Three things in the article struck me as being spot on.

“Even though typical Indian consumers have no Internet access, they have a remarkable appetite for digital content. In fact, they consume an average of 4.5 hours of it daily across offline channels such as television, DVDs, and CDs.”

“McKinsey research forecasts that the total number of Internet users will increase more than fivefold, to 450 million, by 2015. Total digital-content consumption will double, to as much as $9.5 billion. Including access charges, revenues from total digital consumption could rise fourfold, to $20 billion—twice the expected growth rate of China”

“The average price of smart phones that deliver much richer content, including video, is falling rapidly—already nearing $125, significantly less than the cost of PCs. Mobile devices also are inherently easier to operate than PCs, and the ability to access Web sites with a single touch or a voice command (critical given India’s high illiteracy rate) is becoming a reality.”

Indians consume huge amounts of digital content, and even if a part of the consumption moved online via the mobile internet it’ll result in a huge market for content over mobile services. Already, telecom providers in India bank hugely on selling content in varied forms to their users. With ARPUs (average revenue per user) stagnating, the providers are having to turn to VAS (value added services) to bolster revenues. In a country that values education and where families spend large amounts on education, a VAS offering around academics would do well; in fact, there are already several companies that are doing just that in conjunction with the telecom providers. The user-base hasn’t gained critical mass yet, but that’s going to change in a big way if McKinsey’s forecasting is to believed. A mobile internet revolution is just what India needs, yet it remains to be seen how individuals at the grassroots will benefit.

The post India And The Mobile Internet Revolution first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

The video below shows Flash content running on iPad Safari browser using Frash –

The development of Frash is still in progress. The keyboard input and video playback are yet to be supported. Also at present it’s only available for the iPad it would soon be available for iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4. This is what the developer has to say about it –

“…Frash currently only runs on the iPad, but support for other devices (3GS+ only due to technical restrictions) is planned, as well as support for iOS 4….

…Video and keyboard input are currently not supported. The former will require major reverse engineering of the video decoding frameworks on the iPhone, but the latter should be reasonably easy to implement.”

At this time it’s difficult to comment on the performance and battery life while running Frash on iOS device but from the video demo above its evident that Flash runs pretty well on them.

The post This Flash Player (Frash) Runs On iPad first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

Why is Adobe really doing this?
Porting the same experience whether it is standalone or in-browser content, on a variety of platform remains a challenge due to fragmentation and deployment barriers. Adobe wants to latch onto the developer group that’s comfortable with Flash, yet wants their services and content to run across platforms – this by making its runtime consistent across all devices and encourage developers to design accordingly. Obviously, using Flash platform tools offered by Adobe. In other words, it’s an effort to make the Flash platform a de-facto development & delivery standard for the entire gamut of devices. Though some Flash platforms tools like the Flex SDK are freely available from Adobe, for animation and design you still need to depend on Adobe’s Creative Suite of tools – which is not free.

What’s Adobe’s contribution?
The most important one is Adobe removing restrictions on SWF and FLV/F4V specifications. So one can now develop software that can actually “play” SWF content. Also porting Flash runtimes on handheld devices has been made royalty free (which wasn’t the case earlier).

How’s it going?
Since the start of the project virtually everyone has joined the project , except for Apple. Here’s a whole bunch of CEOs praising the Open Screen Project. The alliance looks seriously large now especially with Google and Microsoft recently becoming part of it. As this Gigaom article points out chances are the Open Screen Project may be bigger than iPhone. It says – “The iPhone is awesome, but getting the full web experience on your set-top box or TV is something that represents a far bigger opportunity”.

One very significant partner in this list is ARM, the chipmaker that licenses its IP cores to handheld device makers. Flash is already optimized for x86 which rules the desktop market.  It is estimated that ARM based devices will overtake x86 based ultra-mobile devices in near future. It is important for Adobe to partner with ARM to target support for future devices that are beyond mere mobile phones.

Is there competition for Flash?
For RIAs, the target HTML5 specifications do have the potential to deliver a comparable experience. Checkout this drawing application made in HTML5. Even though HTML5 standards have not yet formalized, many browsers have started implementing the guidelines and encouraging developers to develop and test their applications.

In the mobile browser market, Webkit browser engine and Opera have taken the lead. The Webkit engine has been adopted by multiple smart phone (like iPhone, Android, Nokia, and Palm Pre) browsers that account for 65% of device market share. Recently, even Blackberry is adopting a Webkit based browser. Given the market share of Webkit, most smart phones will feature HTML5 rendering in the near future. Opera has released a HTML 5 version (Opera mobile) for Windows Mobile.

It’s interesting to note that most popular hybrid application frameworks like Phone Gap, QuickConnect, RhoMobile, Titanium Mobile, are based on HTML5 features to provide a rich application experience. So if we consider rich web applications for mobile, HTML5 is a clear competitor to the Flash platform to build a web-based cross-device service development and delivery platform.

Will the Open Screen Project be successful?
With their Open Screen Project Adobe is clearly preparing for the upcoming competition from HTML 5. The alliance partners are aligning themselves with BOTH the HTML 5 as well as Flash – may be no one is sure who will win. Or they all know HTML 5 will – ultimately.

I don’t think it is simple to answer this one. Check out this article by O’Reilly, to get an idea of the war for the web that’s on. Also there are strong reasons for HTML 5 not being able to replace Flash as pointed out by a former Macromedia person Jeremy Allaire.

For eLearning (& mobile learning) I think Flash will remain the obvious tool till for some time. Even if HTML5 gets stronger in terms of features etc, it would take even more time to reach the kind of designer-developer collaboration and the large communities that have emerged around Flash platform. Vector-based graphics creation and playback is crucial for eLearning and mLearning courses. That’s an easy game with Flash tools and I doubt HTML5 can compete there until we see some sophisticated designer-developer tools come up. We would love to see the Open Screen Project evolve Flash platform to be available for virtually all digital devices. It would help eLearning developers to focus on developing engaging and quality experience without concerning about technical difficulties.

I would like to hear back comments from learning professionals about their take on the Open Screen Project.

The post The Open Screen Project – Will It Succeed? first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

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. Looks like the behemoth at Redmond is finally waking up to the true potential of Windows on personal computing devices.

3. Glide OS
Glide OS is a cloud based operating system developed by Transmedia. The Glide OS is available as a browser plugin for IE, Chrome, Firefox and Safari. TransMedia has announced that by the first half of 2010, it will launch a bootable version of Glide for Netbooks.
Glide is designed to run on Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, Palm Pre, Symbian and Windows Mobile and to automatically translate file formats between platforms based on automated device identification and file transcoding.

4. Google may enter in hosted gaming via Youtube
A recent patent application from Google describes a way to provide ‘the collaborative generation of interactive features for digital videos, and in particular to interactive video annotations enabling control of video playback locations and creation of interactive games.’
Get into the description and you find it’s about building games on top of video submissions, making it sound that Google plans to extend its YouTube site into an associated gaming site.

5. MIT’s Scratch
Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web.
Designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create and share Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also learning to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively.

The post eLearning: Interesting Weekly Finds #5 first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

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.

Mobile Technologies – 2009 was the year that mobile technologies have exploded on the scene. We learned that there isn’t one single workable solution for mobile technologies. Having said that, it’s quite evident that the convergence of high-speed networks, powerful and capable personal computing devices (mobile/cell phones) will lead to a point where the need for desktop or laptop personal computers ceases to exist. The computer and communication device rolled into one is ideal for delivering learning interventions and tools. This year I’ve spent a fair bit of time learning about mobile technology. It’s going to radically alter elearning and I must understand what we need do to continue delivering effective learning solutions.

Some posts that were interesting related to mobile learning on our blog:

1. Five Myths of Mobile Learning
2. Mobile Learning in India
3. The Social Media and Mobile Computing Explosion

Games and Simulation – Gaming and simulations are rapidly becoming part of mainstream culture and learners have started demanding experiences that mimic or are similar to games, rather than have purely content driven learning. This is another area we’re learning much, from how expensive games are to develop, to the debates about games, simulations, where they might be suitable and what’s a predictable development process for either. The second challenge involves learning the intricacies of game design, and while learning games seem like a niche area, they cover a wide variety of game genres. Each genre involves a different type of design, and each genre is particularly suited to a type of learning outcome. More on that next year.

Interesting posts related to games on our blog:

1. Patterns at Play – Fundamental to Games
2. Can Fun Help Change Behaviors?
3. These Are NOT Serious Games!

Social Learning– Social learning has made it big this year. At Upside we built a version of our LMS that came with a whole range of social networking and content sharing tools built in. We’ve learnt that if we’re blending learning, we might as well make best use of technology to encourage both formal and informal learning channels in an organization. Implementing a solution that provides a backbone for social interaction vastly enhances the learning environment. While there is a certain loss of organizational control associated with such systems, organizations must learn to trust employees with such tools.

All these technology components just make blending learning more complicated. While we’ve proposed some solutions to customers, there’s been a steep learning curve. As these solutions are rolled out, we’ll learn much more about which of these technology components work and how they support and influence learning and performance outcomes.

Some interesting posts on our about Social Learning and Tools:

1. Six Social Media Trends
2. Blending Learning with Social Technology Components
3. How the Fastest Growing Companies are Using Social Media

You just read my last post this year; I hope you’ll continue to follow our blog next year. Happy New Year!

The post The Big Question – What I Learned About Learning in 2009 first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

search parameters and training them with related websites or RSS feeds. A great tool to see how semantic trees can help search.

2. Captivate Integrates Twitter
Shameer Ayyappan, Captivate Product Manager, posted a Connect recording of his very cool Captivate Twitter Widget presentation to the Captivate Blog. We think there is potential for this sort of Twitter widget to be integrated into all sorts of learning content, keeping it alive and relevant.

3. Video Trace – Rapid Interactive Scene Modeling
VideoTrace is a modeling software from Australian Center that uses objects from video to create realistic 3D models. The user interacts with VideoTrace by tracing the shape of the object to be modelled over a number of frames in the video. The software then interprets the sketch drawn and generates a realistic 3D model. These models then can be inserted into a game, a simulation environment, or another video sequence. Very cool, we think it’ll help the coming 3D web by making modeling easy.

4. Telstra’s 3Rs of Social Media Engagement

Telstra recently released an interactive ebook including Avatar videos and comic style stories to list the rules of Social Media Engagement for their employees. Definitely worth a look!

5. Polarbit brings cross-platform multiplayer 3D games to Android Market
For the first time ever, iPhone, Android and Nokia Ovi Store device users from all corners of the globe can challenge each other in cross-platform multiplayer games. Finally mobile multimplayer gaming across platforms, eLearning could do with just such a solution for its needs.

The post eLearning: Interesting Weekly Finds #4 first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

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.

Interactive Video

The Platform enables content providers to create new interactive layer on top of video content. While doing this the original video file remains untouched and intact.  The rendering of interactive layer can depend on viewer demographics.

Pearltree – Online visualization tool for web bookmarks

Pearltrees [pearltrees.com] is a new online visualization tool that allows users to organize their favorite content found on the Web as a network graph, which then reveals the connections between the interests of people. Or, in other words, Pearltrees is a somehow alternative visual version of the social book marking concepts that drive delicio.us, or a “collaborative network” that let users create, organize and share the world of their interests. However, in contrast to a tag-based system, Pearltrees connects people by the real content that is shared.
Users can save their favorite websites, organize what they find interesting, and explore what others have saved and are saying about specific web destinations.

FluidPaint –Drawing on digital interface using real brushes

This technology let use of real wet brushes for painting on a digital interface. The digitized painting then can be manipulated using image editors like Photoshop etc. Apart from FluidPaint there are other types – PushPaint – senses finger push to draw the strokes
IntuPaint  – Uses special IR powered brushes with tuft of bristles to sense the stroke shape  This is a great example of how haptic interfaces will blend physical and virtual in mixes that we are only just beginning to imagine. The implications for learning are obvious. Imagine equipment like this at an art school – without the cost of materials, students could pretty much try their hand at anything. There is potential for equipment such as this to be a great simulator to for painting technique.

Flurry Smartphone Industry Pulse, November 2009

This one is about how the iPod touch is a BIG player in mobile device market. It outstrips the iPhone; and is in the hands of a specific demographic. Are mobile learning companies developing applications for the iPod?

An educational YouTube for Kids

An educational YouTube for Kids… very impressive aggregation!

The post eLearning: Interesting Weekly Finds #2 first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

This will prove useful for m-learning – users can take a snapshot of any object and Google Goggles will provide relevant information about it. Leveraged appropriately, Goggles has great potential to be a powerful augmented reality application.

For e.g. when a user sees some landmark and wishes to get more information about it. All he need to do is take a snapshot and input the image to Google Goggles which will recognize the landmark and retrieve information about it. Currently it works with book covers, landmarks, artwork, logos, places, and contact information. It doesn’t work with things like foods, cars, animals or plants.

Take a look here:

The post Google Goggles and Mobile Learning first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

The challenge obviously is the delivery of any sort of training intervention using mobile phones. The limitations imposed by screen size and capability, plus in the Indian context having to support a wide variety of languages and scripts. The opportunity is clearly in the ubiquity of the devices amongst the employee base and ownership of the network and the technology for content delivery. An easy solution to propose is the use of installable applications or browser based content access; however it doesn’t account for the largest singular reason such solution fail in India – 90%+ phones do not support GPRS data connectivity or lack a HTML standard compliant browser.

While this may seem strange to someone from the west, it’s well known in India that the bulk of the phones are cheap and basic –phones such as these an do not features operating systems capable of handling installable, or a fully featured browser. These are the phones that are selling in millions and are the ones that provide most of the voice and SMS traffic on the network.

However there is a technology that has existed for more than a decade, that provides a perfect fit for these innumerable basic phones – it’s WAP Wireless Application Protocol. There are three primary reasons :

1. 90% of the phones support WAP – Its old technology and unless you have a phone that’s a couple of decades old (who does?) WAP, your phone surely has it. All newer phones support WAP 2.0; a capable and proven technology that was already being widely used in Europe before the advent of 2.5G and 3G networks. WAP doesn’t really require the internet to work; it can offer a workable solution using SMS, USSD and others; similarly it doesn’t require sophisticated data connectivity like GPRS either.
2. WAP supports push – One of the critical aspects of using a browser based mlearning solution is that it can’t be ‘push’ed to the learner. The technology relies on the learner initiating the transaction with the system that results in some content being downloaded to the phone. WAP circumvents that by directly pushing content to the phone; as a service indicator or as a service loader.
3. WAP supports multiple scripts and languages – Key to a market that is linguistically as diverse as India is the ability to support multiple scripts and languages. With users setting their phones to use native languages, pushing learning in that language assumes great significance. WAP provides that ability, with content that can be rendered appropriately depending on the handset’s language settings.

The post Mobile Learning – Three Reasons for the Return of WAP first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.

Starting this week, we’ll share what we feel were the most interesting finds we came across. We’re going to restrict it to ten or less – keeps it short and easy to read. We hope you find something that interests and influences you.

The post eLearning: Interesting Weekly Finds #1 first appeared on The Upside Learning Blog.