E-learning podcasts and the wonders of transcripts

E-learning figurehead Elliott Masie is offering a wide range of podcasts in connection with the current Learning 2005 conference in Florida. In keeping with the reflexive tradition of the medium, this includes a podcast about podcasting… The implementation of the podcasts is as professional as you’d expect: there’s an option to play the audio with […]

Proliferation of music products

When Robbie Williams’ last album was released three years ago there were 10 bits of content: the album package itself, a few singles, and associated videos and ringtones. When his new album was released on Monday, there were 164 bits of content. These include material for DualDisc, individual tracks for music download stores, and a […]

Sharing book recommendations

Based on my reading this year, I’ve added some more book recommendations to the Stuff We Like web site. This community site shares the tag-based ‘folksonomy‘ approach of flickr and del.icio.us. It also shares the links to online retailers of some music playlisting services like Soundflavor or UpTo11.net — though Stuff We Like is not-for-profit […]

Games and learning design

Like many people, I often accumulate knowledge by seizing on ‘facts’ that reinforce my intuitions and prejudices. So, given my feelings about use of games in e-learning, my radar jumped on the ESRC press release that says, “young people’s experience of playing games (76% at least weekly in 2003) had a negative effect when they […]

Recording online radio vs. podcasts

In the last year or two, the concept of martini media — ‘anytime, anyplace, anywhere’ access to whatever audio and video you feel like — has shifted from being a vision of a possible future to being an almost taken-for-granted inevitability. The speed with which it comes about will be slowed by the friction of […]

Age and tradition in music buying

One other thing about the ‘infomercials’ that I mentioned in my last entry: the LA Times article reports that the informercials “will be largely targeted at the baby boomers who 30 years ago fueled the music industry but who today buy fewer albums”. A Universal Music president is quoted as saying, “Nobody has found a […]