• How to Improve Learning Outcomes With Performance Support | Social Learning Blog – Good to hear that someone is still beating the EPSS drum. I've long been an advocate, but it seems it lost much of its thunder once the Google/YouTube second brain came along.
• Highly cost effective video-based learning –
• Stop creating, selling, and buying garbage! –
• Forget Cramming: Molecular Pathways May Reveal the Best Learning Strategies – A computer has modeled the most efficient form of learning, that is, if you're a sea slug running from a lobsters. Scientists hope it might eventually work for a human studying for a calculus mid-term.

• Disney’s Going Digital: Buy Once, Watch Anywhere – The slow boat of convergence is picking up speed.
• U.S. Navy CIO: Social Media Should Be Part of Military IT Standard – U.S. Navy CIO Rob Carey wrote that social media is a resource for the American military that should be used to build trust and collaborate, both within and outside the organization.
• How the Internet is Changing the Way We Will Watch TV: Scientific American – The slow boat of convergence continues to chug along…
• Gartner: Loosen up on Social Networks, Security | Deep Tech – CNET News – The reality of enabling social networks marches on. From the article: "…corporate computing departments shouldn't block social networking and security shouldn't completely lock down communications with the outside world. And even if information technology authorities wanted to shut down such activity, they couldn't. "

• AOL: People Like It Now More Than Ever – ReadWriteWeb – The once and future king?
• YouTube EDU – Free College Lectures – YouTube has just released a new sub-site called YouTube EDU, aggregating thousands of free lectures from over a hundred universities across the country, including MIT, Yale, Harvard, Stanford, and many more.

• I Know It When I See It : Andrew McAfee’s Blog – Great post from Andy's new blog helps define what Enterprise 2.0 looks like.
• How to: Build a Social Media Cheat Sheet for Any Topic – ReadWriteWeb –
• Streaming video cannibalizing DVD rentals, says Netflix – Ars Technica – Yet another sign that the days of physical media are numbered as more people get their entertainment content delivered direct from the cloud.

Excuse me while I vent.

Media companies are all battling uphill (upload?) against piracy.  One of the questions I often ask them is: “What pricing and distribution model would you need to put pirates out of business?”  One scenario I ask is, “What if we blew up the current stilted distribution model (i.e., theaters – pause – DVD – pause – VOD – pause – HBO, etc.)?  What if we just say “This new movie releases Friday – how would you like to see it?”

We have already seen movement toward a more compressed distribution model in 2008 when some studios announced DVD + VOD day-and-date delivery.  But, how much longer will we have to wait to get to Theater + VOD day-and-date?  When we do, the pirates will lose some of their advantage.  Let me vent my personal gripe to illustrate:

I have an old buddy coming to visit for the Inauguration (yes – we are unbalanced enough to join the insanity down in DC).  He and I used to love to hang out, crack a few, and watch Clint Eastwood movies (mostly the spaghetti westerns, mostly TGTBTU).  So, it would be great if he and I could watch the new Clint movie, Gran Torino, while he is here.  But, of course, the only legal way to see it right now is in a theater.  There is no way that we can work that into our schedule while he is here.  Now, I would gladly pay $25 bucks to be able to rent this VOD in my home.  But I can’t.  C’mon Warner Brothers – the money is yours – just let me VOD!

Of course, if I was The Bad or The Ugly, I could watch the video right now.  All it would take is a short stroll over to Pirate Bay to download a pirated copy (kids – stop that!).  It would probably be crappy quality but since I have a PC connected to my HDTV, my buddy and I could enjoy it any time we chose.  Now, because I don’t want to do anything to upset Clint (he’s always cranky and often armed), I will not do that.  But there may be others with less of The Good that might choose piracy out of last resort.  If someone is willing to pay instead of pirate, why not let them?  Trust me – it won’t cannibalize your box office receipts.  Theater going is an event/experience.  I will still go to movies.  I may even watch something on VOD and think, “Man – that would be great on the big screen – let’s go next week!”

I’m not the only one frustrated by not being able to VOD when I want and the studios are missing a revenue opportunity. How much longer do we have to wait?

(BTW – when I was growing up, my Dad had a Gran Torino.  I don’t think the rifle is standard equipment.)

• Web 2.0 Summit on blip.tv – Who needs to shell out the big bucks to attend when you can watch for free? This year's focus promises to expand beyond typical Web 2.0 focus to start looking at how technology can solve real world problems (i.e., how blogging will end world hunger ;o)
• eLearning Learning – Tony Karrer put together a great feed aggregation site that pulls together e-learning blog posts from across the Web.

• enterprise 2.0 … it’s this simple, see « pm blog – Mazy Hedayat posts a deliciously complex and confusing diagram that summarizes all the moving parts of Enterprise 2.0. A bit tough to read or use for learning, but it is a great summary…
• Why Companies Need Web 2.0 – Forbes.com – No new news here, but Mike Schaffner summarizes how "Web 2.0" (cringe) technologies must be adopted by companies to remain competitive.
• Tear down the broadcast towers – BuzzMachine » Blog Archive – Jeff Jarvis posits on how Web video and radio "could" make broadcast obsolete. Best part of the post is the comments. The way we consume media is changing dramatically and it will impact how we use media to teach.
• Grockit – About Us – Learning 2.0 – From the site: "Grockit is Learning 2.0. Grockit is about questioning together. To this end, we are developing an online learning game where people can teach each other." I look forward to seeing the game!

• Disney.com Breaks New Ground Streaming Full-Length Movies Online for the First Time Ever – Distribution models for media continue to evolve: "The full-length films will then be available for free streaming on Disney.com (www.Disney.com/WonderfulWorld) for the week following the network presentation."
• Is Google Making Us Stupid? – Nicholas Carr in The Atlantic makes an interesting assessment of "What the Internet is doing to our brains".
• LearnHub Relaunches Its Social Learning Network – Jason Kincaid gives an update on LearnHub and other sites trying to leverage Web 2.0 social concepts for learning.

These are my links for May 8th through May 9th:

• Viral Music Video Created Using Surveillance Cameras – Now that is an enterprising and innovative young band!
• The Evolving Web of Future Wealth: Scientific American – Stuart Kauffman hypthesizes that "the web of connections among goods and services in an economy may be the long-missing key to understanding how novel innovations and new wealth arise."
• A Seismic Shift in Epistemology (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE CONNECT – Chris Dede explores how "Web 2.0 is redefining what and how and with whom we learn." An intersting dip into the wiki driven definition of knowledge. He touches on many good points but skips across the power of the Web as "ancillary brain".

These are my links for April 14th through April 15th:

• WatchingTV Online – Blog I just discovered tracking the move of television to the Web. If their theme is correct, this will be a "threat to big media". No saying how the convergence game will play out, but converge we will!
• The Mobile Web Was Born Only Yesterday – I agree wholeheartedly with Michael: "So I disagree that The Mobile Web is dead. For many of us it is just coming alive." Just look at the use of mobil outside the US. The future of the Web is a mobile one.
• Social Aggregators Emerge To Manage Digital Lifestyles [Dion Hinchcliffe's Web 2.0 Blog] – Dion's wonderfully brief post about the rise of social aggregation. This HAD to happen as social fatigue sets in. These will be a model for the future of managing one of our auxillary brains (our social graph(s))