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Thanks to Hewlett-Packard, on the 17 June 2010, we held the "Correct Solutions Workshop" - a half day event that gave us a fantastic opportunity to get together with our clients and discuss their IT requirements, as well as showcasing some of the latest technologies from HP.

For those of you who attended, we really enjoyed your company on the day and hope that we'll see you at our next event!  If you weren't able to attend, this month, we highlight some of the HP technologies on display at the Correct Solutions Workshop...you can also check out all the photos from the day on our Facebook page!

Project Yourself

Something that generated a large amount of interest at the Workshop actually comes in a surprisingly small package.  Weighing less than half a kilogram and measuring  9.3 x 4.0 x 11.1 cm, the HP Notebook Companion had a very enthusiastic reaction from a number of people in the audience.

Designed for use in smaller settings where a handful of people are present, the HP Notebook Projection Companion is ideal for mobile users. This ultra-portable accessory is powerful and durable enough to serve as your primary projector or as a backup while on the road.  It won't cost you the earth either, with an RRP of only $699 Inc GST!

Collaborate

HP demonstrated something called "Skyroom" - an innovative, high-quality video conferencing and collaboration tool, designed for connections within a firewalled organisation (VPN is supported).

HP SkyRoom brings up to four team members together to work virtually side by side via video conference - across any distance - by seamlessly combining high-fidelity audio, high resolution video and the ability to share rich media content into one affordable, easy-to-use collaboration application.

Available FREE on all HP Workstations or via licensing for standard desktops and notebooks, all you need is a webcam and a headset.   With a low-cost start up per user, each time you negate the need to take that interstate trip for a branch office meeting or training session, you can expect to see a return on investment. 

For a free 90 day trial of Skyroom, click here.

Get in Touch

We had a couple of HP's new "TouchSmart" PCs on display at the Workshop.  Some of the feedback we got from the audience was that they would like to have had more time to play!  That's not surprising, the concept of a touch enabled PC has a lot of appeal, having been designed to enable a whole new way of interacting with technology.

HP is building an ecosystem of third-party software vendors specialising in touch applications, so if you visualise it, you can realise it; start dreaming of those customised touch-driven solutions tailored to your specific business needs.

Do you do your marketing in-house?
 
Sometimes the hardest thing, aside from creating good copy, is deciding on a suitable image to accompany your written work. Then there is the headache of having to try and edit it - if you don't have Photoshop it can be tricky to get the results you're after.
 
Recently we've come across a couple of things which may make life a lot easier for the typical desktop publisher looking to make their marketing strategies a little more colourful.
 
The Microsoft Office Ribbon plug-in for iStockphoto.
 
iStockphoto is a member-generated image and design community, offering access to literally millions of safe, royalty-free photographs, vector illustrations, video footage, audio tracks and Flash files. The images are affordable to purchase and with so many photos available there is bound to be something that suits your campaign.
 
If you're a Microsoft Office user (and there's a few of you out there), then the free iStock Ribbon plug-in lets you search for and insert iStock images directly into your PowerPoint presentations and Word documents, straight from inside the applications themselves.
 
The iStock Ribbon is currently available for Windows-based computers. While it will work with Microsoft Office 2007, the powerful graphics handling built into Office & PowerPoint 2010 will give you even greater flexibility when it comes to image manipulation. Download the plug-in here and install it on your machine to get started. If you have an existing iStock account, you'll be able to search directly from PowerPoint or Word!
 
Photoshop Online

The other very nifty tool that has made a blip noise on our radar is photoshop.com. this is a "cloud based" application, where you can upload photos and carry out photo manipulation. It has all the basic stuff like crop, resize, red-eye and colour saturation, as well as some more advanced features like sharpen or soft focus, distort and sketch.

While it doesn't have all the features of Photoshop, it is worth a look if you do not have Photoshop installed on your PC but would like to be able to play around with images.