LANcom Technology Blog

Want to make a presentation you have created available online? Zentation is an online tool which allows you to sync your PowerPoint slides with video, simulating the experience of being at a live presentation. With this tool your audience will be able to watch a video of you presenting while being able to easily see your slides at the same time.

Zentation has both a free and premium service; here’s what’s available with the free version

1. Easily sync your slides with video – For each slide you can either enter an exact time during the video when you would like it to appear, or you can just watch the video and click the handy ‘Pull time from player’ button when it gets to a point where you would like the slide to change.
2. Share with a link or embed it in your site –With Zentation you have the option to either link to your presentation on the Zentation site, or embed your presentation within your own website.
3. Create an outline for easy navigation – For each Zentation presentation you can create an outline which is displayed below the video and allows viewers to easy skip to the part that interests them.

To use the free version of Zentation you will need to have your videos either on YouTube or Google Videos. The Premium version will host your videos for you and also allows you to make your presentations private and to customize the look of the player.

To learn more about Zentation click here.

If you use Gmail you may be interested to know that it will now notify you if it detects suspicious activity on your account. From now on if someone logs into your account from one country and then a short time later someone logs in from another, Gmail will display a red warning message saying “Warning: We believe your account was last accessed from…”.

If you know this login was you then you can ignore this message, but otherwise you may want to change your password.

To read more about this new feature from the Official Gmail Blog click here.

Writeboard is an online writing tool that allows you to create documents, solo or with others, without having to worry about losing previous versions. With Writeboard every time an edit is saved it creates a new version, meaning you can easy roll back any changes.

What else is great about Writeboard?

1. Easy sharing – It’s really easy to invite someone to collaborate on Writeboard, all you need to do is enter their email address and Writeboard will send them a link.
2. Safe editing – As well as being able to go back to previous versions, you can compare any two versions making it easy to identify what changes have been made.
3. Notification of changes – If you want to be kept up-to-date with changes being made to your Writeboard you can subscribe by RSS feed and be notified whenever an edit is made.
4. It’s completely free – with Writeboard you can create as many Writeboard projects as you like at no cost.

To visit the Writeboard site click here

If you are interested in finding out about an online collaborative proofing tool click here to learn about Apollo.

Want to stay up-to-date with all the latest free online tools? We often cover free tools on this blog (click here to see some), but here are some other sites you might want to also check out.

1. MakeUseOf.com – MakeUseOf is a blog that covers free tools and tips. From this site you can browse through their ever expanding directory of free applications or sign up with your email address to have all the new apps added to their directory emailed to you each day. To visit the MakeUseOf site click here.

    

2. Lifehacker.com – On the lifehacker blog you will find tips and tricks for all areas of your life, but in amongst those you will also find posts for free online and downloadable tools. To visit lifehacker click here
   
   
3. The Official Google Blog - Google is always coming up with new ways to help you get more out of the web like new search options, new ways to view news, or more translation features. If you want to be kept up to date with all the latest Google innovations, click here to visit the Official Google Blog.

Want to quickly and easy set a time limit for how long you spend on a particular site? x.minutes.at is a website that allows you to set a time limit on a browser tab.

All you need to do is enter the number of minutes you want to spend, followed by .minutes.at/, and the site you want to visit e.g. 5.minutes.at/blog.lancom.co.nz

As you can see above the time counts down in the browser tab, when it gets to zero you will receive a ‘Times Up!’ alert.

Note: Unfortunately I had some problems with this tool when using Internet Explorer, but it did work perfectly in Firefox. If you are using Internet Explorer click here to learn about MinutesPlease, another time limit site which works better with this browser.

To learn more about x.minutes.at click here.

Hat tip to lifehacker for the idea for this post

Citrix XenDesktop is a desktop virtualization solution that allows you to have your whole desktop environment stored and run not on specific computers, but on your server. With Citrix XenDesktop your operating system, your applications, and your files are all stored and run on your server and are simply projected to whatever computing device you are using.

So what are the main benefits to your business when using Citrix XenDesktop?

1. Mobility and flexibility – With Citrix XenDesktop users will be able to login and fully experience their desktop from any PC, Mac, thin client, or Smartphone. Not only will users be able to access their desktop securely from anywhere at any time, they will be delivered a high definition experience with better reliability and higher availability than a traditional PC. In fact, XenDesktop works so well that Citrix themselves have a BYOC (Bring Your Own Computer) policy. This means that employees are allowed to work on any computer they like because XenDesktop allows you to have a fast reliable experience regardless of your hardware.
2. Lower hardware costs – When your desktop is virtualized the server does all the work, which means users can work from thin client devices lowering your hardware costs. Another result of this is a lower power bill as thin client devices are more energy efficient.
3. Security – When using XenDesktop all your data and information remains secure of the server, so if a laptop or PC is stolen no company information will be able to be obtained from it.
4. Growth – A new desktop can be created instantly and can be made available to employees anywhere in the world, allowing your company to grow with ease.
5. Easier upgrades - Having a desktop virtualization solution allows you to migrate to new operating systems like Windows 7 quickly, efficiently, and cost effectively.

If you would like to watch a video on Citrix XenDesktop click here.

If you are interested in learning more about this technology please don’t hesitate to contact us at info@lancom.co.nz

Do you get annoyed by distracting ads while trying to browse the web? AdOut is easy to use online tool which allows you to view websites minus the ads.

With AdOut all you need to do is enter the website you want to visit on AdOut.org and it will be displayed without the ads. You can then click on any links within this webpage and these too will appear with no ads.

The only downside to this great tool is that webpages do take a little longer to load.

If you would like to try AdOut click here

Hat tip to MakeUseOf for the idea for this post

According to ComputerWorld, Office 2010 will officially be released to businesses on May 12 and will go on sale to the general public sometime in June.

Microsoft has also put together a program to provide free Office 2010 upgrades to those that purchase Office 2007 between now and September.

Office 2010 will replace Office 2007 and has many new and improved features including: Backstage View, Co-authoring, Broadcasting of PowerPoint presentations, Excel Sparklines, and video/audio editing from within PowerPoint.

To lean more about the new features of Office 2010 click here.

To read more about the release of Office 2010 from ComputerWorld click here

Here’s a really easy tip from the Sentenc.es website:

Treat all email responses like they are an SMS text message and have a set length that you can’t go over. Since it’s hard to count letters, count sentences instead. For example, you could choose to write all your email responses in three sentences or less.

To read more about this tip click here.

Hat tip to Seth’s blog for the idea for this post.

Word clouds can be a great way to quickly display what words appear most in a body of text and gives the reader an idea of what the writing is about before they read it. Wordle is a free online tool which allows you to easily create word clouds by simply copying and pasting the text you want to use.

When creating a word cloud with Wordle you have the abillity to choose between different colours, layouts, and fonts. Here’s a word cloud we created from text on the homepage of the LANcom Technology site.

Once you have created word cloud using Wordle you can then print it, save to their public gallery, or use the print screen button on your keyboard to capture an image of it.

If you would like to create a word cloud for your website, blog, or another project click here to visit the Wordle site.