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.

Yesterday Google released a visual search engine called Google Goggles. It is available right now as an application for Android 1.6+ (i.e. Donut or Eclair) based mobile devices. It uses several sophisticated image recognition techniques like object recognition, OCR, face matching, etc.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve met some prospective customers from the Telecom domain here in India. While they’re all keyed about mobile learning, they have serious reservations about how they (as telecom service providers) can leverage their own networks. I often point to some simple facts. Each of their employees carries a cell phone and is connected to the network 24 hours a day. These employees are scattered all over the Indian geography. This presents a unique challenge and opportunity.

Our innovation team spends a fair bit of time trawling the web looking for interesting stuff that’s related to learning and technology that might impact learning in general. Typically, we come up with a list that’s shared with across Upside Learning.

Trawling through my feeds earlier this weeks I came across this link-up post by Ricard Nantel over at the Workplace Learning Blog pointing to a blog post on Harvard Business Publishing about six social media trends.
Worth a quick recount:

We constantly come across interesting user interface technologies; Microsoft’s Natal was one I’ve written about before. There have been others pushing the limits of human computer interaction. However these technologies are a long way from maturing and being available to average developers and users. Also, they demand a completely new way of thinking about user interfaces. Such is not the case with haptic interfaces, which are now rapidly going mainstream and are available with a variety of devices, ranging from mobile phones, to tablet computers and ‘internet devices’. While these may appear as simply replacing the mouse with a singular interface point touch-screen, that’s not always the case. Several of these devices support multi-touch, letting the users use not one but multiple fingers to provide inputs that go beyond just a point and click to gestural inputs. Additionally they also offer some form of force feedback, this admittedly is quite rudimentary at this time.

Interesting numbers about the Social media and mobile computing revolution, while we wont really vouch for the numbers, Gary goes to great lengths to provide sources and substantiation for the basis of his calculation.

More companies are looking to challenge Amazon Kindle’s hegemony in the eBook market. Sony has been in the fray for quite some time. Barnes and Noble made it clear several months ago that it too had designs on this market. Yesterday it released its dedicated eBook reader called the ‘Nook’ in New York city. The device has many features that distinguish it from the Kindle, including a color touch screen for control, and the use of the Google Android operating system.

In my last post (Semantic Web Cometh), I mentioned how the underlying principles of the Semantic Web should make it highly inclusive and provide a uniform descriptive language across all sorts of media and technologies and consequently let users spend more time immersed meaningfully in the learning process.

The information age is rapidly turning into an age of information overload. A simple search of the web using a search engine like Google reveals a fantastic array of information. As I’ve discovered given the thousands if not millions of results, trying to sort through and make sense of any of that data is an exercise in futility. This sort of rudimentary search and pray approach isn’t effective, and grows more ineffective by the day with the growing size of the web. Why can’t it be easier? It can – Web 3.0 or the Semantic Web holds that promise.

Our HR team is getting really busy since a last few weeks. After being slow (well almost non-existent) for a couple of quarters, hiring is back on the agenda. And with a bang! New project wins have been quite impressive in the last couple of months and all indications are towards a stronger demand in coming quarters (hopefully years!). No wonder some of these requirements are URGENT! You know how it is after clients sign on the dotted line. They want everything as on yesterday. No worries – that’s anyways – what I call – “a good problem to deal with”.