webqem blog

Adobe has announced the launch of Captivate 4 and the new Adobe eLearning Suite. To celebrate the launch, webqem has a limited time* offer - for anyone purchasing or upgrading to Captivate 4, we will give you a voucher for $150 off your next webqem Adobe Captivate Training course.

With Adobe Captivate 4 software, you can rapidly author professional eLearning content with advanced interactivity, software and scenario simulations, quizzes, and other engaging experiences—no programming or multimedia skills required. Go to webqem’s Captivate 4 page to see the great new features of this new release.

Offering seven innovative applications in one complete, integrated package, Adobe eLearning Suite includes full new versions of: Adobe Captivate 4, Adobe Flash CS4, Adobe Dreamweaver CS4, Adobe Presenter 7, Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro, Adobe Soundbooth CS4, Adobe Device Central CS4, Adobe Bridge CS4, and SCORM Packager. The eLearning suite is great for instructional designers and developer, training managers, and educators. Got to eLearning Suite on the webqem site to find out more information.

Contact webqem for more information about the Captivate 4 and eLearning Suite software, plus the various upgrade paths that will save you money, as well as special education discounts and bundles. webqem is an Adobe Solutions Partner and Adobe Authorised Training Centre and a leading Australian reseller of Adobe products and services.

*Offer ends 31/03/2009

The Info-Tech Research Group seeks to simplify the complicated technology landscape, to help you get up to speed with new technologies and make the right technology purchasing decisions.

The recent Info-Tech Research Note on Web Conferencing provides a detailed, head-to-head, analytical comparison of the top five web conferencing products from Adobe, Cisco, IBM and Microsoft.

In their scorecard, Adobe Acrobat Connect was the only product to receive a high rating
in all areas: delivery and licensing, core functionality, advanced functionality and value, identifying Adobe as a leader amongst web conferencing vendors.

One of their key recommendations was:
“For advanced e-learning, instructional media delivery, virtual classrooms, and real-time business document collaboration, choose Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro.”

MLB.com, Major League Baseball’s online unit and one of the web’s most succcessful subscription services, is dropping Silverlight and switching to competitor Adobe Flash for the 2009 baseball season.

This is considered a major blow for Microsoft, whose Silverlight was used by NBC to stream Olympics content in 2008. MLB had previously been one of the most high profile Silverlight customers.

MLB.com streams live every Major League spring training, regular season and postseason game, via subscription, with over 1.5 million total subscribers since its debut on Opening Day 2003. Since that time, fans have accessed more than 1.8 billion streams of live and on-demand multimedia offerings on MLB.com, representing nearly 200 million hours of participation.

Adobe’s Flash Player is by far the largest video platform, installed on more than 98 percent of web-connected devices, while Silverlight is installed on about 25 percent.
The MLB two-year deal will see Adobe powering the MLB.tv live streaming service as well as its highlight and library video clips. MLB and Adobe will also work on rich Internet applications, providing content and features outside of the Web browser.

“Flash provides a TV-like experience. You turn it on and it works,” said Bob Bowman, president and CEO of MLB Advanced Media. “We want it to be flexible so we can add features…and it’s got to be scalable. We are the largest server of live entertainment in the country. Whether we are serving 20,000 for one game or 250,000 for another game, it’s got to be scalable over periods of time like nothing else.”

CCTVCOM is the internet portal of the largest professional television broadcasting media organisation in China. CCTVCOM was the official internet/mobile broadcaster for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, enabling millions of sports fans in mainland China and Macau to vividly experience Olympic videos built on Adobe Flash and Flex technology.

CCTV needed a solution that supported a large-scale, highly flexible, robust balancing network of high concurrent streaming media. Partnering with Adobe allowed them to deliver a compelling consistent Web 2.0 user experience, such as a 3D TV wall and seamless integration of viewing with live chat functions. The architecture involved a multi-city node origin/edge distribution mechanism.

During the games there were over 832 million visits, with over 46.6 million on-demand video playbacks delivered via Flash Media Server technology, with the maximum concurrent users of live chat room reaching 90,000 and over 10,000 video clips, including whole matches, highlights, extra new and interviews.

Read more about CCTV and FMS

webqem is committed to standards and accessibility when developing websites.

As part of that commitment, Rob and Chris attended the WIPA (Web Industry Professionals Association) Accessibility 2.0 Seminar in Sydney on 12 November, to discover the latest news about accessibility.

The seminar covered three main areas:

1. Moving from WCAG 1.0 to WCAG 2.0
2. Preparing accessible Flash
3. Preparing accessible PDFs

WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, which a recommendations from W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium, for making web content accessible to people with disabilities. This covers physical, cognitive and technical disabilities.

The WCAG 1.0 Recommendations, have been in effect since May 1999 and needed revision to address changes in technology and future flexibility. WCAG 2.0 is in “Proposed Recommendation” status, and considered highly likely to be approved as a “Recommendation” by the end of the year.
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Adobe announced the new version of Creative Suite in a massive public launch at 12:01 EST on September 23 2008, with webcasts of the launch event scheduled around the globe.

With the tagline “Shortcut to Brilliant”, the new Creative Suite 4 allows you to express yourself richly in virtually any medium; simplifies workflows for greater efficiency; and to exchange information, ideas and feedback more easily.

Packages include the Design Premium, Web Premium, Production Premium and Master Collection. The Adobe website states that Creative Suite 4 is expected to ship by late October 2008.

Contact webqem for more information about Creative Suite 4, plus the various upgrade paths that will save you money, as well as special education discounts and bundles. webqem is an Adobe Solutions Partner and Adobe Authorised Training Centre and a leading Australian reseller of Adobe products and services.

Blackboard is a leading provider of e-Education enterprise software applications and services, servicing schools, universities, corporations, governments and publishers. Blackboard’s online learning application, the Blackboard Learning System, is the most widely-adopted course management system among U.S.tertiary institutions.

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.

http://usc.edu.au/University/MediaPublications/News/MoreNews/GayleBeijing.htm

University of the Sunshine Coast business lecturer Gayle Mayes used Adobe Connect to bring the Beijing Olympics into her classroom.

Ms Mayes spent two weeks in Beijing for the Olympic Games, and organised live video links with her Sport and Event Marketing classes during their scheduled lecture times, covering the sports marketing topics discussed in her University classes.

Issues included ticket prices, politics and sport, drugs in sport, security, the cultural, economic, political and environmental impacts of mega events, and the challenges of marketing and managing an international event in China.

Ms Mayes uses experiential education as her main teaching strategy. This approach last year earned her a $10,000 grant from the Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education.

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.