I'm a big fan of drop.io, the real-time sharing and collaborating tool. Today, drop.io is launching the public beta for present.io, which aims to make web-based presentations really easy. This is a great compliment to existing drop.io services, conference.io and phone.io.

The service is really easy to use. You create a drop (or add a presentation to an existing drop), upload the files you want to share, and then distribute the URL to your participants. Once your presentation starts, only the administrator can control what displayed or how media is played back, but if real-time chat is enabled, everyone can join in and comment.

Using the free conference line that's included with every drop, participants can call in and talk to one another, or listen in to the audio portion of a presentation.

I played around with present.io myself, basically recreating the demo in the present.io video and I was pretty impressed. For a service that doesn't require any external software downloads, or really any logins or sign-ups, it's a great way to do lightweight presentations.

This won't replace services like Adobe's Acrobat Connect or Microsoft's LiveMeeting for users who need to do screensharing or advanced whiteboarding, but if you just want to share a presentation or some documents, this is a great hassle-free way to do it.

Flashforward2008 is going to be in San Francisco this August. This annual conference is directed at Flash designers and developers and those who aspire to be called a designer or developer. Every year Flashforward features a Film Festival with open nominations of the best Flash content out there. In 2008 the categories have changed to the following:

1. Application
2. Cartoon/Story/Narrative
3. Code
4. Experimental/Art
5. Game
6. Motion Graphics
7. Navigation/Experience
8. Sound
9. Typography
10. Video

Anyone can submit links to Flash based works in all categories that are 'innovative and compelling.' Previous winners include Paper Vision 3d, the MoMA Contemporary Voice exhibition, and the amazing Tokyo Plastic. If you do submit a nomination to Flashforward2008 via the official film festival page, please let us know in the comments below with a link. The deadline for nominations is Father's Day, June 15, 2008.

With the popularity and continued growth in the world of widgets, Niall Kennedy has launched a successor to last year's popular Widgets Live! conference, Widget Summit 2007.

The Widget Summit will be held in San Francisco October 15-16th. This year, coined The Year of the Widget by Newsweek, will see this two day conference covering both the product and the development sides of the widget. Widget Summit 2007 sessions will also go over the different widget platforms used, new products and monetization options.

Tickets to the event are $500. They sold out very quickly last year, so if you're thinking about going, chalk up the coin now.

Looking for a conference to polish your year off? If you are a regular user of Adobe products like Photoshop, Flash and Illustrator, the Adobe MAX event could be for you. But you have to empty your pockets first.

Adobe MAX is an event targeted at Adobe users that aims to connect them with other users, discover what can be done with the applications, and inspire others to create. The conference will being an opportunity to meet other users and grab some sneak peaks at what's coming out of Adobe next. There will be training on Adobe's products and solutions, and networking events. Speakers for the North America event include Grant Skinner, Mike Chambers and Erik Natzke.

MAX will be held in North America, Europe and in Japan, and cost a fortune. $1,295 US for general attendance, so make sure your company will spot you. Students, there is an educational discount, but its only $200 off. A one day pass can be purchased for $595, which is still rather pricey.

• Chicago - September 30 to October 3 2007
• Barcelona, Spain - October 15-18 2007
• Tokyo, Japan - November 1-2

Google is schedule to present at the Citigroup Technology Conference in New York on September 6th 2007. The Director of Product Management, Sundar Pichai, and the Group Business Product Manager, Nicholas Fox, will participate in a question and answer session at the conference.

The Annual Technology Conference sponsored by CitiBank will be held from September 4th to 6th, at the Hilton New York. No word on what the team will discuss, but you can sure bet it will most likely be about search and technology. There will be a live audio webcast of the session at http://investor.google.com/webcast.html .

Zoho, the online productivity software company, has announced the latest member of their suite of products, Zoho Meeting. Currently in a private Beta, with full version due out in April.

Through Zoho Meetings, users can schedule meetings, share desktops, and chat between all invitees. As of the beta, only those that are on PC's can host meetings, but anyone can view them as long as they have Flash or Java running installed. Meetings can also be embedded into blogs or websites, how's that for web 2.0 at its finest, run an all day meeting for your blog or website visitors without scrolling or clicking. Zoho Meetings plays nicely with Zoho's other apps as well. For instance, users can plug a Meeting inside a presentation so that it will automatically launch when done, without opening up other applications. How's that for productivity. Will it impress business users? We'll just have to wait until we get a chance to try it out.

Do we smell another possible acquisition deal for Google here?

Check out a video of the new features after the jump...

June 11-15th will see San Francisco packed with Developers heading to the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. The five-day event will see developers and IT professionals attending conference session after conference session about working with the latest Apple developer tools. There will be sessions on choosing and using the latest APIs to make the most of OS X, and how to create mind-blowing, effective user interfaces. Attendees to the conference will get the chance to work side by side with Apple engineers who are responsible for OS X features, ensuring that developers get all of their questions answered from the best possible individuals. This is a not-to-be-missed event for those hardcore OS X developers, web developers, software developers, system administrators, and IT managers out there. Ticket prices range from US$1,295 to $5,180 for a pack of 5 tickets.

If you have an interest in podcasting, blogging, or any of that other "social media" hooey, then you'll want to be in Atlanta, Georgia on February 10th, 2007. That's the date of the as-yet-unnamed social media conference being organized by Sherry Heyl, the Atlanta Media Bloggers, and a bunch of local riff-raff. (If you have any bright ideas for a name, feel free to share.)

EventWax is a web-based service for organizing events. Through the web site, event organizers can publish an event site, accept payments, and manage the event attendees' registration. The initial system was built as a way for a company to organize and manage a conference. The EventWax system is simple to use and can be customized and hosted on your own web site or through EventWax. You can accept payments though PayPal and quickly search the attendee details. All data that the systems captures can be exported as a spreadsheet or XML for easy archiving or referencing. If you organize events, or are thinking about organizing events, try this tool out--you'll love its simplicity, and power.

Check out some screen grabs of the EventWax interface after the jump.

Are you a widget lover? You know all those cool little tools that can be added to desktops and webpages to show the weather, sports scores, news, and horoscopes. The widget world is growing strong, major players and individuals are creating some very neat modules, widgets and gadgets. GigaOm founder Om Malik, and Niall Kennedy have teamed up to organize a conference called Widgets Live! The new conference is aimed at the emerging widget economy, and being held at the Marines Memorial Club in San Francisco. Widgets Live! Is set to be a conference where developer's, business leaders and content producers can get together and understand how widgets, gadgets and modules can communicate and syndicate content effectively. The Widgets Live! Website has not released speakers, panels, or a session list, but judging from this unique niche, and logo collage on Niall's website, we could guess that the list of participating companies might include Google, MSN, AIM, WordPress, Six Apart, Netvibes, Apple, MySpace, and Yahoo. Tickets are set at $100, and can be purchased online.

So, out of all the widgets, gadgets, and modules out there, which ones do you find the most useful?

UPDATE - the Widget Live! schedule has been posted.

The Voice Over Net conference starts today in Boston. Featured speakers for the event include the Vice Chairman of AOL, Ted Leonsis, CEO and publisher of Washington Post and Newsweek Interactive, Caroline Little, as well as the CEO of BitTorrent, Jason Krikorian. This is the tenth year for the Voice Over Net Conference. The conference will go over the full spectrum of IP communication offerings providing massive amounts of industry insight and education.

The Von fall conference will be held from September 11-14 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. It features speakers from Skype, Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, Vonage, Verizon, Earthlink, Time Warner, TMobile, Cingular, Motorola, and Hewlett Packard.

There are also rumors around new product announcements at the event including Yahoo's addition of free conference calling to its Messenger with VoIP service via a free plug-in.

Carson Workshops is running a two day conference on the development of technology you will be using tomorrow in San Francisco at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, on September 13-14. This isn't a no name conference either! There will be some big-hitters speaking at the event, including:

• Kevin Rose from digg
• Mike Arrington from TechCrunch
• Mike Davidson from Newsvine
• Jeff Veen from Google
• Tantek Celik from Technorati
• Cal Henderson from Flickr
• Matt Mullenweg from Wordpress
• Evan Williams from Odeo
• Tom Coates from Yahoo!
• Ted Rheingold from Dogster
• Carl Sjogreen from Google Calendar
• Steve Olechowski from Feedburner
• Ryan Carson from DropSend and Amigo

The speakers will be spilling the beans on how their successful applications were built, with a ton of practical advice on how to create your very own masterpieces or the future of web 2.0 technologies. If you are hanging out in the San Fran area, or feel like taking a trip, September 13 - 14 is the time to go for sure.

If you live in the North East of the US, will be in the area, or just want to attend a podcasting Unconference, then Boston is the place to be the weekend after Labor Day. "PodCamp is a FREE BarCamp-style meetup..." is how the PodCamp Site describes the event.

Anybody can attend, you do not have to be a podcaster, so listeners are welcome, as well as anybody who wants to register and attend. It is free but you do not to go through the registration to get the event swag that will be there. The final venue is still undetermined, but they know it will be in the Boston area and accessible by public transportation to ease attendees getting to the event.

[Via Dave Winer's Blog]

Googles want YOU to attend its conference on Test Automation in London. This is the first conference for Google on this topic, and will he hosted in London in September 7th and 8th.

Google's goal with this conference is to create a colleague based atmosphere where participants can discuss the challenges, and discover solutions of test automation.

Google has 13 presentations lined up, on topics such as:

• Selenium – The in-browser acceptance testing tool
• Building Tests from Real Objects
• Using Open Source Tools for Performance Testing
• Testing Metro-WiFi – Automation Tools and Techniques

Now Google is on the outlook for attendees. They are asking for individuals to submit a 400 word essay on why you want to attend. That deadline is July 28th, and individuals will know if they have been selected to attend by August 4th. Good Luck!

Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of open source blogging platform WordPress, has announced WordCamp, a one-day conference for WordPress users and developers. It's being held for the first time on August 5 in San Fancisco and is following the example of BarCamp, including "free BBQ for lunch, WordPress t-shirts, and a full day of both user and developer discussion." According to Mullenweg, fellow Wordpress developers Donncha and Podz will be on hand from Ireland and England, respectively. Having recently installed the latest version of WordPress on my personal blog and being impressed all over again, I'd love to go to WordCamp, but it probably isn't in the cards.