Recently Amit had written about how the eLearning industry and digital media in general has been driven to HTML5 by the rapid adoption of tablet computers, namely the iPad. To further reinforce that thought, Adobe announced just yesterday that it has ceased development on the Flash mobile browser plug-in. Meaning there will be no updates to those plug-ins and future versions of Android and Blackberry Playbooks may not be able to render Flash content.

The battle between web technologies (read ‘Apple and Adobe‘) started a couple of years back when Apple decided to not support Flash on its newly launched iPad terming it buggy. Apple backed HTML5 to be the next big thing and single handedly forced the developer community to take sides. The eLearning industry was not too happy about the iPad not featuring Flash as it meant reinventing the wheel for animation and interactivity in eLearning.  Also HTML5 was not ready for eLearning development then. The fact is the iPad has taken a significant lead in the tablets market. I’d say purely because of the brilliant ‘form factor’ and the fact that it’s backed by the most popular app store.

This has come just in time for mLearning implementers; there is a new tool out in Google Labs called Swiffy that let’s one convert flash animation (swf files) to a device independent HTML5. Simply put, this will allow existing libraries of flash animation content to be ported to devices that run iOS – iPhones, iPads, and iPods. This also helps us poor elearning developers circumvent the continuous war between Adobe and Apple over flash technology, and allow delivery across devices/platforms. Incidentally, Adobe had worked on just such a tool called Wallaby.

This time around we decided to go all out on training and learning. And true to our commitment, we have covered the whole spectrum – from calculating the effectiveness of your training to delivering training to multi-taskers, from methods to engage learners with emerging and connective technologies to the future of learning.

But our loyalties towards mobile learning cannot be questioned! For all you mobile lovers, dig in to know about the top trends in mobile, cool iPhone Apps for educational purposes and studying aboard, and tons of iOS Apps for freelancers.

Find it all here in our Weekly Digest – a collection of our top 22 links from the week gone by, each accompanied by a quick brief.

Need to quench your thirst for the latest in learning, technology and media links further? You can dig into our previous lists here.

In continuation to our weekly roundup of the best links shared on Twitter and Facebook, here is a collection of our top 15 links from the last week, each accompanied by a quick brief.

1. Taking Cues From Industry: Using Casual Games For Learning At DAU
The use of games in education and training is quickly becoming a mainstream practice. This article talks about Defense Acquisition University (DAU) where games have grown from being closely aligned with both the learning objectives and the context of the acquisition workforce to the launch of the first Department of Defense casual gaming site.
Read it here

In continuation to our weekly roundup of the best links shared on Twitter and Facebook, here is a collection of our top 15 links from the last week, each accompanied by a quick brief.

1. Learning Management System Acquisition Statistics
More organizations are looking to invest in Learning Management Systems as the economy slowly improves. This article on the Brandon Hall blog mentions new statistics on this new technology.
Read it here

About a month back I blogged about Smokescreen which allows advertisers to run simple Flash movies on iPad/iPhone using HTML5/JavaScript.  Today while checking my twitter feed I discovered Frash which runs Flash content on iPad/iPhone in a Safari browser. It’s an effort to take the Android implementation of Flash Player to run on iPad/iPhone.

At Google I/O event last year HTML 5 capabilities were demonstrated to developers for the first time. This year at the Google I/O some important announcements have been made which will make HTML 5 development easier across different browsers.  

On day 1 of the I/O Google has made many announcements like release of open source, royalty-free video format WebM, Chrome Web store, opened up Google Wave, released open source Font API and directory etc.

Last week, while justifying Apple’s refusal to allow Flash player on iPhone/iPad, Steve Jobs wrote– “New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too)”. A few days before the launch of iPad Apple had released a list of ‘iPad ready’ websites having support for HTML5. Clearly Apple is backing HTML 5, CSS 3 and JavaScript for developing future web applications.

Yes, HTML5 is a major revision over its predecessor HTML4. Some pertinent questions need to be asked.

Adobe recently announced AIR for Mobile devices. This is an outcome of the Adobe initiated Open Screen Project, which was started a couple of years back. The Open Screen Project was started to help create a singular experience on multiple devices (using Flash) be it Computers, Mobiles, TV or Game consoles. There are several futuristic videos about how it will work available at http://www.openscreenproject.org/.

1. ELIPS Studio 3
ELIPS Studio 3 is a cross-platform mobile application SDK based on Adobe’s Flex Builder. Now software developers and creative designers can quickly develop for rich, connected or non-connected applications for mobile devices and deploy them on any mobile platforms they want. ELIPS Studio 3 is based on native compilation. It will automatically generate, optimize and package your Flex applications as native code for industry-leading platforms, including iPhone, Android, Symbian, and Windows Mobile.

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.