Worst Tech of 2006?

We've barely cleared the first quarter of this year, and already ZDNet has compiled its choices for the worst technologies of 2006, so far. Styling, functionality and originality (or lack thereof) are among the criteria considered. If nothing else, it's some fun Friday-afternoon eye candy.

Pervasive Computing's Impact on the Environment

As we move ever steadily toward a pervasive computing environment -- in which a variety of objects contain on-board interactive computers -- this article from the IEEE ponders what effect it could have on a sustainable environment.

From increased energy demands for powering pervasive computers, to disposal issues, to exposure to non-ionizing radiation, to the psychological stress that may result from an "always on" networked environment, pervasive computing (if improperly developed and managed) is fraught with unintended consequences for the environment, personal health and emotional well-being.

Source: Buckminster Fuller Institute

Web 2.0 = Hype 2.0?

Facebook, a social networking tool aimed at high school and college students, has made waves by demanding a $2 billion selling price. That's a price tag that's too rich for News Corp, which recently bought the similarly-themed MySpace and is still shopping for Web 2.0 technologies.

Said Ross Levinsohn, president of Fox Interactive Media, "We're certainly not paying $2 billion for Facebook... If the price was right I'd be interested in it. It's a great site and I know the guys there well. But I don't know if they're up for sale." Indeed, there have been conflicting stories about Facebook's status. One report stated that Facebook turned down a $750 million buyout offer as too low, while others deny the company is for sale at all.

Such reports are eerily reminiscent of those circulated during the heyday of the Web 1.0 bubble, when anyone with a bit ot tech savvy and a shred of a business plan was commanding epic prices for startups. Granted, Web 2.0 companies are more grounded in reality, but if Facebook is any indication, they seem to be falling prey to the same hype that ultimately doomed their predecessors. Question is, will the bubble burst or gently deflate? Perhaps the best scenario is for investors like Levinsohn to hold the line, willing to invest in promising technologies while not letting valuations climb out of control.

Sources: Techdirt, Reuters

Text the Vote

Election Day in the US is 7 months away, but already an experimental venture called TXTVoter is ramping up, with the goal of registering young voters at concerts and other events attracting teens and young adults this summer. The initiative is funded by grants from Pew, coordinated by Young Voter Strategies, and supported by Music for America.

The idea is simple: At these venues, attendees will be given instructions for requesting voter registration materials via SMS. The materials will then be (quaintly) mailed to their homes. Come Election Day, participants will receive text-message reminders to vote. Several prominent bands, including Green Day and Death Cab for Cutie, have signed on to promote TXTVoter.

It will be interesting to see what impact, if any, TXTVoter has on youth voter registration, or if the concept is dismissed as a gimmick using technology for technology's sake. Also, since many of the groups behind TXTVoter are pointedly liberal, will this alienate more conservative youth, and might conservative organizations see an opening for a competing initiative of their own?

Sources: Smart Mobs, Personal Democracy Forum

State of Online Feed Readers

Great post over on TechCrunch about the features and state of online RSS feed readers, includes the following chart:

Beyond eLearning = eLearning 2.0?

In the recent Learning Circuits, Marc Rosenberg had a good article on What Lies Beyond e-Learning?

Interestingly, it doesn't include any of his pictures. He doesn't specifically mention eLearning 2.0, but it sounds a lot like it. You can see pictures that go with the story and a discussion of eLearning 2.0 vs. his work in my post:

eLearning Technology: Rosenberg's Beyond eLearning - Is that eLearning 2.0?

Virtual Classroom Tools Survey

Learning Circuits just published the results of their survey around Virtual Classroom tools. There are a couple of interesting charts.

Challenges:

* Technical still at top - but going down
* Lack of engagement and lack of interaction are rising fast

Interestingly, "unskilled facilitators" is going down as a challenge, but given the lack of engagement and lack of interaction going up, I'm not so sure. That's normally what I find to be the biggest challenge.

Top Tools:

* WebEx and LiveMeeting top the list and are going up in market share
* Centra and Interwise appear to be losing marketshare

Interestingly, there was no "other" category. It seems that there are lots of solutions in the market that aim to be lower cost. I would be surprised if there aren't a lot of entrants based on open-source, low-cost solutions offering services over the next two years. TeamSpeak is a feely available audio conferencing system. Good web conferencing can't be far behind. Putting a low-cost service together based on these two would be easy.

FeedYes - Learning Circuits Feed Works Like a Charm

After creating feeds for a couple of the Magazines that don't have RSS and writing about it in my post: eLearning Technology: RSS Feeds from Static Magazines, I became somewhat worried that they weren't working. Well this morning, I got all the recent LearningCircuits articles delivered via my FeedYes feed. Go to the above article if you want to subscribe to that feed.

Millenials are Grounded, Family-Focused

Today's teens ("Millenials") are not the "slackers" that their Gen X elders were accused of being. Nor are they workaholics who worship the almighty dollar. Instead, their priorities revolve around family, security and enjoying life.

The GenWorld Teen Study found that young people surveyed globally chose the following as their top values:

1. Protecting family and loved ones
2. Freedom in action and thought
3. Enjoying life
4. Stable personal relationships
5. Having fun

Their top five life expectations were to:

1. Make my family proud
2. Be financially secure ("Be rich" was much farther down on the scale)
   
3. Travel the world
4. Lead a stable life
5. Get married

Millenials seem to be taking the long view in life, foregoing immediate material rewards in search of stability and meaning. For this group, family and friends come first, before career success. As they enter the workforce, this group may well prefer employers who offer such benefits as liberal vacations and flexible working arrangements rather than large salaries.

Source: VisibilityPR

Typepad Widgets - A Sign of Things to Come in eLearning Authoring / Developement

As I've talked about several times (eLearning Technology: Authoring in eLearning 2.0 / Add-ins & Mash-ups, eLearning Technology: Promise of Web 2.0 and eLearning 2.0 - Comparison to Macros, IDEs, and Visual Basic) ...

One of the most intriguing aspects of Web 2.0 and eLearning 2.0 is the ability to compose together separate services to create something new and different.

The "Authoring Tool of the Future" and "LMS of the Future" will be along these same lines where you will be able to compose together point solutions.

As a great example of how this is happening, take a look at Typepad's recent announcement:

TypePad Widgets -

A widget is a little piece of content or functionality provided by a third party
that you can place in the siderail of your TypePad blog. Technically, it's just
a snippet of HTML and/or JavaScript that you can manage like any other sidebar
content module on your blog.

There's a good Analysis on TechCrunch.

del.icio.us Tools List

Even though I've primarily switched to Yahoo MyWeb (read eLearning Technology: Yahoo MyWeb better than del.icio.us, rollyo, et.al. for Personal / Group Learning), here's a great list of:

del.icio.us tools

I would definitely recommend looking at:

http://similicio.us/ - finds similar sites based on common tags

that I talk about in my article: eLearning Technology: Personal Learning for Learning Professionals - Using Web 2.0 Tools to Make Reading & Research More Effective

http://thumblicio.us/index.php?tag=eLearning - Browsing based on screen shots. It's surprising how much more effective it is to see a preview of the content.

http://del.icio.us/help/tagrolls & http://del.icio.us/help/linkrolls- allows you to put your tags in your blog or site

The list is so long, that it's hard to know which ones really are that useful. If you are using other tools, definitely drop me a comment.

Will Your Town Be Flooded When the Ice Caps Melt?

A mashup of Google Maps and elevation data from NASA illustrates how land masses around the world will flood if sea levels rise. The amount of sea level rise is adjustable.

Using New Jersey as a starting point, if sea levels were to rise 10 meters, all of the state's coastal regions would be under water. At 12 meters, most of the southern part of the state (along with most of the Delmarva Peninsula) are swampland. At 14 meters (the highest level on the map), most of South and Northeast Philadelphia, as well as Upper Manhattan, Brooklyn, Newark, and large sections of Baltimore and Washington DC (including the Mall, the White House area, and Potomac Park) are inundated.

These levels are not necessarily exaggerated, as some global warming models show sea levels rising as high as 20 feet.

Web Clips are the New Reality TV

Increasingly, web video clips of the type found on iFilm and Channel101.com are turning up on TV. Aside from being slipped in on "wacky news" segments on network and cable news shows, funny, viral clips are now the stars of their own TV shows, like Bravo's Outrageous and Contagious and VH1's Web Junk 20. NBC is reportedly developing a similar prime time show hosted by Carson Daly, and Saturday Night Live is developing its own web content with its Digital Shorts, which are available via iTunes.

Like reality TV, shows based on web clips are appealing to TV programmers because they're cheap to acquire and produce. Many are homemade, but others are (frequently embarrassing) outtakes of other TV shows and commercials -- either way, they are grainy, raw and honest. In a sense, putting web clips on TV is the logical extension of shows like America's Funniest Home Video and Real TV, which were innovations when they first appeared in the early '90s. Web clips, though, are different in that, instead of being originally vetted by the TV networks, they have made the rounds on the Internet, where the clips with the most edge and weirdness become the most viral. Instead of TV being the starting point for these clips, it is the end point.

That said, can TV really make a go out of shows based on web clips? Although many of the clips are irresistible, will people (especially young people) watch them and simply say, "I've seen these before..." and change the channel?

RELATED: MediaShift has an interview with Chad Hurley, CEO of YouTube, who says that his video-sharing site represents "the next-generation platform for serving media worldwide."

Sources: Boston.com, unmediated

Meteorologists Say Northeast Could See "Whopper" Hurricane

Meteorologists, who were spot-on in forecasting last year's harsh Atlantic hurricane season, are predicting that the 2006 season could deliver a "whopper" of a storm to the Northeastern US.

Weather experts note that warmer temperatures in the Atlantic and cooler temperatures in the Pacific make conditions ripe for a hurricane to track more northward than usual. The patterns are similar to those present during the devastating "Long Island Express" of 1938, the region's worst recorded hurricane. That Category 5 storm (before today's storm-naming convention was established) produced wind gusts of 183 MPH and left 600 dead along the Long Island and New England coasts.



Recent hurricanes have weakened considerably before they reached the Northeast, but experts predict that a storm as powerful as a Category 3 could make landfall anywhere from Northern New Jersey to the coast of Maine.

Source: AP (via Yahoo)

Federal Student Aid for Online Only Degrees

I saw this on Educational Technology. Interesting...

Teaching and Learning Online - Education World

Congress recently passed a bill that ended the requirement that colleges deliver
at least half their courses on campus (as opposed to online) in order for their
students to qualify for federal student aid. Surely, that change is a sign that
online learning finally has achieved a certain degree of legitimacy -- at least
among lawmakers.

A New Spin on the Video Travelogue

TurnHere is a beta site that provides "tours" of communities via short videos. Explore New York's famous East Village and Hell's Kitchen, party in South Beach, or take a "Sporanos Tour" of Northern New Jersey. Videos are organized by theme (art nouveau, foodie havens, party towns, surf's up) rather than by geography.

What makes TurnHere unique is that its videos are produced by locals who know their communities intimately. Aspiring videographers who have stories to tell about their neighborhoods are encouraged to submit their work (and get paid for it, too!)

Source: unmediated

"Neuro-Chips" Add Silicon to Brain Cells

Enhancing the brain with computer chips is no longer solely in the realm of science fiction. A team of Italian researchers has developed a "neuro-chip" that can be implanted in the brain and interact directly with neurons.

The 1-mm chip contains 16,000 transistors, and can both stimulate and receive information from surrounding brain cells. Currently, the technology is too immature and unstable for use in humans, but it might one day be used to correct neurological disorders such as epilepsy and Parkinson's disease. In the shorter term, the chip could be used to help test the effects of new drugs.

Source: LiveScience.com

The Disruptive Nature of Social Computing

Social networks and software are all the rage these days. But do they really have the potential to disrupt organizations?

Absolutely, says Terry Heaton, citing a Forrester report that confirms what many of those who study social networking have believed for some time: that social computing is shifting innovation and development from top-down to bottom-up, using organic networks and the "wisdom of crowds" to develop opinion and shape product and service demand.



Combining location awareness with social networking could be the next killer app. Nova Spivack suggests several such uses, some of which are already in use, including the ability to physically track those on one's network, tag photos and videos with location data, and get social information about a location (such as recommendations about a restaurant). Of course, these ideas require robust, open ontologies and devices that are (almost) always online for best results.

With models such as the Open Innovation concept in mind, organizations ought to find social computing a powerful tool for idea cultivation and product development. Even less formal innovation approaches such as brainstorming could be enhanced by using social applications to create avatars and alternate identities, giving particiants a level of anonymity that (hopefully) boosts their creativity and level of participation.

The Forrester report notes a downside of the growing social network; that as it grows, we risk suffering from a "pollution of the commons," or the social networking equivalent of spam. To that end, social software will need to build in filtering systems and rely on endorsements through digg- and del.icio.us-style tagging, and other checks and balances.

However, Danah Boyd cautions that the success of social software is not necessarily a given. She compares the current success -- and emerging challenges -- of MySpace with the rise and fall of Friendster. So far, MySpace has been successful when Friendster was not because "MySpace did not try to force people's connecting practices into pre-existing ideas of what should be. They let the practice evolve as users saw fit, without criticism, without restriction. As it evolved, people did new things with it. They used it to flirt, to advertise bands and activities, to offer cultural kudos." Friendster, by contrast, suffered from technical problems, but also because many people joined at once based on powerful media buzz, and then "they couldn't see anything or anyone. It was also not where all of their friends were and often they got bored before their friends arrived; there was never enough of a tipping point for many mainstream clusters."

MySpace is also succeeding, Boyd writes, because it is organic and chaotic, whereas Friendster tried to micromanage a process that is inherently unmanageable:

People were hanging out on Friendster before they hung out on MySpace. But hanging out on Friendster is like hanging out in a super clean police state where you can't chew gum let alone goof around and you're told exactly how to speak to others. Hanging out on MySpace is more like hanging out in a graffiti park with fellow goofballs while your favorite band is playing. That said, there are plenty of folks who don't want to be hanging out in a graffiti park and they are not sticking around on MySpace as a result.

The biggest threat to MySpace, according to Boyd, is "moral panic," or the growing backlash against it under the auspices of security and safety. Free speech, privacy and a degree of anonymity, she says, are key to the success of MySpace, and by extension, any social network. "I think we're seeing a huge shift in social life - negotiating super publics," she concludes. "I kinda suspect that MySpace teens are going to lead the way in figuring this out, just as teens in the 60s and 70s paved the way to figuring out globalized life with TV. I just hope law doesn't try to stop culture."

More Effective Conferences for Learning Professionals

If you've been reading my posts, you know that I've been talking quite a bit about how we don't seem to have applied anything we know about Learning Design to ourselves. See:

Personal Learning for Learning Professionals - Using Web 2.0 Tools to Make Reading & Research More Effective

Do Learning Professionals Make the Worst Learners?

Well, it looks like David Warlick has some good suggestions for what conference organizers should provide:

Conference 2.0 - Ten Tips for Extending your Education Conference

I wonder if we will see better up-front and follow-on activity because of some of these suggestions? To me, that's the key to really making a conference be useful.

Captivate File Size Tricks for Software Training via Simulations

I've been building software training & support solutions for a long time. You can find links to a couple of articles and a list of tools in the space in this previous post.

Recently, we've been doing the production work more often using Captivate and I keep seeing people ask about using that tool because of some of its quirks (like file size). So, I asked a few of the tricks they use and here's what we came up with together...

There are a number of things you can do to manage the file size of your Captivate projects; but like most eLearning projects, the amount of leeway you have is largely dependant on the specific client requirements, such as:

1) Is audio a necessary component? If so, how important is the sound quality?
2) What is the minimum display size that will adequately present the application?
3) Are there drag-and-drop features that need to be demonstrated? and
4) Is 508-compliance a requirement?

Before you read more, I would strongly recommend visiting the Macromedia Captivate Developer Center (http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/captivate/), and in particular, the article: “File-Size Considerations for Captivate Demonstrations and Simulations” located at http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/captivate/articles/filesize.html.

Recording

This is where you can have the biggest impact on the size of your project, both positive and negative. Planning ahead is always an important practice for good Captivate development, but if file size is a key consideration, that “good-practice” becomes even more critical.

1. Minimize the Recording Area—Before I begin recording, my first step is to determine the optimum size for the recording area. My two key considerations here are the end-user display characteristics—are they likely to view on a laptop, is the demonstration likely to be used in a school or library where monitors can tend to be on the small side—and what is the smallest size I can shrink the application I am demonstrating down to, while still adequately illustrating the tasks involved. I often arrive at a custom size and will therefore tend to use the Custom setting in the Record New Movie options, selecting the window from the dropdown menu, and then snapping the recording area to fit.

2. Fewer Colors = Lower File Size—I’m as attached to my carefully selected desktop picture as the next guy, but if I do need to include my desktop in the recording area (i.e. to demonstrate moving from one application to another), I will set the picture to None, and ensure that my desktop is now a color that is already being used somewhere in the presentation, so I am not introducing a new color unnecessarily. If I’ve really got to crunch the size, I will remove all title bar gradients as well—ever notice that every window you open has a color gradient from light to dark? See http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/captivate/articles/filesize.html - “File-Size Considerations for Captivate Demonstrations and Simulations” for more details.

3. Sacrifice a little to gain a lot—I have found that in most cases you can sacrifice the Full Motion Tab options without losing any noticeable quality. Obviously this needs to be visited on a case-by-case basis: If I have to demonstrate mouse movements in a drawing application, then I will ensure that “Show mouse in full motions capture” is selected, and if I need to drag an object from one area to another, then “Automatically capture drag-and-drop actions” remains selected, but usually I am able to keep these deselected, and take my video quality down to 50, and still have the movie look smooth to the end-user. This is another good example of where pre-planning comes into play. If my demonstration is going to involve 10 movies, and there is just one instance of a drag-and-drop, then there is no reason that all 10 movies need to have that option selected. I also have never found myself needing millions of colors for the demo – use 16 bit instead of 32!.

4. Careful about scrolling: If your demonstration includes the use of a scroll bar, consider clicking the directional arrows instead of dragging the scroll bar.

Editing

Although the biggest saving can be gained in the recording process, there are some tricks that can be performed in the editing phase to accomplish further savings.

1. Remove Unnecessary Slides—Whether I use auto-record, manual, or some combination of the two, I always end up with extra slides. The first thing I do once I’ve recorded and moved on to my storyboard/edit window is to identify them and then remove them (having backed up my move first of course!). I tend to be able to tell just by previewing my movie and looking at the storyboard layout, but when in doubt, the Bandwidth Monitor can be a great tool. From the Macromedia “File-Size Considerations…” article: “Look for slides on the Slide Summary tab. If the slide time is less than one second, there is a good chance that you can remove it. A very short slide time indicates that very little action occurs on the slide. For example, a slide that lasts less than one second could simply show the a clicking effect on a button, which helps create a more realistic demonstration or simulation but does not make training more or less effective.”

2. Importing Files—Remember that the same rules discussed earlier apply when importing images, PowerPoint Slides, Animations, etc. Everything you import increases the overall size, so keep images small, keep color depth limited, and avoid color gradients.

3. Adding Audio—Audio can far exceed any other element of your project in terms of file size. Even though Captivate will covert the audio to MP3, it can still have a huge impact on file size. Background music, or cool sound effects can be great to have, but if bandwidth is a major consideration, and audio is not a requirement, avoid the temptation. When I do need to use audio—usually in the form of narration—I will stick to “High (FM Quality)”—a safe middle-ground, so far I have not run into any problems.

Publishing

As with everything else discussed here, be sure of your client-requirements before deciding on your publishing options, but generally I will go with the following settings (under Movie > Preferences):

1. Select Advanced Movie Compression—Yes
2. Compress Compiled SWF file—Yes
3. Include Breeze Metadata—No. Unless you are going to use the project with Macromedia Breeze, there is no need to include this.
4. 508 Compliance—Be careful here! If you don’t need it, then deselect as it does increase file size, but be sure your client is aware of Section 508 and informed on whether it is something that applies to their website. You can always juts point them to http://www.section508.gov/ for more info.
5. JPEG image quality—Much like choosing 16-bit over 32-bit video, there is really no need to exceed 50% here, unless you are dealing with high-quality photographs or video.

Breaking up Files

The last thing to consider is how many slides are contained in your movie. Usually I have a good idea in the planning stage of roughly how many slides a movie will pan out to, but I have on occasion found myself arriving at the storyboard screen with over 100 slides. Macromedia recommends not exceeding 60 slides in any one movie, with 30-50 being the optimum.

When this happens, the solution here is simple—break the movie up into manageable chunks. Instead of one movie with 100 slides, I will break that up into 3 or 4 movies, each with 25-30 slides. Depending on how I am presenting my demonstration (i.e., is it housed in an html shell as part of a larger application or is it a stand-alone demo), I will either link my movies into a single string by going Movie End Options > Action, select Open Other Movie, and then linking to the next movie in sequence, or if I’m just sticking them into a pre-existing navigation, I just make sure I have a logical naming structure and title accordingly.

You can also create a menu system within Captivate using the MenuBuilder Feature. For more info visit the Captivate Developer Center (http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/captivate/)

Permanent Moon Base By 2020?

NASA is planning to develop a Moon base by 2020 to serve as a way-station for missions to Mars... though with competing priorities and limited budgets, that timetable may be optimistic.

Building a permanent base will be an enormous undertaking, considering not only the hostile lunar environment, but the need to develop whole new technologies to build and power the colony, establish a supply chain, and learn how to deal with the health and psychological implications of life on the Moon.

Some observers believe that the impetus for a Moon colony goes beyond the scientific. Just as the Apollo missions to the Moon were part of a space race between the US and the Soviet Union, a driving force in future lunar missions will be similarly political. "The new thing is China, and they've announced they're going to the moon. The Europeans want to go; the Russians want to go; and if we don't go, maybe they'll go with the Chinese," Mars Institute Chairman Pascal Lee said in an interview. "Could we bypass the moon and go to Mars while India and China are going to the moon? I don't think so."

A strong candidate for the first lunar colony is the Moon's south pole, which has virtually permanent sunlight and possible ice reserves from impacted comets.

Source: MSNBC

Internet, Country Style

Getting a high-speed Internet connection in a major metropolitan area is hardly a problem these days. But outside the big cities, it's another story. Cable and DSL connectivity is not available to as many as 15 million households in rural communities in the US. And there, Hughes Communications sees a business opportunity.

Hughes, which primarily manages corporate satellite networks, will initially focus its Internet offerings on small businesses in rural communities that need Internet connectivity, and extend its service to residential consumers. However, Hughes' service will only appeal to those without any other broadband options, as it will be more expensive than cable or DSL ($60/month vs. $15-40/month).

Source: Washington Post

"Talkative" Smart Items

Call it "RFID 2.0" if you will, but even as RFID remains an emerging technology, the European Union is forging ahead with a service-oriented architecture that will allow "smart items" to communicate not just with a central reader, but with each other.

The Collaborative Business Items (CoBIs) project has been in development since 2004, and combines sensing and short-range wireless technologies to create a peer-to-peer network to observe subtle changes in the items' environment, and feed that information back to a central system.

The result would be to transform inventory items into individual nodes. The resulting self-aware network could detect unsafe conditions such as overloads or the presence of dangerous substances, prevent theft and loss, and be incorporated into smart clothing -- all presumably more effectively than conventional RFID technology.

Although those involved with CoBIs are confident that the technology will soon be ready for commercial deployment, a timetable has not yet been announced, and the number of potential users is unknown.

Source: ZDNet

Worms + Pigs = Heart-Healthy Pork

Imagine a meat that's not only low in fat, but that is actually good for your heart. That's what geneticists may have created by adding DNA from the roundworm C. elegans to pigs. The genetically modified pigs yield meat containing omega-3 fatty acids, which are thought to prevent heart disease, depression and Alzheimer's disease.

This is not the first effort to genetically alter the fat content of animal meat, and it's a long way from appearing in your local grocer or deli. “We understand that this research is in the very early stages,” FDA spokeswoman Rae Jones said. “This technology will not likely reach meat counters for many years.” Even if the technology were market-ready today, FDA approval alone could take a decade or longer. Plus, consumers would have to get past the idea of pork modified with worms...

Source: MSNBC

Coffee is Hotter than Ever

Over the past decade, sales of coffee worldwide have more than doubled, from $30 billion in 1996 to $70 billion today. Give credit to the marketing power of Starbucks... as well as our hectic lifestyles that deprive us of sleep and require constant caffeine fixes. Recent research documenting health benefits of coffee haven't hurt either.

Now, beverage giant Coca-Cola is getting in on the act, with an array of patents and registered trademarks for to-be-released coffee products as well as a coffee-flavored cola called "Coca-Cola Blak." McDonald's is likewise trying to attract discriminating coffee drinkers with premium roasts.

Growing along with coffee is the popularity of coffee houses -- so great that coffee houses have begun to replace the legendary pubs along London's Fleet Street. Although this is something of a chicken-and-egg phenomenon (does coffee beget coffee houses, or vice versa?), coffee houses have gained popularity as meeting places and secondary workplaces with Internet connectivity -- indeed, usurping the role of the local bar in many communities.

SORTA KINDA RELATED: Downing java by the gallon just to stay awake? You might want to "Take Back Your Time" during Sleep Awareness Week, March 27 - April 2.

The Training that Sucks Blog - Mildly Amusing Problem

I needed to share this experience...

I got a notification that the folks at "Training that Sucks" had linked to me.

Of course, when a blog called that links to you, you had better visit!

Now that I think of it, great way to get people to visit your site. :)

But, then I had a weird experience, they had a post that mentioned: "And yes, to answer the most frequently asked question, we’re working on an RSS feed." but I just got their content through an RSS feed. I looked at my subscription, and sure enough, I hadn't used FeedYes or some trick like that to grab stuff from them.

So, I figured I would tell them about their RSS feed, only to not be able to find contact information on the blog.

Of course, it was simple communication problem. They have contact information back on their main site and its just not apparent from the blog page that I reached through the RSS feed.

There must be a joke in here somewhere. Or maybe it's Friday afternoon.

"MIT Technology Review" 10 Emerging Technologies

This special report on top emerging techologies from MIT Technology Review is not your average list. Sure, it contains some familiar technologies (nanomedicine, universal ID), but it also boasts what might be some new terms, including:

• Epigenetics, or early cancer detection through measuring subtle changes in DNA
• Diffusion tensor imaging, a new way to image and understand brain disorders
• Comparative interactomics, or developing new medicines based on the body's molecular interactions
• Cognitive radio, a technique allowing wireless devices to negotiate for space on the crowded radio spectrum

"Microsatellites" May Point to NASA's Future

Early this morning, NASA launched three 55-pound "microsatellites" into orbit using not a traditional ground-based rocket, but a Pegasus missile strapped to the belly of a Lockheed L-1011 jet airplane. At 39,000 feet, the missile was released from the plane's belly and fired its engine to fly 10 miles into Earth orbit.


The microsatellites are part of NASA's New Millenium Program, designed to test new technologies for future space missions; these particular satellites will measure the Earth's magnetic field from different points.

Part of the project's outcome may be that this type of a launch -- taking a page out of the playbook of private space entrepreneurs -- will prove far more economical than traditional rocket launches or the Shuttle, making Earth orbit accessible to businesses as well as countries that cannot currently afford their own space programs. As a result, NASA's focus may ultimately shift to that of a high-tech think tank and science advocate, leaving actual space flights to the private sector.

Source: CNN.com

40 Pct. of Amazon Rainforest Could Vanish by 2050

Ranching, logging and farming, while profitable ventures for the South American economy, have been eroding the Amazon rainforest for years. A report in Nature estimates that up to 40% of the rainforest could disappear within 45 years if development goes unchecked.

Britaldo Soares-Filho, of the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in Brazil, ran computer models simulating the effects of agricultural and industrial encroachment on virgin forests in three different scenarios. In the worst case, up to 777,000 square miles of forest could be lost by 2050, threatening the continent's ecosystem and endangering 100 native plant and animal species. Best-case scenarios, though, show that reduction could be minimized through land preservation and controlled growth.

The Amazon rainforest is important not just to South America, but the entire planet, as it absorbs a large amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Without the rainforest, carbon emissions would go unchecked, thereby accellerating global warming.

Faced with this, South American countries have a dilemma: how to protect the rainforests without harming desperately needed jobs and economic growth. Scientists taking the long view would invariably argue that the rainforest is the greater priority, though protecting it will be politically treacherous if means lost jobs and incomes.

Source: Reuters

Turning Urinals into Video Games

In today's entertainment-driven society, everything can be made into a form of recreation. And I do mean everything...

Consider the video game urinal developed by Marcel Neundörfer. While a man is using a rest room, he can play a game by, uh, taking care of business:

Recessed into a urinal is a pressure-sensitive display screen. When the guest uses it, he triggers an interactive game, producing images and sound.

Hey, what the heck... most guys would get a kick out of it! But the device arguably has some practical advantages as well:

The reduced size of the “target” improves restroom hygiene and saves on cleanings costs (like the “fly in the urinal” at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport). It also makes a trip to the urinal “fun and games” – more than just a necessary nuisance.

The design also has some "critical-ironic" artistic aesthetics evocative of Duchamp. And Lord knows that typical public men's rooms need all the artistic help they can get...

Now, of course, comes the next obvious challenge -- a version for the ladies!

Source: Boing Boing

Acceptance of Gay/Lesbian Lifestyle Increasing

Americans are increasingly accepting of homosexuality, according to recent findings by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Opposition to such divisive issues as gay marriage has fallen considerably in the past couple of years, and a majority (60%) favor allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the military. Support for gay and lesbian couples adopting children is now split evenly, whereas a clear majority opposed it in 1999.

The trend toward greater acceptance cuts across most all major demographic groups, with white evangelical Protestants being the primary exception.

Bacteria-Powered Nanotech

What better power source for nano-scale robots than something microscopic? Researchers at Rice University and the University of Southern California are experimenting with a strain of bacteria that, like a miniscule electric eel, generates its own electricity.

Shewanella oneidensis eats metal (mmmm...), and excretes electrons stripped from the metal in the form of electricity. Theoretically, these organisms could be built into a battery to provide a long-lasting charge, powering a device that is either extremely small, requires an exceptionally long-lasting power source, or both.

Using organisms as an energy source is a burgeoning field. Indeed, no less a figure than Dr. Craig Venter, the scientist who first mapped the human genome, is behind a startup in this area.

Source: CNET

Windows Vista Delayed Until 2007

If you were planning to ask Santa for a new Windows Vista-powered PC this coming Christmas, you'll have to take a raincheck. Microsoft is delaying the release of its next-generation operating system until January 2007.

Some Vista versions for business will be released this year, but the consumer flavors won't make their appearance until after the 2006 holiday season -- a serious problem for PC manufacturers counting on a boost from holiday sales. However, the delay might be beneficial in the long run, as Microsoft will reportedly use the extra time to tighten security features.

Source: CNN.com

Computing 2020

Nature has posted a series of essays on the future of computing, covering such possibilities as quantum computing, pervasive environment and computing ecosystems, robotics, and artificial intelligence. Essays are available in both HTML and PDF formats.

Blogging Computers in Libraries 2006

This week I'm in Washington, DC attending and speaking at the annual Computers in Libraries conference. What's this have to do with futurism and emerging technology, you might ask? Plenty!

The three-day conference is entirely focused on advanced digital technology. Although it's designed for those involved in library sciences, almost anyone can find something useful here and learn something new.

This morning saw excellent presentations by the keynote speaker, Chris Sherman of SearchEngineWatch, as well as a talk about innovation and Millenials by Jill Hurst-Wahl of Hurst Associates, Ltd. (who is also blogging the conference and will post info on her presentation). I also attended a presentation about Ajax and open source web tools. Afternoon presentations included an overview of the Grokker visual search tool, and an approach to setting up and managing an emerging technology program. An evening panel discussion of Web 2.0 was, in my experience, one of the most entertaining in memory.

If you happen to be in the Washington area this week, you might want to stop by the Washington Hilton and get a day pass. Pretty much every session has some angle on emerging technology.

As for me, I'll be presenting Friday afternoon. Until then, I'll make updates on interesting stuff that's going on at CIL (it's all interesting, though!).

Job Market Rapidly Becoming a "Seller's Market"

The Herman Group, a futurist-oriented HR consultancy oft-quoted here, has been forecasting a fundamental change to the global labor market for several years. Now, it believes that the US alone will face an employee deficit of 10 million by 2010.

In 2004, in our Red Alert Paper, we reported that the employment market was shifting from a buyer's market to a seller's market. Now, employee turnover is increasing even faster, as talented employees seek better job opportunities. The phenomenon is not limited to the United States or North America. We see these conditions developing at an alarming pace in developed---and some developing---countries around the world. This global shortage of skilled workers---educated and trained to perform the work of today and tomorrow---will affect everyone.

The group points to trends worldwide that show increased and more aggressive hiring. In Japan, where job growth has been stagnant, many of the top firms plan to hire 1,000 or more recent college graduates this year -- an unprecedented number in that country. In addition to a worker shortfall, Japanese employers are also grappling with a 30% turnover rate among new hires.

UPDATE: Peter Cappelli of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School believes that the situation is not so much a labor gap as a skills gap. In an article published in the Feb. 2006 issue of the ASTD's TD magazine, Cappelli argues that while no shortage of people exists, employers are struggling to get workers up to speed, and don't have good training programs in place. Others, though, insist that the demographics of a labor shortage are very real, and that the labor market faces a shortfall of 7 to 10 million skilled workers with education beyond that of a high school diploma in the coming years. All, however, agree that the US labor market faces a deficit of skills, especially executive, managerial, communications, IT and project management skills.

UPDATE 2: The same article cites a survey by the Association of Executive Search Consultants suggesting the US could face a "brain drain" if overseas job opportunities were appealing enough. Half of the US executives surveyed said that they would be willing to relocate to China, and 35% said they would consider moving to Russia or India.

Promise of Web 2.0 and eLearning 2.0 - Comparison to Macros, IDEs, and Visual Basic

There's lots of debate going on as to whether there really is anything new and/or different about Web 2.0 (and eLearning 2.0).

From a technical perspective, there really isn't that much new, BUT...

When you step in and experience the use of Software as a Service, Add-ins and Mash-ups, it is remarkable how different it feels. I have a Ph.D. in Computer Science. Have been involved in software development since 1980. Taught undergrade and graduate Programming Languages. And, I've only really had a similar reaction a few times:

• Macros in Spreadsheets - incredibly easy creation of powerful data manipulation
• Turbo Pascal - first IDE
• Visual Basic - IDE with visual components and easy attribute setting, wiring

Each of these had pretty big impact on ease of development, accessibility and productivity.

It honestly feels like that again with Web 2.0 with the caveat that we aren't quite there yet. In fact, this has the potential of being bigger than any of the above because of the software as service, distributed nature of the data/content and the integration of communication/people/time. But, even if its in the same ballpark as the above three we are talking something pretty special.

To get a handle on part of this picture I would first point you to look at:

eLearning Technology: What is eLearning 2.0?

Just like how Visual Basic allowed you to put components inside your application, you can now put components into your Web Applications. Look on the right side of this blog and you can find various components. For many of them, I would go to a site, tell it the attributes I wanted to use (size, color, field values) much like I would in Visual Basic. They hand me a little snippet of code that I literally cut and paste into my Blogger site. It's not quite drag-and-drop as in Visual Basic, but its awefully close. And while this is very much like Visual Basic, the data and applications are distributed, and provide as a service that I just go and use. Visual Basic was much less accessible in comparison.

Of course, we are still working on the wiring and the platforms. On the wiring side, we have Microformats - Bill Gates at Mix06 - “We need microformats” and a lot happening in Identity and Security (which are big issues).

On the application platform side, we don't yet have Visual Basic. We seem to have a divide between:

• Content publishing type platforms (Blogger, PBWiki) - where you can manually embed script (but they don't have any support for real scripting),
• Database oriented development sites (DabbleDB, ZohoCreator) - where you can easily build applications but that don't have the add-in stuff at all, nor scripting
• Application development platforms (Salesforce.com)

You've got to figure that someone is going to build out the Visual Basic of Web 2.0 in a Software as Service manner.

All that said, while I started as a skeptic, I actually think this is easily as big as Macros, IDE or Visual Basic, and my gut says that it's bigger.

"Fast Company" List of "Jetsons Moments"

The technology business magazine Fast Company has a list of what it considers the most interesting and promising emerging technologies, from blimps and gliders used as portable wirless broadband antennas, to washing machines that use negative ions in place of water and detergent, to scented plastics, to "galvanic vestibular stimulation" (delivering a light electrical charge to the small hairs of the inner ear to control equilibrium). A slideshow is also available.

Personal Learning for Learning Professionals - Using Web 2.0 Tools to Make Reading & Research More Effective

In my previous posts and through discussions on TrDev and Com-Prac, it is clear that we need to look for better ways to take responsibility for our own learning, especially as Learning Professionals.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a little information that really helps us understand how we can take control of our personal learning more effectively. There is some stuff coming out around "Personal Learning Environments" for example, take a look at: ePortfolio Model and the Concept Diagram for Personal Learning Landscape.

I'm going to try to provide a few different posts that look at this topic. This first post looks at how we can take advantage of some of the relatively recent Web 2.0 tools to do a better job reading and researching topics.

Reading & Researching Rough Definition of Use Cases

First, let me start with what I roughly mean when I say reading and researching:

Reading - I sometimes call this scanning. Basically, I don't have a specific question in mind. I'm just trying to find out "what's new" or "give me some interesting ideas." Mostly, this is just trying to stay abreast of what is going on. I do this normally by skimming lots of magazines, newsgroups and blogs. Sometimes, I'm in this mode when I'm attending local presentations, online presentations or conference sessions. Normally, what I find are farily random pieces of information. All I will do with that information is remember the high level concepts and then, if I'm doing a good job, I'll make sure that I can get back to the details again later.

Researching - In this case, I'm trying to find the answer to a question. Sometimes it's fairly broad like "What are the things I should do before and after a professional conference to get more from the conference?" or sometimes specific like "What simulation tool best meets this requirement?" I may research this by searching the web, talking to people or asking questions in newsgroups. I will use the information I find to do what I need to do, I'll probably remember roughly what I found, and then, if I'm doing a good job, I'll make sure that I can get back to the details again later.

Hopefully, you recognize these two high-level use cases to some degree. It would seem that they match pretty will with how other's view this. For example, if you look at the diagram from the post I cited above:

Jeremy has a good model of the likely elements along the bottom. For my Reading and Researching use cases, I'm focused primarily on Collecting, Reflecting, Connecting (somewhat) and Publishing (somewhat - although I would call it sharing). Alternatively, take a look at the use cases in: Four Modes of Seeking Information and How to Design for Them.

Using Web 2.0 Tools to Tag and "Get Back to Details Later"

In both the reading and research use cases, one of the keys to long-term success is to be able to "get back to the details" later. Web 2.0 tools help us in doing a better job of this.

But, there's also great intrinsic value in tagging. From a posts A Cognitive Analysis of Tagging and Why People Tag:

The beauty of tagging is that it taps into an existing cognitive process without adding add much cognitive cost. At the cognitive level, people already make local, conceptual observations. Tagging decouples these conceptual observations from concerns about the overall categorical scheme.

Tagging provides immediate self and social feedback. Each tag tells you a little about what you are interested in. And you find out the social context for that bit of self-knowledge. How do others view that item? Together this piecemeal feedback creates a cycle of positive reinforcement, so that you are motivated to tag even more. This might not make tagging easier, but it does make it more fun.

Now, I'm assuming that we will be disciplined enough during our use cases to roughly do the following:

• Articles in Print Magazines - No matter how you do it (I personally rip out the articles as I read), get the article in front of the computer. Find it online. (BTW, what ever happened to that mouse that would find the online copy for you?) Bookmark and tag it.
• Presentations at conferences - Find a link to the presentation later. Bookmark and tag it.
• Online materials - Bookmark and tag it.

Bookmarking / Tagging Tool

I've just recently switched to Yahoo's MyWeb 2.0 from del.icio.us. While I like the del.icio.us interface a lot more, it doesn't support a few features that I wanted (page caching, searching within linked pages, control on link sharing). Also, since Yahoo acquired del.icio.us, my guess is that MyWeb is the way Yahoo will be going since it is already integrated with other aspects of their social bookmarking. Also, I don't expect Yahoo to go away soon, where I'm a bit concerned about some of the other social bookmarking, tagging tools.

Now you might say, "but, I already bookmark using my browser?" Here's what you are missing that you get with Yahoo's MyWeb 2.0:

1. You can access your bookmarks from anywhere via a browser (i.e., they get shared between home, work and on the road)
2. You can share your bookmarks and get bookmarks from other people
3. You can control who has access to your links (private, group of friends, co-workers, CoP group, public)
4. You can search within the content of your bookmarks for tags, contents of the pages you've link, what other people have linked
5. The system can save copies of the pages (cache them) so they don't rot (give you "not found" messages later)
6. Tagging beats bookmark categories because you don't have to rearrange your categories nor do you need to figure out your categories ahead of time
7. You can use the bookmarks to create a "link roll" that you can post to your intranet, your blog, or wherever to be able to share with people who aren't using the same service

Some Remaining Issues:

• Pages on sites like the eLearningCentre that contain long lists of good links cannot today be easily included in your links. However, going forward, these list pages will be dynamic based on link rolls, so this will go away over time.
• Appears that the system does not cache PDF pages or Docs - which is a drag. So these may get lost over time as people remove the documents.
• Tagging and searching is still across web resources. I also use a desktop search tool which has radically changed how I handle email and directories. I find that there is little need for email folders and a lot less need for directories. I'll just find it via search anyhow. I would really love it if the Web 2.0 tools I'm describing extended down to my desktop so that I could search across all of it at once.

Effective Tagging

When you save a bookmark, you will be asked to provide tags. To get the greatest value from these systems, it is best if you provide reasonably good tags. However, I find that I will sometimes need to go back and tag things again as I find that other people are using different tags and/or I find myself using different tags.

The articles Folksonomies: Tags Strengths, Weaknesses And How To Make Them Work and Tag Literacy provides some good background. Some common mistakes:

• Misspelt tags (e.g., libary, libray) - avoid this by almost always selecting an existing tag. Some will be suggested, others come up based on the first few words. Generally, try to use an existing tag and make a conscious decision to use a new tag.
• Group compound terms together - for example personalLearning is a tag I use. Also openSource would be a good idea.
• Use plurals to define categories. When appropriate, instead of blog or tree, use blogs and trees. Tags signify a category which can encompass various resources, so the plural is generally more appropriate. This will avoid having to check both the singular and plural version of a tags. However, sometimes having both a singular and a plural tag is necessary. For example, I would expect to find very different resources under the tags apple(as in the electronics manufacturer) and apples(as in the fruits).
• Don't use symbols in tags with the exception of a tag like eLearning2.0 where the "." is okay. Don't use # or _

The good news is that most of this is not as important until you start to share your bookmarks and tags. But it is a good idea to have a consist pattern to your tags to make life easier when you look things up.

Finding Bookmarked and Tagged Items

In most cases, I can quickly find any page via tags. Even if I have 500 pages, I will have relatively few pages maybe 30 pages with "personalLearning" as the tag. Even then, sometimes, I'll want to subselect with another tag like "Web2.0" to find the particular pages (now down to 5 pages).

Probably the nicest feature of Yahoo My Web 2.0 is that I can search the contents of the pages. So, even if I've not done a good job tagging my pages or can't figure out what tag I used for a particular page, I can generally search the contents of my pages to find the page anyone. Normally, I start with a tag search and then use a full-text search as a back-up. Oh, and then I tag the page with whatever tag it should have had. :)

Additional Recommended Activities

Okay, up to this point, I'm just suggesting something that is pretty simple and I would venture to say that this is the minimum you should do. But, there are a couple of more things that I would recommend you also try:

Move Towards Reading Online and Expand Your Sources

While, I still read paper publications, I've found a very interesting trend. As I've shifted towards reading a more diverse set of resources (primarily blogs and discussion groups), I've come to realize that I get more relevant diverse and deeper information from these sources. People are able to write about things in more detail that a magazine can possibly do. I still skim the magazines, but I find myself consciously spending more time with alternative sources.

At Training 2006, I was SHOCKED to see only 5 hands go up out of an audience of 200 who said they read blogs to find out what's happening.

If you are among the other 195 people, the first step is to get an RSS reader. If you don't know about these, probably the easiest way to get one and get moving quickly is to go to a previous post: Quick Way to Find and Sign-up for Blogs (it uses BlogLines).

And here are a couple of articles on how to incorporate your blog reading: Ten Tips for Effective Blog Reading - Part 1 & Effective Blog Reading - Part 2.

Once you start reading blogs, you will pretty soon realize that there's lots of other stuff that you can subscribe to. For example:

• Magazines publish their contents as RSS feeds or see my post about RSS Feeds from Static Magazines. Pretty soon you'll subscribe to those so you can more easily link the articles.
• Subscribe to particular searches, e.g., "eLearning 2.0", so that as new information comes up in blogs or get tagged by people, you can get notified of that.

This can quickly pile up, but it also can be much more focused than just reading the same old articles in Training Magazine. And, since you are reading online, its simple to bookmark and tag the items that you want to be able to get back to at a later time.

Pivot

One of the interesting aspects of the social side of tagging and Bloglines is that you can use these tools to Pivot from one resource to another. Some examples:

• If you find a blog you like, use BlogLines to find related blogs and/or go to users who subscribe and see what else they are reading. When you do this, always put this new blog in a "quarantine" so that you give it a certain amount of time before you ignore it. I would suggest making a quarantine based on months. Any new blog that hasn't produced anything of use in a month is going to get the boot from me. But, if it has something good, then I'll move it out of quarantine.
• Also, many blogs have "blog rolls" and "link rolls" ... if their content is good, chances are they are pointing at good stuff.
• Using tags, you can see what other resources are that people have tagged with it.
• Use http://similicio.us/ to put in the URL of a site and find sites that are linked by other people (based on del.icio.us). You can even pivot from those, to find more.

Because of tagging and social aspects, pivoting is quite useful both for research and reading.

Share

Up to this point, I've been suggesting things that will only marginally add to the effort of doing what you should already be doing today (reading and researching). Now, let me suggest something that will take possibly a little more work, but that will actually help your learning tremendously. And, yes, its sharing your reading and research.

Let me give an example. Let's say that you've been asked to look at software simulation tools for an upcoming project. You will definitely do some research. If you follow my advice above, you will probably search for pre-existing lists of simulation tools (and hopefully some commentary). (Link + Tag those). You will visit the sites of those tools. (Link + Tag those). And, you will do some analysis yourself where you make notes on the tools, select the tool that you think fits the best, make notes on why.

At an absolute minimum, I would say that you should make your Links + Tags + Notes available publicly through your social bookmarking service, e.g., del.icio.us or MyWeb.

Preferrably, you would create a blog post or a wiki page with your analysis. Do you not have a blog? Then go to Blogger and sign-up (it takes less than 5 minutes). Create a post that describes what your requirements were and provides a link roll or tags that people can get to your Links + Tags + Notes. This can be done either by exporting or by embedding a badge or link roll directly into your post. Blogger will generally give you a warning that you can ignore when you do this. <>

Alternatively, you can accomplish the same thing with a Wiki. Again, this is incredibly easy and I'd recommend checking out PBWiki (it also takes less than 5 minutes).

Why would I suggest doing this as a blog or wiki? If you have a team working on this, its a no-brainer. It is a great way to share the information. But what if you are solo? And why make this public?

First - there's value provided to the community. We can collectively gain value from this kind of information. If there was more of it, you would have had an easier time in your selection process.

Second - this forces you to codify what you've done and makes sure that you have your research available to you (and others on your team) at a later time. There is lots of research showing that doing exactly this kind of activity codifies your learning. One such article, Promoting Durable Knowledge Construction through Online Discussion, points out:

Knowledge construction is best accomplished through collaboration. In general, students learn through the give-and-take among classmates. That is, as students write contributions to discussions, they learn what it is that they are trying to say. The replies that they receive from their classmates further this learning.

Okay, what if I'm just reading? Well, even better. Then create a post with notes on something interesting that you just found. Or, just put notes in your My Web link. (One thing about notes is that they are specific to the link - so you don't have notes on a group of links. That's when you have to go to a blog post or a wiki page.)

Yes, I understand this represents more work than you do today, but it really is worth it. I think you must try it before you will really know the value.

Furthermore, as learning professionals, I think we have a responsibility to try these kinds of things to understand how we can be better learners so we can help others become better learners.

More Soon

The good news is that the tools we are talking about here are going to get much better quickly, I'll talk about other aspects of these tools in later posts.

I also plan to talk about more of the social aspects and how to take advantage of that.

And, finally, I hope to start to discuss some of the conversation coming out of Do Learning Professionals Make the Worst Learners?

Keywords: eLearning Trends, eLearning 2.0, Web 2.0, Personal Learning

Web 2.0 - One Crucial Idea

Great post - The One Crucial Idea of Web 2.0

If there is one idea that encapsulates what Web 2.0 is about, one idea that wasn’t a factor before but is a factor now, it’s the idea of leveraging the network to uncover the Wisdom of Crowds.

but you'll also want to see: One of us is smarter than all of us that explains what is really meant by the wisdom of crowds concept.

Space Tourism as Early as 2007

As many as a dozen space tourism startup companies are developing space-plane technology that could take paying customers into suborbital space as early as the end of next year.

Outfits such as Virgin Galactic, Space Adventures and PlanetSpace are lining up both craft and ground facilities with the expectation that plenty of civilians will be willing to pay from $100,000 to $250,000 for a two-hour flight and approximately five minutes of weightlessness (a bargain compared to the millions that space tourists currently pay). Rocketplane Kistler, a firm headed by American businessman George French, is aiming to be the first out of the gate, preparing to take commercial passengers into space by the summer of 2007. Most of its competitors are shooting for 2008 or 2009 startup dates.

Source: CNN.com

Is eLearning 2.0 Meaningful? - You Vote

I've been seeing lots of discussion around whether Web 2.0 is meaningful as a term and similarly is eLearning 2.0 meaningful. I've put some links to interesting posts on this topic, but thought I'd put this into a poll as well. I've also created a listible list so that (if you register) you can vote on the eLearning 2.0 resources and add your own resources to be voted on.

FYI - RSS readers won't see the poll or maybe even the links.




Some reading on eLearning 2.0 to help you decide:

Web 2.0 Makes Me Cringe

Does eLearning 2.0 Make a Difference?

E-learning 2.0, whatever that is

What is eLearning 2.0?

Is E-Learning 2.0 For Real?

Whatever you call it, it's yummy

Blackboard Beyond Cites eLearning 2.0 as Part of Their Plans

A place where you can add your own reading items and vote on the above items:

Listible List

By the way, there must be a better way to vote on each of those links (especially where no registration is required). If you know of such a tool, please leave me a comment or send me email.

eLearning Resources

Free eLearning Resources:

http://www.janeknight.com/resources/freebooks.html - Free eLearning Books list

eLearning Trends:

Hot Topics in Training - A Crude (but mildly interesting) Analysis - Gives an overview of what topics are being discussed now as opposed to in 2005.

Resource List Posts:

eLearning Technology: Rapid eLearning Tools - List of Rapid eLearning Development Tools

eLearning Technology: Virtual Classroom Instruction - Resources - Resources on better virtual classroom instruction.

eLearning Technology: Discussion Resources for Learning Professionals - Discussion groups for learning professionals.

eLearning Technology: Software Simulation eLearning (w/ links to Tools) - Articles and tools for creating software training eLearning.

eLearning Technology: eLearning Blogs - Quick Way to Find Good Ones

To Succeed in Business, Goof Off!

Are you working longer hours, giving up weekends and holidays, yet feel like you're less productive than ever? Have you ever agonized over a problem for hours at work, only to have the solution suddenly dawn on you while driving home, in the shower or drifting off to sleep? If so, it's not just your imagination...

Increasingly, management experts are cautioning that overwork is counterproductive, that multitasking and the always-on society are robbing us of the necessary time to unplug, reflect, ponder and play. Such periods of unhurried thinking are what lead to creative insights -- the insights that will give businesses their competitive edge in the coming years.

The late, great Peter Drucker spoke of such need to incubate innovative thinking four decades ago in his seminal work The Effective Executive and subsequent writings. "All one can think and do in a short time is to think what one already knows and to do as one has always done," he wrote. "To be effective, every knowledge worker, and especially every executive... needs to dispose of time in fairly large chunks. To have small dribs and drabs of time at his disposal will not be sufficient even if the total is an impressive number of hours." Touche!

Today's management gurus are dusting off Drucker's advice and are encouraging organizations to nurture creativity by allowing employees more time for strategic thinking and relaxation. They cite Google, which pampers its workers with stress-reducing amenities, and where innovations have been developed by staff in their off hours. They also note celebrated thinkers such as Archimedes and Isaac Newton, whose great insights were famously triggered during moments of leisure.

Source: CNN/Money

Blogs and Wikis in the Enterprise

Great article in eContent Magazine on whether blogs and wikis will take off in the enterprise (independent of eLearning).

Rural Counties Remain America's Fastest Growing Regions

The fastest growing areas in the US are predominantly rural counties... not so much because people want to "get away from it all," but because urban sprawl is pushing cities and suburbs ever outward.

Pennsylvania's Pike County, for instance, is a relatively rural area that's seeing dramatic growth, in large part because of its proximity to New York City and the suburban areas of northern New Jersey. Similarly, many of the nation's fastest-growing areas are within commuting distance of a major metropolitan area and its suburbs.

Migration from urban to rural areas is a 30-year trend, but has undergone explosive growth in recent years. Florida's Flagler County, near Daytona Beach and Orlando, is America's fastest growing county, expanding by a dramatic 10.7% in 2005. Such growth is bound to stress a region's infrastructure and cause friction between pro- and anti-growth elements.

Source: WCAU-TV

Yahoo MyWeb better than del.icio.us, rollyo, et.al. for Personal / Group Learning

I've been a user of del.icio.us and have spent time experimenting with quite a few of the different social bookmarking and search tools. Certainly, there are some interesting tools out there including: Rollyo, deli.sear.ch, Magnolia, and the list gets really long. Check out these lists for a bunch more:

http://www.econsultant.com/web2/social-bookmarking-services.html
http://www.econsultant.com/web2/search-engines-software-services.html

But, I've come to the conclusion to move from del.icio.us to Yahoo's MyWeb 2.0. It provides all of the features I'm currently looking for in a personal learning, social search solution:

1. Searching within the contents of my bookmarked pages
2. Page caching (so I don't lose the pages I've bookmarked)
3. Control on sharing of bookmarks (private, friends or public)
4. Categories of Friends (so I can have family, work, etc.)
5. Web Badge for Integration into my Blog

And there's the little fact that Yahoo acquired del.icio.us and so to me it seems that I can trust Yahoo to continue to build in this space and they likely are not going away.

My only problems are:

• My Web 2.0 is still beta and is a little buggy
• I need more people to use it so I get more value (but we'll probably all be using it soon when del.icio.us gets sucked in)

By the way, if you decide to give it a try, drop me a message and we can link up as friends.

Note: while Yahoo also offers a blog, an RSS reader, social networking, I'm not planning on switching to those Yahoo services anytime soon. Instead, I'll continue to use:

• Bloglines as my RSS Aggregator/Reader. I just like it better than Yahoo's current version.
• Blogger as my Blog engine. I like it better than the current blog engine.
• LinkedIn as a networking tool. Has critical mass for me to get value.

Oh, and I already also use Yahoo Groups as my Group front-end, so no need to switch there.

Great Article on Web 2.0 Tools and Their Impact

Web 2.0: A New Wave of Innovation for Teaching and Learning? Educase Review, March/April 2006.

More Questions on Making Learning for Learning Professionals More Effective

There's a great discussion going on in TrDev based on my post: Do Learning Professionals Make the Worst Learners? There is also a related discussion on Com-Prac about the value proposition of Communities of Practice (CoP) which is likely part of the answer to the TrDev discussion.

The TrDev discussion has turned the original question into the following questions:

1. How can learning professionals get more out of their educational opportunities?
2. Why would they want to?
3. What would happen if we wanted to make our experiences more meaningful?
   
4. How do we make learning opportunities more meaningful for learning professionals?
5. Why would we want to?
6. What would happen if we wanted to make these opportunities more meaningful?
   
7. Isn't accountability the final goal? When an organization spends the money, and the employee's time, which also equates to money, to send them to training (or a conference), shouldn't they ultimately be held accountable for applying and sharing the learning to/with their jobs/teams/organizations?

I think its safe to say, that these questions closely parallel what we are supposed to be doing as the designers of learning solutions in the first place.

How Would a Flu Pandemic Affect Business?

Recent findings suggesting a spread of avian flu (aka bird flu) have raised not only the obvious concerns about public health, but worries about how business infrastructures would continue to function in the event of a pandemic. Mass absenteeism, diversion of resources and even shortages would challenge businesses' day-to-day functioning, on top of added responsibilities for critical industries:

Airlines, for instance, would have to fly health experts around the world and overnight couriers would have to rush medical supplies to the front lines. Banks would need to ensure that computer systems continued to move money internationally and that local customers could get cash. News outlets would have to keep broadcasting so people could get information that might mean the difference between life and death.

"I tell companies to use their imagination to think of all the unintended consequences," said Mark Layton, global leader for enterprise risk services at Deloitte & Touche in New York. "Will suppliers be able to deliver goods? How about services they've outsourced — are they still reliable?"

Asian companies, drawing on their experience with SARS several years ago, are drawing up contingency plans that involve having employees work from home or at multiple sites as much as possible to reduce contamination, replacement of all face-to-face meetings with teleconferencing and web conferencing, and rapid "phone tree" communication via text messaging and cell phones. Companies in the US are likewise considering increased use of automation to keep operations running with minimal personnel.

Preparation for a pandemic -- whether or not one occurs -- could be the tipping point for many new business technologies that facilitate telecommuting and robotics. Just as interest in teleconferencing spiked in the wake of 9/11, so too could the broader adoption of technologies that have been "right around the corner" for years.

Source: New York Times

Virtual Classroom Instruction - Resources

Several people at my recent Training 2006 panel on Blended Learning asked for additional information on building skills in virtual classroom instruction.

I enlisted the help of a couple of people who know quite a bit about this, namely Karen Hyder (who runs online sessions for the eLearningGuild and consults around this) and Ann Kwinn (who works with Ruth Clark … and is co-authoring a book with her on this very subject). Karen also enlisted help from Bill Bateman. So, between the four of us, here’s what we have:

Articles, Documents and Whitepapers:

Behind the Screens
Harnassing the Virtual Classroom
The Road to Success is Paved with Preparation
Teach in Your Pajamas
How to facilitate e-Learning Courses
eLearn Mag: Being an Online Learner & Professor
eLearningGuild and WebEx: 834 Tips for Successful Online Instruction
Virtual Classroom Starter Guide
Motivating Online Learners
Synchronous Exercises From Scratch
Making Synchronous Training a Success
eModerators.com - The role of the online instructor-facilitator
Icebreakers
Facilitating Every Student in an Online Course
What Makes a Successful Online Student
Online Interaction

Seminars/Workshops:

How to Leverage Virtual Classroom Technology for Successful Training and Webinars - Clark Training

Jennifer Hoffman from Insync Training does periodic training on this.

Karen Hyder will do training and coaching around this.

One-to-One Philanthropy Online

Doubtless you are familiar with online efforts to help victims of the southeast Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. But on a much smaller scale, people who want to help others now have tools to reach them and offer assistance.

Kiva is a website connecting potential donors with entrepreneurs and small businesses in developing countries in need of small loans. It is not charity; all funds are considered loans, with an obligation to pay back the lender. Through such "microfinancing," individuals can lend as little as $25 over a six- to 12-month period. Kiva removes middlemen and is a low-overhead operation itself, so it ensures that all lent money goes directly to the recipients and is repaid in full to the lender. Lenders can use their credit cards or PayPal accounts.

Most interesting of all are the success stories of loan recipients posted on the site. The following is an account of one Kiva client, a pharmacist in Uganda:

Mr. Simon Okiror is doing very well with his drug shop and above all the community of where he comes from is enjoying so much in the service of his drug shop and with the progress... in this short period of three month since he received the loan from Kiva Office last year, Mr. Okiror’s drug shop... has improved to the level that it has opened a laboratory where tests for sicknesses like Malaria, Tuberculosis, and Typhoid including Syphilis in his drug shop... [I]t has even drugs that are rarely got from Government Hospitals...

Source: TrendCentral

Software Simulation Tools

Software Simulation Software has definitely been changing since I originally posted this.

I've recently added some data from the eLearningGuilds Research at the bottom of the page - eLearning Tools Satisfaction. This shows satisfaction among tools that fall into categories related to software simulation: screen capture, electronic performance support (EPSS) and simulation. There are some definite issues with some of these tools not really being for the same purpose, but I was looking to get Assima (which comes under EPSS) listed next to Captivate, Camtasia, etc.



Based on a request on a message board around Software Simulation, I thought I'd pull together some quick links to useful information on the topic:

See also: Camtasia and SnagIt free.

Brandon Hall had their 2007 Software Simulation Shootout. This shootout had:

• Assima www.assima.net
  
• Atlantic Link www.atlantic-link.co.uk
  
• Kaplan www.kaplan.com
  
• Qarbon www.qarbon.com
  
• RWD www.rwd.com

Not sure what to make of the fact that it did not include many of the market leaders shown in the graph above.

Articles & Posts:

• Simulation Levels in Software Training
• Instruction and Feedback Models for Software Training
• Captivate File Size Tricks for Software Training via Simulations

Tools:

I've listed these tools in roughly the order of popularity based on my experience in presenting this topic at conferences (training & eLearning conferences).

Adobe/Macromedia Captivate - most popular tool, easy to use, file sizes a bit large
Viewlet Builder - easy to use, good for more advanced development, works on Linux
Camtasia - simple to use, but mostly for demonstrations - now have free version
Wink - simple to use, freeware, used a lot in academia, primarily demonstration
Xstream Rapidbuilder - primarly aimed at Windows applications, good balance of ease of use w/ flexibility
FireFly - flexible, powerful, but somewhat expensive tool
STT Trainer - normally used on larger, enterprise application kinds of roll-outs
Assima - great tool for doing larger implementations, e.g. ERP roll-out, especially those with multiple languages, job aids
Swish - Aimed more at animation creation, works well for demonstrations
SoftSim - Easy to use, lacks flexibility for more complex software simulations

One thing to note, we've recently been doing many of our demonstrations/simulations seamlessly integrated into the reference system either through a Portal/CMS or through a tool like RoboHelp/RoboInfo or as HTML pages.

There are a bunch more tools out there as well. A recent Bryan Chapman presentation listed the following:
1.Assima
2.Datango
3.Eedo Knowledgeware
4.Enlight
5.Epiance
6.OnDemand (Global Knowledge)
7.InstallShield
8.Knowlagent
9.KnowledgeQuest
10.KS Tutor (KnowledgeSolutions)
11.FireFly (KnowledgePlanet)
12.Captivate (Macromedia)
13.SoftSim (OutStart)
14.ViewletBuilder (Qarbon)
15.InfoPak Simulator (RWD)
16.SAP Tutor
17.SIVOX
18.SimCorder (TEDS)
19.STT Trainer
20.TurboDemo
21.RapidBuilder (XStream Software)

Text From Chart:

KnowledgePresenter eLearni.. GeoMetrix Data Syste.. 4 9.50
NexLearn SimWriter NexLearn 7 8.97
Content Point Atlantic Link Limited 3 8.97
Performance Analyzer7M (Simul.. XStream Software 3 8.90
Snaglt Screen Capture and Sha.. TechSmith Corporation 763 8.79
HyperSnap Hyperionics Technolog.. 31 8.70
Elicitus Harbinger Knowledge .. 5 8.60
EPSS Assima 3 8.40
KnowledgePresenter KnowledgePresenter 13 8.28
Lectora Trivantis 251 8.24
Adobe Captivate Adobe Systems, Inc. 2412 8.15
Macromedia Flash Professional .. Adobe Systems, Inc. 546 8.12
datango Knowledge Suite datango AG 4 8.10
KnowledgePla net On-Demand .. KnowledgePlanet 6 8.05
Adobe Acrobat Professional Adobe Systems, Inc. 372 8.01
Camtasia Studio Screen Record.. TechSmith Corporation 585 7.99
Flashform Rapid eLearning Ski.. Rapid Intake 48 7.90
Second Life Linden Research, Inc. 19 7.87
Raptivity Harbinger Knowledge .. 32 7.87
ReadyGo Web Course Builder ReadyGo Inc. 3 7.80
ViewletACE Qarbon 14 7.78
Adobe Acrobat Connect (Pro/Br.. Adobe Systems, Inc. 349 7.59
Overall Rating _______
Macromedia Authorware from .. Adobe Systems, Inc. 145 7.56
RWD Info Pak RWD Technologies 6 7.50
SAPTutor SAP 12 a 7.43
OnDemand Personal Navigator OnDemand Soffivare 29 r 7.42
Capture Professional v6 Creative Softworx, Inc. 7 isca 7.40
KnowledgePlanet Firefly KnowledgePlanet 83 . 7.38
SimBuilder Phasient Learning Tec.. 3 a 7.37
ViewletCam Qarbon 23 7.33
RapidBuilder (Software Simul.. XStream Software 12 7.27
Plateau Learning Management.. Plateau Systems, LTD 8 7.16
Altova XMLSpy Altova 17 6.99
ToolBook Instructor SumTotal Systems Inc. 50 6.78
IBM Simulation Producer IBM 18 6.61
Lectora (OpenOffice-Impress/T.. eLearning Consultants.. 4 :::1 6.58
Visual Studio Microsoft Corporation 4 6.45
CodeBaby Production Studio CodeBaby 6 6.43
CustomDoc OnDemand Software 3 6.33
Decision Tool Media 1 3 6.20
OutStart Softsim OutStart 28 6.00
LearnCenter Learn.com 11 5.56
Wizard Training Suite Assima 6 5.45
Rapid Content Dev System Knowledge Anywhere 3 5.33