Hello everyone! We opted for a robust issue in July instead of a luke-warm edition in June where not that much was ready to talk about yet. So welcome to the big combined June-July issue!

We have five interesting articles to introduce, so I'm just going to dive right in. I recently received some pictures of a Christmas Tree set up in Auckland, NZ last December that really takes the idea of expressing creativity through tree lighting to a new height. It's not a small tree to begin with either. Enttec helped bring good cheer by providing the team with 5 of our Datagates as an Art-Net to DMX conversion tool, and -- with the help of our customizable rule-based routing -- a whole lot more. Click here to read more

A few weeks ago, I was showing my European-raised nieces around Washington DC, and was able to slip away for a few minutes to look around in the lobby of a landmark hotel nearby some of the sites they asked to see. At the newly reopened W Hotel, I saw first-hand in their lobby what I had been hearing about for a few months as the project came together. "Look, up in the air, is it a bird? A plane?" (Probably not a F22, if you're following that story.) No, it's a crystal chandelier and the lobby bar of this ultra hip hotel is illuminated by it, in mood-setting colors that change subtly to reflect the energy of the after work crowd of bureaucrats, politicos, and those who like to party near them. All this is controlled by an Enttec E-Streamer, and we will find out what new feature was added to the product to solve this challenge, and why it was chosen by the system integrator for the job. They asked for a new feature on the E-Streamer for the W, and we were happy to oblige. Click here for the Case Study.

How about another Case Study? We have a report from Ra Byn Taylor about a theatre for which he's consulting in Ft. Worth Texas. The Jubilee Theatre is using LightFactory and SFX together in a seamlessly integrated package. Click here to see what Jubilee has going on

Speaking of LightFactory, there is a new release out, version 2.1. I've streamlined the change list for you and brought together just the highlights. Click here to see them Not to dwell on this one topic, but back in the May issue, I promised a 2nd part to the story we ran then about the magic show, in which I would describe lighting another event in the same venue. The 2nd show was a salute to Lindy Hopper Frankie Manning. Well, there's so much already happening in our current edition with LightFactory and it turned out that the program played more of a supporting role than a starring one there, so to fulfill my promise, I'll throw you a couple of pictures and that's where we'll wrap things up for now.

To summarize: we've got stories about LF, ODE, E-Streamer & Datagate. We hope that makes up for a month off. See you in August, when we hope to tell you more about a project where Enttec got to partner with Microsoft. It's a big story, and we need more time to get all the proper clearances to tell it, but I think you'll feel it was worth the wait.