And from our friends on the Flash Authoring, and Flash Platform Evangelism teams:

• Flashthusiast (Jen deHaan): Lists of keyboard modifiers in the Flash CS4 motion model - lets you do more stuff
• Daniel Dura: Another TwitterCamp Update
• The Flash Blog (Lee Brimelow): Download Tour de Flex right now!
• The Flash Blog (Lee Brimelow): Flash and Flex Project Builder application
• The Flash Blog (Lee Brimelow): New tutorial on customizing Flex Builder
• The Flash Blog (Lee Brimelow): Win $100,000 doing Flash development!

Finally, a bunch of post-MAX wrap-ups, and session notes/files:

• Ted On Flex (Ted Patrick): MAX 2008 NA Session Recording
• Adobe MAX Blog: MAX 2008 NA Session Recording
• AIR Team blog: MAX Session: Maintain Security With Adobe AIR
• AIR Team blog: Oliver Goldman's "High Performance AIR Applications" MAX 2008 slides now available
• Kevin Hoyt: MAX 2008 Review and Content
• James Ward - RIA Cowboy: Duane's World: Road to MAX 2008 Europe with James Ward
• Adobe MAX Blog: Duane's World: Road to MAX 2008 Europe with James Ward
• FLEXing My Muscle (Raghu Rao): The MSRIT Mojo - Flex Bootcamp [Day 1] and The MSRIT Mojo - Flex Bootcamp [Day 2]
]]> Wed, 26 Nov 2008 14:33:40 +0000 adobe air air performance air applications performance air team blog supports adobe air max session max flex This Week's Top Posts (11/26) http://www.softratty.com/article/d20c238d79c18e23617b4f36ccf2c55d http://www.softratty.com/article/d20c238d79c18e23617b4f36ccf2c55d
MAX was a big event. The last few days I've been reading reaction and news. Here are some items that I found interesting which haven't been discussed as much yet.


groups.adobe.com has potential to bring people together in the real world, not just the online world. It's essentially a portal to Adobe User Groups worldwide. Helps to find like-minded people in your own area, but also helps if you're travelling too.

I was working the booth in the Community Lounge during the event, and was astonished by how many people wanted to set up a local user group in their area. Fortunately there's a link on the front page to resources to starting a local group. Face-to-face, I saw a lot of interest in this directory.

We're still populating the database and improving the navigation... it's very much a work-in-progress. What you see in it today is just a taste of what you'll see over the coming weeks. Keep an eye on it.

More from Ted Patrick, and also see the MAX Open Working Group page.


Videos of the San Francisco event will be online soon.


It's a small thing, but I got a kick out of Linux first for 64-bit Player, and Mac first on the early preview of Flash Catalyst. In each case the situation made sense, but it can also serve to demolish some stereotypes and assumptions. (A full pre-release of Catalyst is expected on Adobe Labs early next year, and please be sure to install the MAX pre-pre-release into the default directory as explained on the Labs page.)


There's lots of talk about individual initiatives, such as CoCoMo, Alchemy (check out Doom user reviews!), Stratus, Flash text, more... I don't have a full overview yet myself, still learning.

One project which hasn't been discussed much is Adobe Wave. It probably has zero impact on you -- Wave is basically a notification system for publishers and service providers. But it's interesting to consider why it works, why it has the potential to become valuable.

Sometimes there's a trusted vendor you want news from... could be an online store that handles new models you'd like to know about, could be a hosting service, could be a musician or other artist... it'd be convenient if you could just say "let me know when something new happens".

We tried this with email and it sucked. Sometimes the little "add me to your mailing list" checkbox is ignored, and you get spammed regardless. If you say "stop sending me email!" it's 50/50 they'll listen. And of course your mailbox is clogged with spam and malware you never wanted. Email put all the control in the hands of the message creator.

Wave is an AIR app to display system notifications from trusted publishers. The control over which publishers you listen to is on your own desktop. If you want to stop seeing messages from a given publisher, you can exercise that control directly. There's a better blend of power between creator and consumer. You control your own experience.

This is an important principle. Lots of today's technical problems arise from an imbalance of power between agents. Websites bulk down their pages with third-party widgets. Greasemonkey dissociates the content from the presentation. Movie producers charge big prices "because we can" and then they get Bittorrent'd "because we can".

We've got to find better ways that people can opt-in to a communication, and opt-out when tired of it. Adobe Wave may not be a big, flashy project, but it seems a valid example of how things should be. Both consumers and creators have rights, and I think the successful internet applications of the next few years will find novel ways to respect those rights.


These next two links aren't MAX-specific, but came up in the same timeframe. Zoetrope is an Adobe research project into searching the web -- with a twist. Instead of focusing on "what pages are on the Web today?", Zoetrope asks "What information has been revealed on the Web over time?" Like the old Recall engine at The Internet Archive, Zoetrope can search a site back through time. But there are also tools to extract changing information from those different versions of a page. Very interesting.

And Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch was quoted on fragmented JavaScript implementations by The Register during the conference. JavaScript implementations won't reliably be improved until you can use a feature knowing that the overwhelming majority of your audience will actually support it. The browser brand with 80% marketshare is moving a little bit slower than the changing and under-standardized browser behaviors from Mozilla, Safari, Opera, Google. A multi-implementation runtime will always evolve more slowly than a single predictable runtime, but we need both types of runtimes in our digital ecology. The future is uncertain, but Kevin lays out Adobe's priorities here.


One more topic... Silverlight is getting a bit of a bum rap. The MLB.com deal produced lots of headlines like "Silverlight strikes out" and such.

Part of this is Microsoft's fault, for over-hyping its prior deal with the baseball site. The best info I've seen on the implementation was in an InfoQ interview last February... MLB.com has used Flash for years, and used Windows Media Player for years, and last year added a Silverlight client for the WMP stream. The MAX news was about MLB.com converting their backend from a WMP workflow to a Flash video workflow... about 80% of web video is Flash video now. It's just a practical move.

But much of the blogosphere coverage was pretty brutal. Some of it is likely an over-reaction to the "execution of Adobe" and "reboot the Web" jive from last year -- the "build 'em up, then tear 'em down" style of journalism. But the overall tone was more of a morality play, a soap opera, rather than neutral evaluation of technology. Harsh.

(This also shows there's a danger in being a second-mover in the marketplace, because there will be pressure to mimic the first-mover instead of finding your own unique path. A lot of the reason SVG failed was because its advocates wanted to duplicate Flash. HTML5 is facing the same pressure, as is Silverlight. It's hard to focus on what you alone can provide, when external pressure compares you to something else. Be yourself.)

I still think the Silverlight initiative is useful. It gives .NET developers a way to do richer things in the browser. It might have been more useful if Microsoft had just compiled to SWF in the first place, but that's water under the bridge. The people who create this technology deserve respect regardless.


Those are some of the MAX items that I haven't seen as much in the aggregators. But like I said, I'm still reading and learning, finding what other people found important. Big event overall.... :)

]]> Wed, 26 Nov 2008 07:01:43 +0000 max wave adobe wave adobe flash video workflow flash video adobe research project max items items MAX tidbits http://www.softratty.com/article/3d738927dfc0044ed22bec441142269c http://www.softratty.com/article/3d738927dfc0044ed22bec441142269c We all know about Google Adsense and the contextual power that it offers.    Meaning that you don’t have to do anything except insert the code and it will automatically determine the content of your page and serve relevant advertisements.   This is fine for websites with a wide variety of content that don’t really have the time to hand-select advertisements for each page.

However, if your blog is pretty niche-focused, meaning that your reader base is expecting similar sorts of subjects with each post, then you may actually be able to dramatically increase your revenue by selecting targeted CPA (Cost Per Action) advertisements for your reader.  CPA meaning that you are NOT getting paid by the click, but rather by the action such as a purchase that a user may take after the click.

A typical CPA is basically referring a user to a website and they buy a product and you get a set percentage.    Other valuable CPA’s are for example referring a user to a subscription for Netflix and you get paid a considerable bounty.

These 5 networks may give you dramatically increased monetization.   They are worth a look!

eBay Partner Network

Good ole eBay.   What most don’t know is that they offer a massive affiliate program for website owners.   Anybody who clicks through on your eBay link will get a 7 day cookie and you will receive 50%-75% (for US traffic) of the final value fees of any product that the user buys from eBay within the next seven days.

Now to get eBay integrated, the easiest way is through the eBay toolkit which offers geo-targeting, custom displays and RSS feeds.   However I have found that when using the toolkit, the click-though is rather low because nobody wants to click advertisements blaring eBay.

To solve this, you could spend considerable time in development or grab the free version of PhpBay Wordpress Plugin which takes the RSS feeds and formats them in an visually pleasing way.   For the power user there is also a premium version which will give added functionality.

Payments on EPN are via Paypal or Direct Deposit.

Amazon Associates

The great thing about promoting Amazon is that people are always happy to buy.   They will give you 4%-8% commission depending on quantity shipped on a 1 day cookie.   There are so many ways to use this service, but a great place to start is a recent article on MakeUseOf on how to turn your traffic into Amazon Cash

Personally one of the coolest things they have is the MP3 widget which you can dynamically call MP3s and albums from their DRM free catalog to be advertised to your users.    That and also make sure to check out the UnBox and Carosel Widget.

Commission Junction

CJ is one of the big daddies in the industry sporting advertisers such as Apple, Dell and players from almost any niche you can think of.   After being accepted by CJ, you will have to manually apply to many of the advertisers who will hand review your website for quality before determining whether to accept you or not.    Anybody seriously into CPA should get with CJ as they are the best.

Linkshare

One Word about LinkShare.   iTunes.  That is right.  Among other outstanding programs, the iTunes affiliate program is run through LinkShare.   What does this mean?   It means that with a single click on your iTunes affiliate link you get a 365 day 10% cookie.   Meaning that you will get 10% of anything that users purchase on iTunes for the next year.

Why is this a goldmine?   Well because just think of everybody that has an iPod or iPhone and how much they spend.   Wouldn’t you love 10% of that?

Neverblue

Last but not least we have NeverBlue Ads.  They are one of the better mid-level CPA providers.   You will generally find a different type of promotion here than on the big boys.   Expect to find more promotions for ringtones, insurance, dating, online universities, auctions and those sort of things.    If your audience is inclined, then this may be a potential goldmine.  Payments are via Paypal.

In Closing

As we mentioned above, CPA networks are not for everybody.   The first thing to note is that international traffic will be lost on many of them, with you having to pick your country for the promotions.   So unless you are using some sort of geo-targeting such as OpenX and have time to tinker then you may wish to look elsewhere.

Other things are that you only get paid if your user does an action.    Meaning that certain types of audiences are more than happy to click on Adsense to get you paid, but would never actually buy anything.  You have to determine this yourself.

Lastly, most of these networks require some sort of approval either by location or quality of site as they are only looking for the best of websites to represent their advertisers.

We might follow up in later posts about other ways to replace Adsense with alternative CPC (Cost per Click)  and CPM (Cost per impression) networks.

What are your thoughts on these networks?   Have you had any positive or negative experiences with any of them?   Would you recommend a network not on this list?   Is there one on this list that you would not recommend?   Let us know in the comments.

(By) Ted Nash is the Content Director and general handyman at YouBundle.com - a socially powered Bundling Service. He uses Windoze, but Tinkers with Linux, loves his iPhone, but won't touch Macs and prefers open-source to Torrents.

Enjoyed the article? Please leave a comment and tell us what you think about it

New here? Get your cheat sheets and freebies at MakeUseOf Downloads. Enjoy!

Tags:adsense, affiliate, Amazon, cj, cpa, cpm, eBay


Related posts

• Turn Your Amazon Links Into Affiliate Links (1)
• Watch Online Products for Price Drops with ShoppingNotes (2)
• User Generated Content (Episode II) (1)
• Stick This On Your PC - Sticky Notes For Your Desktop (14)
• Need a Personal Shopper? Amazon Watcher does the Work for You (3)




]]> Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:01:14 +0000 cpa cpa networks networks link ebay link ebay advertisements hand-select advertisements ebay partner network 5 CPA Alternatives To Adsense On Your Blog Or Website http://www.softratty.com/article/93eb72eb50a43b20282e3b1aa061be6e http://www.softratty.com/article/93eb72eb50a43b20282e3b1aa061be6e We all know about Google Adsense and the contextual power that it offers.    Meaning that you don’t have to do anything except insert the code and it will automatically determine the content of your page and serve relevant advertisements.   This is fine for websites with a wide variety of content that don’t really have the time to hand-select advertisements for each page.

However, if your blog is pretty niche-focused, meaning that your reader base is expecting similar sorts of subjects with each post, then you may actually be able to dramatically increase your revenue by selecting targeted CPA (Cost Per Action) advertisements for your reader.  CPA meaning that you are NOT getting paid by the click, but rather by the action such as a purchase that a user may take after the click.

A typical CPA is basically referring a user to a website and they buy a product and you get a set percentage.    Other valuable CPA’s are for example referring a user to a subscription for Netflix and you get paid a considerable bounty.

These 5 networks may give you dramatically increased monetization.   They are worth a look!

eBay Partner Network

Good ole eBay.   What most don’t know is that they offer a massive affiliate program for website owners.   Anybody who clicks through on your eBay link will get a 7 day cookie and you will receive 50%-75% (for US traffic) of the final value fees of any product that the user buys from eBay within the next seven days.

Now to get eBay integrated, the easiest way is through the eBay toolkit which offers geo-targeting, custom displays and RSS feeds.   However I have found that when using the toolkit, the click-though is rather low because nobody wants to click advertisements blaring eBay.

To solve this, you could spend considerable time in development or grab the free version of PhpBay Wordpress Plugin which takes the RSS feeds and formats them in an visually pleasing way.   For the power user there is also a premium version which will give added functionality.

Payments on EPN are via Paypal or Direct Deposit.

Amazon Associates

The great thing about promoting Amazon is that people are always happy to buy.   They will give you 4%-8% commission depending on quantity shipped on a 1 day cookie.   There are so many ways to use this service, but a great place to start is a recent article on MakeUseOf on how to turn your traffic into Amazon Cash

Personally one of the coolest things they have is the MP3 widget which you can dynamically call MP3s and albums from their DRM free catalog to be advertised to your users.    That and also make sure to check out the UnBox and Carosel Widget.

Commission Junction

CJ is one of the big daddies in the industry sporting advertisers such as Apple, Dell and players from almost any niche you can think of.   After being accepted by CJ, you will have to manually apply to many of the advertisers who will hand review your website for quality before determining whether to accept you or not.    Anybody seriously into CPA should get with CJ as they are the best.

Linkshare

One Word about LinkShare.   iTunes.  That is right.  Among other outstanding programs, the iTunes affiliate program is run through LinkShare.   What does this mean?   It means that with a single click on your iTunes affiliate link you get a 365 day 10% cookie.   Meaning that you will get 10% of anything that users purchase on iTunes for the next year.

Why is this a goldmine?   Well because just think of everybody that has an iPod or iPhone and how much they spend.   Wouldn’t you love 10% of that?

Neverblue

Last but not least we have NeverBlue Ads.  They are one of the better mid-level CPA providers.   You will generally find a different type of promotion here than on the big boys.   Expect to find more promotions for ringtones, insurance, dating, online universities, auctions and those sort of things.    If your audience is inclined, then this may be a potential goldmine.  Payments are via Paypal.

In Closing

As we mentioned above, CPA networks are not for everybody.   The first thing to note is that international traffic will be lost on many of them, with you having to pick your country for the promotions.   So unless you are using some sort of geo-targeting such as OpenX and have time to tinker then you may wish to look elsewhere.

Other things are that you only get paid if your user does an action.    Meaning that certain types of audiences are more than happy to click on Adsense to get you paid, but would never actually buy anything.  You have to determine this yourself.

Lastly, most of these networks require some sort of approval either by location or quality of site as they are only looking for the best of websites to represent their advertisers.

We might follow up in later posts about other ways to replace Adsense with alternative CPC (Cost per Click)  and CPM (Cost per impression) networks.

What are your thoughts on these networks?   Have you had any positive or negative experiences with any of them?   Would you recommend a network not on this list?   Is there one on this list that you would not recommend?   Let us know in the comments.

(By) Ted Nash is the Content Director and general handyman at YouBundle.com - a socially powered Bundling Service. He uses Windoze, but Tinkers with Linux, loves his iPhone, but won't touch Macs and prefers open-source to Torrents.

Enjoyed the article? Please leave a comment and tell us what you think about it

New here? Get your cheat sheets and freebies at MakeUseOf Downloads. Enjoy!

Tags:adsense, affiliate, Amazon, cj, cpa, cpm, eBay


Related posts

• Turn Your Amazon Links Into Affiliate Links (2)
• Watch Online Products for Price Drops with ShoppingNotes (2)
• User Generated Content (Episode II) (1)
• Stick This On Your PC - Sticky Notes For Your Desktop (14)
• Need a Personal Shopper? Amazon Watcher does the Work for You (3)

]]> Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:01:14 +0000 cpa cpa networks networks link ebay link ebay advertisements hand-select advertisements ebay partner network 5 CPA Alternatives To Adsense On Your Blog Or Website http://www.softratty.com/article/de015f1707af706c5d3124f8cc497fa7 http://www.softratty.com/article/de015f1707af706c5d3124f8cc497fa7

Interactive service provider AOL has launched the beta version of AOL Sync. The service aims at mobile and desktop users and has the ability to synchronize AOL’s address book and calendar to Microsoft Outlook, the iPhone, BlackBerry, phones containing Windows Mobile and handsets made by Nokia, Motorola, and Samsung. The service will not by synchronizing emails.



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• AOL launches online event guide When.com
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• Plug-ins Galore: AOL email revamps its interface to connect with Yahoo Mail
• JS-Kit gaining new heights by partnering with AOL/Userplane
• Facebook hires Ted Ullyot as its new general counsel
• Yahoo Board Authorizes AOL Talks



]]> Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:38:31 +0000 aols address book aols aol sync windows mobile service service aims mobile aol email revamps aol talks AOL launches AOL Sync beta http://www.softratty.com/article/058455bef85d495553b5b6208ebee1b9 http://www.softratty.com/article/058455bef85d495553b5b6208ebee1b9
• James Ward - RIA Cowboy: Take the Tour de Flex
• AIR Team blog: Explore over 200 Flex and AIR samples with the new Tour de Flex application
• AIR Team blog: Introducing Adobe AIR 1.5
• Peter Ent: Adobe AIR 1.5 Announced at MAX 2008
• Sujit Reddy G - The Evangelist: Adobe AIR 1.5 is live
• AIR Team blog: Advanced JavaScript debugging support for AIR 1.5 apps from Aptana
• Flashthusiast (Jen deHaan): Adobe AIR 1.5 is live, you should really go get it now
• Mike Chambers: Adobe AIR 1.5 is out
• Flex Doc Team blog: Flex 3.2: Loading sub-apps
• Flex Doc Team blog: Adding ASDoc Comments to Flex MXML files
• david zuckerman/adobe: Quick tour of ASDoc support in Gumbo (Flex Builder 4)
• Mike Morearty: New Flex Builder debugger features: Conditional breakpoints, function calls from expressions, watchpoints, and more
• david zuckerman/adobe: Flex Builder extensibility documentation online!
• Sujit Reddy G - The Evangelist: Adobe Flash Platform it is
• My journey in the world of RIA (Srinivas Annam): MAC Dashboard Style Calendar control in Flex
• James Ward - RIA Cowboy: Drunk on Software Episode 3 - Performance Pitfalls of Flex痴 ArrayCollection
• Adobe Labs blog: Text Layout Framework Released on Labs
• Text Layout Framework Team blog: Teaser and Text Layout Framework Labs page is up!
• Emmy Huang: Text Layout Framework beta available on Adobe Labs
• Flashthusiast (Jen deHaan): Want to layout your text better? You can download the beta Text Layout Framework / component (use with Flash CS4 now)
• Emmy Huang: SWF 10 spec available AND Flash Player alpha for 64-bit Linux on Labs
• Penguin.SWF (Mike Melanson): Now Supporting 16 Exabytes
• kaourantin.net (Tinic Uro): 64-bits
• Penguin.SWF (Mike Melanson): http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2008/11/swf_and_flv_10_specs.html
• James Ward - RIA Cowboy: Flash Player for 64-bit Linux - BETA NOW AVAILABLE!
• James Ward - RIA Cowboy: Oracle CRM Gadgets using Adobe AIR and Flex
• LiveCycle Doc Team blog: How to exclude objects on a master page from the tabbing order sequence
• LiveCycle Doc Team blog: Tips for maximizing Output service performance

And from our friends on the Flash Authoring, and Flash Platform Evangelism teams:

• Flashthusiast (Jen deHaan): So is Flash CS4 perfect, or not?
• Flashthusiast (Jen deHaan): Flash CS4: Modifying and applying a custom ease in the Motion Editor
• Flashthusiast (Jen deHaan): Flash CS4: How to ease between keyframes using new motion tweens
• Mike Chambers: Updated ActionScript 3 RIA API Guide
• The Flash Blog (Lee Brimelow): Flash conference news and updates

Finally, a bunch of post-MAX wrap-ups, session notes/files, and news on the upcoming RIA Hackathon hosted by Adobe India:

• Frish's Blog (Ryan Frishberg): MAX 2008 and MAX 2008: Item Renderer Talk
• Flex Butterflies and Bugs (Joan Lafferty): ItemRenderer Talk at MAX 360 Unconference and Slides and Examples from ItemRenderer Talk at MAX (Flex 360)
• Mark Anders' Blog: Thermo (Flash Catalyst) Unleased at MAX!
• david zuckerman/adobe: MAX 2008: What to expect from "Extending Flex Builder" and MAX 2008: Sample content for Extending Flex Builder and MAX 2008: Extending Flex Builder presentation
• Mike Morearty: News about tomorrow's "Extending Flex Builder" talk and Extending Flex Builder: sample code for design.xml
• Ethan Malasky: MAX2008: Maintain Security With Adobe AIR
• Flashthusiast (Jen deHaan): Liveblogging MAX 2008 Day 1 General Session Keynote - Click Refresh!
• Flashthusiast (Jen deHaan): Liveblogging MAX Sneak Peeks and Awards - Refresh, yo
• Flashthusiast (Jen deHaan): Motion source FLA files for MAX presentation (Flash CS4 from Flash QE team)
• James Ward - RIA Cowboy: MAX 2008: RIAs in the Cloud with Salesforce.com and Flex
• Buntel Blog (Tim Buntel): Max wrap-up (not really)
• Ted On Flex (Ted Patrick): MAXOWG - How was MAX NA?
• Adobe MAX Blog: The road to MAX 2008 Europe
• Sujit Reddy G - The Evangelist: riathon - RIA Hackathon by Adobe India
• FLEXing My Muscle (Raghu Rao): Adobe riathon - registrations open・/a>
• flexgeek (Harish Sivaramakrishnan): Adobe riathon '08 - Register Today!
• My journey in the world of RIA (Srinivas Annam): Adobe riathon'08 - Bangalore, India
• Anirudh Sasikumar: Adobe Riathon 2008
• Ted On Flex (Ted Patrick): FlashCamp SF 2008 - GaudIO with Dru Kepple, Larry Reynolds & Lucas Swick
• Ted On Flex (Ted Patrick): Ajax Exerience 2008 - Google Chrome and Web Applications with Ojan Vafai

Apparently the only similar quality that everyone on Obama’s Admin team has is the fact that all of them maintain a blog of their own. This mere fact tells a lot about the intense focus and importance that the new president is giving to being web and tech savvy. The use of Web was also one of the main advantages that Team Obama had over Team McCain. Alley Insider has listed the bloggers who are now part of Obama Administration for you:

• New Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Daschle’s last post to "Travels With Tom" — a "travel web log" — is from August 2003. It features a long quote from Monty Python’s Holy Grail movie. The post before that one reads: "I seem to be lost in a vast farm in southeast South Dakota. Send a rescue party!"
• Obama’s choice to direct the Office of Management and Budget, Peter Orszag, keeps a more up-to-date blog. Unbloggily, he keeps comments off. So we’re not sure we agree with Matthew Yglesias when he calls Orszag "highest-ranking blogger in the history of the United States of America."
• The pair Obama chose to lead his FCC transition team, Susan Crawford and Kevin Werbach, seem more native to the form. Crawford recently posted a link to Alaska Senator Ted Steven’s infamous "series of tubes" speech. Following an equally popular meme, Werbach — who embedded a Twitter stream on his blog — wrote a short post on November 5 titled "Yes. we. did."

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I've spent the better part of the last two months attending and presenting at elearning industry conferences, and was surprised to hear this question on more than one occassion. Instructors and Training Managers were ready to embrace new ways of engaging their audiences in VCs (as described in my whitepaper on connectusers.com), but beyond holding straight lectures to meet a single immediate need, were curious what kinds of training occurs in other organizations with different needs.

In response to this, here is a short list of some of the needs Connect Pro Training departments are meeting today:

-- Provide short, targeted, product knowledge udpates to a global sales force. For example, a pharmaceutical company needs to make sure new drug information is communicated to, and understood by the field. Another example: a bank with branches all over the country is rolling out a new promotion. The staff at every branch needs to understand how to implement the promotion while meeting regulations. These types of updates happen once or twice a month, and are quickly pulled together using Presenter content, which is then delivered in a Connect Pro Meeting or Virtual Classroom. Sessions are frequently recorded so those who could not attend are able to review the material when time permits.
-- Train new employees. A curriculum is deployed that includes video - perhaps of the CEO, welcoming the employee to the company and speaking to corporate values - and a mix of on-demand and live modules to orient the new employee to the company. Compliance regulations are met through online offerings of sexual harrassment and policy training, and all activity is auditable through Connect Pro Reports.
-- Encourage brainstorming or other highly interactive group collaboration in teams that need to innovate. Bring together a small group of experts from around the globe, and get them talking about new ideas and concepts. Include video of inspirational talks from somewhere like TED.com, or another relevant site, to host your own mini-conference with virtual keynote speakers - for so much less!
-- Facilitate hands-on application training labs. In some environments, learners are not permitted to touch the software that will soon be critical for them to master in order to complete their work. Students in class sizes of 10 or fewer are often brought together after some preliminary on-demand training, to participate in a live lecture and facilitated lab, which provides them with hands-on work on a remote instance of the software. Instructors send the learners into breakout rooms on their own or in pairs (depending upon class size and objectives), and provide them with access to a virtual / remote machine running the application they need to master. Exercises are provided, and students work through them while one or more instructors visit each breakout room to assist with questions and monitor progress.
-- Using the integration with Microsoft Live Communication Server Client (instant messaging), hold SMEs 'on call' during your class to pull in if a tough question comes up, or to give students a moment with a renowned expert within the company.

The list above is a small subset of the ways in which we see Connect Pro customers use our tools. Looking forward to the next three years, I expect we'll see more examples that include extensive use of video, learning through mobile devices, and the incorporation of social networking, wikis, tagging, and more to enrich learner communities and allow groups to form around topics of interest.

Please comment and share how your company is using Connect Pro Training - both live and on-demand - to solve your organization's learning needs.

I own a HP TX 2500z touch screen tablet PC myself and readily enjoy it’s performance but yet it’s single touch. Today Hewlett Packard introduced the company’s first notebook computer with multi-touch technology Wednesday, promising users the same fingertip navigation built into previous HP desktops and popularized by Apple’s iPhone.

HP is providing users an easier, more natural way to interact with their PCs. said Ted Clark, the manager of HP’s notebook group, said in a statement.

Dubbed as the HP TouchSmart tx2, it will be delivering computing at your fingertips with HP MediaSmart digital entertainment software suite. You can also use gestures such as pinch, rotate, arc, flick, press, drag, and tap once or tap twice. You can even resize your images just like on Microsoft’s own Surface table.

Similar to the Tx2500z series, the Touchsmart tX2 would have a AMD Turion X2 Processor and with it comes Windows Vista Home Premium operating system and HP said the new laptop will be available for order online today starting at $1,149.

What do you think, will touch make our lives much more fun??? Comment…

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