How To .NET and How To ASP.NET

The MSDN events team takes to the road again (USA) showing how to use the .NET Framework 2.0 and ASP.NET. It's free. From Scoble.

10:58:26 AM    

Online video publishing.

Robin Good shows us how video publishing (and editing) are getting more accessible.

10:43:46 AM    

Virtuality: Could this be where e-Learning is going?

We talk about using games and simulations for learning -- here are 200,000 people who are already doing it. See the post for April 26 on "Games and Performance."

UPDATE 4/29: Scoble points out this weblog on 3D Virtual Worlds.

'Second Life' Avatar Population Hits 200k (Tony Walsh/Clickable Culture).

'Second Life' Avatar Population Hits 200k  —  The virtual world of Second Life reached a population of 200,000 residents today, doubling its size since the last milestone of 100,000 residents was reached just over four months ago.  At this rate, it's possible Second Life will reach 1M residents …

Source:   Clickable Culture
Author:   Tony Walsh
Link:   http://www.secretlair.com/index.php?/clickableculture…

View discussion

11:36:49 AM    

Fewer PDAs, more smart phones.

If you're planning to offer a mobile application, the market is moving away from PDAs and toward mobile phones. Depending on your app, this may present some interface challenges, but when consumers are voting with their feet, it's hard to argue with them.

Sales of handheld devices continue to drop. For the ninth quarter in a row [The Register]

11:27:05 AM    

Keep your podcasts legal.

FYI.

Podcasting Legal Guide: Rules For The Revolution.

Podcasting can be daunting. Who's who and what's what!

The all-new, PODCASTING LEGAL GUIDE: RULES FOR THE REVOLUTION is now available free of charge at: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Podcasting_Legal_Guide

As quoted...

'The purpose of this Guide is to provide you with a general roadmap of some of the legal issues specific to podcasting. EFF has produced a very practical and helpful guide for issues related to blogging generally (http://www.eff.org/bloggers/). This Guide is not intended to duplicate efforts by EFF, and in many cases refers you to that guide for where crossover issues are addressed. Our goal is to complement EFF's Bloggers FAQ and address some of the standalone issues that are of primary relevance to podcasters, as opposed to bloggers.'

Please do make the time to read and digest the facts and podcast legaleze found across its' pages.

We highly commend all involved and professionally consider this timely podcast guide as a job well done.

News Department
PodCast Radio Show
http://radio.weblogs.com/0144135/

11:45:06 AM    

Social bookmarking.

This is another aspect of knowledge management. Still figuring out how best to use it, and how the various social bookmarking services differ/overlap. Once you get the hang of using other people's bookmarks and tags, you can save quite a bit of time in your searches for information -- as long as everyone is tagging in some rational way.

CHI 2006: Dogear, Social Bookmarking for the Enterprise. (Notes from a talk about IBM's Dogear.)

Social bookmarking is a central store, where you can put keywords (tags), discover via "pivot" browsing, and subscribe to link feeds.

[Seb's Open Research]

10:49:37 AM    

Some different approaches to games and virtual life.

As reported by Seb from CHI 2006. I've edited his post. These sessions are more "idea generators" than research that actually answers questions in a way that a designer could use directly (or so it seems to me). World of Warcraft is an eye-opener if you are new to MMORPGs. Also see Business Week (cover story here) (author's comments here) this week for Second Life. These are far more open-ended than any e-Learning game available today, but I think they show us where we are headed.

CHI 2006: Games & Performance session. Alone Together? Exploring the Social Dynamics of Massively Multiplayer Online Games is the title of a very interesting study of World of Warcraft (WoW) social dynamics by Nicolas Ducheneaut and collaborators.
Basically they used WoW's open API to scrape data about hundreds of thousands of players on five servers, registering who was present where and when and what character they were playing. The paper is surely worth a look if you're interested in online social interaction patterns from data.

Next I listened to a talk about Interweaving Mobile Games With Everyday Life, which dealt with an urban multiplayer PocketPC game called Feed the Yoshi. It gave me some game ideas for the Ile Sans Fil community wireless project.

10:43:57 AM    

Cheaper, if you can make some tradeoffs.

Teamslide is a lower cost product, but ... it has its drawbacks. Read the article carefully. I think it will work well for conferencing, not so well for e-Learning and team training, which will be severely hampered by the need to have a server.

Teamslide could disrupt WebEx.

Munich, Germany based Teamslide is a new and very low cost alternative to services like WebEx, Placeware and GotToMeeting that allow people to share applications (like power point) online.

 [TechCrunch]

11:36:25 PM    

How does bandwidth affect online learning?

One more factor to consider.

The Relationship of Bandwidth, Interaction and Performance in Online Classes: A Study - Yan Wu, et al, Online Journal of Distalance Learning Administr. Although it is often assumed that the larger the bandwidth of the connection to the Internet, the better, few studies have actually been conducted to investigate the impact of various bandwidth connections on student performance in online courses. The goa [Online Learning Update]

11:29:17 PM    

Go beyond providing a simple RSS feed.

This article by Rok Hrastnik is pure genius.

Your RSS Marketing Strategy: Deciding How To Deliver Your RSS Content [The RSS and Marketing Diary]

11:19:26 PM    

Indiana CPAs get CPE online.

This would be in addition to satellite broadcasts and other technology-delivered content. Attorneys and the banking industry are two other areas where online learning is growing. There are many similar opportunities.

'Virtual Classroom' Seminars to Help CPAs Stay Current - Carly Zander, Send2Press. Indiana CPAs now have something to look forward to beyond the end of another hectic tax season. Starting next month, a new seminar series will make it easier for the state's 9,000 CPAs to satisfy the strict continuing education requirements imposed on the [Online Learning Update]

11:18:48 AM