While doing some research, I came across this interesting article ‘Can India lead the mobile-internet revolution?’ (registration required) that McKinsey published in February of this year.
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.
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. 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.
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.
- 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.
I’ve spent an inordinately long time writing a whitepaper on mobile learning trying to expound our thoughts about it and how it might be used in the workplace. I’ve been doing some research around it and I’ve documented some of the better links I’ve come across. Again, as with the links I posted about Games and Simulation, these aren’t categorized in any way nor does the order assume any significance.
I’ve been occupied with writing a paper to promote the adoption of mobile learning amongst corporates and enterprises. While trawling through multiple web-links, a pattern of myths about mobile learning emerges. Quite a bit of back and forth about these myths – I’m taking the liberty of listing and describing the five that struck me as odd, and am attempting to debunk them to an extent. I’ll be the first to admit there is always an element of truth behind myths; but with the rate of technological change, quite a few of those ‘truths’ would seem like falsehoods today.
