The 2014 Postgres Open Program Committee is pleased to announce the opening of Early Bird Tickets and Tutorial Registration sales.

Early Bird Tickets: Book early through July 6, 2014 to save $200 on your registration! Postgres Open has received such strong support from our community sponsors that we’re retaining our ticket prices from 2013 - no increase this year.

Conference Tutorials: We’ve brought in some new presenters and topics this year for our tutorial sessions held Wednesday, September 17th.

• Adv. SQL + Functions - Joe Conway, Stephen Frost
• Intro to PostGIS Core and Popular Add-ons - Regina Obe, Leo Hsu (a 2 part/full day session)
• Writing and Using Extensions - Dimitri Fontaine
  

In addition, Heroku is offering a free platform tutorial covering dynos and their environment, buildpacks, deployment, releases, HTTP routing, add-ons, and of course Postgres.

Early Bird Tickets and All Tutorials can be purchased here: https://postgresopen.org/2014/tickets/

The CfP has been extended through Sunday June 8th: We’ve received some impressive submissions thus far, however a few of you have asked for some extra time, as such we’re giving you until this Sunday June 8. https://postgresopen.org/2014/callforpapers/

We look forward updating you in the coming weeks and with more speaker info and the presentations schedule for Postgres Open 2014!

The new Admin4 release is the first to contain a greatly enhanced PostgreSQL module. It includes:

• Object browser with Favourites
• Query tool with Snippets, sql text fragments stored for frequent usage
• Data tool for table data modification, with Presets to remember frequently used data retrieval filters.

Favourites, Snippets and Presets are stored centrally in the database, making them available for roaming usage. Your day-to-day code snippets, standard filters and frequently used objects are right there no matter which workstation you're using to maintain the database.

Download it here from sourceforge, it's free (Apache2 licensed). Contributors/testers for this fresh project are welcome!

TAIPEI, Taiwan — June 4, 2014 — Wednesday during a keynote address at Computex, Nick Parker, Microsoft corporate vice president responsible for Microsoft Corp.’s device partnerships, demonstrated the breadth of innovation happening across Windows and the Windows device ecosystem. He was joined during his keynote by Tony Prophet, corporate vice president of Windows Marketing, and Dr. Hsiao-Wuen Hon, managing director of Microsoft Research Asia and distinguished scientist at Microsoft, who provided evidence of how Microsoft is innovating to deliver opportunity for partners and value to customers in a mobile-first, cloud-first world.

Parker opened the keynote talking about Microsoft’s vision for devices in a rapidly changing market and how Microsoft is innovating across its products, partnerships and business model to create opportunity for partners. Parker also talked about Microsoft’s device partner strategy to drive scale and innovation with Windows, through new partnerships and new technology that delight customers.

To talk about how the Windows team is operating with new speed and agility to deliver enhancements to customers and partners, and how Microsoft and its partners can build the next 1 billion devices together, Parker invited Tony Prophet to the stage. Prophet talked about how recent Windows enhancements including $0 Windows for devices smaller than 9 inches, relaxed certification requirements, the release of Windows 8.1 Update, Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows universal apps all make building incredible Windows devices easier for a broader ecosystems of hardware partners and ultimately more valuable and affordable for customers. He talked about the value of Microsoft cloud services across devices and shared the latest momentum:

• 2 billion Skype minutes per day

• 4.4 million Office 365 Home subscribers

• 400 million active Outlook.com users

• 250 million OneDrive users

• 48 million Xbox Live members

• 18 percent share of U.S. search market for Bing
  

He also shared momentum on apps and announced that Kabam, a leader in free-to-play games, will deliver its lineup of hit games to Windows tablets and phones over the next year, including “Fast & Furious 6: The Game,” “Dragons of Atlantis: Heirs of the Dragon” and “The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle-earth.” Moving forward, Kabam games will be available for Windows in the same timeframe as for other platforms.

Prophet was joined on stage by Nick Hedderman, group manager in the Windows Product Management team. Hedderman demonstrated the latest capabilities in Windows 8.1 Update and Windows Phone 8.1, showing a number of new experiences that were built based on customer and partner feedback, including improved mouse and keyboard navigation in Windows and enhanced notification, personalization and file management options in Windows Phone. He finished the demo with a look at Cortana, Microsoft’s new personal assistant on Windows Phone, and spoke about its upcoming availability in both China and the U.K.

Microsoft and its hardware partners announced new designs, price points and markets for Windows devices. Parker had nearly 40 brand-new devices on stage, including all-in-ones, laptops, 2-in-1s, tablets and smartphones. He gave the first sneak peek of Toshiba’s 7-inch tablet that will be available in the coming months at a value-driven price point that is very competitive to any other 7-inch-class device and unveiled the HP Pro x2 612 2-in-1 that is packed with business-ready capabilities including security features, a Wacom stylus, and dual batteries in the tablet and the power keyboard. He demonstrated an expanding ecosystem with new partner devices including numerous tablets from partners in the China technology ecosystem in Shenzhen, Beijing and Shanghai, including Haier, VIDO and Luckystar. Parker also showcased a breadth of smartphones from value to premium from new partners including BLU, InFocus Corp., Prestigio and Yezz. These new devices are the result of Microsoft’s expanded collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies Inc. on its reference design program, which enables device manufacturers to quickly and efficiently broaden their portfolio with Windows Phones.

Dr. Hon joined Parker on stage for a discussion about the future of computing and key areas of investment for Microsoft Research that include big data, machine learning, datacenter, sensors, computer vision and natural user interface. Dr. Hon talked about advancements in computer science and provided examples of how technology coming out of Microsoft Research ends up in products such as Xbox, Bing and Skype. He concluded by sharing his thoughts on how computing is evolving to become more human-centric, which provides a more personal and contextual user experience for people to do more, know more and be more.

Computex is the second-largest computer exhibition in the world, drawing a range of manufacturers and developers each year for a look at the latest upcoming devices and technologies. Microsoft products and partner devices can be seen on display in the Microsoft booth in Nangang Exhibition Hall, L Area-#0110. More information is available at http://www.computextaipei.com.tw/.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services, devices and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.