An electronic portfolio, also known as an e-portfolio or digital portfolio, is a collection of electronic evidence assembled and managed by a user, usually on the Web (also called Webfolio). Such electronic evidence may include inputted text, electronic files, images, multimedia, blog entries, and hyperlinks.

E-portfolios are both demonstrations of the user’s abilities and platforms for self-expression, and, if they are online, they can be maintained dynamically over time.

An e-portfolio can be seen as a type of learning record that provides actual evidence of achievement.

What I’ve learned is that more and more the changes of software particularly browser technology can make these obsolete over time. It actually becomes easier to keep a checklist of change management. I have four samples up at any given time – some have been up since 2003.

Interesting note: I met a new neighbor last weekend who needs a Federal contract fulfilled with a relevant accounting training I touched on seven years ago.

Flash and PDF seem to be the containers of choice. They’re always displayable regardless of which browsing technology is used – they all support the industry standard.

Charles Jeter’s ePortfolio links:

Tutorial – Completing Government Cost Accounting System Employee Timesheets (Adobe / Macromedia / Captivate / eHelp RoboDemo 2003)

Help File – Codo Software’s Laser Squad:Nemesis Tactics Guide (RoboHelp X5 FlashHelp, 2002 – 2003)

Rapid eLearning – Collaborative Blogging Overview (Articulate Studio 2009 with elements designed using GlobFX Swiff Chart Pro and Adobe Captivate, 2008)

Effective Curriculum Development – Securing Our eCity (multiple technology for Instructor Led Training, 2009 – 2010, shows results)

Corporate Blogwriting – Blogging in April on the ESET Threatblog (Microsoft Windows Live Writer / WordPress, 2010)

Could Microsoft out-Apple Adobe?

Let’s examine a few trends and remember that Apple beat its competitors in the education market twenty years ago by having a rabid fan base along with compelling intuitive software.  Microsoft Live’s community had 60 million users last time I checked. Working within the existing Live framework will be critical for any Learning Management Systems (LMS) play that Microsoft chooses to do in the future.

The eLearning potential with Microsoft’s (NASD: MSFT) current portfolio of hardware and software, part of which is the XBox brand, is gaining momentum. I’ve been discussing current instructional design trends with instructional designers, consumer media analysts, military training officers, and gamers. We’ve reached current consensus:

There are a lot of benefits to using the XBox 360 as a training / eLearning platform, primarily because of the XBox Live community.

Having solid revenue generating Intellectual Property (IP) in both hardware and software gives a strong advantage to MSFT in this space. Windows Live Mesh is self descriptive; it meshes all the services together.

How Does Live Mesh Work?

From Ten things to know about Microsoft’s Live Mesh | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com

Live Mesh builds on the cloud storage, management, service and provisioning and computational fabric that other Microsoft Live services use. On top of that, Live Mesh uses the same identity, synchronized storage and connectivity services that Microsoft uses for other Live offerings.

The “platform” services (a k a the “developer stack”) include the new Mesh Framework, as well as both a cloud and a client software run-time Mesh Operating Environment (MOE).

Live Mesh “experiences” from Microsoft and third-party providers will build on top of these layers.

Windows Live Mesh will make use of Silverlight as Michael Cote explained in People Over Process » Market Context for Silverlight – A Brief Q&A:

Q: What is your overall feeling about Silverlight at this time?

A: At the moment, Silverlight feels like it’s going to be on a full-on contender with Flash and Flex in a short time. Silverlight 2.0 is supposed to bring in the more “hard core” GUI programming features that Flex has.

Perhaps Microsoft’s Mesh project will address the offline synch tick-list of AIR. Then, the battle will be over ubiquity, developer hearts and minds, and control of the web.

Through the PC Silverlight allows some scary-good functionality.

Think about having Instructional Design teams building applications that can reach outside and into the web page itself: From More about Silverlight – Microsoft’s Flex / Flash Competitor

Further to that, Silverlight applications can access and manipulate the browser DOM (meaning they can reach outside and into the webpage itself) so once the Silverlight runtime is more common expect to see many developers of web applications tap into Silverlight for both a performance increase and for better visual enhancements and user experience.

This is important. We are now looking at two-way communication with Silverlight.

Available Silverlight eLearning Tools

I’ve seen a growing demand in Google hits on my site for how to take Captivate content and put it into Silverlight. People are asking about how to take the output from this market dominating tool and repurpose it into Silverlight and this is only the beginning.

Imagine having software tutorials buildable by instructional design staff that can be quickly hashed into something usable for the XBox 360, through XBox Live, or through Windows Live Mesh…

La Jolla-based MadCap Software’s Mimic (Adobe Captivate and TechSmith Camtasia competitor) outputs in Silverlight format. I haven’t heard whether TechSmith or Adobe are intending to put this into their products within the next release cycle.

Where is eLearning in all of this?

There are some other very significant benefits aside from Silverlight; meshing all of these services together adds Windows Live Writer and Instant Messaging in as well.

One benefit is in reaching people through advertising as well as explaining the process: Simple Instructions Work Best and Sell Products

Finding your audience is something that every Marketing person desires to do. Explaining a process so that an audience gets the point is what every Technical Communicator desires to do.

With Microsoft’s Live platform they’ve integrated both of these within their Instant Messaging client.

Regarding Windows Live Writer from Web 2.0 – Windows Live Writer reviewed for blogging:

Yet another entry from MSFT into the Web 2.0 space such as with the Silverlight framework which allows two-way communication from a website, and oh yes… this is for free. That’s pretty disruptive.

Adding to the chaos is the mash of what has occurred within the current eLearning space. Market analysis of eLearning from 2008 Corporate Learning Factbook Values U.S. Training Market at $58.5B:

* E-learning has grown dramatically. The use of self-study e-learning now accounts for 20% of student hours, up from last year’s figure of 15%.

This growth is driven largely by an increase in online training among small organizations (100-999 employees), which are acquiring the skills and technology to make online training a reality.

Analysis: Adobe Media Player, my @%$

The shaky economy plays into this. Re-education of adults is becoming a critical factor in economic restructuring. If industry is closing down, concessions from the unions force retraining. Cost efficient training is a growth industry.

While Adobe (NASD: ADBE)is repositioning itself and firing divisions, Microsoft has an advantage into the eLearning market and can leverage their existing Rich Internet Applications. If MSFT can duplicate what Apple did in the 1980s and entrench themselves into education, it will mean long term success in a disrupted market which has $58.5 billion in potential.

This model could effectively work even with a poor economy and would build an OS-free eLearning model built on IP within hardware and software which could be used globally.

Labor Day 2008 | About Randy Pausch

For over a month now I’ve been trying to figure out how to post about Randy Pausch’s death last month from pancreatic cancer. What his final lecture meant to a lot of people, what it meant to me wasn’t about cancer, it was about how you live.

My dad passed away last year from complications from a pancreatic tumor. According to wikipedia, Randy underwent the same drastic surgery as my father. That’s a 13 hour surgery. No walk in the park. Both Randy and my father, however, lived well past the estimates of medical science. They had their own positive mental attitude (PMA) which burned within them.

That similarity wasn’t why Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture was so profound for me. Positive Mental Attitude: Randy had it in spades. His lecture was so profound six million views and counting were seen on YouTube.

My Lesson: Sacrifice and Responsibility

You learn a lot about yourself being the person responsible for someone. Whether as a parent or in caretaking a parent, it changes us when we are forced to accept or reject life and death responsibility for another human being.

I learned a lot about myself in the past four years and my opinion is that most people don’t know what’s important in their lives until they are confronted with life and death decisions. It’s not something that can be adequately described. It’s a large part of why I posted my essays on Martin Luther King Day and Memorial Day on this blog.

Communication, Education and Teamwork Balanced

It’s amazing what priorities we will set, what sacrifice is defined by when everything else becomes placed into proper perspective. My personal experiences in the past four years make me realize several things.

Lifelong learning is important. Passing those skills along through education is important. Communication with others and the tone and impact of my voice is equally as important. Both for my family and for my community as a whole. Passing a desire to learn rather than simply driving content – that is a finesse that is reserved for the best of teachers.

Whether in a workplace or in a family, teamwork, communication, and education will make or break the team. Randy had it nailed, and I’m still working on it with mixed but mostly good results. 

Randy’s Lecture Defines What’s Important

In a showcase for how to change video into eLearning, Gabe’s Word of Mouth Blog features Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture in Presenter format. The lecture, a YouTube top favorite, has a learning centered focus and is now viewable in smaller chunks and retention is increased due to the formatting and sidenotes.

If you want to learn from Randy Pausch the first time around and in the best eLearning format possible watch this rather than just the YouTube video. You will love both the content and the container it comes in.

See it today.

Australia’s Learning Object Debate

Are flash based Learning Objects dead?  They sure are expensive – since 2001 the Teaching & Learning Federation (TLF) has used “AUD$123 million ….. divided by 6300 curriculum items.

That’s close to AUD$20,000 for each single (eg, Flash) TLF curriculum item,” observed Stephen Loosley

One of the comments had this to say in defense of the cost:

Using a purely economic argument in this discussion is flawed from the start because the real cost of the digital content produced by The Learning Federation is shared by the 3 million plus school children across Australia (using 2007 census data).

A $20,000 Learning Object if only ever used only once by one third of this population equates to a one-off cost of less than 2 cents per student. The reality is that the best of these objects will have a much greater rate of use and for some a longer shelf-life.

Sales of tools such as Adobe Captivate / eHelp RoboDemo brought the cost down for learning objects. Before that it was Flash programming for hours and hours. My question is one of usage. How would anyone know what the value of the content is if they can’t chart the usage statistics properly?

Sounds like a client for Articulate Online or some other LMS. What a case study. Actually, this might be a good time for the administrators to release some usage data justifying the cost of these presentations / learning objects.

Curious about what the background characters mean in the Olympics? Pick up one of these kits and teach yourself Chinese in a weekend.

Lazy me, I was doing a LinkedIn search reconnecting to old acquaintances from old squadrons I’ve been in (Shamrocks) and ran across the profile for this product.

I’ve been meaning to find a quick way to pick up kanji style languages and this looks perfect. These small word magnets are really cool. This is also going to be my hot Christmas gift this year as well since the price is only $20.

Learn Chinese Faster with IdeoLingo Word Magnets. Better Than Flashcards!

IdeoLingo® – Better Than Flashcards

IdeoLingo® is a Southern California-based company that develops fun and innovative study aids for students learning languages whose words and concepts are represented by ideograms.

These languages include but are not limited to Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

Localizing For Dummies: Use MadCap Lingo

Of course MadCap Software has put a focus out for their localization services and their program Lingo has accolades for Chinese localization through XML.

With a strong Asian customer base, GPRO makes its technology solutions—along with the supporting documentation—available in English, simplified Chinese, and traditional Chinese versions. Since April 2008, GPRO has used the MadCap Lingo integrated content authoring and translation memory system together with MadCap Flare for content authoring and multi-channel delivery.

Where it once took up to six months to deliver a documentation project, GPRO now uses MadCap Lingo and Flare to complete the project in just one month.

Clearly Technical Communicators don’t have to learn Chinese in order to do documentation, however it’s just SO COOL that I recommend it. My philosophy is to pick up any bits of language that you can. When you’re done, IdeoLingo would even look cool on your fridge.

A Little Sight Recognition Goes A Long Way

While in the Navy, flash cards weren’t portable enough for me and my retention could have been better. Even so, while running around Hong Kong during Christmas 1994, my friends were (easily) impressed with how I was the first to find the subway, never got lost, and always found good food and cool stuff. After I got out of the Navy, sitting at the computer and crunching through exercises just didn’t fit into my time schedule. 

And then there’s my cautionary overseas travel tale… Now everyone can see how I got to be such a fan of eLearning software – cuts down on the travel hell.

Stand-up Training Culture Shock | Avoiding Gaijin Syndrome

My interest in cultural situational awareness was revived in 2000 with a last minute Fourth of July business trip to Taiwan. Those guys at Novatel Wireless must have really trusted me a lot to send me off by myself. Then again, the trip meant missing 4th of July stateside. For the millennium bash.

My favorite holiday, Fourth of July, was now a casualty of the sales contract specifics. And my status as junior man in the Applications Engineering department.

I’d watched the inflight movie Mission to Mars about seventeen times prior. This was due to my two month whirlwind onsite client support and product training tour courtesy of Novatel Wireless. They showed it again on the flight down to Taipei.

I’d never been to Taiwan but had previously been to Japan and Hong Kong. This time however, I was on my own. On my own after being picked up at midnight by one of the engineers in a Hsinchu technology park that looked like any other suburb. In a hotel that made Motel 6 look like the Hilton. With three channels on the TV and no CNN.

At least the hotel was across from the office I would be going to in the morning. 

I didn’t understand a thing anywhere. Three years before that Bill Murray movie Lost in Translation described utter culture shock I was living it for three straight days. A few books, no internet in the hotel, nothing to read or watch on TV, and no magazines in English.

Adding jet lag to that meant total sensory deprivation. My Palm V didn’t have enough juice to make a decent eBook and of course the travel charger cord was not the right type.

Of course the great thing is that GEEK is spoken globally, and the engineers I met with were really cool – even if most of the communication was one way with one guy translating. Once we got into AT command sets for the wireless modems it was like binary code between computers; we understood each other perfectly in machine language.

Of course there were no fireworks on the Fourth of July. I couldn’t even find a beer near my little Motel 6. That’s fine because by 4pm I was exhausted and crashed big time until 4am.

Things perked up after I made my way to Taipei. After a three hour bumpy taxi ride through back roads and past rice paddies I checked into a plush Starwood / Sheraton and had an hourlong shower.

Walking the city streets was amazing, and I tried my best to get lost. Blending in could have been a bit easier for me, I looked only about six inches taller than average but my surfing tan gave away my Western heritage. A deep California tan made me stick out about as much as I would have in Denmark.  

The good news was that I had learned to memorize the airport airline signage on the way out so I knew where I needed to come back to… That saved me on my return because the ticket desks were switched out as contracting airlines came and went.

I had to watch Mission to Mars yet one more time as this airline showed it on the return leg. Best thing ever, the DVD player was broken and we got to watch Mission to Mars…

Over and over and over. Three times, yes, three times in one flight.

Only just this year did I watch Mission to Mars again. I’d blocked it from my memory not unlike a traumatic train wreck it seems. I didn’t even recall the ending. Some eight years later it was surprising and pleasant, just like the first time I saw it. 

Back To The Review…

One of the IdeoLingo founders relates how the concept came about…

I experimented with several software programs but none allowed for hands-on manipulation or rearranging words and characters. Magnets seemed to be the perfect solution. I found a company to produce the magnets and asked my Chinese teacher to help me develop the initial vocabulary list.

A year later, production on these magnets began. After a quick self-tutorial of Adobe Illustrator, six proofs later and one test print, the first IdeoLingo® Chinese Magnet Kit was produced in Spring 2006.”

Free Consulting for IdeoLingo: Try PC and Flash

My recommendation for IdeoLingo might be to develop an expansion pack based on Windows, to help aid navigation of localized PC screens. Giving the tiles Windows colors would also be great marketing.

Another technical usage of these pre-existing Adobe Illustrator files might be for a Flash-based tutorial for use on a mobile phone or PDA. Something quick to enhance the study, nothing expensive. Adobe Illustrator files output to Flash, and keeping the screen size small enough to view with clarity would be simple. Keeping the same color scheme makes it easier to see in bright light, and gives a downloadable format that opens another sales channel.

IdeoLingo Analysis: KISS Rule In Force

What I find interesting is that first, this is a complete home developed product. Second, it’s cheap, portable, easy to understand. Third, the primary color usage is brilliant.

Keeping it simple, simply works in this application. There’s enough data here to navigate around Hong Kong or Taipei and count your change accurately. Plenty for a gaijin like me (yes, I know that’s a Japanese term) to get himself around and simple enough to learn on the 14 hour flight to Taiwan or other destinations.

For the price they’re asking, IdeoLingo is on my Christmas list for my more adventurous friends!

According to this BNet article referencing a recent Bersin & Associates study, overall corporate spending on training products and services grew from $15.8B in 2006 to $16.38B in 2007. This is as the total market grew slightly from $55.8B to $58.5B

Let’s hear it for eLearning

eLearning’s growth is phenomenal with a 5% increase in one year for self-study / computer based training, attributed mainly to online training adoption by small organizations. All of this is in line with the top technologies I’ve been tracking.

* E-learning has grown dramatically. The use of self-study e-learning now accounts for 20% of student hours, up from last year’s figure of 15%.

This growth is driven largely by an increase in online training among small organizations (100-999 employees), which are acquiring the skills and technology to make online training a reality.

Web 2.0 – Creating conversations and pushing knowledge

Notice within the article about the study the Web 2.0 effect on learning:

* The younger generation of learners is driving changes in learning strategies. This year’s study shows a sharp increase in new web-based and collaborative learning resources, such as podcasts, communities of practice, blogs, and wikis.

Trend alert: More space for consultants, less offshore content developing

According to the article, outside consulting is growing along with content developed and tailored specifically for the company. 

* Reliance on outsourcing continues to increase in two categories: the use of outside instructors and custom content development. Outsourcing of LMS administration showed a decline in 2007, as did use of offshore content developers.

Consulting Market Analysis: Focus on PnP

To me this shows a concentration on Policy and Procedure (PnP) along with the realization that corporate workflow is now able to be quickly corrected through on-demand training.

As far as the decline of outsourcing LMS administration I would have to read the study further, as well as to to analyze the decline of offshore content developers. As far as  whether this was limited to LMS content or across the board, I would offer that there has recently been an industry wide offshoring backlash.

Let’s talk about Learning Management

Along with the LMS Intellectual Property fight that Blackboard has (tentatively) lost, it appears that LMS usage is still prevalent and the new niche seems to be the mid-market buyer.

The article states:

* Today 38% of organizations are using a learning management system (LMS), with the highest growth in usage among mid-market buyers.

Trend alert: Blended Learning software tool sales are increasing

Now application simulation and rapid eLearning are normal along with cost effective. Tools such as Adobe Captivate, MadCap Mimic, and Camtasia gained a foothold in corporate learning over five years ago with a small market share. What was once only considered bleeding edge technology is quickly becoming the norm.

From the article:

Over half of all companies are using a virtual classroom tool, and between 20 to 30% are using application simulation and rapid e-learning tools.

Blended Learning methods such as virtual classrooms are becoming more available with technology. I’ve been checking some of the virtual classroom technology that’s now available and it has been pretty out of this world.

Educational content has a place in driving consumer sales…

I’ve revisited the HDTV content delivery methods in a recent article as well. I see a definite trend towards marketing through instruction, and with the digital TV deadline only a year away, there are competitive edges that broadcast TV will have against the pipelines such as cable and DSL.

FYI: If you’re in Florida…

A lot of you reading this may be in Florida for eLearning conferences this month. The 2008 Factbook findings are the foundation for benchmarking workshops held at Bersin & Associates’ upcoming research conference, IMPACT 2008: The Business of Talent, April 22-24, in St. Petersburg, FL. Here are a couple relevant books by Josh Bersin:

The Blended Learning Book: Best Practices, Proven Methodologies, and Lessons Learned by Josh Bersin Read more about this book…

The Training Measurement Book: Best Practices, Proven Methodologies, and Practical Approaches by Josh Bersin Read more about this book…

Related Articles:

• My favorite eLearning & Tech Comm Books
• Best Practices: DevBlogs and eLearning Content Development | eLearning under $1000
• In case you wondered… HDTV Over The Air
• eLearning, Gaming & Tech Comm are new Adobe focus
• Rich free resource of Tech Comm data

I recently was drawn to this video from a small Microsoft IM advertisement because – well, everyone wants to save time. Folding my own laundry is something that I (and most people do to save money and look neat.

Audience: Everyone

Folding a t-shirt faster simply helps everyone. This instructional video is being chosen by savvy web marketers as a way to draw people into their space, whether it’s for ordering t-shirts or printing on t-shirts, or… well you get the point. VideoJug uses this how-to instructional clip as a portal for driving people to their site. Microsoft promoted it and I tried it out.

Finding your audience is something that every Marketing person desires to do. Explaining a process so that an audience gets the point is what every Technical Communicator desires to do. With Microsoft’s Live platform they’ve integrated both of these within their Instant Messaging client.

Click beneath the fold for the instructional video of how to do the 2 second fold…

That solution just is not geeky enough for me…

If you’re really wanting to engineer a t-shirt folding solution, here’s one: How To Make A T-Shirt Folding Machine:

This is important for all who are currently examining an LMS system or have one in place with an end-of-life plan.

In a nutshell, Blackboard was claiming Intellectual Property (IP) patented rights to the software user roles and responsibilities, much like the Microsoft NT Server technology assigns them, with an LMS layer of student / teacher responsibilities.

Keeping it brief:

Any Technical Communication software company who has the penetration into the existing e-Learning space has a potential to leverage those existing relationships and push out a Software as a Service (SaaS) demo for their users to try before they buy. Striking down the LMS patent claims held by Blackboard opens up the market along with insulating the existing LMS providers from further IP claims.

In short, my interpretation is that the court found that Blackboard’s claims were too broad. It also ‘Linuxizes’ much of the LMS market. Just what free enterprise needs in a $400 million market.

Of course, Blackboard will appeal the judgement. My perspective is that their model was based on fear and intimidation of the market without any real innovation after the initial development of the concept.

In my brief time away from my construction project in NorCal, I found this article at e-Literate about the Blackboard LMS patents being rejected:

On March 25, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office issued its Non-Final Action on the re-examination of the Blackboard Patent. We are studying the document, found here, but in short, the PTO has rejected all 44 of Blackboard’s claims.

There are some other background blog articles that are fantastic at presenting the entire picture of what Blackboard’s patents were, how they were presented, and what this means.

Legal stuff? Make it easy please…

I’ve got a background in legal review, but it’s nice to see someone analyze the legal brief and outline it. One of the best and easily understood – A Description of the Blackboard Patent in Plain English sums up its analysis:

Once we cut through the pseudo-technical mumbo jumbo it’s apparent that there is no there there. If Blackboard gets away with this it will be one of the great hoaxes of this century.

I recommend reviewing that article because it’s the most concise and combines visual diagrams along with Michael Feldstein’s e-Literate text explaining the case.

Needless to say, the discussion on the topic at e-Literate is most telling. User opinion is very strong, and this is yet another case of Corporate Authenticity being tested.

Yeah, but what does this mean?

My analysis is that this is groundbreaking.

It means that without the patents, there is a lot less risk involved with getting into the very lucrative LMS game.

It also means that Microsoft and Adobe risk a lot less in pushing LMS boundaries – maybe in existing product lines they already have for Technical Communication.

Other LMS wanna-be’s who happen to have a strong Technical Communication software product offering (Adobe, MadCap, even Microsoft) can now look at SaaS as a model for penetrating the LMS market through their existing customer base.

I see the framework that MadCap has developed as being the strongest towards this area, seconded only by Adobe. With MadCap’s existing focus on Lingo and the Analyzer, they have the ability to 2.0 their existing software quickly and rip a new one in the LMS market. With their rabid and enthusiastic fan (customer) base they’ll lose no time in coming up with a killer application.

Adobe is no slouch to eLearning. They announced a $200 million commitment to developing in India, primarily for TechComm, Gaming, and eLearning over five years. That’s equivalent to $1.2 billion spent in the US. I’m sure they’re working on something in that space as well.

Microsoft has some well hidden LMS potential I won’t speculate too much about publicly.

Maybe someone will offer me some dollars for consulting to talk about it further, but the broad strokes are seen in my past articles.

Previous CharlesJeter.com articles relating to LMS:

• My LMS / eLearning Disruptive Technology Concept
• Halo 3, XBox and Technical Communication? (Part 5)
• eLearning, Gaming & Tech Comm are new Adobe focus | Adobe to invest $200m in five years

In the interest of repurposing TechComm content into ‘Distance Learning’ I’m posting this

eLearning and Blended Learning Business Development Tip – sound smart to the big office crowd

This content allows broadcast television stations in local markets to compete with the 500 channel special content cable providers have enjoyed for years.

That means that educational content has much more of a market in the broadcast media. As you’ll note from the picture below, the ‘Education’ category has three times the access shown.

What does all of this mean?!?

After all, the multicast capability allows much more content during non-prime time hours.

So I’m looking at how to not pay $100 a month for my HDTV signal and found some good resources about the impending over the air broadcast due by 2009. Guess what? In San Diego, we already have some Digital Television broadcasts (DTV) in the area.

I checked out my lat/long on this site and narrowed down the options to the DTV currently broadcasting. It also works for your street address.

Personally it means I’m not a slave to the satellite reseller who struck a deal with the devil (my apartment management company) and cut all the competing cable provider access, forcing a monopoly.

Thought that the Sherman Anti-trust Act of 1890 took care of forced markets, obviously I was wrong… My only protest until now was in refusing to buy into the whole deal, and my life hasn’t suffered for lack of television. That’s what Netflix is for.

Salvation, salvation, salvaaaation… (that 1990s song)

So now I find the time to check into things and lo and behold! Digital TV (DTV) is supposedly broadcast in San Diego already! DTV is best defined from this information on MyFreeHDTV.org:

DTV brings viewers three (3) video formats, each different in picture quality…

SDTV: Better Than Regular TV

With DTV, SDTV (Standard Definition TV) picture resolution is better than today’s analog (640 x 480 min. vs. 440 x 480 max.)-a noticeable improvement. The audio is digital, too, so the sound is of higher quality than on analog TV (like a CD compared to FM radio) and may even feature multiple channels of surround sound.

EDTV: Really getting good

With DTV, the next level of digital television is EDTV (Enhanced Definition TV). EDTV features a minimum of 480p scanning lines, for a more detailed picture than SDTV. You can see the difference. EDTV also can reproduce Dolby® Digital audio. EDTV provides DVD quality pictures and sound!

HDTV: the best you can get

HDTV has all the benefits of EDTV, but goes far beyond it in picture resolution and audio features. The HDTV specification requires a minimum of 1080i or 720p scanning lines, far higher than EDTV and about five times the resolution of analog TV! It’s a level of detail that you’ve never seen before. The added benefit is 5.1 channel Dolby® Digital sound (movie theater quality sound), at home!

I’m going to say that the coolest thing I’ve seen is the ability to multicast on this signal. This means a lot for the non-CSI or non-Law & Order prime time programming.

Picture’s worth 1000 words… or worth 1080i resolution

Here’s a graphic, from MyFreeHDTV.org that explains the potential:

So what’s this mean again – to me?

You’re looking at the potential to push out corporate communication through local access programming. Marketing can repurpose some media content, training videos, etc. in order to gain brand name recognition. Technical Communication, in its blending and fusion, will end up touching into this market in one or another way.

Technical Communication has gained a new (old) market.

Note: I held positions in 3M for some time, I can’t recall if I still have it in my stock portfolio.

From 3M Press Room

3M Revolutionizes Mobile Displays

Miniature Projection Technology Available Now

2008 International CES

ST. PAUL, Minn.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–3M is now providing consumer electronics manufacturers with a revolutionary advancement in the emerging field of miniature projection technology. 3M scientists developed a breakthrough ultra-compact, LED-illuminated projection engine designed for integration into virtually any personal electronic device. Roughly the size of a wireless earpiece and less than half an inch thick, the 3M mobile projection engine delivers brilliant VGA resolution images and is available today.

This would be perfectly paired with the Minority Report Interface or the Multipoint Interface that I blogged about last week since the killer app would be your laptop becoming an interactive whiteboard / 3D modeling multipoint interface.

What’s currently done with a hacked Wii remote will quickly jump forward.

Forget the Sony sixaxis or the Wii: Disruption within Gaming Controllers Predicted

This could also completely revolutionize gaming since a simple USB plugin could allow the same reflective tape motion capture (MOCAP) that works with a larger projection engine without the form factor issues.

Rekall, Rekall, Rekall: Blast from the past

Remember that old movie Total Recall, yet another Philip K. Dick short story I might add?

Where Sharon Stone’s character was playing tennis with her virtual reality tennis pro in her shared apartment with Arnie at the beginning of the movie?

Casual Gaming Revolution: Even Tetris could take on a whole new life with this type of interaction.

MOCAP Developer requirements are critical

Drivers to be written for existing game titles and all new motion capture potential to be realized by developers. Standardizing the motion capture would be smart. I’m sure there will be a rush towards an IP approach to the MOCAP not seen since the 1990s with the dotcoms and their technology booms. Coding in development games with sockets / hooks for this type of interface to be written later would be a very wise decision.

eLearning and Blended Learning Killer Applications

Any training or arts which would reinforce muscle memory (dance, for one, or karate, or Tai Chi) will logically follow.

Not to toot my own horn, but I’ve already been looking into this market for some time. I’m excited about what this could offer, particularly after attending the 2007 GDC last year.

By the way, hat tip to iconnectdots.com for the news about this.

Three things I’ll closely watch in 2008:

1. Multipoint User Interfaces
2. Workflow Collaboration
3. Software as a Service (SaaS)

New User Experience Challenge: Multipoint User Interfaces

In my previous Gaming to Boardroom post I mentioned the cost-busting hack of a new type of interface – the multipoint interactive user interface – was starting to gain momentum. This would make much better use of those large wall-mounted LCDs and projectors.

The disruptive technology hack was sourced to the Nintendo Wii remote, a cheap off the shelf component mass produced, a Bluetooth interface, and any PC.

With reflective tape on his fingers, Johnny Chung Lee from Carnegie Mellon’s Human Computer Interaction Institute easily reproduces Tom Cruise’s motions within the groundbreaking Minority Report, a Philip K. Dick short story adapted by Steven Spielberg in 2002.

As I researched further I found out that SpaWar and indeed other military centers have indeed been closely examining this type of interface for their command and control centers.

Here is a quote from one of PC Magazine’s sources confirming that same trend in User Experience (UX) driven hardware interfaces.

From EDS’ Next Big Thing Blog: Predictions for 2008:

This will be the year when we see real deliverables for new user interfaces, moving beyond the mouse. Just like the Wii used a new interface to take some old technology and make it new again, we’ll see similar advances on the PC interface. Gestures, voice, displays… it’s time.

If this is as simple to create as Johnny Lee’s project, we’ll be seeing this on the market in 2008. The key will be what applications will be written to support this new interface, and that may end up being UX’s long term challenge for months or years.

Workflow Collaboration

The author also adds some information about workflow. It’s interesting to me that this validates quite a bit of the same mobile and technical communication markets I’ve been researching for the past ten years.

From EDS’ Next Big Thing Blog: Predictions for 2008:

I’ve been mentioning workflow for a number of years and we’re beginning to see it move from the desktop into mobile devices and that will be common place by the end of 2008 as various COTS applications incorporate mobile interfaces. Collaboration on mobile devices will also take off as part of Enterprise 2.0 activities.

I doubt that we’ll see widespread use of electronic paper techniques in business even though there are some quite interesting capabilities out there now and those devices will drop significantly in price by the end of 2008.

SaaS-y Applications

And of course, here’s a bit about Software as a Service (SaaS) applications, one such I’ve reviewed with the MadCap Feedback Service.

From EDS’ Next Big Thing Blog: Predictions for 2008:

Broad acceptance of SaaS and web based applications will take place but probably not in ways that we may think. A wider range of businesses will use service based approaches to enable their activities and it will be as controversial as offshoring has been.

Summary:

So what will we end up doing with Workflow Collaboration, SaaS, and Multipoint User Interfaces in 2008? 

SaaS is a cheaper way to do business, and can easily amortize the high cost of server technology. Its adoption is just good business sense since it can be cut loose quickly if something better comes along.

Workflow Collaboration will disrupt the current status quo, if it hasn’t already, particularly in the global knowledge management space. This saves time and money, allowing smaller stateside corporations to gain the same benefits as traditional outsourced models.

I see Gaming technology jumping full fledged into the Multipoint Interface market along with some specialized applications for design. I also see this immediately involved in eLearning and more importantly, blended learning environments.

This technology is really in its infancy but with the LCD market so commoditized and screen real estate not being trapped in low resolution with HD content everywhere, it’s a necessary step in our human interaction with our systems.

This is pure disruptive technology at its finest. If you haven’t priced a multipoint interactive whiteboard lately, just trust me in that it’s not cheap. Dell has them on sale listed in Google.

But I’m seeing a definite market developing for this user interface, particularly in eLearning and Blended Learning not to mention all sorts of uses for my buddies over at SpaWar here in San Diego.

Multi-touch sensors as far they’ve been touted as a high-res, low cost, scalable method to interact with your system. Not to get too Bleeding Edge, but this is like having a six foot iPhone interface.

The possibilities are amazing, particularly for someone with carpal tunnel syndrome like me. Software design does have to keep up though.

Multipoint Interactive Whiteboard: Blended Learning’s Holy Grail

Check out what Johnny Chung Lee, a Carnegie Mellon HCI Researcher hacked together with a Bic pen, LED light, some custom software and the Nintendo Wii remote (Wiimote)

Minority Report Interface: Reality and Yesterday’s News

If you’re a Phillip K. Dick or Steven Spielberg fan, you might recall the Minority Report UI that Tom Cruise used (at top of article).

Johnny came up with a wicked method to do the same thing.

So the end result is that this is Bleeding Edge technology, and finding uses for it falls into the Applications Engineering field.