We've finally got the TODCon Vegas 2007 schedule and speaker list up. Check it out. Lots of excellent sessions about the new Adobe products, running your web business, usability, CSS and more. There's still time to register for the best little conference in Vegas! Come play on the strip with the rest of us geeks. You know you wanna... :)

Representatives from Adobe announced today the launch of Adobe CS3. I know we've been hearing little bits about this for a while, but people, this is huge.

This live webcast gave the global audience an chance to see what Adobe has been working on for the past two years, "the largest software release in Adobe's history."

How large? 13 point products upgrades were announced today, including NEW products. A pretty ambitious effort indeed.

Adobe has created variety of collections geared to different types of users and price points:

• Design Suite Standard
• Design Suite Premium
• Web Suite Standard
• Web Suite Premium
• Production Premium
• Master Collection

The common theme throughout the CS3 suites is one of integration - better integration between Fireworks, Photoshop and Illustrator, better integration between Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Illustrator, between Flash, Photoshop and Illustrator and between Photoshop, Indesign and Illustrator.

Lording over it all is Adobe Bridge, which is now connected to many of the major Adobe apps, including Fireworks, Flash, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop. 

For more information on the new suites, keep checking back here at Community MX where we will be giving you sneak peeks into some of our favorite features over the coming days.

You can also - of course - visit Adobe's web site for more details on the new software, pricing and packages as well as tutorials.

As you may have noticed from my recent articles, I've been on a bit of an organizational kick. It all started (or became more focused) when I downloaded the LightRoom beta from Adobe. Pretty cool software which I am still playing with.

Ironically, playing with LightRoom got me thinking more and more about Adobe Bridge, and its functionality. While not near as sexy as LightRoom, Bridge is packed with functionality that can really help to streamline your workflow and business.

I've been using Bridge for quite some time to add Metadata to all my images before they are burned to CD and/or shipped to the client, or even uploaded to my flickr site. But lately I've been experimenting more with the search, keyword and rating features. This experimentation has resulted in a series of articles about Adobe Bridge. So far, Parts 1 and 2 are online. Parts 3 and 4 are completed and will be hitting cyberspace some time soon.

The Getting Organized with Adobe Bridge Series:

• Getting Organized with Adobe Bridge - Part 1: Batch Renaming
• Getting Organized with Adobe Bridge - Part 2: Working with Metadata
  

Coming Soon! 

• Getting Organized with Adobe Bridge - Part 3: Keywords and Searches and Collections - Oh My!
• Getting Organized with Adobe Bridge - Part 4: Rating and Labelling

I didn't begin writing about the Bridge with a series of articles in mind. However, the more I played (and found cool things) the more I thought about sharing those discoveries with you.

I'm not sure if I have any more Bridge articles up my sleeve, but as I continue to work with the application, the muse may slap me upside the head yet again. Part four was a bit of a surprise even to me. I hadn't even thought about going over these features until I realized how often I use the rating feature myself.

I'm also finding this information to be very useful to my current students. This semester, I am teaching photojournalism and photography to students in two different journalism programs at Centennial College.

One core component of the courses is Photoshop instruction, but it occurred to me recently how valuable the Bridge can be to these students and how important it is to instil good organizational habits early. This is of particular relevance to my photojournalism students, because Bridge works with XMP data and follows IPTC standards for data storage/input. The type of information you can include/embed with an image file will become part of their photography workflow when they enter the profession.

Adobe has also acknowledged and embraced this technology with the creation of their XMP toolkit and the extended capabilites of the File Info feature.

For those of you who are not photographers, Adobe Bridge works with multiple image formats, not just photographs. Whether you have a collection of PNG designs for a web site, or a bunch of animated GIFS, Bridge can help you get - and stay - organized with those files as well. So if you haven't had the chance yet, be sure to take a peek at these articles.

Anything you can do to make your life easier is a good thing, in my view.

As Adobe continues to develop its myriad product lines, I hope to see Bridge capability or integration with other programs, too.