webqem blog

Good news from the Adobe MAX conference – Adobe is now closer than ever to running Flash on the Apple iPhone. At Adobe MAX, the company’s worldwide developer conference, Adobe announced that the new Flash Professional CS5 software will enable developers the ability to create applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The new functionality opens iPhone development to millions of designers and developers who currently use Adobe’s popular Flash authoring tools. Adobe already has some examples of Flash applications available on the Adobe Labs site.

Flash is an integral part of many webqem projects, so we are very excited to hear this news. However, we are still holding out to witness a Connect Meeting on our iPhones – we hear that Adobe is not far off, so let us wait in anticipation!

The power of Adobe Connect Pro has found its way into a unique not-for-profit organisation by the name of Mensheds Australia. Mensheds Australia specialise in the health and well-being of men through local organisations that act like a social groups aka a ‘Men’s shed’.

One of the biggest challenges faced by Mensheds Australia was reaching men throughout the country, in particular in remote areas. Furthermore, even where men’s sheds have been established, successfully managing and maintaining them was particularly hard to achieve from head office in Sydney as each men’s shed requires resources, training, and detailed information 24/7.

So, thanks to the team at webqem, Mensheds Australia has implemented a very successful solution – Adobe Connect Pro. From an administrative perspective, Connect Pro has drastically reduced the cost of delivery, travel, training, and Occupational Health & Safety compliance. Explains managing director Peter Sergeant, “When you consider the thousands of documents and information packages used by Mensheds Australia to communicate and collaborate with individual men’s sheds and our partners everywhere, Acrobat Connect Pro is worth approximately $5 million to our organisation.”

Now Mensheds can conduct online meetings to remote areas via Connect Meetings. They can provide access to an plethora of information via the Connect Pro Training module, and can easily create engaging mulitmedia presentations via Adobe Presenter.

The feedback from supporters and stakeholders on the organisation’s portal, www.mensheds.com.au has been outstanding and exceeded all expectations. “Simply put, without Acrobat Connect Professional, we would not have been able to continue with our work at Mensheds,” concludes Sergeant. “We couldn’t deliver the volume of information needed anywhere near as efficiently and compellingly without the Adobe software.”

For more information about this success story, you can view a full article online.

Leading kitchen retailer – Australian Kitchen Industries (AKI), is prospering from the power of Adobe Connect Pro. In recent years, AKI has significantly grown and prospered into a large franchise. With this growth, communicating with, and training it’s geographically dispersed network of franchisees had become particularly difficult and more costly. To streamline training and communications company-wide, AKI found a cost-effective, powerful solution: Adobe Presenter and Adobe Connect Pro software.

Since implementing Connect Pro, AKI have noticeably benefited from the high-impact web conferencing and ease of access that eLearning provides. Over 400 people across the company are now using Connect Pro to conduct online meetings and training. The solution has been so successful that it, amazingly, paid for itself within the first seven months. The team from webqem were instrumental in implementing this solution, which involved: software procurement, installation, hosting & training. A full report is available online.

The number of people in the world using Adobe Connect Pro is set for a massive increase in users as Adobe has secured a huge US$9.5 million with the U.S. Marines Corps. The Marine Corps cited several factors for choosing the awesome Connect Pro: stringent standards for security, availability & quality, and the solution is “Joint Interoperability & Test Command Certified” – so troops can connect quickly across any Department of Defense network (who already have Connect Pro). Connect, being based on the Flash platform, which is on 98% of internet-enable  desktops, was, as always, a major selling point..

This deal was great news for our Connect Pro team at webqem, as it demonstrates the quality and high-value placed on one of our top solutions that we specialize in. We can only hope more of the armed forces choose Connect Pro as their preferred solution and expand the Connect user base. A full report on this is available online.

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.

For the August ACUGA meeting, we were joined by Terry Shane – the President and founder of Refined Data Solutions. Terry showed us the synchronization and automation that can occur between two completely different systems: Adobe Connect Pro and Moodle. Terry’s company has developed a level of integration between the two systems that is “unmatched”. It is so well integrated, that students would never see the Connect system, only the Moodle interface.

The two systems work so well together, it must be magic! No, its just a great piece of technology that has enabled the two systems to work together. For more details check out the recording, or click on the image.

Building studies and virtual classrooms? You would not think they go together. However, a keen teacher from Armidale TAFE in NSW, has managed to successfully put the two together with the use of Adobe’s Connect Pro. Graeme Wilton regularly uses Connect Pro to teach his teach his Certificate IV in Building Studies course to a range of distance education students in North-West NSW. His students “absolutely love it”.  He says that “It’s added an enthusiasm that I haven’t seen for a while, but I must say that part of that would come from me because I’m a little ‘g-ed’ up about the whole thing too,” he laughs.

This is another Connect Pro success story that the webqem team was instrumental in – Good work team! You can read the full report here.

The team from webqem will be exhibiting for the very first time at the 2009 Online Retailer Expo & Conference. webqem will be showcasing their outstanding digital solutions including Maxoom, and Adobe Connect Pro, to name a few.  In addition to exhibiting, Larry Adler -webqem Director, will be treating guests to a presentation on ‘Creating a Digital-led Multichannel Strategy’.

With more than 2,500 people expected to attend,  the two days are bound to be hectic – with non-stop exhibiting action! webqem will be stationed at exhibit no. 18, so be sure to pop in for a visit and say hello to the webqem team.

More Information about the Exhibit & Larry’s Presentation:

The Online Retailer Expo & Conference 2009:
Online Retailer Expo & Conference is the must-attend event for anyone interested in or involved with e-commerce and web-based retailing. The event brings together top executives, entrepreneurs, managers and marketers in online and multichannel retailing to network, share best practices, develop new business opportunities and shape the future of e-retailing in Australia.

Creating a Digital-led Multichannel Strategy:
The greater the complexity of the franchising or corporate retail network, the greater the challenge in implementing a successful multichannel strategy. Using real world case studies from major retail brands, this presentation outlines methodologies for building an effective, productive multichannel strategy that resolves conflicts and rewards all facets of the business.

The July ACUGA meeting was held on Tuesday 22^nd of August. Joining us all the way from his Adobe office in Ottawa, Canada, was Adobe Connect Pro expert -Alistair Lee. Alistair treated our ACUGA members to a very polished and well presented presentation on the best practices for using the Adobe Connect Pro Meeting module.

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.

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.”