"A project manager in the U.S. can now know when an offshore developer has instantiated the debugger or when they are editing the file. The system monitors files by checking byte count," said Greg Burnell, co-founder and CEO.

By monitoring sign-in and sign-out times in context, an Active Time feature measures the amount of time spent actively developing software in such contexts as modeling, UML design, and testing.

Burnell said 6th Sense is perfect for monitoring offshore developers because it insulates managers from cultural differences.

"The neat thing is it is an empirical method, so an hour of active time in China is the same as in the U.S. or India," Burnell said.

A is for Adobe Systems, and for those who spend more time online than off but who always worry about getting disconnected, Adobe will officially unveil Apollo, a not-very-well-kept secret project that takes RIA (Rich Internet Applications) and puts them back on the desktop.