Adobe Photoshop Elements owners: Save 50% when you upgrade to Photoshop CS4 (only $299)

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/882790

Amazon.com Deal: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 -- $124.99

Available 10AM PST.
Lightning Deals at Amazon.com
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 -- $124.99

Online Holiday Shopping at Risk from 'Browser Wars,'

I thought this was an interesting (and different) article on Holiday shopping online.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Online-Holiday-Shopping-Risk-Browser/story.aspx?guid={6D8F6F73-A7DC-4A74-857A-1097748034AA}

Adobe CS4 $299 with purchase of Wacom Tablet

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/880924

Simple Silhouettes in Illustrator CS4

This is a cool tutorial on one of the many uses of the Illustrator CS4’s Blob Brush tool. Check this out!

Simple Silhouettes In Illustrator CS4

November Meeting - Recap

Thanks to Jim Almeida for presenting Flash APE via AdobeConnect and congratulations to Tina Anness who won the Adobe CS4 Design Premium Suite.

Since PixelWit took the liberty of posting the links we discussed during the meeting, I'm going to gladly just link to them and make my life a little less hectic. Thanks Sean! :-)

Hope everyone has a great holiday season and we'll see you in January for the next meeting where there will be a tour of The Patriot-News printing press. Check back on the blog for specifics.

Meet Adobe Groups

Adobe Groups gives the Adobe community a place to connect, find one another, and locate communities of people who share their interests—whether in their own back yard or worldwide. It is a common home for Adobe user groups, containing information about those groups, their areas of focus, and past and future meetings.

Adobe Groups provides a forum of support and technology to the community at all levels. Whether your professional focus is design or development or you're a hobbyist looking to gain experience, or you are just starting out, Adobe Groups can help you strengthen community ties, build your network, learn the latest technology innovations, and see the techniques that turn novices into experts—and experts into gurus.

Nearly all of the content on Adobe Groups is created or curated not by Adobe staff but by the user group managers themselves. Adobe user groups are run by community members like you. They are professionals who live and work all over the world, love Adobe products, and make time in their lives to share their passion and expertise with others in their area. They are a tremendous resource to the Adobe community, building connections and fostering learning face to face. We've built Adobe Groups in large part to help them do their work better and more easily.

Adobe Groups is currently organized by region, so no matter where you are in the world, you can quickly and easily find what's closest to your home, office, or school. And if there are no user groups listed in your local area, you can find out how to start a brand-new user group.

More at:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/logged_in/rluxemburg_adobe_groups.html

Photoshop Disasters Blog

Hope on over to the Photoshop Disasters Blog for some "FAIL-blog-esq" Photoshop fun!

http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/

Contest: APERTURE NATURE PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOPS CONTEST

As a proud sponsor of the Aperture Nature Photography Workshops, Peachpit is happy to announce that the second Aperture Nature Photography Workshops contest is now open!

Winners will be chosen for a chance to participate in the second Aperture Nature Photography Workshop at Yosemite National Park. Participants will have unparalleled photo opportunities, followed by first-hand instruction in Apple Aperture by a team of Apple-certified Aperture trainers.

Questions and inquiries about the contest can be sent toaperturenatureworkshops@gmail.com, or visit the official Web site. Submissions will be accepted until Thursday, December 4.

$10 eBook Deal of the Day

Have you ever wanted to buy an eBook to learn something fun but couldn’t justify it because of the price? Apress is pleased to offer you the “eBook Deal of the Day” found on their homepage in the top-right corner. At 12:01 a.m. PST, a different Apress or friends of ED eBook will be priced at only $10 US for a 24-hour period. Check back every day for a new deal.

Adobe Elements products on sale at Costco.com

If you're a Costco member and thinking of buying PS Elements, now might be the time! Elements is a great tool if you are just doing some light (non-professional) photo touch ups and photo fun.

Photoshop Elements
$49.99 -- $30 discount is reflected in the price. Valid for orders placed November 17, 2008 through December 7, 2008.

http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11306946

Premiere Elements
$69.99 After $20 Mail in Rebate

Photoshop and Premiere Elements together
$99.99 after $30 Mail in Rebate

UG Benefit: Free Books with Book Reviews

Just a reminder to our CPAUG members to let us know if you're interested in doing a book review in exchange for a free book from our publishing sponsors (right side bar of the blog).

If so, let us know at our next meeting or feel free to email us at: cpaugmanager@gmail.com

It's a great benefit that we'd love for you to take advantage of.  Most reviews are about a page long.  Here's an example of one that I did back in June:  http://cenpennaug.blogspot.com/2008/06/book-review-ajax-and-php-building.html

Flash Is Now A Platform, AIR Gets An Upgrade, And Adobe Puts A Catalyst In Gumbo

A concise summary of the latest news from Adobe at TechCrunch:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/16/flash-is-now-a-platform-air-gets-an-upgrade-and-adobe-puts-a-catalyst-in-gumbo/

November Meeting: Flash APE engine - Win a CS4 Suite!

Go APE with CPAUG and get a chance to win a CS4 Suite!

Date: Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Time: 6-8PM
East Shore Area Library - Computer Lab, 1st floor (basement)
4501 Ethel Street
Harrisburg, PA 17109
Free WiFi for all DCLS card holders
No food or drink is allowed in the computer room
GoogleMap
Information about the meeting location
CPAUG RSS Feed

About the Meeting:
Jim Almeida will demonstrate APE (Actionscript Physics Engine) for Flash.
APE is a free AS3 open source 2D physics engine for use in Flash and Flex, released under the MIT License. APE is written and maintained by Alec Cove. Jim has been using Flash since it was “Future Splash” and essentially lives and breathes Flash :-)

APE Tutorial:
Curious about APE? Check out this slick tutorial at http://www.emanueleferonato.com/2007/10/14/ape-actionscript-physics-engine-tutorial/

WIN a CS4 Suite!
One lucky CPAUG member will be randomly selected from a raffle to win their choice of one of the CS4 Suites! Adobe® Creative Suite® 4 delivers tightly integrated software and services that measurably improve productivity and enable you to produce richly expressive work in print, web, interactive, video, audio, and mobile.

Everyone who is present will get a raffle ticket but the raffle will include bonus tickets for CPAUG members and a better chance to win:
A) 1 extra ticket for every meeting you've attended and signed-in for since July 2008.
B) 5 extra tickets for bringing a new person to this meeting.
C) 5 extra tickets if you were a presenter at one of our meetings since July 2008.

The fine print: You must be a CPAUG member and you must be present to win. Approximate retail value of the prize is up to $1900.00. CS4 Master Collection is excluded. Maximum 16 total tickets per person. Winner must not have won a CS Suite in the past 12 months.

Additionally, we'll be giving away prize packs that include a book from Focal Press.  Focal Press has been a consistent supporter of CPAUG supplying us with many of the great books you've received in our raffles lately. More about Focal Press. 

This will be our last meeting in 2008. Have a Happy Holiday and looking forward to a great 2009! As always, please feel free to contact your group managers at cpaugManager@gmail.com if you would like to present, have any topic suggestions, or other feedback. This is your group!

Article: Lawmaker Plans Bill on Web Neutrality

For those of you keeping up on the "Net Neutrality" situation here's a good article from Reuters: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-us-fcc-netneutrality.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

And for those that have no idea what "Net Neutrality" is about, be sure to check out the Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality

CS4 trials now available at Adobe.com

Wanting to try before you buy? Or maybe you'll get lucky and win a copy of CS4 at our next meeting! Either way, you can now download CS4 trials at www.adobe.com. I noticed there were trials for at least Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, InDesign, Dreamweaver and AfterEffects though there may be more so be sure to check for yourself for your favorite product.

The Ioke JVM Language: The power of Lisp and Ruby with an intuitive syntax

I am not sure who may be into this but I found it interesting.

Ola Bini, a core JRuby developer and author of the book Practical JRuby on Rails Projects, has been developing a new language for the JVM called Ioke. This strongly typed, extremely dynamic, prototype based object oriented language aims to give developers the same kind of power they get with Lisp and Ruby, combined with a nice, small, regular syntax.

Ola explains the basic nature of Ioke:

If Photoshop were "real"

I'm not sure where this came from, but it's too neat to not post about!

Large image: http://i36.tinypic.com/2quu0qw.jpeg