webqem blog

Just occasionally, clichés are perfectly apt.
And this is one of those occasions. In a merger that really is a case of “ the whole being more than the sum of its parts,” two of Australia’s most experienced web and print software companies have become a single, powerful entity.

On July 1, Formstar Print Technologies merged with Webqem, pooling resources and talent to create a formidable team of over 40 highly skilled individuals.

Having operated independently over the past decade, the pairing is a natural fit. Both companies share similar processes for improved business processes, core skills and the same development tools platforms.

For all of the K-12 schools out there, Adobe has a great offer for their Creative Suite 5 software. From now until the end of October, all K-12 schools that purchase a brand new Adobe CS5 site license will receive a 35% discount. To be eligible for this promotion all you need is a previous version of Adobe or Macromedia K-12 school site license and must be a K-12 school in Australia.

To help you make the most of this upgrade, this offer also comes with 2 FREE one day training courses (valued at $1749).

The Adobe K-12 School Site Licenses allow installation rights for 250 or 500 school-owned or school-leased computers regardless of school enrollment size. K-12 school site licenses also come with valuable DVDs of curriculum and training materials to help educators implement career and technical education programs around design, web, and video programs.

Take advantage of this great offer now and contact us here at webqem.

Adobe has released an urgent announcement addressing issues with the recent release of Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro version 7.5.

Adobe has found an issue with the Connect Pro 7.5 Installer that can delete the entire drive on which Connect Pro is being installed. This issue affects anyone who has downloaded the version 7.5 license trial between November 3rd and November 17th 2009.

Adobe has advised customers to immediately cease any further installation of Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro version 7.5 and to delete the Installer program containing Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro version 7.5, as applicable. The issue occurs if you select “cancel” during the file copying step of the installation process.

For more information on this, please carefully read this technote released from Adobe, to see if your current version is affected by this issue. Contact webqem if you require more information about this issue.

Adobe have just released a significant update for the their Presenter 7 software moving it up to version 7.0.5. It is the third update to Presenter 7. This update addresses a number of issues, and provides a number of enhancements across the entire product. Some of the areas this update addresses include: PowerPoint conversion, audio editing, inserting flash and video content, and quizzing, just to name a few.

If you own Presenter 7 software, we highly recommend that you upgrade your software as there are about 50 resolved issues and more than 10 enhancements. Updating is really easy, all you need to do is go into the Presenter software and go to the automatic product update system (Adobe Presenter help-> updates). Otherwise you can visit the Adobe Presenter product update page, which has a file ready for download and installation – its only 4.4MB so you will have it in no time.

A full list of resolved issues and enhancements are available online.

Well – our little 10 year party on Friday was A LOT of fun… at least what we can remember of it.

If you couldn’t make it… we missed you!  If you did make it – thanks for coming and sharing our birthday with us!

Thankfully we dismissed the photographer early in the evening… so those of you who’d rather not be reminded of what you can’t remember… fear not… and check out the pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/webqem :-)

Lawn Bowling Gurus

The 2009 Sydney Breast Cancer Foundation Rugby Long Lunch was once again supported by the team here at webqem. Held on Friday 10th July, it was a sold out event with over 700 guests filling the grand ballroom at Sydney’s Hilton Hotel.

The global financial recession did not deter the collective group of supporters from digging deep with over $200,000 of much needed funds raised!

Special guests included Phil Kearns, George Gregan and Matthew Bourke, who candidly shared their career highlights with an attentive audience and Sir Nicholas Shehadie who on the contrast shared with us all what it was like to be a Wallaby in the 1940′s and 1950′s.

It was an extroadinary event organised to perfection, can’t wait for the 2010 rugby long lunch!

Only July 11th, the staff at webqem attended the Sydney Breast Cancer Foundation Rugby Long Lunch along with a sold out crowd of over 700 others from companies supporting the cause.

It was a fantastic event held at the Hilton Sydney raising approximately $250,000 for breast cancer research. Highlights of the day included a moving account of Antony Shaw’s 245 KM Marathon des Sables run, a Q & A with Wallaby’s coach Robbie Deans and former Wallaby’s player Phil Kearns, and the chance to win an A3 Audi – lucky winner Robert Lattuca took away the grand prize.

Guests were treated to a three-course meal, champagne, and a plethora of items to bid on, all in the name of charity. Three of our very own webqem staff took home prizes from the business card draw and auction items. It was a moving and memorable event held in the name of an extraordinary cause.

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

Last week saw the release of the latest update to the Flash Player. Previously code named “Moviestar” Flash Player 9 Update 3 now supports the H.265 video standard – the same standard deployed in Blu-Ray and HD-DVD high definition video players.

This version also includes hardware acceleration for better performance on multi-core machines.

A HD gallery has been launched to help demonstrate the capabilities of the new version of the player, it’s well worth checking out at http://www.adobe.com/products/hdvideo/hdgallery/

The release of Service Pack 3 for Adobe Acrobat Connect has meant a visible improvement in performance partly made possible by the required use of Flash Player 8.

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.