Remind Me

With so much going on all the time it is nice to know that Rminder is there in a pinch to remind me of upcoming appointments and meetings. Rminder is a free Internet service that allows you to schedule Rminder to call your phone at a designated time to tell you about an upcoming appointment or an event. It is easy to use and set up and works as stated on the web site. Give it a try! Think of all your students who could use a little reminder every now and then.

Mark.... mark.... what "mark" thing? OH!!! You mean Marketing!

Well, friday night, and a lot of rain out there... I was looking for the last webcast replay (got the presentation but couldn't get the sound yet). It's still not available but something on the page side caught my attention: A link to some customer and partner success stories... Got curious and cliked. You can to the same, either directly or by checking the IBM Informix webcasts page.

I looked at the video, which is presented by Bernie Spang, the Director of Data Server Marketing, and contains some interviews with clients and partners about their experiences with IBM Informix. Not surprinsingly, they all talk about the features we all know and love about Informix (efficiency, simplicity, reliability, scalability etc.). So what is the real interest of this? What made me write this lines? Er... Step a few lines back... the begining of this paragraph... "Director, Data Server Marketing"... customer and partner interviews... On the IBM site...
Well, I still consider myself a young guy... But when was the last time we've seen something like this? Marketing and Informix together?

Oh... regarding the stability statements... I'm feeling bad for forgeting to congratulate the sysadmin team... I was doing some onstats recently and I noticed they have manage to run their servers for more than an year without stop! Onstat revealed an IBM Informix Dynamic Server uptime greater then 365 days!!! Just to show you all that I really understand those customers when they mention stability and reliability :)

Incredibly Cool! Vision of Future of Application and eLearning Development

Last week I moderated an event on Web 2.0 where we had speakers from IBM, Google, Microsoft, Sony and others talking about what it really means (especially for corporations). One of the most interesting things was the Enterprise Mashup demonstration by Rod Smith at IBM. He basically showed how a business-user would be able to wire together an application. This is very similar to what I discussed back in March - Promise of Web 2.0 and eLearning 2.0 - Comparison to Macros, IDEs, and Visual Basic.

Now, you have a chance to play around with this kind of thing yourself. Do the following:

1. Go to http://www.yourminis.com/
2. Click "Add tab" at the top
3. Drag and drop Comics onto the page
4. Click the little drop down arrow top right in the comic widget to change the comic
5. Click the little blue down arrow below the list of widgets to see more
6. Play around a bit

But is this usable by me? Now go look at the Google Gadgets which work on Any Web Page.

What's this got to do with eLearning? Now go visit my previous article: Authoring in eLearning 2.0 / Add-ins & Mash-ups. Take the poll while you are at it.

Wow, you mean I could put a dynamic poll in the middle of my courseware? Yep. Or allow them to make notes to each other? Or ???

The "e" in "eLearning"

The issue of the "e" in "eLearning" seems to come up more often than it really deserves. It's currently being talked about by Harold Jarche, Dave Lee and Albert Ip. My guess is that there's not a lot to really discuss here. Of course, I'm adding to the discussion right now? Why would I do that if there's no issue? The problem is that there may be an implication that somehow people who talk about eLearning are only talking about technology.

No way! By putting the "e" on the front we haven't somehow cut ourselves off from learning. We are simply alerting people to the fact that we are likely using technology and specifically web technology of some kind to assist in learning (and really performance). I like how Harold summarized the topic area as the:

intersection of learning, work and technology

Okay, I called my blog "eLearning Technology." So I'm more likely to discuss technology right? Yes, I am. My Ph.D. is in Computer Science not Instructional Design. However, at the end of the day - like someone with background in ID, I'm trying to figure out how to ultimately help drive human performance.

So, can we all just learn to get along and learn to love the "e"?

Consumers Torn Between Good Health, Great Taste

Despite greater awareness of the benefits of eating healthy, consumers are increasingly weighing healthy, low-fat food choices against more indulgent fare. Restaurants have found that customers are rejecting healthy menu items in favor of those offering larger, higher-fat portions.

Burger King has seen success with its triple-decker "BK Stacker" burger, whereas Applebee's, Ruby Tuesday and Olive Garden have pulled "lite" items from their menus. One theory behind this demand is that people may eat healthy at home, then "treat themselves" to something they don't normally eat when they go out to restaurants.

This, however, doesn't mean that consumers aren't paying attention to their food. Restaurants are reporting an increase in vegetarian and organic selections -- though these aren't necessarily low-fat or low-calorie.

Source: Herman Group

How Do People Interact with Blogs?

I just encountered a situation where I honestly wasn't sure what I should do. A comment was made by Paul Coyne on my post Corporate Learning Laggards? I think the comment is so good that I'm writing a blog post to respond to the comment. Normally, I would just write a comment back, but my belief is that most people (including myself) don't read the comment stream unless it is a really interesting post OR if someone specifically posts that there is a really interesting comment stream. Thus, I'd hate for readers of my blog to miss out on something that I think is pretty interesting. At the same time, this feels lame?

Part of the issue is that I have only rudimentary stats on readership of my blog and I'm making some assumptions about how people read my blog and how they participate. More specifically, I have a rough idea of how many people subscribe (500) based on a crude extrapolation of feedburner, feedblitz, and bloglines numbers. This could be way off, but I don't really have a good way of tracking. I also know that I get about 200 visitors a day to the blog site itself, but very few maybe 50 will come through an RSS reader. Thus, most people do what I do:

Most blog readers read entries in the RSS reader and never touch the blog.

This is why I argued previously that You Should Provide Full Feeds on your blog so that readers don't have to visit. However, the net effect is that if this is reality, then:

Most comments are buried in the blog - out of sight of most blog readers.

However, I could be completely wrong about how people interact with blogs. Obviously, if you are seeing this post, you read blogs. But, the question is: How do you Interact with Blogs?

• Do you only read the RSS feed?
• Do you ever click to the blog post itself (as opposed to the links it provides - which would be on another blog)? If so, why did you click?
• Do you ever leave comments?
• Do you ever read comments? If so, how did you find them?

Important: if you are a person who normally doesn't click through and leave comments, its okay to do it this time. :)

And if you are a blogger with insights into this more generally, I would love to hear it.

Transumerism

Trendwatching.com has identified a new consumer type: the transumer. This type of consumer is affluent and mobile, yet also highly style-conscious. They value convenience, demanding that services be fast and be located where they are, whether at work, at play or in between. They prefer to own things temporarily, either by renting or trading up via eBay or similar services. Telecommuting allows transumers to work where they please, freeing them from the need to live near an office. They even like their homes to be mobile, as witnessed by the surge in interest in RVs among retiring baby boomers.