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    

Could this be an example of e-Learning?

Chapter 8. Improving Your Ability to Recognize Business Opportunities. From:   mbatoolbox.org

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10:45:46 PM    

 "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."

10:41:06 PM    

 [TechCrunch]

10:38:59 PM    

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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10:52:59 AM    

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

Probably the most unique microphone in the line, the APEX162 is a true stereo mini condenser microphone designed specifically for use with minidisc recorders or portable dat machines. The 1/8th inch mini TRS connector is fixed directly to the microphone and mounted on a swivel base allowing the mic to be angled up to 90 degrees foreward when attached directly to a recording device. A 4.3 metre (14 foot) mini TRS extension cable is included for maximum versatility. The APEX162 requires 1.5-volt DC phantom power to operate. Ideal for event recording, Electronic News Gathering, ambience recording or for use in broadcast, the small and inconspicuous APEX162 is shipped with pop filters and a five-metre cable with TRS 1/8th inch minijack. Small and inconspicuous design makes the APEX162 ideal for use in any application where quality stereo recording is required, yet the microphone itelf needs to be virtually invisible.

UNQUOTE

10:48:08 AM    

Improving RSS readers.

(Note that SearchFox is in private beta testing and is not generally available at this time.)

SearchFox - Personalized RSS Reader.

Company: Search Fox
Founded: December 2004
Launched: in Private Beta
Location: San Francisco

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.

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:

Our RSS reader learns by watching what individuals and the entire community find interesting, taking into account various inputs such as source, author, and topic of the an RSS entry. Existing RSS readers only show information chronologically, which quickly leads to information overload. Our goal is to that you see what’s interesting to you on the first page, rather than on the 20th page. Initial studies show that our personalization engine surfaces 50% of the interesting posts to the first page after a week of use, and reaches the 90% level after two weeks of use.

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.

Tags: searchfox, attention, rss, atom, rssreaders, search, techcrunch, web2.0

10:43:25 AM    

eBay becoming the market leader in pure IP based communications.

eBay/Skype Analyst Conference Call.

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.

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.

Tags: TechCrunch, Skype, EBay, VoIP, Acquisition

10:41:43 AM    

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    

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:

10:21:42 AM