Dave Boggs, CEO of SyberWorks, states, “Today’s podcast is an interview with Guy Wallace, Certified Performance Technologist and the President of EPPIC, Inc. Guy has written an e-Book, ‘Management Areas of Performance,’ which presents a comprehensive scheme for managing performance in an organizational context.”
Walter Mossberg's Wall Street Column on Gadgets featured a review of a new video search engine called VideoSurf.com. A Search Engine With a Real Eye for Videos by Katherine Boehret, Wednesday November 19th, 2008
The company claims its "technology can analyze a clip's visual content, as well as its metadata." The search results themselves are "spread out videos in a flimstrip-like format, distinguishing one scene from another. Users can choose an option to show only faces, which helps if you're looking for a specific person in a video or movie." The tool give you the ability to "select a scene from the filmstrip and jump ahead to that scene rather than sit through the entire clip."
The next episode of the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series is up! This week's word is "Core Capabilities".
On the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series, there are three ways to
comment on each episode. You may post a message to the blog; leave a web-based
voice mail by clicking the button in the upper right-hand corner; or
call in and leave a message about each show. You may find each weekly episode and
its accompanying transcript on the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series page located in the Media
Center of the SyberWorks web site.
While I was combing through my RSS feeds, I found a set of articles (parts 1, 2, and 3) on Designing for Dyslexics by Mel Pedley.
While
this series is written purely from a web development perspective, there
is some really good information that can be applied to improving
e-learning content when developing for dyslexics. The article discusses readability issues resulting from sharp color contrasts and best practices in regards to line widths, fonts, line height, and others when developing online content for dyslexics.
What I like about the article series is that it talks about the W3C accessibility standards in regards to dyslectic needs and the other visually impaired populations.
There's a lot of software envy going on at Microsoft when it comes to some essential web tools. Adobe has long held a widely established platform for publishing and document delivery with Acrobat. With the acquisition of Macromedia (2004), Adobe had its eyes set on Flash, Macromedia's ubiquitous web animation and interactivity platform. Adobe has expanded on that platform and added Flex and AIR to the mix. YouTube, quite arguably the biggest online video sharing site, has pinned its platform with Flash technology, using Flash's streaming capabilities.
Something interesting happened last week though. Netflix, the online video rental empire, who has been delivering it's Instant Watch technology to PC users for almost a year now, decided to use Silverlight as a method to deliver Instant Watch to Mac users. This begs the question "Silverlight vs. Flash"?
The answer may be easier for you depending on your server environment. If you are a .NET, Microsoft IIS environment, then Silverlight can take advantage of those areas. So developers on Microsoft platforms will be able to leverage the power of Silverlight quickly and easily.
Conversely, developers who are not in the Microsoft sphere (or could care less about Microsoft's publishing and development platform) may not want to migrate to a relatively unsupported web technology. After all, the Flash Player has over 90% market penetration, whereas Silverlight is relatively new. Not only that, but developing for Silverlight would mean starting all over again with new programs, syntax, etc. Probably not a good shift for those comfortable developing on the Flash platform.
According to Microsoft's Silverlight website, an Analysis Report shows the differences between the two platforms and how an entrenched, proven technology, such as Flash, has the werewithal to move forward in the marketplace, whereas Silverlight is the up and comer that has to prove itself.
So brace yourselves, developers, the browser wars may be over, but the platform wars are just beginning.
The next episode of the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series is up! This week's word is "Bloom's Taxonomy".
On the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series, there are three ways to
comment on each episode. You may post a message to the blog; leave a web-based
voice mail by clicking the button in the upper right-hand corner; or
call in and leave a message about each show. You may find each weekly episode and
its accompanying transcript on the e-Learning Lingo Podcast Series page located in the Media
Center of the SyberWorks web site.