For many of us, it is no longer something that we “turn on” when we are looking for a specific answer or experience . . . but rather something that is “always on”.

Our ideas, assets and creations are stored in various place on the web, most of our communication and information is web-based, so why aren’t we using a presentation medium that is tightly integrated with the web?

I mean . . . have you ever tried to link to a web page from a PowerPoint presentation and back again without it disrupting the presentation!?!?

Then I discovered how easy it is to create a media RSS feed that can be displayed as a Cooliris Wall!

If you haven’t come across it before; Cooliris is a browser plugin that will “transforms your browser into a lightning fast, cinematic way to enjoy photos and videos from the Web or your desktop.”

This is an ideal alternative to more ‘traditional’ presentations, as you can simply export your PowerPoint or Keynote slides as images and display these on a Cooliris wall, interspersed with other images and movie files.

Now enough theory . . . if you are interested click on the image below to go to the launch page for this demonstration / tutorial.

Is this something that you would use?

Would love to hear your thoughts. Click here to go to the comments.

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Thanks to the unexpected rise of Twitter, global communication is happening more often than ever before.

One of the trickiest parts of communicating globally is timezones – the manual calculations become tiresome and even with the various online timezone converters there is still room for error. I once missed out on an online conference that I had been looking forward to for 6 weeks because I accidentally selected a ’slightly’ incorrect timezone . . . I stayed up until 2am one morning only to find the conference had finished 24 hours prior!

This experience prompted me to look around for the best ‘time converter’ tool I could find.

Enter Permatime, it doesn’t get much easier than this!

You simply set the meeting time in your timezone, and email the link provided to other participants who will see the meeting time in their timezone, or any other timezone they wish to view it in.

Magnificent tool, bookmark it now and follow @Permatime on twitter.

All the timezones used by Permatime are listed in the locations page (you can even request for more locations to be added!)

There are lots of ways that Permatime can help facilitate Global Communication, how will you use this?

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I came across a product tonight that I was relieved to find and I wanted to share it with you:

So let’s make this review even stranger:

[Disclaimer:  The above image links to the DIY Themes website via an affiliate ID meaning that if you go to the site and purchase the theme I will make a little bit of money.]

Yep, I am actually advertising to you about a product that I haven’t tried!

I feel okay about doing this because I found this product on Chris Brogan’s site and figure that I can trust the co-author of Trust Economies, and author of some of the greatest content on the web!  (If you are not familiar with Chris make sure you read “You’re Doing It Wrong“, “The Righteous Web” and the “Social Media Decision Tree“).

I went to Chris’s site because he is great at what he does and I figured I can learn a lot from him.

While there is a lot that I could say about Chris’s site . . . I am here to talk about Thesis and its ‘behind the scene’ features and ‘futureproof customization system’.  This is a premium theme.

“Thesis boasts the strongest SEO of any theme on the market today . . .”

There are thousands of different marketers who will happily sell you the “Learn the Secrets of SEO & Have A Million Clicks on Your Website in Less Than 3 Minutes” ebook.

If you like spending all of your ‘blogging’ time searching for indexed algorithms in your XML sitemaps, worrying about spiders crawling over your robots.txt or have trouble spamdexing because you cannot decided what hat you are wearing . . . then you are obviously really passionate about SEO!

I am glad someone is passionate about it.  I read the ebook.  It sucked.  You are better off donating your heavily discounted, today only member special price of $20 to me.  I won’t send you any bonus gifts to the value of $35,000.

“Not a coder? Not a problem. The Thesis option panels allow you to command your site with ease, while Thesis does all of the heavy lifting behind the scenes.”

My coding ability = I have been to this page more than once.

“The difference is in the details. You may not know it, but typography and visual clarity are two of the most important aspects of your site. Properly setting type on the web is an exercise in mathematical precision, and this is not an area where you want to compromise. After all, typography is the primary vehicle for the most important thing on your site—your content!”

This is an important point.

Put simply, if the text is hard to read . . . people won’t want to read it.

“What about customizations and design changes? Thesis contains a futureproof customization system that allows you to produce unique designs, all while keeping your changes isolated to just two key files!”

This is major.  You can test different layouts, fonts, images etc. easily.  To give you a bit of an idea of some of the ways others have customized Thesis, have a look at this video appreciation of the Thesis Gallery Showcase.

[Music:  music by spaze craft one, it's use donated to matthewbibby.com]

“In addition to our in-house support staff, there are also tons of amazingly talented users who help newbies and veterans alike in our forums. On top of that, we’re ratcheting up the support with the addition of video tutorials, so now you’ll be able to do more with Thesis than ever before!”

In-house support staff, an active and supportive community of users, video tutorial and everything else mentioned in this post . . . well worth the $87 in my opinion.

If you agree, please click on the below image to go to the Thesis site:

Oh, and before I forget, here is Chris Brogan’s review of Thesis.  Have a read and have a look at how he has customized the design.

What do you think about my strange review?

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Look, DeskTube is great program. I love it.

What really amazed me was the level of service that came with it’s $0 price tag.

Here is how it went:

* I downloaded DeskTube
* I liked it a lot, so I tweeted about it
* DeskTube then followed me on twitter and thanked me
* DeskTube also provided an email address for feedback
* I emailed them saying that the playlist function didn’t work . . .
* The problem was fixed and an update released in under 24 hours!

I felt like a truly valued customer, thanks Damon.

Do yourself a favour, download DeskTube.

Here is a video I put together showing how great DeskTube is, for more info on all of the features go to http://thedesktube.com:

The video featured at the end is: Mankind is No Island – a truly amazing piece of art.

Oh, and make sure you check out this post by eQuixotic to see the story behind this postcard from Bee Docs Timeline.

Have you recently received some wonderful service from an Indie Software developer?  Tell us about it and thank them by promoting their products.

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TwitDir (a twitter directory) shows more than three million people are communicating in this way.

The exchange is different to normal conversation, it results in sharing of resources, help with fleshing out ideas, stories are told, people are inspired, problems are solved, feedback is gained and collaboration occurs.

The trick is to know who to follow and how to manage the flood of information; as well as being prepared for the fact that you may get more insight into the person that you are following than you have had previously.

I originally started using twitter a few months ago but was rather disappointed about the whole experiment because I didn’t know anyone else who used it.

This changed when I came across Jane Hart’s Directory of Learning Professionals on Twitter.  Suddenly I realized that I would get the most out of this tool by connecting with others who worked in same field as me.  There are over 400 entries on this list so I just went through and picked out professionals whose work I already followed and others whose descriptions inspired me.

Not long after I started using twitter a new site was launched which has directories for tweeters in all sorts of industries.  JustTweetIt’s Education directory has links for over a hundred people that you could follow and you can easily add yourself to this directory so others can follow your updates.

Now I have a stream of people who I follow.

This means that whenever I choose to tune in to twitter I have the chance to talk about eLearning, communication, design and web 2.0+.  To share articles, pictures, videos and blog posts.  To collaborate, promote, assist and inspire – it is the perfect tool to connect with others who have similar interests.

The 140 character limit really encourages you to be precise about what you are saying, something I really benefit from as I tend to be a bit wordy.

Being able to quickly and easily provide an update on what you are doing and to get feedback from others results in a better work flow and reduces the amount of time it takes to share an idea.

Just now I have twittered the following:

Within 5 minutes I have a number of responses suggesting that what is most important in a new model of communication is the “ability to convey what you want people to know” (@mayhemstudios) and “the message itself, by far” (@alexhosterman).

By considering the way that we communicate and share our lives with others, we have an opportunity to change the way that we work together in the future.

For those of you who are new to the world of Twitter, I suggest you check out Twitter in Plain English Video by CommonCraft below:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o&hl=en&fs=1]

I am considering how twitter could be used in business to improve communication and how it could be integrated into the eLearning experience.

I will post more on these topics another day, but for now I leave you with this question . . .

How do you see us communicating in the future?

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Forms allow you to obtain and organize relevant data easily.

They can improve productivity and data integrity as well as providing a great way of getting feedback from trainees and students.

Setting up a form is easy and I suggest that you create one while reading this post (all the links will open in new tabs/windows in your browser).

• Go to the Google Docs site and login/register
• Then create a new form as shown below

• You can then enter the title of the form and any instructions you wish

• Then start on your first question

• You will notice that a ‘Name’ field is added by default
• Add your question title and choose the question type
• For this example I will use a Scale question (think Likert)
• Then fill in the fields and your first question is done!

• There is big Add Question button at the top of the page that you can use to add more questions
• If you want to change the order of the questions simply drag and drop!
• You can preview, edit or delete individual questions
• Once you have finished writing the questions, hit the link to the spreadsheet at the bottom of the page

• This is the link to your form, you can also email the form or embed it in your own webpage

• I strongly suggest editing the confirmation message (i.e. the page that appears after a form has been submitted) to personalize the appearance of your form
• Once a form is complete all the responses are added into a Google Spreadsheet, which can then be exported to a variety of formats (.csv, .xls, .pdf etc)

A couple of other things to note:

• People completing the form do not need to have a Google account or to register for one to complete the form that you create
• Make sure that you understand the level of security of these forms before using them to collect confidential information

These forms can be used to:

• Get feedback from trainees, students etc.
• As a way of brainstorming ideas (especially before a meeting as it gets everyone thinking about what will be discussed)
• To collect information, track expenses, get course feedback etc

Please leave a comment letting others know how you are going to use this knowledge. In what ways can you use forms to improve you productivity?

Oh yeah, the form that was created while this post was being prepared is located here and if you would like to save a copy of these steps please download this PDF file.

Finally, thanks @beckcollect for letting me know this functionality existed

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