As we knock on 2010’s doors, it’s a good time to look at what we did on this blog in 2009. We started this blog in March 2009 and in its 10 month existence has more than a 100 posts. The blog now has about 500 subscribers and has received more than 53000 page views and more than 200 comments.

1. Alternatives to Second Life
Karl Kapp puts some alternatives to Second Life on his blog. Interesting products, although some will cease to exist starting next year.

2. Windows Mobile for Gaming
Microsoft to make Windows Mobile a gaming platform. While other mobile OS developers are jockeying for position to become the game platform of choice for mobile devices, Windows mobile lagged behind.

The Big Question posed on Learning Circuits this time,as always, is thought provoking –

What did you learn about Learning in 2009?

I think my learning for 2009 was focused around three primary areas; this obviously derives from my focus on innovation in elearning and is biased, but here goes.

From Wikipedia – Microlearning deals with relatively small learning units and short-term learning activities. Generally, the term ‘microlearning’ refers to micro-perspectives in the context of learning, education and training. More frequently, the term is used in the domain of E-learning and related fields in the sense of a new paradigmatic perspective on learning processes in mediated environments on micro levels.

1. Meaning Tool: Training Semantic Search With Feeds
Meaning Tool is a semantic engine that offers users a chance to extract concepts from text using specific semantic trees. You define your categories of interest by creating search parameters and training them with related websites or RSS feeds. A great tool to see how semantic trees can help search.

A lot of companies today face a resource situation that’s not unique in this age. A few key individuals holding important technical and project management knowledge is quite common.

1. Device tag support in HTML 5
   Yesterday World Wide Web Consortium has reported that HTML 5 will support external devices, directly from your browser. Now your browser will access your webcam, microphone and other USB devices directly, no other software/plug-ins required.

Often the real meaning and potential impact of a database can be hidden behind all the raw names and numbers, but a well-chosen visualization can bring the data to life. Google fusion is a cloud based application from Google where you can share and visualize data online. You can visualize data in a number of forms like: Map, Intensity Map, Bar, Pie chart, Table, line etc.

With increasing bandwidths and better compression techniques available, use of videos in Flash platform based eLearning courses is on the rise. However, often we find videos not being used optimally. This could leave your learners with a bad experience. Here are a few technical aspects to keep in mind when working with videos. Please do share any others that you may know in comments area.

I came across this really interesting interview with Greg Kroah-Hartman – Linux Kernel Dev/Maintainer. In this interview, Greg talks about how the Linux project has accommodated the accelerating rate of change for the kernel. It was very interesting to draw parallels between some of what he says and learning.

1. Google Dumps Gears for HTML5
   Google will end Gears, an open-source plug-in project it launched two years ago to allow Web applications to function even when a computer isn’t connected to the Internet. Applications that used Gears include Google’s Docs and Reader.
   However, new incompatibilities with Gears have cropped up. Although it works with Microsoft’s Windows, Linux and some Apple Mac OS X versions, it doesn’t work with Mac OS X 10.6, also known as Snow Leopard. Also As much of the technology in Gears, including offline support and geo-location APIs, are being incorporated into the HTML5 spec as an open standard supported across browsers, it is natural for Google to Drop Gears in favor of HTML5. However Gears will continue to be supported for sites that already use it.

Jane Hart released the final list of top 100 tools for learning 2009 last month. It’s been created based on responses from 278 learning professionals worldwide and has taken several months to compile.