2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 150,000 times in 2011. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 6 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Best Purchase I Made All Year

I love my new ScanSnap S1500M! I just do. This product paid for itself not 4 hours out of the box. Tasks that would have taken me days, even weeks, to do were accomplished in a short time.

Business cards that were piled up – done! Oh, and input into my contact manager! Conference manuals and notes stacked beside my desk – now digitized and searchable. Sweet! File cabinet print outs from previous projects are now converted to Word documents.No more paper clutter.

Did I say I love this tool?!

Save files as PDFs, searchable PDFs, Word, Excel, add to your contacts and in color or black and white. Everything I have wanted to do the Fujitsu designers and engineers seem to have thought of. Even if there is a paper jam, a window pops up showing me the last item scanned and asks if I want to rescan it after I clear the rollers and continue with my project. Nice work.

If you are an information hound and collect research, periodicals, newspaper clippings, business cards, and more – you have to get a Fujitsu ScanSnap. If you do, let me know what you think. If you already have one, tell me of your experiences here.

Python Programmers Twice As Productive As Counterparts

Saw an interesting article today by Kurt Grandis. After a six-month productivity study of teams using Python and C#, Kurt states, “Given our development processes we found the average productivity of a single Django developer to be equivalent to the output generated by two C# ASP.NET developers. Given equal-sized teams, Django allowed our developers to be twice as productive as our ASP.NET team.”

A programmer friend of mine says, “You have to write 3x more code in C# just to do the same stuff….”

Read the article on Kurt’s blog and tell me what you think about Python v. C#

38 Tools To Listen To The Social Media Buzz

Sebastian Barros, at Penn Olson, has put together a nice list of 38 free tools for monitoring social media. Evaluating return on investment (ROI) or, for social media enthusiasts, return on engagement (ROE) is a must! Seeing results is often challenging for many that want to get a handle on what is happening related to their online brand.

Check out Sebastian’s article and be sure to visit the links to the resources listed. I think you’ll find some that will definitely need to be added to your tool box.

If this was helpful, let me know by commenting below. Enjoy!

Kindle App On iPhone Misses, But Just Barely

By E. Brown

I installed the Kindle app for the iPhone right after it came out (thanks Ryan Block for the heads up). I then found a free book that I downloaded and was able to play with. Listed below are my first impressions. What are yours?

Likes:

• Text sizing
• Bookmarking
• Page turning
• Page scrubbing (page location)
• Sync with Kindle books

Dislikes:

• Cannot annotate
• Page will not rotate when I turn iPhone on side
• Cannot download books directly from Kindle app (like Stanza)

So, what about you? Comment now…

App Trap Uninstalls All Those Pesky Added Files

By E. Brown

My friend, Heath, introduced me to App Trap the other day and I do not know how I have lived with out. It is a great little app for the Mac and needs to be on every Mac computer (hear me Apple?).

I love trying new software. Yet, every time you download and install an application or trial version, files get placed in all kinds of places. Many apps come with an uninstall feature, but there are many that do not. Welcome App Trap. This free software (although you can make a PayPal donation, which I’d recommend) will save you all kinds of time hunting down pref files and other assorted library files.

Once you install App Trap it sits and watches what applications you download and delete. When you delete an app you will get a message asking you if you want App Trap to delete all the other associated files to that application. Once you say “yes” App Trap neatly rounds up all the files and plops them into your Trash. They are not gone until you empty your trash so you can easily retrieve them if you feel you’ve made a mistake. It is that simple.

Download a copy today and you’ll be singing it’s praises as I am. If you already have it or know of something better, comment below.

Enjoy!

iPlotz for Collaborative Web Designing

By E. Brown

If you’re a Web designer or part of a Web development team you gotta check out iPlotz. This subscription based SaaS has some very cool application for collaborative wire-frame development and workflow.

Browser-based, it works with Mac, Windows, and Linux. You can easily add and delete pages from your sitemap. THen add images, fields, navigation, etc. and size them accordingly. You can even link from within and without of your wireframe project.

To me, the real power comes in the collaborative aspects. You can invite others to work on the project and comment regarding any element or component of the pages being built. You can then assign to-do’s to members that only they can see as you start to move the project into production.

Check it out. For $99/yr and a gig of space you cannot beat the time savings.

Is The iPhone Really Cheaper?

By E. Brown

I have to be honest, I have not researched this yet. So, I wanted to hear what you have experienced. I have heard that  while the iPhone is cheaper to buy ($199) the cost of operating is more and so it all evens out similar to the original pricing.

Now, it’s your turn – talk back. Have you found this to be true or is the phone more competitive with other models and manufacturers?

5 Questions To Improve Email Response Rates

By Paul Broni | Inbox Interactive

Before you write the copy for your next email marketing effort, ask yourself these five questions and write down your answers:

Question 1: What problem does your target audience have?
You only need a few sentences here. Your prospect needs to know that you really understand her. Remember, we’re not writing copy yet, so you don’t need to be creative here. Rather, we’re developing a framework that we will turn into great copy.

Question 2: What have been the obstacles to the problem’s solution?
Again, this answer can be short, with just a few factual sentences. You need to identify what the historical roadblocks were to the problem’s solution in the past. Think about what’s been keeping the problem from getting solved.

Question 3: What is possible because of your product or service?
You’re getting ready to set the stage for what your prospect’s life will be like after buying your product or service – your solution. The answer to this question should paint a picture so the prospect can see himself enjoying the benefits.

Question 4: How is your product or service different?
Write a few sentences on your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). Your USP is what sets you apart from your competition in a favorable way. Your USP is what gives your business the advantage from which your clients and customers benefit.

Question 5: What do you want the prospect to do?
This is the call to action. Think about what you want the recipient to do. Sign up for something? Call you? Register for an event? Make a purchase?

With this framework in hand, you are on the way to crafting copy that will elevate your email marketing results.

-Source: Paul Broni has been a partner at Inbox Interactive since 1998.

How Blogging Can Help Or Hurt Your Personal Career

By John O’Connor

Blogging has become an impulsive contemporary art for careerists. Should you develop your own blog or shouldn’t you? Will it help or hurt your career? Let me present this canvas to you as a primer of sorts to think about this issue.

Much of my career practice and coaching involves an organizing thought: You own the business of your career. It’s your worklife mission, your vision. For years I coached and, some would say, admonished my clients to take ownership of their career paths as they work for someone else. When you do not own the business, one of the greatest ways you can help or hurt your career centers around your own online and offline reputation. With so many choices and so much information at the click of a computer key we may feel information overload no matter what our career field might be. We may also feel empowered to create or destroy.

What’s easy can be fun or dangerous. In a matter of minutes you can set up your Blogger, WordPress, Typepad or related blog site. And the minute you post? Your words can be accessed by billions of people around the world. No web designer needs to be hired. No technical guru at x dollars an hour has to listen to and potentially kill your ideas. You own this medium. You have freedom. You can say or site anything. There’s no waste of time and no need to white-board everyone else’s ideas.
It’s so easy but don’t let the impulsive ease of blogging let you forget about the eyes that watch your art, your views, your passions, protests, observations and objections.
How might this medium help – or hurt – your career direction and path?

How it can help:

1. You have an audience. Keep it positive. Blogging may add to the company’s brand and your position as an authority or subject matter expert within your company or your field. Jane S. worked at a powerful, regional advertising company. She cleared her personal blog through her boss, her boss’ boss and her company human resources department. They said she didn’t have to but with my advice she did. During a recession she has received two promotions and her blog has since been incorporated into the main site of the corporation because of its powerful, business development prowess. She says, “Now 40 percent of my time is incorporating my personal brand or blog into the company’s brand with the complete blessing of the executive team.”

2. Paint the right picture. Drive customer confidence. As you cite critical sources and make intelligent, important observations your personal blog augments your position within your company and promotes your company. You never bash your company. You can be yourself and be authentic. James P., a salesman, asked for permission from his company to comment on his business travels and business adventures as a technology sales consultant. Customers love the funny, idiosyncratic stories. James says, “My blog has been a business generator for the company and earned me four speaking engagements on behalf of the company and four speaking engagements locally that were sponsored by local sales networking organizations. I can’t believe it. It’s made me kind of recession-proof in my career!” His first book is being self-published and his company uses him to teach and train all new sales personnel.

3. Get a raise and a promotion. Defend the faith. Blogging helps you document and publish your ideas while associating with great people. Again, Alice P. published her blog under a pseudonym two years ago. Today she has kept the quirky observations about life, travel, art and kids quite eclectic. Her blogging has incorporated funny observations about office life without offending anyone at work. It’s been serialized by the company and referred to. The CEO thought her site should be commented on, featured and linked to by the company to help with esprit de corps. Alice states, “Now I have an in-house company editor who helps me promote and publish my blog. We’ve added videos and more fun stuff. The company pays me monthly.” She keeps her comments happy, funny and still personal.

How blogs can hurt:

1. One small step. Negative posts can be fatal. Blogging can open you up for many legal, liability and employment questions, problems or crises. Last year, Jim C. came to me after he had posted a rather nasty post on his Top Ten Worst Retailers in the World blog. His company did business with two of those retailers and as nosy or highly-sensitive corporate personnel found out about his lambaste it caused a rift at the company. According to Jim, “This year for other reasons I was let go. It was not the economy. I crossed the line.”

2. Pictures tell a thousand stories. Larry seemed to pipe up at work a lot about things that bothered him. So he decided to publish a seemingly anonymous blog. As a techy he posted hundreds of comments on political ideas, people he thought should be impeached and railed against what he considered bad taste and fashion. He did this anonymously under a lot of different names. But when he decided to take pictures at the year end Christmas party and publish captions that offended nearly everyone, he was, well, suspended without pay forever (fired).

3. Beautiful art can be destroyed. Craig became disillusioned after an 18-year career. Nearing retirement, his company had promoted three people younger than him to the technology director level. Years ago he had engineered their web presence. Knowing that having no blog presence left his company vulnerable, he found it increasingly interesting and titillating when he created a blog presence, added negative comments to company products and dumped a list of customer complaints onto the proverbial, anonymous IHATEXCOMPANY.com, the site a former employee developed to stick it to the man. Under pressure, the IHATEXCOMPANY.com author faced legal entanglements and gave up Craig’s name as a blogger. Now Craig is in litigation. It’s not looking good.

Imagine you’re an artist like Michelangelo dipping brush to paint; a seemingly limitless creative well. You’re halfway done with your masterpiece, the signature of your worklife and rather spiritual mission. As you take your impossible position on the scaffold to paint more of the Sistine Chapel you have a thought. Imagine you could destroy your Sistine Chapel with one strike of the match. Like the great artist, blogging can help you take ownership of your career and worklife vision. Of course, it can also be just for fun too. But let’s also realize you, like the great artist, have the power to create or destroy your career future with just a few strokes or decisions.

Make sure you know your audience and you understand the potential impact of your newly -minted blog posts. It could make a lasting impression and a permanently positive or negative impact on your career picture.

Paint yours. Paint it well.

John M. O’Connor, MFA, is the President of Career Pro of NC, Inc., a comprehensive career services organization specializing in Executive Outplacement, Corporate Outplacement, Federal/Military Career Transition and Consulting. He was appointed to the Board of Directors (2006) for Raleigh-Wake Human Resources Management Association (RWHRMA.org). He is also a Certified Career Coach, Certified Resume Writer, and Credentialed Career Master.

Guy Kawasaki’s Reality Check

I am reading Guy Kawasaki’s book Reality Check. Here’s little bit about the book from the author. Enjoy!

Posted with vodpod

Source: BNet.com

35 Tips Toward An e-Learning Plan For Your Organization

I saw this, of all places, on the San Diego City College site under their military education department. It is really, quite a well put together list of tips, things to do, and think about when forging out into the world of online learning and training. Enjoy!

1: First Things First

The “e” in e-Learning stands for education — we too often forget that — it is not about bandwidth, servers, and cables. It is about education – first and foremost.

2: Find Your Roadmap

Do your homework understanding the basics of e-Learning — terminology, types of systems, resources available. The task seems daunting at first, but keep reading, asking questions and recognize that it is a cumulative process.

3: The Times They Are-a-Changing

Training organizations must rethink their mission, redesign their metrics, and retool their staff. From “We deliver classroom training that we think someone might need” to “We work with the entire company organization — senior management to individual learners — to provide whatever is needed at each stage of the learning life-cycle”; From “butts in seats” (or even “happy butts in seats”) to “discovered gaps addressed and met effectively as shown by multiple levels of assessment”; From “stand-up trainer” to “multi-modal consultant” (or from “a cadre of stand-up trainers” to “a team of learning specialists: analysts, assessors, designers, builders, and deliverers.”)

4: There is a Place and a Time For Everything

Be assured that e-Learning is not a silver bullet. Refrain yourself from using e-Learning for every training/learning opportunity. There is a place for e-Learning, but it is not appropriate in every circumstance.

5: Know & Respect

Know your team/role expectations and then communicate effectively with the entire team. I suggest brainstorming with the team to determine the most effective way and including IT resources. Respect all team members.

6: Start Small, Grow Later

If you’re just starting out with e-Learning, target a course that is small but high visibility for your organization. After it is deployed successfully, developing future courses will become more easily acceptable.

7: Learning Is Learning Is Learning

e-Learning is just a media, a small “e” in front of learning. Thus, everything fundamental about learning applies as well.

8: e-Learning = Learning

Be sure to wrap the e-Learning experience with pre-work and/or communication (motivation and preparation), real-time support (either on-line or a point of contact), and post-learning transfer activities (further coaching from manager, follow up communications, post-learning reading and activities, etc.) Just because it’s e-Learning doesn’t mean we should forget all the things we know about adult learning, moving new skills to performance, and enhancing memory.

9: The e-Learner’s Pledge

Recognize the skills that serve e-Learners well: Self Advocacy : “I need to learn”; Self Sufficiency: “I am responsible for my learning”; Self Confidence : “I can Learn”; Learning Process: “I know how I learn” and Self Evaluation: “I know whether I am learning.” Without this recognition, e-Learning is at best acknowledged as difficult.

10: Put Your Toe Slowly In The Water

Be slow with the ‘e’ in e-Learning. It’s always about learning first.

11: Don’t Fix What Isn’t Broken

Sometimes the classroom is the best solution. Keep an open mind and don’t create e-Learning just for the sake of having e-Learning.

12: The Rules Of The Game

Focus on people, then on corporate needs, then on technology.

13: Those That Can, DO

For e-Learning to be effective in business, it has to support “doing,” not only learning. Go back to a fundamental concept in education: behavioral objectives. After an e-Learning session, the student must be able to DO something, not just know something. If you can’t state a behavior that the student can do after the e-Learning session, you may have used the e-Learning tool as a hose to spray a thirsty student instead of as a glass.

14: Unite, Don’t Divide Your students

Before introducing e-Learning, find out more about the basic skills of the students. What proportion use a PC at work? What proportion have the required PC skills? What proportion are able to undertake e-Learning in the working day without prior clearance with a boss? The answers to these questions are critical in designing the overall strategy (and especially important at implementation time). If ignored, there is a possibility of creating or accentuating a digital divide in the students.

15: Show Me The Way

If the main reason you want to implement e-Learning is to save money … stop and ask for directions.

16: Do You e-Learn?

Make sure you experience being an e-Learner yourself before you attempt to deliver a course online.

17: Become an e-Learner

Experience e-Learning first hand to understand the student’s point of view in an e-Learning situation. What are the frustrations? What becomes easy? What do I, as the student, need to do differently? Do I have enough access to my instructor? Do I have access to the other learners? Do I feel connected to the class? Shut out and lonely? By putting oneself in this situation, trainers can begin to understand what they need to build into their design to assist the learners, who are also making the transition to e-Learning.

18: The “Hard Stuff’ Is The “Soft Stuff’

What’s hardest about e-Learning isn’t really the design, development, and technology. What’s hardest about e-Learning is getting learners motivated and organizations energized. Spending time on the “people-side” of e-Learning will pay great dividends.

19: Bottom Line

E-Learning is like any other benefit – staff will not use it if they (a) don’t know about it, (b) don’t understand it, or (c) don’t get it free.

20: First Time?

Consider blending e-Learning with classroom learning as a short mandatory component. This may help people to become comfortable with e-Learning if they haven’t tried it before.

21: Fill The Gap, Don’t Patch It

Do yourself, your organization, and/or your clients the favor of doing the preliminary footwork necessary to honestly determine whether the targeted reason for the proposed training will actually be affected by training. For example, is the “gap” something that can be narrowed via training, or does the underlying reason for the gap lie elsewhere (internal communication, company culture, management, tools, etc.)? Often times large efforts and budgets are expended building solutions to the wrong problems. Take a little time and money up front to properly analyze what should be done and why – it’s a step that will undoubtedly pay for itself several times over (either by preventing unnecessary training from being developed, or by focusing the purpose of the training that is needed).

22: One Step At A Time

First step: think about Learning. Second step: think about e-Learning.

23: Begin By Connecting The Dots

Always always always start with the business need the e-Learning is intended to meet. If you can’t draw a straight line from the course or Performance Support you are proposing to a bottom-line business result, then don’t do it. The only valid way to “make a business case” for e-Learning is to start with the needs of the business.

24: Training Is For Life

If you believe that your training is finished, you may be trained but you are finished.

25: Just Getting Started?

Making It Required May Lead To Success

Often an e-Learning course is successful because it is required. Associating a test with the completion of the e-Learning effort could lead to success especially in an environment new to this method of learning.

26: So Well Said!

On the road to e-Learning, make sure that Learning is in the driving seat, and Technology is in the passenger seat with the map. Learning decides the destination, Technology helps you get there.

27: Start From Square One

Analyze if/when online learning makes sense in your organization. Perform a needs analysis. Is there management buy-in? Do learners have access to the right equipment and software? Analyze which e-Learning delivery method is best: Blended/Hybrid Courses (part classroom, part online); Synchronous (online course, with instruction taking place in real-time via the Internet); Asynchronous (courses taken independently with minimal instructor support).

28: Don’t Get Myopic About e-Learning

E-Learning is only one of the many, many resources available to you to meet your organization’s learning needs. Use it appropriately. I got caught up in the hype until I was forced to step back and gain perspective about all the available tools and resources. As a result, my toolbox is now equipped to handle each job in a more effective and efficient manner.

29: e-Learning = Change

Treat e-Learning as a “Change Initiative,” not just another training program. E-Learning will represent a behavior change for most employees so you and your trainers need to act as “change agents.” If your organization has a Change Management discipline, use some of the techniques to guide you as you implement.

30: Look For Grants In All The Right Places

For associations and other non-profits, look for grants and other funding sources to get started in distance learning. We identified three curriculum development projects of key importance to the conservation profession and I was able to find funding for at least portions of all three, including assistance for our initial venture into distance learning. Once we gain experience, expertise, a body of courses, and (happy) learners, we anticipate that future projects will be more time and cost-effective.

31: Practice Safe e-Learning

For your first attempt to launch e-Learning in a slightly skeptical organization which has accepted the Business Case but is awaiting the outcome with interest, select a topic of enterprise wide significance which is needed by as many employees as possible and has to be delivered in a very short time. The message is to focus on an operational problem/challenge, see it as an opportunity to “‘sell” the e-Learning, produce something good but simple and practical, and go for it. Don’t begin with management development topics where the immediate gain may prove more difficult to specify to everyone’s satisfaction. Be safe, but effective.

32: Use e-Learning To Solve Specific “Pain Points”

Don’t go for an all-out Napoleonic attack with e-Learning, it might just result in your Waterloo. Rather, focus on a few pain points that can be best solved with e-Learning and just go after these.

33: Use e-Learning To “Info-Include”

e-Learning is a very good way to allow people to acquaint themselves with computers and the Internet. If you have “info-excluded” people that you want to involve and gain exposure to IT, try e-Learning with any content that helps this person to develop their competency on the job.

34: The Grandma Rule

If you are just starting out with e-Learning in your company, assume that your people know as much about computers as your grandmother. Then you won’t be too off base as you work towards changing their paradigms.

35: First Impressions Stick

Make sure a learner’s first experience of e-Learning is a good one or else they won’t try again.

5 More Reasons To Love Your Mac (PC Magazine)

I saw this nice little article on PC Mag.com and had to share. Some of these I knew and some are now favorites. Enjoy!

Everyone has secrets—even your Mac. And your Mac may be your friend, your best friend, or even your only friend, but there are still a few things it’s not going to share with you no matter how close the two of you are. Did you know that your Mac can proofread—out loud? That it can help you create new keyboard shortcuts in most apps? Are you familiar with its security tricks? Its productivity skills? Come along as we uncover some of your Mac’s more exotic capabilities. Some you probably already know about. But we’re willing to wager that most will be new to you, though they’ve all been around at least since Panther (OS 10.3) and some have been a part of the Mac experience for as long as we can remember. Let’s get started.

Read more…

(Image Credit – PC Mag.com)

5 Tools That Help Your Sales Team Succeed

By MediaBrains

What does it take to achieve sales success? A near-infinite number of experts have pondered, theorized, and philosophized about the answer to this basic question. But when you break down that mountain of opinions (at least the credible ones) it becomes clear that they all have some elements in common.

1. No dead-end leads
In a successful sales strategy, salespeople are not asked to pursue, or even to initially contact, an unqualified lead. Ensure the prospect is shopping for what you’re selling before the lead ever reaches your sales department. Otherwise, you’re wasting salespeople’s time, a valuable commodity. The best way to do this is to place advertising where buyers in your market are already searching for your product or service. Send only qualified leads their way, and salespeople will spend their time wisely and profitably.

2. A tried and true process
You have your sales team screened, hired and trained on the features and benefits of your product. Now it’s time for them to step up to the plate. But what’s their sales approach? Did you think through the possible sales techniques and make an informed choice about what would work most effectively for your product and market? If not, your team may not hit the home run you’re hoping for. Take the time to think about what approach would work best for the sales environment your reps will be facing. Once the process is in place, keep an eye on its progress. Determine what the salespeople do with those leads and (if possible) how many resulted in a sale.

3. Armed with the right tools
A sales team must have the tools necessary to complete the job successfully. If a rep has no leave-behinds or follow-up materials, they are losing the race before they ever leave the gate. Arm your sales team with the knowledge and materials (online and in print) they need to do their job effectively. And make sure your brand is represented…and easily reachable…online. Your brand should be visible on reputable websites where industry buyers go to do research before purchasing.

4. Data intelligence
To succeed, you must have a good handle on what’s working, and what’s not. Spend your budget on the right advertising – that which produces qualified leads. To make sure you’re doing that, track the performance of your marketing programs. No longer is marketing an ambiguous function that’s nearly impossible to track and measure. One of the draws of online marketing is that it has taken the guesswork and mystery out of measuring an ad’s performance. Pick your key metrics – focus on 1 or 2 metrics which show clear progress toward the goal.

5. Secure the future
Once the sale is made, the job shouldn’t be done. At least it’s not for successful sales organizations. Follow-up and relationship building should be a part of the sales process, not a “nice-to-have” extra. Strive to make every company you do business with a long-term customer. When new products and services come out, make sure your best customers from the past know about the new options available to them. To ensure this long-term relationship building happens, it is marketing’s job to provide salespeople reasons to keep in touch with customers. Newsletters, white papers and press releases keep your name at the front of the customer’s mind long after the initial sale is completed.

Make sure your sales strategy incorporates these tools and your salespeople will be on the road to success.

-Source: MediaBrains September 15, 2008 newsletter.

FoxTab Add-on For Firefox Browser Rocks!

From CNet News

One of my buddies just tipped me off to a must-have tab management add-on for Firefox. It’s called FoxTab, and it’s a cross between Mac OS X’s Expose, Windows Vista’s Flip 3D, and the thumbnail view in Google Chrome. When you’ve got a lot of tabs open in Firefox, this offers a quick way to jump to the page you want without having to eyeball the name of each one.

To toggle it on you just hit a small keyboard shortcut and it zooms out all the tabs into a giant wall. You can also summon it with a small button that sits next to the address bar, or by choosing it from the right click menu. Once opened, you simply pick which tab you want to see by clicking it, or simply scrolling with your mouse wheel. It’s not nearly as smooth as Tab Effect, an eye candy tab switching add-on Rafe wrote about back in September of last year, but it’s neat nonetheless.

Read more…

Choose from up to 4 different views. Below are two: scrolling and circular.

Web Working Team Work Just Got A Whole Lot Easier With Wiggio

Are you on a virtual team? Are you amongst the next generation web workers of the world? Then Wiggio is for you!

From Wiggio’s About Page
As seniors at Cornell, we started wiggio out of our own frustrations with unnecessarily clogged inboxes, using five different websites for five different functions, and all the other hassles associated with working in groups. We were tired of sending eleven emails back and forth just to set a meeting time. We were tired of that guy who just never knows where and when to be there. We were tired of list-servs, contact lists, phone-chains and incompatibilities. We wanted everything to be in one place, and we wanted it simple. So we created wiggio.

Wiggio lets you use the following group tools, and it’s all for free!

• Messages— send mass text messages, voice messages and emails from wiggio
• Calendar— keep a shared group calendar that will send you text message reminders before all your meetings, practices, rehearsals, games and other events
• Poll—survey your entire group and get their responses as they answer
• Folder— dump all your groups’ files into one folder and never send another attachment
• Meetings— never walk 15 minutes through the snow to get to a 10 minute meeting again… setup free conference calls and web chats on Wiggio
• Links— keep a shared favorites folder

Hall Davidson Talks About Cell Phones In Education – NECC 2008

By Mark van’t Hooft

It’s in your pocket: teaching spectacularly with cell phones. Great speech by Hall Davidson from Discovery Education Network about using mobile phones in education, the kind of talk many teachers and administrators need to hear. The first thing Hall said was to take out and turn on our cell phones

There is a large potential for cell phones in education, but current best practices are small. Mobiles have lots of functionality, including:

• Telephone
• Text messenger
• Still camera
• Video camera
• Video player
• GPS device
• Podcaster
• Music player

Are we really going to ignore a device this powerful? Can we, when it has all kinds of applications for teaching, learning, school-to-home, administration?

In general, we still take cell phones away, and school districts ban them (e.g. during school hours). However, if this is a tool for adults, we need to teach kids how to use it.

Read more…

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- Jeffrey Veen Taps Into eLearning For Start Conference
- Twitter Is For The ADD Generation – Part 1

Kevin Kelly of WIRED Talks At TED About The Web’s Next 5000 Days

Kevin Kelly is one of those guys I could listen to for a time and then have to walk away and ponder on all the implications of the information I have just received. He is one of a handful of people I greatly admire. At the “5000 Day” mark, Kevin talks about the next 5000 days of the Worldwide Web and makes some interesting predictions. The clip is about 20 minutes long, but well worth the time. Sit back and listen to what Kevin has to say.

Jeffrey Veen Taps Into eLearning For Start Conference

By E. Brown

While on a recent panel discussion, Jeffrey Veen noticed something…

I was on a panel at this year’s South by Southwest talking about the role of analytics in design. With me were two veterans of the advertising industry who’s work included some of the biggest ad campaigns of the past few years – some really amazing stuff. I started the conversation by saying how the remarkable amount of audience data available to us gives designers tremendous power to affect user experiences. My collegues suggested my approach sucked the creativity out of design. I countered that they were mistaking preferential research from behavioral. The argument heated up.

While this was happening, my phone was buzzing non-stop. I slipped it out of my pocket to discretely turn it off, but noticed a stream of Twitters going by – many from audience members in the room. So I set the phone down on the table in front of me and kept an eye on it. I’m so glad I did.

As the conversation on stage continued, the stream of questions and comments from the audience intensified. I changed my tactics based on what I saw. I asked questions the audience was asking, and I immediately felt the tenor of the room shift towards my favor. It felt a bit like cheating on an exam.

I guess it really wasn’t cheating, but it does illustrate one of the frustrations I’ve had at conferences lately. Most of the events I attend have a rich conversation happening in the room, yet the only people not able to participate are those on stage. A couple times, I’ve seen organizers project a live IRC channel, but that usually bring out the worst in people (“First!!!111″) – and is terribly distracting. So I’ve been wondering for a while if there was something smart we could do at our conference.

Apparently, Bryan had the same idea. As we were planning Start, he said, “We should have someone onstage the whole time to represent the audience. Like an ombudsman does for a newspaper.” (for more visit Jeffrey’s blog)

This is community driven synchronous learning at it’s best! Why do we often think learning has to be limited to traditional “learning environments”? Learning happens every moment of every day. Unfortunately, there is often a monologue going on inside each of our heads as we learn new things about ourselves, others, and the world around us. Yet now, with the social networking and collaborative tools available, we no longer have to settle for a monologue — we can have a dialog. And, the fact is, we are!

Learning On The Road
Mobile devices incorporate much of the new social networking technology. Whether you’re a tweeter, yelper, IM’er, ichatter, texter, blogger, vlogger, or whatever, there is a conversation going on. It is constantly going on around us. You see people talking and texting in cars, trains, buses, and planes. Even during meetings there are other conversations going on (some related to the meeting, some related to the speaker, and some totally unrelated).

Those of us in the learning profession have seen synchronous and asynchronous learning happening for years. Utilizing the latest tools and technologies to further equip learners is what good trainers do.

Speakers Do The Same
Who is my audience? What do I want them to learn? Is it practical? What is the best way(s) to communicate and transfer information to them? How can I make it “stick”? How can the audience take and apply what they learn?

These are questions any good communicator/trainer should be asking. So, what have you learned today?

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10 Cool Tips About Gmail

1. Gmail’s system of organizing emails into conversations (a collection of all the messages in an exchange) makes it easy to keep track of the various messages in a discussion.
2. You can access Gmail from a cellphone or other mobile device. Just start up your phone’s browser and point it to http://gmail.com to sign in.
3. Although you can have periods in your Gmail address, Gmail doesn’t actually recognize periods—it treats the address exactly the same with or without the periods. So if your Gmail address is jesse.smith@gmail.com, emails sent to jessesmith@gmail.com or even j.e.s.s.e.s.m.i.t.h@gmail.com will reach you.
4. If you’re reading an email and want to set up a filter for this message and similar ones, click More Actions and select “Filter messages like these”. (You can also select messages in a mailbox, and then choose this option.) Gmail shows the filter options with the sender’s From address already filled in. From there, you can filter by sender and/or any of the other filtering criteria.
5. Gmail scans your emails, looks for keywords, and then pairs the email with advertising that relates to those keywords. Usually, one ad’s displayed above the message you’re reading and several others are on the right-hand side of the page (they’re easy to ignore). But Gmail tries to keep things tasteful, so if you receive an email about a tragedy, such as a death in the family, you won’t see any ads at all.
6. You can set up your Gmail account so that messages sent to your other email accounts arrive in your Gmail inbox. That way, you can check all your email accounts in one place. Even better, in Gmail, you can send emails so that they look like they come from your various email accounts.
7. If you write emails in more than one language, Gmail tries to guess the language of the email you’re working on and uses the appropriate dictionary. (If Gmail’s wrong, next to the Check Spelling link, click the arrow, and, from the list that appears, select the language you want.)
8. You can chat with your AOL Instant Messenger buddies through Gmail’s version of Google Talk. In Gmail’s left-hand Chat section, click the Options link and select “Sign into AIM”, then follow the directions.
9. To help protect you from viruses and other Internet threats, Gmail neither sends nor receives executable files—they typically have the file extension .exe—which can launch programs and wreak havoc on your computer.
10. Instead of folders to file your messages in, Gmail uses labels to organize messages. You can assign more than one label to a message, so you have several ways of finding it and don’t have to remember which folder you put it in.

Source: Amazon.com, Google Apps: The Missing Manual