Home-Based Entrepreneur
Saturday, September 17, 2005|
David Jonassen urges "Learn to solve problems." If you are struggling with your e-Learning initiative, take a minute to read this and you might find out why our learners aren't learning how to think, reason, and function in the world. 2:05:51 PM 
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Dare Obasanjo writes about the dangers of taking the Web 1.0 approach in the Web 2.0 world. There's a lesson here for all of us: Pay attention to how the world is changing. 1:47:24 PM
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Will Richardson tells about Students Producing Content for Real Audiences. Tablet PCs and second year Spanish. How to place technology -- and learning -- in the hands of the learners. "Students were creating and sharing and loving the process. The teacher was using the technology to connect their learning, and it was their learning, not his. They were in charge." [Weblogg-ed News: The Read/Write Web in the Classroom] 1:39:15 PM
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Flock Evolves, Announces Public Launch.
It is still in private beta, although you can request a beta invitation on their home page. Not sure of your chances though. Chris Messina sent out an email to Flock beta testers yesterday announcing that they are moving from beta 0.2 to 0.5 and making some product changes. Social Bookmarks (they call it “Breadcrumbs”) are being phased out after a lukewarm response from testers, and they will be adding new functionality. They’ve also announced that Flock will be publicly available sometime in October:
I must say I’m even more impressed with Flock - it is a very bold move to simply drop functionality that must have hundreds of developer hours behind it. They are obviously serious about listening to beta feedback and building an exceptional product. Chris also pointed to flickr pictures of the flock office and people taken by Flocker Lloyd Budd. [TechCrunch]1:14:05 PM
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If you haven’t heard about |
"Firefox not only has more vulnerabilities per month than Internet Explorer, but it is now surpassing Internet Explorer for the number of exploits available for public download in recent months." Is the Firefox honeymoon over? — [Updated: 9/16/2005 7:22PM] …. From: George Ou / ZDNet [tech.memeorandum]11:08:58 AM
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Security problems with Skype and eBay. Gartner: VoIP Security Uncertain in EBay/Skype Deal (TechWeb). TechWeb - In another twist on the eBay/Skype deal, a research firm cautions big businesses should steer clear of the combined companies' technology. The problem: lackluster VoIP security. [Yahoo! News: Technology News] 11:07:05 AM
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Rational trigonometry? No angles? Use algebra for calculations? Distance isn't the best way to show how far it is from point a to point b? oh my ... it's the new math all over again. New trigonometry is a sign of the times. From: physorg.com [tech.memeorandum]11:05:55 AM
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Doesn't this seem kind of ironic? An elearning on how to use elearning? Doesn't the necessity to have such a thing indicate a user interface problem? Maybe I'm just grumpy today: Drexel podcasts prepare online learners. eLearning Minute is Drexel University's 4-podcast series to get students ready to learn online. [learnandteachonline.com] 11:01:59 AM
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This site on design, inspired by thoughtless acts, may infuriate, inspire, or bore you. 9:49:23 AM
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Friday, September 16, 2005|
George Siemens points to Knowledge Sharing with Distributed Networking Tools. What you need to know about webfeeds, social software, networked learning, tags, and read/write web. From [elearnspace] 10:58:26 PM
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TechCrunch offers another new word for your vocabulary: Mash-ups. From [TechCrunch] 10:53:09 PM
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Web 2.0, eLearning 2.0, and Changing Education in the NY Times. From [Weblogg-ed News: The Read/Write Web in the Classroom] 10:51:29 PM
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If you think Ajax is an old-fashioned brand of cleanser, maybe it's time to update your vocabulary. From [Computerworld News] 10:48:18 PM
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Could this be an example of e-Learning?Chapter 8. Improving Your Ability to Recognize Business Opportunities. From: mbatoolbox.org [tech.memeorandum]10:45:46 PM
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TechCrunch: Netvibes - Personal homepage.
10:41:06 PM
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"The aim of it is to provide a place on the internet where you can set just the content you like, a super easy way of building your personnalized homepage, available anywhere, anytime. No registration is needed, however if you want to access your page from another computer you’ll be able to do it by registering with your email address and a password."|
TechCrunch: Odeo launches dashboard widget. 10:38:59 PM
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eBay, Skype, and Constant Communication.This story hit the news this week, and many people will not understand just how significant it is. From The Economist 10:23:44 PM
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This TV Is Strictly for the Nerds. NerdTV is a web-only interview show for geeks. It's brainy and interesting, but can it learn anything from real TV? A review by Jason Silverman. [Wired News] 10:53:22 AM
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Microsoft's Vista looks to get tablets on write track. From: Ina Fried / CNET.com [tech.memeorandum] 10:52:59 AM
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Roland Tanglao's podcast mike.Roland recommends the APEX 162 . Says it's "$CAN 15 at Long and McQuade for it in Vancouver, not $US 19!" and gives the description from Amazon.com: Musical Instruments: APEX 162.: QUOTE
UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]10:48:08 AM
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Improving RSS readers.(Note that SearchFox is in private beta testing and is not generally available at this time.) SearchFox - Personalized RSS Reader.
This is a very big problem that I’ve written about many times. RSS readers are great for sorting through content, up to a point - after a couple of hundred feeds there is simply too much information to go through quickly. Companies are now trying to tackle the problems faced by the power users - those reading hundreds of feeds daily, in the hope that in solving their problems they will create a product that addresses the needs of the masses as well. Since they are in private beta, you’ll need to request an invitation to try the product out now. Esteban Kozak at Search Fox tells me they still have a few left, but they have almost invited the quota. There are a number of preset feeds when you log in for the first time, which I promptly deleted. Adding new feeds was fairly simple - no problems with adding feeds one at a time. Although there is functionality to import an opml file (the standard file format for RSS feeds), I was not able to successfully import my file. I’ll be trying again and it may be an issue on my end. I’ve only been using it for a couple of days, but I am already seeing how the prioritization works and I’m fairly happy with the decisions it is making. Estaban tells me via email that after a couple of weeks of use the results will be even better:
Search Fox also has a nice interface - inlcuding easy links to save, mark as read, email link, and delete. One of my favorite features is the ability to expand or contract a post without a page refresh. Robert Scoble wrote about Search Fox last week, and Matt Marshall mentioned them briefly as well. You should also check out TechBlog, which does an excellent comparison of a number of web based readers, including Search Fox. The Search Fox blog is here. Attensa and others are talking about releasing products in this space. Search Fox may be ahead of them. [TechCrunch]10:43:25 AM
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Company: 
eBay becoming the market leader in pure IP based communications.eBay/Skype Analyst Conference Call.
Here is the EarningsCast MP3 of the Call And here is the PowerPoint EBay used for the call The full text of EBay’s press release is on the Web. [TechCrunch]10:41:43 AM
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Meg Whitman, Niklas Zennstrom and their teams hosted a conference call earlier today to discuss EBay’s acquisition of Skype. Our sister company, EarningsCast has made it available for download to your new iPod Nanno :-). Our take: Ebay is showing amazing leadership and preparedness to take risk in becoming the market leader in pure IP based communications. Pay per Call and Click to Call are destined to become primary enablers of electronic commerce and EBay now owns one of the key pieces. Although there will be much hand wringing we believe that the Valley needs this kind of optimism and leadership from the big players if the transformations we all hope for are to be delivered. Bravo EBay! And congratulations to Skype, DFJ, Danny Rimmer and the other investors.
iPod nano positions Apple for another year on top of the MP3 player market.Something to consider if you're into podcasting. Analysts: iPod nano solidifies Apple's dominance (MacCentral). MacCentral - When Apple Computer released the iPod nano just over a week ago, replacing the popular iPod mini, they effectively solidified their place of dominance in the MP3 player market. While the company has released no official sales numbers, industry analysts have been closely watching the progress of the device. [Yahoo! News: Technology News] 10:34:02 AM
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Dept. of Holy Smokes!Adobe's net profit leaps 39 percent in Q3. (InfoWorld) - Adobe Systems Inc. on Thursday reported its third quarter net profit rose 39 percent from a year ago on solid business execution. The software maker reported net profit of $144.9 million in the three months ending Sept. 2, up from $104.5 million during the same time last year. Revenue rose 21 percent to $487 million, the company said. In the fourth quarter, Adobe expects revenue of between $490 million and $510 million, and a gross margin of approximately 94 percent, the company said. The fourth quarter targets do not factor in the pending acquisition of Macromedia Inc., the company said. The process of integrating Macromedia continues to go well, Adobe said. The transaction should close this fall, subject to appropriate regulatory approvals and other closing conditions. Adobe and Macromedia shareholders have already approved the $3.4 billion deal. SEE ALSO: By Dan_Nystedt@idg.com (Dan Nystedt). [InfoWorld: Top News] 10:21:42 AM
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Thursday, September 15, 2005
Video podcasting.Dept. of For What It's Worth: Apple supports video podcasting. From: Ars Technica [tech.memeorandum]4:33:44 PM
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Knowledge sharing and knowledge management.Two extraordinary posts by Lilia Efimova: Unexpected knowledge sharing: on recording and discoverability of knowledge traces. Public weblogs as a tool for (internal) knowledge management. And a bonus referral: Legitimised theft: distributed apprenticeship in weblog networks [Mathemagenic]4:25:14 PM
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Where existing learning theories fail.George Siemens asks What's wrong with established theories of learning?. "The achilles heel of existing theories rests in the pace of knowledge growth. All existing theories place processing (or interpretation) of information squarely on the individual doing the learning. This model works well if the knowledge flow is moderate. What happens, however, when information is more of a deluge than a trickle? What happens when information flows too fast for processing or interpreting?" [Connectivism Blog] 4:19:38 PM
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Wednesday, September 14, 2005|
DrupalEd and Usability.. Marc points out that usablity is coming to Drupal, adding to that there is also an active usablity and theming design dialog going on at DrupalEd. Educators interested in seeing drupal improved for educational uses should get involved.Open Source Usability: The birth of a movementMarc's Voice: Usability comes to Drupal [ClinedbloG - Elearning from the trenches.] 11:09:23 PM
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DrupalEd Launchs New Distro of Drupal for Education.. A new community has recently launched for the creation of a Drupal distribution for education. Ideas are being tossed around and there's some interesting stuff going on, get engaged! What is DrupalED? DrupalED is a distribution that combines core Drupal.org with a selection of modules optimized for use in educational settings. These range from K-12 to university, as well as per-class, per-department, and per-institution scenarios. [ClinedbloG - Elearning from the trenches.] 11:09:07 PM
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The Road To Powerful Instant Vertical Communities: Personal Media Aggregators. Robin talks here about P2P for E-learning "For example, can you imagine a P2P network devoted only to learning and educational materials? Imagine if a major academic organization created a PMA that allowed access, not only to the selected educational feeds that it originated or selected to provide, but also to the opportunity to meet and interact with others in this like-minded virtual club."And i just wanted to point out that they are doing just that over at Pen State with Lionshare "The Lionshare P2P project is an innovative effort to facilitate legitimate file-sharing among individuals and educational institutions around the world. By using Peer to Peer (P2P) technology and incorporating features such as authentication, directory servers, and owner controlled sharing of files, Lionshare promises secure file-sharing capabilities for the easy exchange of image collections, video archives, large data collections, and other types of academic information. In addition to authenticated file-sharing capabilities, the developing Lionshare technology will also provide users with resources for organizing, storing, and retrieving digital files." [ClinedbloG - Elearning from the trenches.] 11:08:50 PM
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Drupal for educational sites: quiz module. I'm re-broadcasting this message because it fits rather well with the focus of this site. Not much to add here except it looks like allot of good work has already been done in this direction, please follow the link for a more n'fo.Drupal for educational sites: quiz module - I am interested in spearheading the development of a module that allows the creation of quizzes, administers them and keeps records of users' performance. This module would be aimed at educational sites where users come to test thier skills and understanding. I would like initial feedback from the community to guage interest and to find out if anybody has already begun work in this direction. [drupal] [ClinedbloG - Elearning from the trenches.] 11:08:11 PM
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Four ways to use wikis for project management. Both of these posts make some excellent suggestions, lets all take note!Four ways to use wikis for project management - Following hard on the heels of 10 ways to use blogs for project management, here's some thoughts on how we've been using wikis in a project management environment. Planning meeting agendas The task of planning agendas normally falls to one unfortunate, who's then bombarded by emails from all quarters. Rather than stand underneath the deluge, why not plan the agenda on a wiki page? Anyone who needs to add an agenda point can do it themselves, adding notes and background information as required -- and once the organiser decides that the agenda is set, the page can be locked to prevent further changes. [ClinedbloG - Elearning from the trenches.] 11:07:55 PM
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Folksonomies - Cooperative Classification and Communication Through Shared Metadata. A meme worth touching on here... Folksonomies - Cooperative Classification and Communication Through Shared Metadata Adam Mathes December 2004 This paper examines user-‍generated metadata as implemented and applied in two web services designed to share [ClinedbloG - Elearning from the trenches.] 11:07:27 PM
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What is needed in a Learning Environment?. I have been giving some thought as to what exactly we are trying to accomplish with deployment of an LMS. Our learners and our organization has a set of very unique needs and meeting those is a pre-qualification of deployment. So it seems that we are in the predicament of removing much of the functionality of our LMS and possibly lessening the environment for learning. So i ask myself: What is needed in a Learning Environment? Pulled from the excellent article Learning Management Systems: The wrong place to start learning located at http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/lms.htm [ClinedbloG - Elearning from the trenches.] 11:06:47 PM
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Jeremy Asks: How Do You Learn to Search?. Last night at a book event at Books Inc in Mountain View, a fellow asked me a question that made me think - in short, he asked why there was so much useless information on the web. Put another way, he was expressing frustration with search results - so often we can't find what we are looking for. I responded that - while it's possible he might not like this answer - we as users of search need to get better at searching. And by that I don't mean smarter about how to use advanced features, or how to find the perfect query, but rather at critical thinking, at reviewing and critiquing a set of results, learning from what is and is not there, and refining our searches as a result. And that the only way that is going to happen is if our educational system values critical thinking skills over rote testing. Today as I was waiting between interminable radio interviews (yes, I am being a cranky author now, after all, I got up at 3.30 am, I'm allowed), I read this post from Jeremy. From it: ....I wished that someone could have been watching the query stream and stopped the user to say "hey, I see what you're trying to find.... try this instead." I felt like there was a missing link. Gary on this.... [John Battelle's Searchblog]11:06:21 PM
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Barking up the wrong tree. Newspapers turn to podcasting to shore up readership among younger demos. The logic goes like this: kids are way into iPods; podcasting is related to iPods; therefore podcasting is the ticket to the young audience. I've seen the general idea quoted by expert after expert including the big tech analysts, and it never feels quite right to me. I don't think it's a youth phenomenon. For one thing, there's a recent survey saying it's not the case. And anecdotally, I'm around a lot... [learnandteachonline.com] 11:05:49 PM
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Numbers Show Economic Lag Before Storm. WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 (AP) - Hurricane Katrina is eating into the economy, leading to concern that consumers will lose confidence and curtail spending. By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. [NYT > Business] 11:05:22 PM
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Google Blog Search.Google Blog . Name your topic and Google will find you all the weblogs that address it. Thanx and a hat tip to George Siemens at [elearnspace]
12:37:16 PM
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A pair of articles every e-Learning producer should read.Web 2.0 for Designers.What is this "Web 2.0" business we keep seeing referenced lately? This article introduces the concept and is vital reading for developers and managers as well as for designers. "Enter Web 2.0, a vision of the Web in which information is broken up into “microcontent” units that can be distributed over dozens of domains. The Web of documents has morphed into a Web of data. We are no longer just looking to the same old sources for information. Now we’re looking to a new set of tools to aggregate and remix microcontent in new and useful ways. The Web of documents has morphed into a Web of data. We are no longer just looking to the same old sources for information. Now we’re looking to a new set of tools to aggregate and remix microcontent in new and useful ways. These tools, the interfaces of Web 2.0, will become the frontier of design innovation." Stephen Downes on E-Learning 2.0.What E-Learning 2.0 means To You 11:49:10 AM
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UT Austin picks Drupal.UT Austin has coverted their Computer Writing and Research Lab over to Drupal and is also using it for instructor blogs. James Brown, Mariela Hristova, Thomas Nelson, and Matthew Russell have written about the reasons why UT Austin has made this switch: Towards a Dynamic Community Identity: Transitioning to a CMS-Driven CWRL Web Site. via [cyberdash - cyberteacher cyberculture cyberlearner] 11:37:25 AM
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DoubleClick: Email Going Strong, But Open Rates Sag. [MarketingVOX - The Voice of Online Marketing] 11:28:45 AM
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Tuesday, September 13, 2005|
Educause Review (Sept/Oct) is available. Don't miss these two excellent articles: Learners, Learning, and Technology: The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (Diana Oblinger presents a very complete understanding of what is happening in the learning space)...and Five Points of Connectivity current buzzwords (blogs, wikis, eportolios, podcasts, etc). [elearnspace] 12:15:15 PM
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Monday, September 12, 2005|
Podcasting Monetization Strategies #1: Marketers "In these examples monetization does not come through directly generated revenues, but indirectly through improved sales." [The RSS and Marketing Diary] 4:02:57 PM
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Podcasting Monetization Strategies #2: Publishers Dscusses monetization through ad sales or monetization through content access sales / subscriptions. [The RSS and Marketing Diary] 4:02:11 PM
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Survey: Tangible Marketing Results from Blogging Only With Frequent Posting "...bloggers still need to deliver their content via e-mail as well, using RSS as a supplement and not as a replacement ..." [The RSS and Marketing Diary] 3:59:35 PM
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Another Desktop RSS Publishing Tool Free tool -- two others listed (one of them better than the other two) [The RSS and Marketing Diary] 3:58:01 PM
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Marketing Optimization 101 for Blogs How to use your weblog and RSS effectively to drive business. [The RSS and Marketing Diary] 3:55:38 PM
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Lightening Your Gadget Load. We tech nerds like to think we are prepared for every possible contingency that could come up during the course of our day. So much so that my computer bag is less of a superhero utility belt and more of a ball of kryptonite that I swing around my neck. In my continued efforts to carry less with me I have come up with some thoughts on how to attack this bane of our daily journeys. [To-Done]3:43:14 PM
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Useit.Com: Time Budgets for Usability Sessions. In most companies, it's a rare and wonderful experience to have actual customers show up to use the design. You should obviously make the most of this opportunity, but companies often waste too much of their precious time with users. [Tomalak's Realm] 3:39:27 PM
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SearchFox - Personalized RSS Reader. Company: Search Fox
SearchFox is in private beta testing of a potentially disruptive RSS reader. It’s the first product I’ve seen that does a good job of prioritizing new content from feeds based on your historical reading behavior, as well as data gathered from the SearchFox community as a whole.
This is a very big problem that I’ve written about many times. RSS readers are great for sorting through content, up to a point - after a couple of hundred feeds there is simply too much information to go through quickly. Companies are now trying to tackle the problems faced by the power users - those reading hundreds of feeds daily, in the hope that in solving their problems they will create a product that addresses the needs of the masses as well. Since they are in private beta, you’ll need to request an invitation to try the product out now. Esteban Kozak at Search Fox tells me they still have a few left, but they have almost invited the quota. Robert Scoble wrote about Search Fox last week, and Matt Marshall mentioned them briefly as well. You should also check out TechBlog, which does an excellent comparison of a number of web basedreaders, including Search Fox. -- from [TechCrunch]3:37:57 PM
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Custom List: Must Reads. Must Reads   [technology filter]3:35:36 PM
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Marketing Optimization 101 for Blogs. Read this article to discover the 13 essential points to optimizing your blog. By rss_feedback@lockergnome.com (Rok Hrastnik). [Lockergnome's RSS & Atom Tips] 3:19:21 PM
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New Firefox Beta Out. The beta version of Firefox 1.5 is online and PC World found a few glitches. The new releases spiked the authors A9 and Greasemonkey toolbars. Chances are there are a lot of little extensions that will be broken when you upgrade. Still, compatible extensions will be out shortly.
Besides the drag and drop tabs and background-updating features alone are worth the upgrade.  [technology filter]11:48:12 AM
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Note to Mary Jo: Sparkle is no Flash killer. Mary Jo Foley gives her predictions of what's coming at the PDC: More Developers, More Developers, More Developers! One thing I gotta correct. I used to think that Sparkle was a Flash killer. Hey, that was good hype cause that team hired a lot of graphic designers, including guys like Manuel Clement who used to speak at a bunch of the Flashforward conferences. But I got the demo. It is NO Flash killer. You'll get a look at the demo on Channel 9 on Wednesday after the team presents what they are doing here at the PDC. But Macromedia/Adobe's Flash is safe from the bad big boys in Microsoft. That said, Sparkle is freaking cool. Let me say that again. Don't get me wrong. Not everyone will love what we're doing. But that's why it's shock and awe. Some will be shocked. Some will be awed. I can't wait to see what the reaction is. [Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]11:40:40 AM
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Sunday, September 11, 2005
OpenUsability."OpenUsability brings Open Source Developers and Usability Experts together. The idea behind is simple: There are many Usability Experts who want to contribute to software projects. And there are many developers who want to make their software more usable, and as a consequence, more successful." [OpenUsability] via [Robin Good's "New Media Picks of the Week"] 3:58:46 PM
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Open Source LMS OLAT."OLAT is a web-based Open Source Learning Management System (LMS) / Learning Content Management System (LCMS) used in the public sector of Switzerland. " [OLAT.org] 3:52:57 PM
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Last update: 10/8/2005; 1:13:35 PM .
