Testing

My blog doesn't seem to be updating and yet I am posting. Is something going on with blogger?

Looking for Good Examples

Help! I'm looking for some input: good examples of software product training. Good stuff that stands out from the crowd.

I'm working on a pitch to a software company -- technical audience (think database guys). This training will be incorporated into their website -- available free to everyone -- so it's got to have a polished look with marketing appeal, but not be filled with fluffy stuff -- "just give me the content I need, now."

I've done about 8 gazillion software training programs in my time. I think some of them I've even done fairly well. That said, I've never done eLearning for a truly technical audience group (I think these are the types who typically don't read a manual, but dive right in and only come up for air when they get stuck).

Have you seen anything recently that stood out to you? That made you say wow?

A Deserted Second Life

An interesting read from Wired.com on Second Life and Corporate America. How companies are spending millions and yet no one comes.

How Madison Avenue is Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life (Wired 7-24-07)

What's behind this stampede is not that hard to divine. "A terror has gripped corporate America," says Joseph Plummer, chief research officer at the Advertising Research Foundation, an industry think tank. Plummer has been around Madison Avenue since the early '60s, when modern advertising techniques materialized. "The simple model they all grew up with" — the 30-second spot, delivered through the mass reach of television — "is no longer working. And there are two types of people out there: a small group that's experimenting thoughtfully, and a large group that's trying the next thing to come through the door." Second Life appeals to the latter — the ones who are afraid of missing out, who don't consider half a million dollars to be a lot of money, and who haven't figured out (or don't want to admit) that Second Life is less than the bold new frontier it appears to be.

Well, I do know that some educators are experimenting thoughtfully with Second Life (Karl Kapp, for one). And I also know that there's a lot of hype and a lot of people who haven't bought into the whole notion of even having a second life.

My SL stats:

• I have an account and an avatar named Bliss Yue.
• I read about SL a lot. (I think my secondlife category in deli.ci.ous has more articles than any other category).
  
• I have never actually gone into SL (my laptop doesn't have the right video card). But it's on my to-do list for this week (as it has been on my to do list for the last month).

What about you? Do you have a Second Life? How often do you access your account? What have you done?

I'm definitely interested in getting myself in there and would like to arrange a meeting of bloggers, if you're interested. But it's been low on my list....

Is Facebook the next Microsoft?

Have you seen this article from TechCrunch: Could Facebook Become The Next Microsoft?

My Top Ten Tools for Jane Hart

Jane Hart asked me to add my own top ten list to the mix.

I'm not a techie -- far from it. I'm an instructional designer with an emphasis on writing and schmoozing. For the most part, I like tools that are easy to use, easy to learn, look good, and create good-looking output.

Here goes:

1) The Google Brand

• iGoogle My starting point for just about every online activity.
• Google Reader All the news I need to know about e-Learning in one place.
• Google Alerts A nice adjunct to Google Reader; I'm always discovering something new via my "instructional design" alert.
• Gmail Gmail love.

2) FireFox I made the switch from IE 6 a few months ago and I love it. Although I think my love affair is mostly with the Tab feature, which IE has as well.

3) Blogger It's part of the Google brand, but it merits its own line item. Blogger is what I started with, so I feel sort of stuck with it. It does the job.

4) Adobe Flash I don't actually develop a thing with Flash myself, but our designers and programmers do some fabulous stuff with it! As an instructional designer, I feel like I can design just about anything and these really smart people can do something with it in Flash.

5) SnagIt Great for screen captures.

6) Microsoft PowerPoint Yes, there's lots of groaning about PowerPoint. But I like to use it as a simple wireframe tool. I can't program to save my life, but I can create a course flow mockup using PowerPoint that gets my ideas across to those who can make it look really good.

7) MediaWiki Wiki love. And I've only been using it for my own project documentation. Haven't even gotten into the collaborative aspect.

8) Facebook It's only been a few weeks, but Facebook has given me a whole new warm and fuzzy feeling. I got a cupcake for my birthday! What could be better than that?

9) Bugtracker by FogBugz We've been using this bug tracking software in-house for the last few months. It's inexpensive, easy to use, customizable, and sends email notifications when bugs come in and when they get resolved.

10) Paper Call me old school, but I still like to take notes with pen and paper. I carry a composition book around with me most of the time to record meeting notes, brainstorm, jot down other peoples' great ideas, and doodle.

Updating My Blog

Lately, I've been having blog envy. Wordpress and Typepad blogs look moh' bettah to me.

They have tabs. Tabs seem more professional, they make a blog feel more like a "real" website.

The blogs I envy are very white (Michele Martin's blog comes to mind).

Rather than making a big switch to another tool, which just seems like an enormous pain in the tuckus, I've decided to work with what I have -- which is Blogger. I'll start with a crisper look.

I don't think Blogger has tabs yet, but I bet that will come in time.

So here's what I did:

I chose a different Blogger template: one with less color, more white.

I decided I wanted a picture in my banner to create some visual interest. But I didn't like what Blogger did with the image when I first uploaded it -- the only option was to place the text right on top of the image. So I created a new banner in Photoshop -- took another apple photo and added some text. My Photoshop skills are minimal, but this task I could handle.

That's it. Took about 20 minutes.

Shake things up a bit. Still trying to motivate myself after a week of vacation, I suppose.

So -- what do you think?

Google Desktop, Sidebar and Dual Monitors

Wendy Wickham has been posting about her Google Sidebar experiments. So, in the interest of trying to be more of a geek and trying to play hard with all the new tools that are out there, I went ahead and installed it.

My first impression was, why bother? It's just my iGoogle page in a sidebar.

I found a good LifeHacker article expounding on the wonders of the Google Sidebar. And it is kind of cool. But....

I think the reason I may not be getting it, is that I work with two monitors. Dual monitors lets me have Mozilla open on one screen, while working in another application on the other screen. I know when there's something new to read (gmail, rss) and I always have easy access to search.

Other benefits of working with two monitors:

1) Have a source document open on one screen and be writing a proposal/storyboard/script on the other.
2) Watch an online Adobe Connect presentation in one screen and blog about it in the other.
3) Read Outlook messages in one and find a file in the other.
4) QA an application in one window, have bugtracker open in the other.

The uses are endless and I don't think I could ever go back to a single monitor. With monitors so cheap these days, why not try it yourself?

Back to the Google Desktop -- I'm playing around a bit with the searching capabilities and am seeing the light. Tony Karrer has often written about his complete reliance on desktop search.

I'm struggling a bit with figuring out how to set the preferences so that it searches where I need it to search (I save most of my files to a shared network drive; not locally). And I think I just figured it out: set your preferences and then let your computer sit idle for a long time so it can "crawl" and create an index.

So the search feature -- I get that and I'm sold. Use Google searchbar to search for documents and files on your desktop, on your network, in your email, on the web. Very useful feature. Does this mean I will never again use Windows Explorer?

I'm not sure if the Sidebar would make me more productive or just more distracted....I don't think I'll become a widget creator myself. I agree with Wendy and her IT buddy: it completely bogs my machine down.