Tips and Tricks using NOAH
As more and more developers get comfortable with using the NOAH animated character technology, we hear more questions about how best to use it. We've seen some pretty cool ideas, and wanted to share some of the better ones. This is the first of a series of blog entries that talk about what we're seeing our e-learning customers do.

We know that learners start to bond right away with a NOAH character in a course. It becomes a virtual instructor, a mentor, and a trusted source of learning. One client has online pre-work for its new hires to be taken before they show up to the Home Office for orientation. They asked us to build a custom avatar that looked exactly like the instructor the new hires would eventually meet. The pre-work was built with the instructor's voice for the NOAH avatar.

When the new hires finally showed up to the Home Office, they encountered the "real" NOAH that they had come to know in the online pre-work. Since the instructor is a very large and imposing man, who can often appear intimidating at first meeting, this was a major ice-breaker. The students immediately bonded with him and felt comfortable getting right to work. This made the Home Office visit more efficient and made the company look pretty cool as well.

If you want to share the ways you use NOAH, visit us at http://www.NOAHx.com.

As always, you can access the NOAH Editor at http://editor.NOAHx.com or the NOAH web site at http://www.NOAHx.com

eLearningGuild Conference
I wanted to give a report on what's been happening lately with NOAH. I'm glad to report that we have been picking up new customers at an increasing rate, mostly for developers of e-learning projects. NOAH seems to be competing well in the online learning space, which is hearing a lot more buzz about "learning agents" or "virtual instructors" or "avatars".

Our President/CEO went to the elearningGuild's Annual Gathering in Orlando last month. Eighteen months ago people visiting learning technology conventions asked, "What's an avatar?". Last year they said, "We've heard about using avatars in e-learning. What's it all about?". This year they said, "We've decided to incorporate some sort of learning agent into our coursework. Tell me about NOAH."

Since the NOAH animated character technology is way ahead of any other technology in terms of flexibility and usefulness for online learning instructional designers are excited about the prospects and the results. Adding a powerful tool that provides a high degree of engagement and interest to normally boring, text-based learning content seems to be gaining traction. There are some other avatar alternatives to NOAH, many of which are static, that are useful if you just want to add audio and a talking head.

The questions we heard most were about cost and ease of use; both are a big concern to course developers who don't have a lot of time or budget. Again, NOAH shines.

So, we're encouraged by the increasing awareness of how much animated character technology can add to the success of online learning projects.

New Improvement and Upgrade to the NOAH Editor System
The editing system for NOAH, the popular animated character technology for e-learning and web sites, has had several improvements made to it. Instead of relying on email to transfer the NOAH files to the developer's computer, the NOAH Editor now allows direct downloading of the files to the developer's computer. This reduces the development time it takes to place completed Voice-Action files, the file that tells NOAH what to do on a page while speaking, in production.

NOAH Animated Character Technology Upgrades Its Editor
TelSim Software's NOAH technology has brought a large degree of learner engagement to e-learning projects, raising completion and retention rates, learner focus, and the e-learning ROI. Now, NOAH has added a new dimension of usability and flexibility. The Company has announced an upgrade to the NOAH technology which allows the easy integration of NOAH into projects created with popular authoring tools such as Articulate, Captivate, PowerPoint converters like PowerConverter, and Lectora, as well as Flash-based and HTML-based projects. This upgrade allows developers to easily and quickly add NOAH to existing PowerPoint projects, bringing life and character to the content.

As always, you can access the NOAH Editor at http://editor.NOAHx.com or the NOAH web site at http://www.NOAHx.com

TelSim Software announces major upgrade to its NOAH animated character technology
TelSim Software, the developer of the popular NOAH animated character technology, has released an important upgrade to the NOAH online editing system that will make NOAH-enhanced projects possible for e-learning developers who use popular authoring tools such as Articulate, Captivate, Lectora, and PowerConverter, a PowerPoint to Flash conversion program. Since many training and e-learning projects are created with PowerPoint, this new feature will allow developers to breath new life into old PowerPoint projects after conversion to a Flash-based format. Read Full Press Release

As always, you can access the NOAH Editor at http://editor.NOAHx.com or the NOAH web site at http://www.NOAHx.com

See what Training Media Review thinks of NOAH
"NOAH is one of the most sophisticated avatar authoring tools currently available on the market and is reasonably priced. The animation software allows you to add talking, animated avatars or characters to your company website, CBT, or asynchronous course..." Read the Full Article

NEW NOAH Menu Options
Now, in the NOAH Menu, you can choose to not have the "Dock" and "Disable" options visible to your visitors. You can change these settings in the PAGE SETUP section of the NOAH Editor.

As always, you can access the NOAH Editor at http://editor.NOAHx.com or the NOAH web site at http://www.NOAHx.com

Exciting News - New Text-to-Speech Voices
NOAHx.com has made available 6 new Text-to-Speech voices for use with the NOAH Animated Character Technology. Now you have earn more choices to choose from when creating your own Voice/Action files but remember you can always use your own voice or one of our professional voice talents.

As always, you can access the NOAH Editor at http://editor.NOAHx.com or the NOAH web site at http://www.NOAHx.com

SUMMER SPECIAL Good Until 7/4/2007
Sign up for or upgrade to any paid account and receive access to every avatar for as long as you keep your account active. That is access to over 60 current and all future avatars - more than a $1,200 value!

As always, you can access the NOAH Editor at http://editor.NOAHx.com or the NOAH web site at http://www.NOAHx.com

Text-To-Speech can now be changed in your Voice-Action files
If you use Text-To-Speech in your Voice-Action files, you can now change what NOAH says as many times as you want without any additional charges. That means you can use the same Voice-Action file over and over again without having to buy a new one every time you want to make a change.

As always, you can access the NOAH Editor at http://editor.NOAHx.com or the NOAH web site at http://www.NOAHx.com

New NOAH Emails
Now you can have NOAH email all your friends with your personalized message. When you are in the Avatar Playground, select a NOAH character and customize the avatar as desired. Next, type in the message you want your NOAH avatar to deliver by selecting from various Text-To-Speech voices and combinations. Then you can email your message to one or more friends. Have fun!

New Text-To-Speech Voices
There are 5 new Text-To-Speech voices that you can choose to use. You can also change the 'Pitch' and 'Rate' of the voices. That gives you hundreds of different possible voices.

NOAHX blog now indexed for Technorati users! We support easy access to our feed by navigating your browser to http://noahx.com/rss/rssadd.asp and click on the rss reader you would like to use. Technorati Profile

Page setup now supports events
You can now easily setup how, where, and when NOAH appears on your website. This applies to every account type offered by NOAHX. Holiday messages and specials can be setup ahead of time. Just configure the web page in the page setup section. You can then expand on this by specifying different avatars or Voice/Action files based upon time of day, day of the week, date range, cookie information or a combination of the criteria.

A quote from a new E-Learning user: Quote of the Month
"After years of research and the use of many different learning agent technologies, I chose to use the NOAH technology. The difference is in the TTS,JavaScript capabilities,the full-body gestures, and appearance. NOAH can be integrated completely and seamlessly into an eLearning course, and it is user friendly. As soon as my clients saw it, they immediately understood how much it would add to the learning experience". Gina Richter, golearningusa.com

NOAH can now be used on your MySpace page with one line of code. After the code is added you can control what NOAH does and says very easily from the editing system! Sign up for your free account by navigating your browser to https://editor.noahx.com/freeaccount.asp , you can also find out more at http://noahx.com.

(TelSim Software, Tampa, FL) TelSim Software is launching NOAH, a dynamic and powerful animated character technology for e-learning and web-based business solutions. A Flash-based product, NOAH can integrate with web- or Flash-based coursework, and is compatible with most browsers. It does not require any server-side installations, proprietary course authoring tools, or special downloads. NOAH works on the 98+% of computers that have Flash player 6 or above. It also works well on lower bandwidth connections; most avatars are less than 25K and the NOAH engine is less than 30K. Where current avatar-based technologies are static and do little more than deliver an emotionless speech in the corner of a web page, NOAH moves around the page to point out important messages while displaying a wide range of emotions. NOAH's mobility means that critical messages or page elements can be pointed out, highlighted, and explained to improve understanding and focus. One improvement from older technologies is that NOAH can easily execute and integrate with JavaScript and ActionScript commands during its speech, which means that NOAH can pop up images, animations, text, links, sales messages, or instructions whenever the designer wants to draw special attention to something during a speech. This makes possible almost any conceivable user interaction. For web sites this is an interactive way to increase cart or form completions by guiding and encouraging the visitor. NOAH can be called by JavaScript or ActionScript functions as well. This means that users can click a button or link for the display of avatar-delivered on-demand information, appropriate for help buttons. This also means that appropriate feedback based on user inputs for tests or social scenarios can be displayed, for example when a correct or incorrect answer is selected. For web sites, this can be a user-friendly way to point out missing form fields. Because NOAH avatars display believable emotions, they are considered more engaging than "talking images" and seem to improve learner engagement and retention. Stanford University has several papers that discuss this. NOAH is designed to be an engaging and believable coach, co-learner, advisor, guide, or teacher who can point out and explain critical content, encourage the learner, and be a learning partner. "After years of research and the use of many different learning agent technologies, I chose to use the NOAH technology. NOAH can be integrated completely and seamlessly into an e-learning course. As soon as my clients saw it, they immediately understood how much it would add to the learning experience", reports Gina Richter of golearningusa.com. For web sites, showing emotions creates a warmer, more personal site environment. Developers can implement NOAH easily with the easy-to-use editing program. Either pre-recorded voice files or speeches created with the Text-To-Speech engine are uploaded to the editor where emotions, looks, move commands or function calls are inserted along the timeline. The NOAH avatars can take almost any form, from full-bodied humans to simple cartoons. The 72 standard avatars are customizable. The Avatar Playground provides a way to get to know what the avatars can do. A full presentation on NOAH is available at http://www.noahx.com/NOAH/ NOAH's web site is http://www.noahx.com. "Our NOAH system represents the next generation of animated character technology, jumping ahead of static talking images to provide significant benefit as a web-based business solution and an important new way to improve e-learning projects", says TelSim Software's founder and CEO, Timothy A Freriks. TelSim Software, a software development company located in Tampa, FL, has been engaged in the development of business solutions and e-learning since 1995.

You can now choose a free account and utilize NOAH on your site free of charge. Sign up for your free account by navigating your browser to https://editor.noahx.com/freeaccount.asp , you can also find out more at http://noahx.com.