All posts by Richard

The Four Hour Work Week

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Saturday morning while driving to our cabin in northern Minnesota, I listened to this podcast author interview from iinovate blog. If you take the time to listen, you’ll be surprised to learn that this podcast is not about working less. It’s about working smart, being innovative, and enjoying the process. The author’s name is Tim Ferris, and he’s done some cool and smart stuff in his life.

My wife who was in the car with me … stopped what she was doing and listened to this particular podcast.  Thus this comes dual recommended by Rich and Molly Hoeg!

Had you ever thought of using Google Adwords and the resulting stats to run a marketing test … where the goal of the test was NOT to sell anything? Nor had I! Listen to the podcast.
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4hour

Using Your iPod for Training

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While attending eLearning Devcon last week, I attended a fantastic presentation given by Mark Henry on how to use the Apple Video iPod as a training device. Imagine an iPod which becomes an "expert system" for field technicians … or providing instructions in multiple languages for hotel personnel … you now understand the theme of Mark’s presentation.

Even better, Mark has been kind enough to provide me his very thorough Powerpoint deck, which is a tutorial in itself … and some Apple Computer white papers on using Notes for this kind of functionality. Use the links provided below to download same!

In addition to this information, you should check out these other posts I have on mobile learning, two with specifics to iPod and the iPhone:

Beyondpodcasting

Social Networking and College Admissions

College Search

The words given below are a direct quotation from the Collaborative Thinking Blog. Please visit Mike Gotta's blog for his excellent expanded analysis. It is amazing to learn that the top colleges and the universities in America are using Facebook and mySpace as part of their candidate evaluation process. It makes sense … I just had not realized how pervasive social networks had become. Time to insure my son's high school Facebook entry is "acceptable".

"This post is a follow-up to my previous thoughts regarding social networking and employment. An ongoing study being conducted by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (Center for Marketing Research), has revealed some significant findings. A "sneak peak" report, The Game Has Changed: Web preview (PDF),
indicates how the higher education system (colleges and universities)
are being quite aggressive in their use of social media. The preview
report compares results to a previous study on use of social media by
business organizations. The methodology is based on 450+ detailed
interviews with admissions departments and includes well-known
institutions such as Duke, Carnegie Mellon, University of Arizona and
University of Pennsylvania. What I found striking is the use of social
media as a means of learning more about student applicants."

Collegesearch

Bald Eagles

Northern Life

Definitely off topic, but cool …

During this afternoon's training run (9 miles), I saw a bald eagle. Now for a person who lives in Minnesota, you may not find that unusual … but I was only six miles from the middle of downtown Minneapolis! A pair of bald eagles has built a nest on the shores of Medicine Lake right in the middle of the Twin Cities. My family has been seeing them all Summer.

We also see bald eagles all the time up by our cabin in Northern Minnesota, but that is to be expected. Two weekends ago I watched an eagle catch a fish for supper, just like the eagle in the photo shown below (click to expand). Our local loons hate the eagles and make a real racket whenever one flies by.
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Baldeagle

Nerdcast – Take 09: eLearning Devcon

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Given I’m attending an eLearning conference (DevCon), I decided to "practice what I preach", and do a podcast from last night’s reception. My setup is fairly simple … my Dell laptop and a Samson USB condenser microphone (Northstar Nerd’s Podcasting Tutorial).

Listen to my podcast comments (1:52 running time). Each name below links to their interview. Everyone also had to answer the age old question … What’s the nerdiest thing you’ve ever done?!

My three victims were:

  • Edwin Garcia from the University of Texas
    (3:36 running time)

I interviewed Edwin due to the phenomenal speed he applied the lessons learned in an afternoon session on how to use the Video iPod as an eLearning device. Within two hours of a session provided my Mark Henry on how to use the iPod Notes feature to create custom eLearning, Edwin had applied the lesson for a different platform than the one reviewed. I hope to link the Powerpoint slides for Mark’s presentation soon.

See this separate post which includes Mark Henry’s source files!

Hear Garin’s view on Rapid Intake’s views on technical conferences and Web 2.0. Having never attended eLearning DevCon before, I have been impressed with the openness this conference has to having presentations on "competing" ideas and technologies.

Michael’s comments include his impressions of Devcon, and also an explanation of Knowledge at W.P. Carey. This web site / service of Arizona State’s business school is provided in conjunction with Knowledge@Wharton. Quite frankly, I had no idea Knowledge@Wharton was building a network.

Learn more from some of my prior posts on Knowledge@Wharton: