in this issue
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Windows 7 Showcase
| Nearly 3 million developers are already building on Windows. Are you one of them? If so, did you submit your product to be considered for the Microsoft Windows 7 showcase? Back in October 2010, we shared with you a great opportunity to get free promotion on CNET Download.com. As many of you already know, we partnered with Windows 7 and invited CNET Download.com software developers to optimize their products for the Windows 7 operating system. In order to participate, developers had to incorporate at least one of the qualifying Windows 7 features and submit their updated product for consideration.
If you were one of the many developers, who submitted your product for consideration, check out the Windows 7 Showcase page on download.com to see if your product was accepted! Congratulations to all, who were accepted and thank you for participating!
RSA Conference 2011 overview
 RSA Conference 2011 has come and gone again - from February 14 - 18 - right here in San Francisco. If I remember correctly, it was raining cats and dogs during RSA last year and this year was no exception. Luckily, for me, I didn't have to travel far since RSA 2011 was right around the corner from the CNET office, but during the same week, President Obama visited the bay area to meet with some of the top leaders in tech as well as the former President Bill Clinton, who was one of the keynote speakers at the conference this year. I heard from a lot of the publishers that they had trouble getting out of SF due to flight delays, but I'm not sure if that was from the usual San Francisco fog, combined with the storm, or if the President's Air Force One had anything to do with it. Nevertheless, it was a great conference, indeed.
Unlike the previous couple of years, I didn't get a chance to walk the Expo floor as much, but I did get a chance to sit-in with our Security Editor on some of the best meetings and meet some of the new developers, who traveled far from all over the world. Some of the common themes at the conference centered around new classes of vulnerabilities, WikiLeaks, current and emerging regulations and legislations around national security, cryptography, cloud security as well as mobile security. It was great to hear about some of the exciting initiatives in the works in the security space and we are looking forward to hearing more in the coming months!
 | | |  | Note to the Software Publishers
from Peggy Yu
Director, Business Development
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Greetings, hope this note finds you well. The most recent news on our front is very non-CNET related. We, in San Francisco, have just come from an eventful few days...we were told we would get snow! And while some parts of the Bay Area did, those who lived in the city saw absolutely nothing. Regardless, it was the talk of the town for a while.
Back to our regularly scheduled CNET programming...we know that one of February's big holidays is Valentine's Day and we made sure CNET Downloads celebrated properly! Did you see our Valentine's Day promo? Users were able to send flowers to that special someone and get some cool software as well. Talk about a "sweet" deal. We are planning on doing a lot more of these deals - if you want your product featured in a deal, let us know. February also saw yet another conference. Right down the block, we attended RSA 2011 and saw many of our security publishers. It was great to catch up with our publishers in-person. Catherine will share her experiences at RSA - so read on below. Finally, I'm proud to share yet another successfully Upload.com software publisher story. Please read about KeyLemon - a company we've worked closely with from the launch of their first product.
Happy reading! Best,
Peggy |
Publisher's corner: KeyLemon success story
One of the CNET Downloads publishers, KeyLemon, has recently started a partnership with a Semp Toshiba and Florian Sorber, the CEO of KeyLemon, flashes back to give us his story on how it all got started: "In March of 2010, I received an email from Semp Toshiba, asking us if they could integrate KeyLemon into their PC's. I had never heard of this company, so I immediately did some research and found that Semp manufactures Toshiba electronic equipment under license in Brazil. They had been using KeyLemon's face technology to access their own computers and really liked the product. We then started the email and phone conversations to discuss how this partnership could work. Once the partnership started to look very promising, we decided to fly down to Brazil and meet with Semp Toshiba to work out the final details. During our 10-day visit, we had a great time working on the technical and business aspects on how to make this partnership work. By the time we left, we had technical approval from Semp Toshiba and a contract. Now, we have a wonderful partnership and are already looking for ways to provide even more to Semp Toshiba. This is a very important partnership for us because it gives us tremendous credibility in a very competitive market. It acknowledges not only the quality of our work, but also the expertise of our technology partner, the Idiap Research Institute."
Software Deals: Valentine's Day promotion
This month, we ran a special Valentine's Day promotion through our new program, CNET Downloads Marketplace, which featured 12 software titles for users to choose from as they completed a 3rd party offer to send flowers to their loved ones. We are building out the program to be able to feature more products, so sign up today and see how you can participate in these promotions going forward.
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