Paul: E Learning

Sun, 10 Jul 2005 16:49:11 GMT

"What is the SlingboxTM?

The SlingboxTM Personal Broadcaster is a consumer electronics product that a user connects to their personal TV source (including a TiVo, cable box, analog cable, satellite receiver, or virtually any other AV device) and to their high-speed network/internet connection (including DSL, cable modem, or other solution) for the purpose of "placeshifting the content" - enabling them to view their TV programming on any device. Once connected, the user can watch and control their personal TV experience from virtually any computer, PDA or mobile phone. Your TV. Any Device. Any Location."

Now tell me that isn't freaking cool!? Anything that timeshifts or placeshifts (it seems like those aren't even words for some reason...?) is cool in my book now. TiVo starting the timeshift revolution and now I believe slingbox will start the placeshift revolution. I'm a gadget geek and this thing has me going. Slingbox will be available at BestBuy and CompUSA starting tomorrow (Thursday, June 30th) and will run $249 with no montly fees.

[Alex Lowe]

Sun, 10 Jul 2005 16:35:59 GMT

Equation Editor

Here is something useful for folks in math and enginnering!

Word

Geek symbols

A little used feature of Office is an applet that will help create complicated equations.

Equation Editor is available in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
It is a sub-set of a full-blown program called MathType. The instructions are similar for each version.

To add an equation to your document, go to Insert>Object.
In the Create New option area, scroll down to Microsoft Equation 3.0.

(BTW: If you create the equation in Word. You can save that Word document as HTML. That will save the equation as a GIF file that you could use on the web. )

If you need more instructions, use the Help file in Equation Editor itself.

Also:
Steve Simonds at Portland Community College:

Creating Mathematics inside Microsoft Word

University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada:

Creating Equations With Microsoft Word and PowerPoint
(there are videos available as well)

Also:

Microsoft.com/education:

Using Equation Editor

Indezine.com

Equation Editor
by Geetesh Bajaj

See all Topics
[Unofficial Microsoft Office Stuff]

Sun, 13 Mar 2005 19:26:11 GMT

Atlantic Monthly article on me. There's a 6-page article on me and GTD in the current (JUL/AUG) issue of Atlantic Monthly in case you haven't seen it. Jim Fallows (senior writer for them former editor of US News) has been following my stuff for a while and I think did an admirable job of expressing some of the core stuff about GTD and me... ... [David Allen]

Sat, 26 Feb 2005 23:40:22 GMT

Google Cheat Sheet. Google Help: Cheat Sheet... [Google Weblog]

Sat, 20 Nov 2004 23:04:18 GMT

Google Scholar. New: Google Scholar: Stand on the shoulders of giants. "Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web."... [Google Weblog]

Sat, 30 Oct 2004 19:49:04 GMT

Signed up for this. Loks like it mihgt be a nice product to try out.

Wiki startup JotSpot draws crowd for product beta. A Silicon Valley startup aiming to catapult wikis into the mainstream and transform the editable Web sites into an application development platform has attracted a flood of interest for its product beta. [InfoWorld: Top News]

Wed, 20 Oct 2004 00:46:36 GMT

Your webcast host could be working in her pajamas.

More and more people tell me "hey, I talked with your wife today." For those who missed it, she got a job hosting MSDN Webcasts. On some days she has more people listening to her than listen to me (it isn't hard, cause they are getting very popular). Georgeo Pulikkathara breaks the news: more than 60,000 people are signed up for ASP.NET webcasts over the next week or two alone! That's just a freaking huge number of people. Remember, last year's PDC conference was considered an overwhelming success and we had less than 10,000 developers there. At Fawcette we were happy anytime we got more than 1,000 developers to show up.

Don't miss the really interesting part. These are all produced on standard PCs at home!! My wife uses a standard HP laptop -- she is talking live from home. The presenters are working out of their homes. Everything is connected with LiveMeeting. You watch -- and participate -- on your PCs at home. I watch over her shoulder and it's just amazing to see how the world of work and training has changed in just the past few years.

Hey, just think, this entire conference could be participated in by people who are wearing pajamas!

Oh, by the way, you're welcome to participate and the webcasts are free! Subscribe to the RSS feed -- Georgeo is doing a great job of keeping up the schedule.

I wonder when Fast Company is going to start writing about the "pajama revolutionaries?"

[Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]

Fri, 08 Oct 2004 01:11:13 GMT

Steve Wozniak Part 2: Gnomedex 4.0. From Gnomedex 4.0: The Geeks-Gone-Wild crowd was glued to this rare and brilliant presentation by Steve Wozniak, a geek's geek. It started with games and pranks, crystal-set radios, reading Popular Electronics. Then he met Captain Crunch and got into telco-busting Blue Boxes. Woz wanted to be an HP engineer forever and never thought he'd start a company, but his friend, Steve Jobs, said, "Let's sell it!" at every opportunity. Good thing he did, and good thing HP turned down Woz's offer for the rights to build what would become Apple's first computer. You'll enjoy this -- one of the best from Gnomedex 4.0. (Part 2 of 2) [IT Conversations (with enclosures)]

Fri, 08 Oct 2004 01:11:01 GMT

Steve Wozniak Part 1: Gnomedex 4.0. From Gnomedex 4.0: The Geeks-Gone-Wild crowd was glued to this rare and brilliant presentation by Steve Wozniak, a geek's geek. It started with games and pranks, crystal-set radios, reading Popular Electronics. Then he met Captain Crunch and got into telco-busting Blue Boxes. Woz wanted to be an HP engineer forever and never thought he'd start a company, but his friend, Steve Jobs, said, "Let's sell it!" at every opportunity. Good thing he did, and good thing HP turned down Woz's offer for the rights to build what would become Apple's first computer. You'll enjoy this -- one of the best from Gnomedex 4.0. (Part 1 of 2) [IT Conversations (with enclosures)]

Thu, 19 Aug 2004 21:57:47 GMT

We've Got to Start Meeting Like This. Meeting Tomorrow is a one-stop shop for meeting presentation technology and other tools. Offering projectors and flat-panel displays, the service also offers notepads, name tags,... [Fast Company Now]

Fri, 06 Aug 2004 00:35:20 GMT

Board Fires CEO Over PowerPoint. When the day comes that a board of directors fires a CEO because of a PowerPoint, it will send a very clear signal about what is at stake these days when anyone gives a presentation. According to the Financial Times... [beyond bullets]

Wed, 04 Aug 2004 00:32:28 GMT

MSDN Webcasts now on RSS.

MSDN's Webcasts now have an RSS feed The Webcasts are free and are very information

Fri, 09 Jul 2004 23:15:14 GMT

Mary Jo Foley: 'KSanjay and Eric do the buddy groove.

Fri, 09 Jul 2004 23:08:02 GMT

Learning PHP. Dan Olsen links to some Web-based tutorials, documentation, and books he's found useful in learning PHP. [Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog]

Tue, 29 Jun 2004 00:27:19 GMT

Red Fish, Blue Fish.

Color Communication & Symbolism

"Colors in motion - an animated and interactive experience of color communication and symbolism. (flash. via One's web)" [MetaFilter]

This is a very cool demo of color that shows how to use color and sound to teach.

Tue, 22 Jun 2004 00:18:40 GMT

I need to look this up. IT is a product that my friend Don used quite a bit.

MindManager - very cool. I've been working with a new version of MindManager Pro for the last couple of weeks and it's really cool.... [David Allen]

Sun, 02 May 2004 18:47:33 GMT

VB at the movies. A very cool approach to learning Visual Basic.

Visual Basic at the movies. Cool, watch a movie and learn something about Visual Basic.

[Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]

Tue, 16 Mar 2004 23:54:40 GMT

Carl posts "how to program VB" videos.

Carl Franklin and Rory Blyth have done some great "how to program in Visual Basic" videos on Carl's blog. Carl's a master trainer and I like how he teaches. You might too.

[Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]

Sun, 14 Mar 2004 15:09:17 GMT

Something to think about when creating committes..

Peaks and valleys in group cohesion. Ross points to Christopher Allen's very interesting piece on the relationship between group scale and cohesiveness or satisfaction. His observations derived from several different domains concord with my personal experience, and the implications in coping with business growth are worth thinking about.

(Note that if this graph is accurate, jury duty (size=12) must be pretty nerve-wracking!)
[Seb's Open Research]

Thu, 19 Feb 2004 00:47:19 GMT

Loïc covers how to do an interactive conference.

An interesting look into the "conference off the future. here now! Here is a point at an interesting blog on how to make a great interactive conference.

[The Scobleizer Celebrating the Geek lifestyle]

Mon, 29 Dec 2003 00:42:07 GMT

Speaking at the 19th Annual Conference on DistanceTeaching and Learning at the University of Wisconsin - Madison was an incredible experience. In addition to speaking at the conference, I attended workshops and short presentations that dealt with various aspects of developing and delivering course materials through an online format. One of the most beneficial aspects of the conference was the opportunity to talk with peers who are experimenting with and developing alternative ways to create and deliver distance learning materials.

Presentaion on how to use Groove to teach and administer distance learning courses. The presentationcompares Groove with LMS systems like Blackboard and WebCt. It also covers a variety of software programs used to develop course materials and to support the Groove workspace. View the presentation at http://mslive.sonicfoundry.com/forum2AM1/index.asp.

[Rick Lillie's Radio Weblog]

Sun, 21 Dec 2003 21:21:37 GMT

Convoq ASAP Public Beta.

I'm excited about the release of the public beta of "As Soon as Present" (ASAP) from Convoq. This product has been in the making for well over a year, and is a powerful demonstration of new convergence trends we're experiencing with the Internet -- social networking, VoIP, video messaging, broadband, instant messaging, and many others. The release today is a public beta of a 1.0 product, but it covers extrodinary ground for a first release. (full disclosure: I am a board member and investor in Convoq, Inc.)

Some of the features worth exploring:

* Rich media instant meetings --- import and use your buddy lists and presence status from consumer and enterprise IM systems (AIM, Yahoo, MSN, and MSFT and IBM enterprise IM products), and convoke text chat, VoIP, and video conferences with anyone on the Internet (anyone who has Flash Player, that is). It works transparently through firewalls, and works with end-users on any platform (Windows, OS X, Linux).

* Robust web conferencing features. Meetings can be of any size, with moderation tools available as the number of users in a meeting grow. A moderator or presenter can own the podium, and present themselves via video of remarkably good quality, share their desktop with others, and deliver online powerpoint presentations with excellent fidelity (e.g. you can use transitions and animations in PPT, and they translate beautifully into the Flash format, including any audio or video content used in powerpoint). This is part of the trend in "modernizing web conferencing" that products like Breeze Live and ASAP both accomplish nicely, making first-generation products such as WebEx and Placeware feel awkward.

* Collaboration and presence management features. A fundamental notion in ASAP is presence (e.g. As Soon As Present), where it goes way beyond the extremely limited notions of presence in existing IM systems. For example, in ASAP you can have delegates or Stand-Ins --- if you aren't immediately available, enable other users to select a stand-in to try and communicate with (e.g. co-worker, boss, husband). A more powerful concept is that of Lifelines -- these are topic-based presence switches that enable users to find someone to communicate with based on a topic or role (e.g. IT HelpDesk, Legal Services, Product Support). Both of these are good examples of social networking features in the real-time realm.

* It's all Flash, baby. Convoq has deftly and powerfully taken advantage of Macromedia's Flash platform to deliver an exceptionally rich user experience throughout the product. While the product installs as a desktop application, it is almost entirely built in Flash (some native code is needed to work with existing IM clients, to convert PowerPoint to Flash, and for integration into the windows system tray). More importantly, the product is also built on the Flash Communication Server, which provides VoIP, video conferencing, and shared data services. But most user's of ASAP will never install any software, and will collaborate and communicate with you directly through a Flash application running in a browser. The experience of engaging someone in instant video communications without them having installed any software is always a joy -- better yet, having a quick web conference/meeting without the awkwardness of WebEx and Placware is also great!

Give the Public Beta a try, and share your thoughts. I'm sure the Convoq team is listening! I will be writing more about ASAP in the future.

[Jeremy Allaire's Radio]

Sun, 21 Dec 2003 16:28:09 GMT

Ctrl-Alt-Delete.

A nice short video of interest to IT folks! Ever wonder who came up with the guy who wrote Ctrl-Alt-Del? Here's a video of him, Dave Bradley (he's an engineer at IBM) on stage with Bill Gates. Hey, on that page the Real Networks choice is above the Microsoft one. How the heck did that happen? I thought Real wasn't able to compete against us? So, why is CNET putting them on top? Just a question to ponder this Friday. Here's more on Dave Bradley.
[The Scobleizer Weblog]

Tipping Point Summary

Sun, 21 Dec 2003 16:06:49 GMT

Tipping Point - Net Version from Robert Paterson's Radio Weblog "How to Start a Revolution"

paraphrasing the main ideas in Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point (See Link To Author Happy Feet)

The Law of the Few		The Magic Number 150
The Stickiness Factor		Conclusion
Back to Politics

HappyFeet has made the best effort possible to put these items in some form of coherent order. This book used alot of marketing/business angles. I chose to replace those examples, etc. with art, creativity, and revolution. Use this to make the truth bloom.

THE TIPPING POINT IS:

That one dramatic moment in an epidemic when everything can change all at once.
The moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point, a place where the unexpected becomes expected, where radical change is more than possibility. It is a certainty. Epidemics...
Tip b/c of the extraordinary efforts of a few select carriers. But they also sometimes tip when something happens to transform the epidemic agent itself.
1. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.
2. Are another example of geometric progression: when a virus spreads through a population, it doubles and doubles again into infinity.
3. Epidemics are a function of the people who transmit infectious agents, the infectious agent itself, and the environment in which the infectious agent is operating:
  - They (Epidemics) have clear examples of contagious behavior.
  - They both have little changes that make big effects.
  - It takes only the smallest of changes to shatter an epidemic's equilibrium.
  - They happen in a hurry.
This is the most important trait, b/c it is the principle that makes sense of the first two and that permits the greatest insight into why modern change happens the way it does.
Epidemics involve straightforward simple things; a "product" (I put this in quotes b/c Gladwell writes this book using mostly marketing/business ideas. However, I see it as a way to spark revolution.) and a message.
In order to create one contagious movement, you often have to create many small movements first.
Contagiousness is in larger part a function of the messenger. Stickiness is primarily a property of the message.

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THE LAW OF THE FEW

There are exceptional people out there who are capable of starting epidemics. All you have to do is find them. With an epidemic, a tiny majority of the people do the work. Once critical factor in epidemics is the nature of the messenger. Messengers make something spread.
Word of mouth is still the most important form of human communication. Rumors are the most contagious of all social messages.

Connectors

People with a special gift for bringing the world together, people specialists
Know lots of people
Have an extraordinary knack of making friends and acquaintances, making social connections.
Have mastered the "weak tie"; a friendly, yet casual social connection.
Manage to occupy many different worlds and subcultures and niches. By having a foot in so many different worlds, they have the effect of bringing them all together.
Acquaintances represent a source of social power, and the more acquaintances you have the more powerful you are.
Social glue: they spread the message

Mavens

Information specialists
Once they figure out how to get that great deal, they want to tell you about it too.
Solves his own problems, his own emotional needs, by solving other people's problems.
Have knowledge and the social skills to start word-of-mouth epidemics.
A teacher and a student
In a social epidemic, Mavens are data banks. They provide the message.

Salespeople

Have the skills to persuade when we are unconvinced of what we are hearing.
Little things can make as much of a difference as big things.
Gives nonverbal clues that are more important than verbal clues.

"Interactional synchrony": human interaction has a rhythmic physical dimension. We dance to each other's speech…we're perfectly in harmony.
Motor mimicry: we imitate each other's emotions as a way of expressing support and caring and, even more basically, as a way of communicating with each other. Emotion is contagious. "Senders" are very good at expressing emotions and feelings. They are far more emotionally contagious than the rest of us.

Persuasion often works in ways that we do not appreciate
You draw others into your own rhythms and dictate the terms of the interaction.

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THE STICKINESS FACTOR

There is a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible/sticky and compels a person into action. All you have to do is find it. In order to be capable of sparking epidemics, ideas have to be memorable and move us into action. Content of the message matters too.

What is needed is a subtle but significant change in presentation to make most messages stick.
The elements that make an idea sticky turn out to be small and trivial.
"Clutter" has made it harder and harder to get any one message to stick. The information age has created a stickiness problem.
Pay careful attention to the structure and format of your material, and you can dramatically enhance stickiness.
Can tip a message by tinkering, on the margin, with the presentation of their ideas THE POWER OF CONTEXT

We don't necessarily appreciate that our inner states are the result of our outer circumstances. We are more than just sensitive to changes in context. We're exquisitely sensitive to them. And the kinds of contextual changes that are capable of tipping an epidemic are very different than we might ordinarily suspect. The impetus to engage in a certain kind of behavior is not coming from a certain kind of person but from a feature of the environment.

Small changes in context can be just as important in tipping epidemics.
An environmental argument.
What really matters is little things
- "Broken Windows Theory": in a city, relatively minor problems like graffiti, public disorder, and aggressive panhandling, are all the equivalent of broken windows, invitations to more serious crimes (Rudy Gulliani's belief)
An epidemic can be reversed/tipped by tinkering with the smallest details of the immediate environment.
There are specific situations so powerful that they can overwhelm our inherent predispositions.
Human beings invariably make the mistake of overestimating the importance of fundamental character traits and underestimating the importance of the situation and context. We are a lot more attuned to personal cues than contextual cues.
Character is more like a bundle of habits and tendencies and interests, loosely bound together and dependent, at certain times, on circumstances and context.
The convictions of your heart and the actual contents of your thoughts are less important, in the end, in guiding your actions then the immediate context of your behavior.

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THE MAGIC NUMBER 150

"There seems to be some limitation built into us either by learning or by the design of the nervous systems, a limit that keeps our channel capacities in this general range (i.e. the human minds inability to comprehend things beyond sets 7)" —George Miller "The Magical Number Seven"

"The figure of 150 seems to represent the maximum number of individuals with whom we can have a genuinely social relationship, the kind of relationship that goes with knowing who they are and how they relate to us. Putting it another way, it's the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar." —Robin Dunbar,

Even relatively small increases in the size of a group [beyond 150] creates a significant additional social and intellectual burden.
The rule of 150 suggests that the size of a group is another one of those subtle contextual factors that can make a big difference.
Peer pressure is much more powerful than a concept of a boss
Transactive memory: we store information with other people. Since mental energy is limited, we concentrate on what we do best.
Groups of 150 are an organized mechanism that makes it far easier for new ideas and information moving around the organization to tip; to go from one person or one part of the group to the entire group all at once.

CONCLUSION

First Lesson of the Tipping Point

Starting epidemics requires concentrating resources on a few key areas. Your resources ought to be solely concentrated on the Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen.

Second Lesson of the Tipping Point

The world does not accord with our intuition. Those who are successful at creating social epidemics do not just do what they think is right. They deliberately test their intuitions.

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Important Conclusion!

What must underlie successful epidemics, in the end, is a bedrock belief that change is possible, that people can radically transform their behavior or beliefs in the face of the right kind of impetus. Tipping Points are a reaffirmation of the potential for change and the power of intelligent action. Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push; just in the right place; it can be tipped. NOTES, ETC.

Diffusion model: a detailed, academic way of looking at how a contagious idea or "product" or innovation moves through a population.

Innovators: the adventurous ones. Visionaries.
- Connectors, mavens, and salesmen make it possible for innovations to connect with the early adopters. They are translators: they make ideas and information from a highly specialized world and translate them into a language the rest of us can understand. They drop extraneous details and exaggerate other details so that the message itself acquires a deeper meaning.
Early adopters: the slightly larger group that is infected by the innovators. Visionaries.
Early Majority: the deliberate and the skeptical mass, who would never try anything until the most respected of this group try it first.
Late Majority
Laggards: the most traditional group that see no urgent reason to change.

Robert Paterson's Radio Weblog

Fri, 19 Dec 2003 00:40:06 GMT

Workflow Learning. Quote: "Workflow learning is characterized by:

A deep integration with enterprise applications assembled from Web Services into composite applications.
Task and work support fused into the aggregated business processes that make up the real-time workflow.
Contextual collaboration with people and systems.
Design and modification achieved by modeling and simulation.
Short, granular bursts of learning and workflow task support embedded at specific “nodes” of a business task.
Bottom-up dynamic generation of on-the-fly tasks as work evolves.
Continuous performance improvement and performance measurement.
Workflow Learning Resource Arrays aggregated “around” workers based on job roles."

Comment: Sounds a little like EPSS to me.
[Serious Instructional Technology]

Paul: E Learning

Equation Editor

Tipping Point Summary

Tipping Point - Net Version from Robert Paterson's Radio Weblog "How to Start a Revolution"

paraphrasing the main ideas in Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point (See Link To Author Happy Feet)

THE TIPPING POINT IS:

to top

THE LAW OF THE FEW

Connectors

Mavens

to top

THE STICKINESS FACTOR

to top

THE MAGIC NUMBER 150

CONCLUSION

First Lesson of the Tipping Point

Second Lesson of the Tipping Point

to topImportant Conclusion!

to top
Important Conclusion!