Saturday, December 16, 2006

Get a life. Business Week.com reports: IBM Corp. said Friday that it collaborated with electronics retailer Circuit City Stores Inc. to open a big-box outlet in the virtual video-game world, Second Life. IBM said the prototype store is part of a bigger complex Big Blue plans to open next week in the virtual world. The store contains replicas of real-life Circuit City products. People can direct their avatars, or in-game characters, to walk down the aisles, pick up and examine items, and order online for home delivery, IBM said. The two companies are also working on virtual customer service and a place for shoppers to recreate their real-world living rooms, then test different TV sizes and sound system setups. At a holiday party last night, some of us discussed how immersive-world technology is evolving. Imagine, say, that in a few years, Second Life looks like a movie, not a cartoon. What a great place for learning and collaboration! Or is it? Once again, the technology is advancing more rapidly Informal Learning Blog, December 16, 2006. [Conversation] [Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Edu_RSS Most Recent - RSS old] 1:16:32 PM      Google It!.

Seven Steps to Better E-Learning. Clark Quinn wrote this article for eLearn Magazine. It is "a distillation of cognitive research on learning intended to make your e-learning more effective, and to create a better experience for the learner. These seven principles integrate cognitive and emotional components of learning, and the more that happens, the greater the outcomes". Seven Steps to Better E-Learning Clark also invites comments on this article on his blog Learnlets Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day, December 16, 2006. [Conversation] [Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Edu_RSS Most Recent - RSS old] 1:15:06 PM      Google It!.

Look, Ma, No Hands . Letting go is difficult, especially letting go of the steering wheel. I'm not accustomed to it. I don't like it. I didn't want to do it. But I did, thanks to Toyota Motor Corp.'s advanced parking guidance system. By Warren Brown. [washingtonpost.com - Technology - Industry News, Policy, and Reviews] 9:11:49 AM      Google It!.

It took the virtual world Second Life more than three years to finally hit one million registered accounts. But on the basis of a flurry of recent media attention around the world, and the arrival of a steady flow of Fortune 500 companies, Second Life made it to 2 million accounts just eight weeks later. -- Growth is not linear!!!! 9:08:35 AM      Google It!.

How Skype Punches Holes in Firewalls. An anonymous reader writes "Ever wondered, how P2P software like Skype directly exchanges data [~] despite the fact, that both machines are sitting behind a firewall that only permits outgoing traffic? Read about the hole punching techniques, that make a firewall admin's nightmares come true." [Slashdot] 9:03:08 AM      Google It!.

Seb Schmoller - Google's Patent Search - Fortnightly Mailing. Google has launched a new patent search tool and of course the first thing everybody in our field has done is to look up learning. Here's a patent for roles-based access control from 1997 - this is one of the things Blackboard claimed in its patent. And 'learning'? A search reveals 1147 patents - and a lot of work for someone, I guess. I think we need to get a handle on this, though I must confess, I preferred my earlier strategy - ignoring the U.S. Patent Office as irrelevant. [Link] [Tags: Blackboard, Copyright and Patent Issues, Google] [Comment] Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ OLDaily RSS 2.0, December 16, 2006. [Conversation] [Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Edu_RSS Most Recent - RSS old] 8:54:54 AM      Google It!.

Kathy Sierra - Become the Thing That Replaces You - Creating Passionate Users. Some good advice, especially with respect to the design of games in learning (and note that I did not say 'learning games'). The 'meta level' that Kathy Sierra, of course, is the nuggin - the thing that people are actually buying when they buy something. People buy heat, not coal or oil. Transportation or status, not cars or trucks. What do they buy when they pay tuition? What do people looking for when they sign up for OLDaily? Good questions, I think, and it is worth taking to heart, that "'Don't mess with success' is often the biggest barrier to becoming your own 'killer'." [Link] [Tags: Tuition and Student Fees, Games and Gaming] [Comment] Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ OLDaily RSS 2.0, December 16, 2006. [Conversation] [Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Edu_RSS Most Recent - RSS old] 8:46:31 AM      Google It!.

Implementing social technologies inside organizations. If the set of technologies loosely identified at Enterprise 2.0 are to have any hope of real success, we need to take a closer look at how they are introduced into organizations. I see two basic patterns for technology introduction in general use and neither holds much promise. The first pattern is embodied in the massive ERP rollout. Here, a highly structured set of technologies and corresponding processes are imposed on the organization. People in these systems have equally structured roles that are imposed on them in order for the overall system (organizational and technological) to perform as a designed mechanism. In the second pattern, some fundamentally individual technology sneaks into the organization at the hands of discrete individuals. Spreadsheets, word processors, web browsers all infiltrated the organization. Even email and networking followed a fundamentally organic diffusion process. Enterprise 2.0 technologies, of course, are social tools. Their promise and their ch McGee's Musings, December 16, 2006. [Conversation] [Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Edu_RSS Most Recent - RSS old] 8:42:47 AM      Google It!.