webqem blog

webqem’s Larry Adler and Gavin Perry will be in Hong Kong next week attending the International ITC Expo at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. The Expo runs from 14 – 17 April 2008.

While the two will be manning a booth at the Expo, Larry is also part of the speaker line-up – presenting the topic “Rapid E-Learning with Adobe Connect Professional” on Tuesday afternoon.

webqem has recently opened offices in Hong Kong, Singapore and Auckland.

The International ITC Expo is one of the largest information & communication technology exhibitions in the region with product and service providers exhibiting from 18 countries and regions. Details for the International ITC Expo can be found online at http://ictexpo.tdctrade.com/index.htm

Congratulations to Kim McKay and Jenny Bonnin of True Green for the release of True Green Kids, their third True Green book launched this week in Sydney by Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, AM MP.

webqem worked with Kim and Jenny to produce the True Green @ Work E-Learning Program, creating it with a number of Adobe products including Adobe Flash and Adobe Presenter.

Visit the True Green site to read more http://www.betruegreen.com/

A new public site, extranet and blog for Converge International has just gone live. Converge International specialises in the design and implementation of productivity, risk and health services and a full range of training and consultancy services. The public site was designed to present potential clients with a clear view of all services offered and to facilitate employees wishing to speak to a counsellor at Converge International.

The extranet allows both staff and clients to access a repository of relevant documents, links and content and integrates with Adobe Connect and a 3rd party data management system.

The blog is a great way for Converge International to keep their users up to date with the latest news and in addition, is an excellent SEO tool.

The role of technology in linking students together is discussed today in an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, where Adobe Connect Professional is mentioned as one of the ways that teachers and students can collaborate online.

Adobe’s John Treloar, well known to educators here in Australia, is one of the people quoted in the article that covers how a variety of different technologies are being used to engage students online.

Using Adobe Connect to involve students in a collaborative environment rather than a passive one-to-many online seminar means that the learning process is more engaging – that the student has the ability to contribute and to be part of the learning experience.

Read more in the Sydney Morning Herald article entitled “Dial-up duxes”.

Adobe released their innovative new desktop runtime, Adobe AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) last week and webqem was part of the launch activities at the Powerhouse Museum.

Webqem and four other developers were invited to demonstrate their AIR skills by participating in AIR Jam, a competition where participants were each given three minutes to get up and demo AIR applications that they had built – the audience then selected their favourite by an SMS vote.

We showed a prototype of a travel companion application inspired by tripit.com. Especially built for the Sydney AIR launch, travelAIR gives users the ability to manage travel itineraries through a single program.

Users can add activities to their itineraries by dragging domestic airline PDFs or manually entering details using a variety of activity specific forms. Activities that include addresses have the ability to display their locations via Google Maps. Images can be associated with an itinerary by dragging them into it. Itinerary events can be dragged out of travelAir into calendars that support the ICS open standard; Apple’s iCal for example.

Our presentation of travelAIR received the highest amount of votes for the competition winning us a Nintendo Wii and a copy of Guitar Hero III for the office. Check out Barry Beattie’s video below for the webqem travelAIR presentation at the Australian Adobe AIR launch.

MySherpa is a new site specialising in travel guides and maps for Phu Quoc and Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) in Vietnam.

MySherpa produces fresh, independent guides based on informed local knowledge and solid research.

Also available are rugged water-resistant maps of Phu Quoc and Saigon with all the best local features and activities marked, and a comprehensive travel guide for Phu Quoc, with the Saigon travel guide coming very soon. See samples of the guide and map online at the site.

MySherpa was written in ColdFusion and MySQL, with an online payment gateway for ordering the maps and guides.