The presentation was made using Adobe Presenter, so all you need is an internet browser with Flash installed. The tutorial available online.

October eSeminars Design for Beginners topics:

• Getting started with CSS 1st Oct

• How to create tabbed menus and AJAX controls in Dreamweaver 8th Oct

• Flash for Beginners 22nd Oct

• Getting started with Illustrator 29th Oct

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Adobe provides a great online resource that is Adobe TV. This website has come back better than ever with its recent relaunch. Launched at the end of  August, the redesigned Adobe TV is now faster and features customization, improved navigation, sharing options, and a more accurate search.

You can watch a full range of programs, from entertainment to instruction to tips & tricks, with videos covering almost every piece of Adobe software – from the Creative Suites, to ColdFusion and Flex, to Photoshop & InDesign. So whether you are a beginner, intermediate or advanced user, Adobe TV has a video that will cater for your needs. You can check out Adobe TV online, you will be pleasantly surprised at the number of great videos available.

September eSeminar Video topics:

• RED Camera workflow with CS4 Production Premium. 4th Sept.

• Encore – Authoring to BluRay and Flash using custom designed templates. 11th Sept.

• Using video with Photoshop CS4. 18th Sept.

• Audio tool for video production – including speech to text workflow. 25th Sept.

For all the people out there that own a piece of Acrobat software, there are some great eSeminars coming up in September. The Acrobat software is packed with many features that most people don’t even know exist. If you own Acrobat standard, Acrobat Pro or Acrobat pro extended, chances are, you have only just scrapped the surface of what the software has to offer. Register now for these free eSeminars and see what Acrobat can do for you. If you still need more training, there is always webqem’s Acrobat training courses.

Septemeber eSeminar Acrobat topics:

• Acrobat 9 for Beginners. 3rd Sept
• Acrobat Top 10 Tips & Trick. 10th Sept
• Converting your standard PDF files into interactive documents with ease. 17th Sept.
• Paper to Searchable PDF – Scanning and OCR. 24th Sept.

Septemeber eSeminar Photography topics:

• Introducing LightRoom & ‘The Five Rules’. 7th Sept
• Lightroom’s Powerful Digital Asset Management Features. 14 Sept
• Fast Raw Workflow Techniques – PART 2. 21st Sept
• Professional photo galleries with Photoshop, Lightroom and Photoshop Elements. 28th Sept

A recording of this meeting is available for viewing, so don’t worry if you missed this. The recording is available here or you can find it under the ‘Recorded Events’ on the connectusers.com website.

The next ACUGA meeting is being held on Thursday 20th of August, so make sure you are registered and we hope to see you there. Simply go to connectusers.com and register today. And be sure to join the ACUGA user group!

About ACUGA

Adobe Connect User Group, Asia Pac (ACUGA) was established by webqem in response to a community need for collaboration and delivery of best practice in online education and e-learning. ACUGA aims to provide a vehicle for sharing of ideas and future development based on the Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro Platform.

Adobe has just announced that the Adobe Acrobat Connect/Blackboard Building Block (integration module) is now available to customers from the Blackboard Building Block website at http://www.blackboard.com/corp/objects/inc/B2Details.asp?ExtensionID=10314

Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro 7 provides a more integrated workflow to common tasks with Blackboard 7.3 and 8, allowing:

• Administrators to easily install the LMS integration module;
• Course Builders create and manage course-specific Adobe Connect Pro Meetings as part of their course offering;
• Students to see upcoming Adobe Connect Pro Meetings and Today’s Meetings.

webqem are the leading Australian Adobe Solutions Partner for Adobe Connect Pro, and will be attending BBWorld AsiaPac 08 in Adelaide on September 8 – 10, sharing knowledge in online learning solutions.

Required equipment:
SoundStation 2W conference phone
USB Cable – A male to mini 5-pin male (same as most digital cameras)
2.5mm to 3.5 mm stereo cable
Windows based computer

Install the Polycom firmware updater software onto PC/laptop. Do not upgrade the firmware of the soundstation. Visit Polycom download page.

Connect cable from the 2.5mm stereo jack on the Polycom to the 3.5mm Microphone jack on your PC/laptop (there is a picture of a mobile phone next to it).

Once the Polycom software has been installed, connect a USB cable from the Polycom (on the underside of the unit at the opposite end to the keypad) to your PC/laptop.

Press the button marked “IP Mode” on the Polycom.

Go into the Sound Applet in control panel and ensure that the microphone jack is enabled. You should now be in business.

1. Google does not execute some types of JavaScript. So if your web page loads a Flash file via JavaScript, Google may not be aware of that Flash file, in which case it will not be indexed.
2. Google does not currently attach content from external resources that are loaded by your Flash files. If your Flash file loads an HTML file, an XML file, another SWF file, etc., Google will separately index that resource, but it will not yet be considered to be part of the content in your Flash file.
3. There are difficulties with Flash content written in bidirectional languages, for example Hebrew or Arabic languages.

Discussions

Feedback from various forums and blogs includes concerns that:

• Flash developers will get even lazier about SEO;- Some Flash sites may see large improvements in their rankings;
• Accessibility will suffer, as designers no longer bother to replace Flash navigation with alternatives;
• Black Hat SEO techniques will flourish, as they hide text in Flash files and create tiny 1 pixel Flash files loaded with links and keywords;
• SEOs will be unable to analyse why a site ranks highly, when the site uses a Flash file containing content that they cannot see;
• What Google will do about duplicate content in HTML sites created for non-Flash users;
• Whether SWFObject , the most commonly used Javascript technique for loading Flash files, will be affected by Google’s inability to execute some types of Javacript;
• Whether alternate text used with SWFObject will be considered duplicate content by Google;
• Whether XML files loaded by Flash, will be excluded, or treated separately, as per the Google limitation above;
• Whether SWF files loaded by small SWF preloaders, will be excluded, or treated separately, as per the Google limitation above;
• How will Google prioritise the content of Flash files. Will it just be one large file of data?
• What about Microsoft and Silverlight?

Making Use of the Announcements

Use deep linking to create direct links to specific parts/states of the Flash application.You can use Adobe Flex components that will update the location bar of a browser window to generate URLs at runtime. The objective is for the search landing page to be exactly at the page/state in the Flash File where the content was found. (A similar flaw with PDF files, where you land at the start of the document.) List the deeplinks in your sitemap XML file.At this stage there are more questions than answers. It will be interesting to see how the rankings for various websites change as the new algorithm rolls out.

1. Brand vs Keywords

Company XYZ sells widgets. Should they choose xyz.com or widgets.com?
Consensus is to go for the brand first, xyz.com. Next best would be brand plus keywords, for example xyzwidgets.com. And finally the keyword-based option, widgets.com.

The rationale is that you always want to be found for your business name, especially when you gain a high profile. You can always use your keywords in the titles, heading and content and incoming links. You may even have your keywords in your company name, which would be very helpful from an SEO perspective.

2. Which suffix?

Theroetically .com is for commercial business sites, .org is for organisations, .net for networks, .gov for government, and .edu for education. Altogether there are currently 21 top level domains to choose from. If possible, purchase all the relevant ones, to avoid your brand being hijacked. If you own xyz.com, try to get xyz.net. If you are an organisation owning xyz.org, try to purchase xyz.com.

If your target market will only ever be local, go for the .com.au. If you intend to expand globally, go for the .com. Ideally purchase both, and redirect them to the primary domain for your market.
Note that in Australia you need an ABN to purchase a .com.au domain address. To be included in the Australian index of search engines, you should either have a .com.au domain, or host your site in Australia.

On June 26, 2008 the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers announced that the board had approved a recommendation to expand the range of top level domains. See ICANN domain name announcement.
The final plan should be published early next year, with new names available in the second quarter of 2009. There is already interest in city-based domains, like .paris, or .brandname.
The downside is the potentially large number of extra domains you may now need to purchase, if you intend to safeguard your brand.

3. Multiple domain names

Multiple domain names can be useful for many reasons. Cater for misspelled domain names, or even setup a specific domain name for offline advertising, so that you can measure the success of different forms of advertising. If the CEO is high profile, buy their personal name as well. Even Google registers multiple domains – enter Gooooogle.com and you will get redirected to Google.com. See the multiple domain names apparently registered by Google at Google Domain List.

4. Redirecting domain names

Ideally you should have one primary domain name. E.g. xyz.com. Other domain names, such as widgets.com, xyz.com.au and xyy.com, should be permanently redirected back to the primary domain. Also known as domain forwarding. For Apache-based servers, it is most commonly known as a 301 redirect.

Avoid placing duplicate content, or token keyword-rich content on the other domains, purely for the purpose of sending traffic or generating links to the primary domain. Google views these as search engine spam, attempting to “game” the search engines. See the Google Webmaster Guidelines for more information.

If you have setup your redirects correctly, entering xyy.com will redirect you to xyz.com.

5. More on domain names

Keep it short.
Keep it catchy and memorable.
Avoid trademarked names.
Spell it correctly.

Avoid dashes if you can. A few years ago dashes were beneficial, as they helped search engines find the keywords in your title. People started creating www.the-widget-shop.com/blue-widgets/buy-blue-widgets-online-now.html, which is likely to be treated as spam by search engines these days.
If you listen to radio advertising of websites, it sounds strange reading out website names with dashes in them.

Buy it quickly. Domain names are issued on a ‘first come first served’ basis so it makes sense to get in quickly and register the best possible name for your business.

6. Domain tasting, kiting and front-running

In 2000, ICANN recommended a “grace period”, to allow you purchase a domain name and return it without cost within 5 days, in case you made a mistake, mistyping the domain name.
This led to the growth of domain tasting, where people would buy a domain, test its earning capacity by placing Google and other ads on it, and dump it after 5 days if it proved worthless. Apparently during March 2006 29 million .com names were registered, and 27 million were dropped before the grace period expired. In response, Google announced plans to crack down on profiteering from repeated domain tasting in February this year. And ICANN has a proposal to make part of the registration fee non-refundable, which will make it less popular.
Domain kiting is serial domain tasting, where people repeatedly purchase and dump, purchase and dump, the same domain name, to avoid the purchase cost.
Front-running is where domain registrars would lock a domain into their system after a search for an available domain name had been performed. There were a few US registrars who became famous for this unsavoury practice. Although they defended themselves by saying they were trying to stop domain tasting by other registrars.

Many people found that after searching to see if a domain name was available, when they returned the next day to purchase the domain, it was no longer available, and had been registered by a domain registrar. Domain name searches are logged, and also many registrars automatically contact other registrars to ask whether a domain had been registered but not propagated. This information was then used for domain tasting or front-running. Some people try to avoid having domain name searches logged by searching for only a part of the desired name, and viewing the search list results, and only searching through reputable registrars.

7. Reusing old domain names

You may choose a domain name that has been used before. It may have already been deleted a long time ago, or it may only just be expiring now.
Check the Wayback Machine to see what your domain used to be used for, to ensure you are not accidentally buying an unsavoury site.
Check what sites may still be linking to the domain, by searching for “site:yournewdomain.com” at Yahoo or Google.
If it still exists, check the Google PageRank, to see if it has been banned.
There is a significant online industry in domain names, waiting for popular names to become available, with easily downloaded software to scan for available names so they can take advantage of existing searches. Some sites, such as drophunt.com, let you search by Google PageRank and Alexa Ranking, to give an indication of the domain popularity.

8. Searching for domain names

If all the names that you can think of have been used, you may need help coming up with ideas.
Some sites with search suggestion include:
WhoIS.
If you also want to check the availability of .com.au version of domains, try:
TPP Internet.

9. Buying your domain name

When you’ve worked out which domains you would like to purchase, webqem can help you purchase your domain name, as an authorised domain name reseller.

Until recently, you had to know the actual URL, or follow a link from a Facebook page or website. Now you can go to http://www.facebook.com/directory/pages without being logged on to Facebook, and search by business name or browse by type. Facebook says pages are automatically added to the directory, although they do have a disclaimer that only a limited set of results are available to unregistered users.

The fact that you don’t have to login means that Pages can be indexed by search engines. The usual rules apply, in that links from external websites affect whether you will rank well, regardless of whether you are included on the Facebook directory. For example http://www.facebook.com/pages/wwwcostumeboxcomau/8168104555 is indexed at Google, but not yet included in the Facebook directory.

A search at Google.com for say “Barack Obama” highlights the current importance of social networking sites in search engines. Page one at Google includes dedicated pages at Wikipedia, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube. His Facebook page is on page two of Google, with his Flickr and LinkedIn profile on page three.

So if you have not yet claimed your company name at these social networking sites, you are missing out on a boost to your search engine performance, and associated traffic. We also recommend grabbing your name at these sites before someone else does, so that you can control your public image.

The downside to social networking sites is the need to maintain the content. By nature, social networking sites interact with their audience. It can be damaging to your reputation if a malicious or false statement is posted to your page, and you haven’t logged on to respond or remove the comment. And if you don’t add fresh content to your site, people won’t come back.

In saying that, it is easy to maintain content. You can import feeds from other sites you are active on, such as your WordPress blog, or YouTube. That way it looks like you are adding fresh content, and your audience keeps up with what you are up to.

You can share the responsibility for maintaining your Facebook Business Page, with nominated Facebook personal users as administrators. The viral nature of Facebook means that when others see which Pages you are a fan of, they may also become a fan.

When people become a fan of your Business page, you have the ability to send updates to their Facebook inbox, so that you can tell them about special offers.

If you are a high profile brand, you may get a name like http://www.facebook.com/pinkfloyd if you contact Facebook directly. Otherwise you end up with the standard business page naming format http://www.facebook.com/pages/webqem/17279306527 .

Facebook Ads allow you to reach a targetted audience and bring them to your Facebook Page or external website. You can choose your audience by age, gender, geography and keywords. For example if you wanted to display your ad to people in Australia over 18 who listed “skiiing” as an interest, Facebook will tell you the number of people available, and let you craft an ad.

Although it is very easy to do, if you need help, we can setup your page at Facebook and help you setup your ads.

Flash Player 8 has better video compression algorithms (codecs), which are being utilised in this update to Connect for improved quality screen sharing during live meetings.

Another benefit is that Flash video files (FLVs) compressed with the Flash 8 codec are now better performers when served up as content from the Adobe Acrobat Connect server. Connect can stream FLV files, detecting user connection speeds and optimising performance on the fly, with better quality visuals coming as a result of the codecs used for Flash 8.

While there are a number of applications available for compressing video into the FLV format the majority, especially the freeware and shareware variety, are still only using Flash 7 compression. Adobe ship a Flash Video Encoder with Flash CS3.

If you’re  a power user of both Outlook and Adobe Acrobat Connect Meetings, you might be interested to know that there’s a free add-in for Outlook that will allow you to schedule a Connect Meeting with associates directly.  It can be used to select a room from the available Meetings on your Connect server and view the schedules for invitees if you belong to the same Exchange server – it is compatible with current versions of Outlook up to Outlook 2007.

The latest version of the Acrobat Connect add-in for Microsoft Outlook can be downloaded from http://www.adobe.com/support/connect/updaters.html#outlook

An online tutorial is available from the Adobe site, titled “Using the Breeze Add-in for Microsoft Outlook” it can be found at http://brc.breezecentral.com/usingoutlookaddin/

With this situation in mind the Email Standards Project has been launched by a group of people involved in the web industry. The project aims to educate web designers and developers about the importance of web standards for email, and to liaise with email client developers to provide assistance and feedback on standards support within their clients. The aim is to improve standards support within email clients, similar to the goals of the Web Standards Project for browsers.

HTML emails aren’t going away, so anything that can be done to make the experience more consistent for readers will benefit the businesses using email marketing, and make it easier for the web designers and developers to create great looking content.

Check out the Email Standards Project site for more information, and help spread the good word!

When managing an event you select the “Enable Campaign Tracking” option from the Registration Questions page to activate this option, then locate the URL for the registration page.

Copy the URL and modify the address, adding “?campaign-id=” to the end with an additional unique identifier and use that new URL in any correspondence you use for the campaign’s registration pages.

This process is explained in further detail in an Adobe TechNote: http://www.adobe.com/go/c886a790

Participants can, with the presenter’s permission, remotely interact with the presenter’s shared screen regardless of their operating system if they have the shared software installed locally.

Connect screen sharing is bandwidth intensive because it’s broadcasting everything from the presenter’s machine. This in turn impacts other high bandwidth processes within the Connect Meeting. One of those processes is Voice over IP (VoIP).

An article entitled “Best Practices for Recording Breeze Meetings” on Adobe’s Developer Center discusses a number of techniques including how to improve screen sharing and VoIP.

Video conferencing hardware is often a closed or “black box” solution and the desire to integrate existing camera hardware within an Adobe Connect Professional Meeting is natural.

This can be done by grabbing the signal from the camera via a video splitter so that it can be fed into both the “black box” and a PC. The PC will then need to use the composite video from the camera’s signal. This can be done with a hardware capture solution like a video-to-USB adapter and a number of these are available from various manufacturers. The signal, once converted, can then be used in a Connect meeting room.

This will then allow for users to attend an online meeting using less expensive equipment than the proprietary video conferencing hardware.