Avacaster: in the fight!

Avacast is proud to announce that the Avacaster System has been selected for a trial as part of the Army’s new Future Combat System program, which stresses advanced, enhanced communications among soldiers and equipment in all combat situations, allowing better and more effective decisions to be made in high-stress situations thanks to better transfer of information.

The robust nature of the Avacaster System’s design and the flexible and rich nature of the data that can be sent and received via Avacaster make it a natural choice for effective communication no matter the circumstances. We’re happy to do our part!

Avacast is proud to welcome Lion’s Share to the Avacaster-using family. Lion’s Share is a marketing firm that specializes in banking—and they are absolutely one of the best.

Lion’s Share will be using the Avacaster System to directly consult with their clients, allowing for the rich, interactive, personal experience previously only available via physical travel. Avacaster’s highly accessible, in-browser approach is especially important here, working well even in the ultra-high security networks of banking.

Avacast is proud to have Lion’s Share as part of the pride!

The International Council on Open and Distance Education has been organizing global conferences on open and distance education every two years since 1938. This year, for the first time, the massive, international conference will be webcast thanks to the Avacaster System and our partners in the Netherlands, Avacast Europe.

The 4-day long conference will feature speakers who are global authorities on open and distance education, and, thanks to the Avacaster System, even those of us not fortunate enough to be in lovely Maastricht can still watch and even participate and ask questions from the comfort of our own homes or offices.

Avacast USA and Avacast Europe are both very committed to the expansion and development of distance education all over the world, and these sorts of global-scale events show the real potential and immense possibilities of what is open and distance education can achieve.

So, by all means, check it out! And check back for more news from Avacast Europe as we expand across Russia and Asia– there’s exciting things to come.

Avacast is proud to welcome NKREC, the Northen Kentucky Real Estate College, to the Avacaster-using fold. NKREC is the premiere learning center for real estate professionals in Kentucky, and it’s only fitting that they, after an exhaustive search, selected the premiere distance-education and meeting system to deliver their classes and content.

NKREC offers classes in a wide range of real estate disciplines, from Agent and Broker licensing, continuing education, commercial real estate, and more. Using the Avacaster system expands the reach of this remarkable resource to people throughout the state, free from the constraints of distance and time.

Avacaster: Helping your business go nowhere! In a good way, of course. In a way that saves you money, yet lets you and your people meet, interact, and collaborate. With everyone cutting back, it’s worth reminding everyone just how much money Avacast can save your business. The Avacaster system offers a genuinely useful alternative to expensive travel. Using Avacaster, you can meet with people wherever they may be, with the ease and rich interaction you’d have if they were right across the table from you.

Watch our recorded demo. Then contact us for a live demo, where you can actually experience how great the Avacaster experience is. Soon you’ll be cutting back on travel, saving money, and, as a nice bonus, the environment as well.

Avacast is pleased to report version 6.0 has passed another milestone with one of our Beta test sites as the new Avacaster SIX Admin tools have completed Cycle I testing with flying colors.

“We’re quite pleased with the refinements made to the UI, and, as always, we’re especially happy to see our own suggestions taken to heart and incorporated in a meaningful way,” reports our Beta site lead.

Avacaster SIX builds on the sucessful Avacaster 5.x platform, while adding many new features and fundamental improvements. More release information will be available shortly.

Avacast is proud to announce the opening of our official European Branch, Avacast Europe. Based just outside of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Avacast Europe boasts a powerful new datacenter outfitted with the latest high-capacity Avacaster servers dedicated to serving the needs of the European market even better than ever.

Avacaster has always been a great global solution, and now it’s even better, especially for our friends in the old world. We’ve got a lot of languages to learn.

Avacast is proud to announce our new partner and exclusive distributor for Europe, Chatkantoor, based in the Netherlands. Chatkantoor, already a major player in Europe’s online business communications field, has selected Avacaster as the basis for their new, expansive programs to bring powerful online interactive communication to Europe’s biggest companies, schools, and organizations.

It was only after a very comprehensive period of research that Chatkantoor selected the Avacaster System, finding it to be the only solution that offered the unique combination of power, features, and accessibility that was needed to meet their ambitious goals.

Avacast is very excited and pleased to be working with our new partners in the Netherlands, and more information about this exciting development is coming soon.

Avacast is proud to welcome yet another university to the Avacaster-using community, Azusa Pacific University. Going beyond the traditional university uses of content and class delivery, Azusa Pacific will be using the powerful Avacaster system to reach out to potential students and provide rich, interactive programming to a vast amount of people, students and otherwise. Based on the turnout and content of the events so far, we expect some very interesting things to come out of Azusa Pacific.

Avacast is proud to welcome the University of Alabama to the Avacaster family. After an exhaustive search, the University has selected the powerful Avacaster System as their distance-education solution, and will start by implementing Avacaster-enabled classes in their languages department. We’re tickled crimson to have them aboard.

You may have noticed our website has had a facelift, just one of many things currently in progress. We have many new customers to tell you about, as well as some sneak previews of the next version of Avacaster, Avacaster SIX. So keep checking back!

TV Guide, a subsidiary of Gemstar is one of Avacaster’s latest clients, and is using the powerful system in some new and novel ways. TV Guide is no longer just something that sits on your coffee table; it’s now the sophisticated menu system you find on your cable box, and the Avacaster System was chosen as the method to train salespeople and support staff all over the world in these new, exciting tools.

“Avacaster has proven an amazingly effective tool for us here at TV Guide,” says Dan Ward, head of Training. “The Avacaster System has really opened up new markets; for example, we can train staff in South America via Avacaster even if they don’t have one of our cable boxes; we can stream the interface, with additional trainers’ videos, and answer questions in real time, and so much more. It’s great.”

Southern University in Baton Rouge, LA, as one of the surviving Universities after Hurricane Katrina, has undertaken extraordinary measures to maintain a high standard of higher education in the aftermath of one of the greatest disasters in recent memory.

Taking over the responsibilities of many other Universities has, of course, been highly taxing on the institution’s resources. As a result, Avacast is proud to announce that continuing use of the Avacaster System will be donated to the University.

Southern University has already found the Avacaster System to be a powerful, useful tool for reaching their many students, and the distance learning potential offered by Avacaster has proven especially valuable in the recovery. Avacast is proud of the work they’ve done, and pleased to be a part of this great effort.

Avacast is pleased to welcome Cooler Waters to the happy confederation of satisfied Avacaster clients. Cooler Waters will be using Avacaster as a powerful, engaging new medium to inform and demonstrate the advantages of their water filtration system to potential clients, wherever they may be.

As you may imagine, we at Avacast like to keep busy. One of the things we like to keep busy with is development of new Avacaster versions and new products. We’re especially excited about one of our latest development efforts, AvaOffice. AvaOffice represents a radical new approach to online communication that we think is going to be very effective and desirable; the best way to learn more about it is to view this Avacaster demo about AvaOffice, hosted by Avacast’s lead designer Jason Torchinsky. A PDF outlining AvaOffice’s innovations and concept is available here.

This past month has brought us 38 new Avalite clients, in sites all over the globe. We thought we’d plot out some of these sites, since it so clearly shows the real power of Avalite: an easy way to meet, keep in touch, discuss, train, teach, no matter where you are, anywhere on Earth. The world’s a very big place, we just haven’t told that to Avalite.
So, if you have the need to meet and collaborate with people nowhere near you and you don’t want to spend a lot of money, give Avalite a look.

Avacast welcomes our newest Avacaster client, Wall Street Prep.
Wall Street Prep is a global full-service financial training firm, providing self-study programs as well as instructor-led training and e-learning services to investment banks, financial institutions, and Fortune 1000 companies. Wall Street Prep has trained at some of the most prestigious academic institutions and corporations in the world.
Wall Street Prep’s needs soon made it clear that only Avacaster could give them the mix of accessibility, ease-of-use, features, and scalability that they desired, and we’re happy to have them on board.

It was just a matter of time, really: the number of Avacaster users has just crossed the one million mark, and is, of course, continuing to grow.

That millionth user could have been attending a class in the Choctaw language, meeting with workers at a grout plant half a continent away, studying for the LSATs, particpating in an animated discussion about jazz, selling real estate, consulting a patient, or much, much more. Avacaster users use the Avacaster system for a vast array of reasons—and every day they’re coming up with more.

So, millionth Avacaster user, thanks! And we look forward to a million more, even sooner.

One of Avacast’s longtime clients, the Choctaw Indian Nation of Oklahoma, is dramatically expanding their Avacaster-powered offerings, thanks to many years of excellent results with the Avacaster System.

In light of their recent expansion, it’s worth reviewing what the Choctaw Nation has accomplished with Avacaster: The Choctaw were the first Native American Nation to provide interactive online classes of any sort back in 1998, working with a technology co-developed by several of Avacast’s founders. Once Avacaster was released to the market in 2001, the Choctaw Switched to this more powerful platform. Since then, they have been providing three or more language preservation, cultural, historical and other sorts of classes to thousands of Choctaw in school systems and to private students all over the world.

With native Choctaw speakers growing older, the use of the Avacaster System as the lifeline to keeping this proud and beautiful language alive has proven immensely sucessful, allowing new speakers to be taught in numbers and locations never before possible. It is also a testament to Avacaster’s ease-of-use that these classes were run by the actual native speakers themselves, using the Avacaster tools.

We salute the Choctaw Nation on their new program expansion, and look forward to spreading Choctaw language and culture far and wide on the wings of Avacaster.

Jones International University, one of the most respected educational insitutions to operate online, has chosen the Avacaster System as the medium for all of their online courseware.

Avacaster beat out such big-name competitors as Adobe Acrobat Connect, which couldn’t match Avacaster’s renowned ease-of-use, features, and price.

“Avacaster and distance education is a very potent combination,” said Jon Redyk, Avacast CEO.

“Organizations like Jones, which routinely require connecting people from as diverse locations as India, Panama, Ireland, and the USA find Avacaster an ideal solution.”

Avacast welcomes Jones University aboard and looks forward to the many amazing things certain to come.

Avacast CEO Jon Redyk is pleased to announce Avacast’s selection by the Pasadena Angels to provide a comprehensive website platform and powerful new communication tools. These state-of-the-art webcasting and webconferencing systems will grant the Pasadena Angels communications abilities unparalleled by any venture fund.

“Angels will be able to share ideas, conduct evaluations, board meetings, and more with the Avacaster system,” says CEO Redyk.

“Avacast brings over 40 combined years of experience in this field, and are proving its utility and adaptability even into such security-intensive environments like a venture-capital group.”

Rob Terrell, Avacast’s CTO, says of the deal, “This is really just the beginning of what is possible for these sorts of organizations, who, by their very nature, involve people who’s schedules are demanding and in highly dispersed locations. We’re offering n incredible way to work effectively within those requirements.”

Avacast’s legendary ease-of-use and UI will be meshed with the Pasadena Angels’ needs by Lead Designer Jason Torchinsky.

“Powerful is great, but usable is really what matters,” Torchinsky states. “Just like a 500 hp car with no steering wheel is just a piece of sculpture, a powerful communications system without an intuitive UI is just data on a hard drive. Lucky for everyone, Avacast is meant to be driven.”

Charles Emely, Chairman of the Board of Avacast, has high hopes to see this replicated throughout similar capital groups all over the world.

“Once others see what the Pasadena Angels are able to accomplish, they’ll know it’s time,” says Emely.

Comhaus searched and investigated webcasting and webconferencing tools for over a year to find just the right solution for their WebCredenza series of webinars and training programs. Like so many others that took the time to really investigate, they found that Avacaster had the right mix of features, ease of use, and price.

As always, we’re excited to have a new member of the Avacaster family. A metaphorical family, perhaps, but a happy and productive one.

By now, everyone’s heard about Nintendo’s wildly popular new videogame console, the Wii. Outselling all its competitors, millions of homes all over the world now have a Wii connected to their televisions.

And, now millions of homes all over the world have a new way to use Avacaster. Avacaster is the only webcasting/webconferencing system proven to work on a Wii, or any videogame console. This opens up incredible new markets, audiences, and opportunities for anyone looking for a powerful new way to reach people or a productive, innovative new use for a videogame console.

We’re proud of Avacaster’s flexiblity, and are excited to see how these newfound capabilities will be used!

If you can’t say something nice…then our moms would always tell us not to say anything at all. But this is business, and mom’s not here. So please allow us to relay to you this story from one of our newest clients, regarding their experience researching webcasting/webconferencing systems:

I was looking at many systems, Adobe Connect among them. I contacted Adobe to get pricing, and, after lots of frustrating talking to recordings, was given a reseller’s number. I called, left a message, got no response. When I finally did get ahold of someone a few days later, I found the number I was given was for a confused mortgage broker, who had been recieving up to three calls a day from Adobe. Needless to say, with customer service like that, I began to look elsewhere. I found Avacaster had the features I wanted, was easier to use, and was much, much cheaper. So, in a way, I guess I should thank Adobe and one puzzled mortgage broker!

So, Adobe, from all of us at Avacast, thanks for the new client!

When the National Community Reinvestment Coalition held their annual Congressional Lunch, they looked to Avacast to make it available to far more people than any hotel ballroom can fit.

The presence of keynote speaker Hillary Clinton and the large associated audience made the choice of Avacaster all the more clear: whether you’re doing an event with 100 users or 60,000, Avacaster is the obvious choice.

Avacast’s robust infrastructure and advanced video and audio features insured that the event went off without a hitch, and archives will be available for those who wish to view the speech.

Avacast is proud to welcome the University of Oregon as one of the first clients for our latest offering, Avalite .

The University selected Avalite after an exhaustive search and comparison of all the major webconferencing tools, and found that Avalite had the best mix of features, ease-of-use, and price.

“For 99 dollars a month this new offering is unbeatable: performance and features only found on expensive solutions can now be obtained as easy as 1-2-3,” says CEO Jon Redyk.

The University will be using Avalite to allow for real-time, face-to-face meetings with instructors and administrators both on and off campus, and will likely also employ the system to conduct professor-student small-group discussion sessions, counseling, and more.

Avacast is proud to announce two new offerings in the Avacast product line, Avalite and AvaOffice.

Avalite is an affordable and powerful webconferencing tool for up to 5 concurrent users, with slides, polls, audio and video, screen sharing and much more. Incredibly, Avalite gives you all this for only $99/month, unlimited use. Call or email us today to find out more!

AvaOffice is Avacast’s new entire-office conferencing solution. Incorporating a total solution to dispersed office communications, AvaOffice employs innovative new interfaces that make it easier than ever.

“I don’t think its unreasonable to say that AvaOffice is the most important communication tool for start-ups and small companies to be released in quite some time,” says Jon Redyk, Avacast CEO. More AvaOffice information will be provided soon.

When CLK Management needed a powerful, easy-to-use webcasting and webconferencing system in a hurry, they only found one solution that fit the bill: Avacaster. Only Avacaster had the combination of features, security, and aesthetics that made the choice so quick and obvious. It is with great pride that we welcome CLK into the Avacaster family.

International marketing and trade company Evosite selected Avacast for its many and varied online communication needs after one of the most comprehensive and involved selection processes in company history.

Evosite has spent over a year evaluating such systems as Adobe’s Acrobat Connect (replacing the discontinued Breeze), E-Luminate, WebEx, Microsoft LiveMeeting, and Avacaster. In the end, Avacast scored higest by a wide margin, being the only system that could meet their marketing, scale, accessibility, and budgetary needs.

“I’m pleased, but not surprised,” says Avacast CEO Jon Redyk. “When a client goes through this amount of effort to select us as a client, it means that much more, because it vindicates what we’ve always known: Avacaster is better, easier, more powerful, and cheaper than anything else out there.”

Avacast welcomes Evosite to our family of happy clients.

Avacaster is being used in one of the most innovative and engaging projects to date thanks to Art Academy Live selecting Avacast to provide the vehicles for their exciting online art classes.

“While the Avacaster System has been used in many educational contexts,” says Jason Torchinsky, Art Director of Avacast, “this represents the first time that Avacaster–or possibly any system– is being used exclusively for online studio art instruction.”

“I was an art history and studio art major myself, so I’m especially excited. Though I’m not sure we’ve overcome the issues of getting acrylic paint out of hair just yet. Regardless, we’re very excited to have Art Academy Live on board.”

Live, affordable art instruction classes using the Avacaster System will be available very soon from Art Academy Live’s website.

As we all know, the only sure things in life are death and taxes, which may be why theCenter for Tax Studies chose the Avacaster System as the vehicle to produce their online classes. One sure thing deserves another, after all, and Avacaster’s incredible mix of features and reliability make it a sure thing indeed.

In the continuing march of progress that has long defined the Avacaster System, Avacast is proud to release version 5.4, which includes, among other features, a full-featured Scheduler and Calendar.

The Scheduler and Calendar allows for easy scheduling of presentations, email invitations, and automatic conflict checking. Making and managing large numbers of Avacaster presentations has never been easier! Contact an Avacaster representative for more details!

Waterstone Homes, a pioneering home and community residential developer, chose the Avacaster System as the most effective vehicle to communicate their development plans to the communities surrounding their new environmentally-friendly development.

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The University of British Columbia’s Division of Emergency Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, has chosen the Avacaster System as their delivery vehicle of choice for a series of Webinars starting September 17.

The series begins with Little Bugs, Little Buggers– Pediatric infection: When to Worry, given by Simi Khangura, MD, FRCPC. This informative and engaging presentation is expected to be the first of many webinars designed to help provide doctors in the high-pressure world of emergency medicine the training and tools they need to remain at peak effectiveness.

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In an effort to improve their already industry-beating service, Avacast will open an East coast support center on October 15 to work with their existing West coast support facility.

“By opening a separate support center on the east coast, we can offer our customers even better support, no matter what time zone they may be in,” says Rob Terrell, CTO of Avacast.

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Avacaster has been selected as the solution for a series of webcasts in conjunction with the world premiere of Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s The Pirate Queen in Chicago.

Boubil and Schönberg’s previous credits include Les Miserables and Phantom of the Opera, and this production is expected to be just as huge and successful.

A series of Avacaster webcasts will follow the cast and crew throughout the exciting, tense, and often elating process of staging a major Broadway production. more…

Firmly establishing itself as the online communication system of choice for America’s noble Native American nations, Avacast welcomes the North Carolina branch of the Cherokee Indian Nation. more…

TALHO, the Texas Association of Local Health Officials, has become the latest Avacaster customer.

TALHO has extensively used dedicated videoconferencing systems to achieve their goals, and have found that the Avacaster System can provide that functionality and much more for significantly less cost and without the hassle of dedicated equipment.

TALHO is a non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of public heath via technical leadership, and Avacast is proud to be part of their efforts.

The Avacaster System has long had the ability to take PowerPoint PPT files and automatically convert them to the Flash SWF format. And, almost as long as we have been able to do this, people have been asking us for a tool that would do just that, separate from the powerful Avacaster System.

So, we finally relented. And, even better, we decided that, since we love all of our fans on the internet, we’ll make it free. Think of it as our gift to you: FlashPoint, the PowerPoint-to-Flash converter. Get it now!

RTI International is global scientific research nonprofit, with over 2,500 employees with offices in over 40 countries. As you can guess, communication between employees in far-flung locations is mission-critical for RTI. Previously, this kind of communication had been handled via analog video transmission, satellite video uplink, and Polycom-style conferencing. For a variety of reasons, none of these were completely satisfactory. In 2004, RTI’s Video Services group began to investigate using Avacaster Enterprise to enable IP-based video to replace other forms of video transmission.

RTI spent most of a year using the Avacaster for small-scale events, to get used to the tools and to test their internal network. When the time came for the 2006 President’s Forum, which all RTI employees would be invited to view online, they were ready. more…

Avacaster announced today that its entire network infrastructure has been upgraded with state-of-the-art equipment. In addition, a second data center has been activated with triple failover capability. CEO & President Jon Redyk stated that “this has been a carefully planned upgrade with no interruption in service and quality to our over 1/2 million users worldwide.” more…

Verus Group offers a full range of global qualitative research services in including traditional offline focus groups and in-depth interviews.

Their latest offering, VerusLive, offers real time online qualitative research that will include video, audio, and text based interviews with research participants. The new VerusLive will deliver qualitative research results in a fraction of the time that is typically associated with offline qualitative research – without giving up any of the body language and non-verbal communication that is so valued in the traditional qualitative research setting. And, of course, VerusLive is powered by Avacaster.

As you know, Avacaster is constantly being developed and improved; we thought you might like to have an inside view into this process, and even have the chance to directly tell the Avacaster Dev Team what you’d like to see in the product. So check out the Avacast Dev Blog!