will wiki or blogs replace e learning content and the tools

web 2.0 is about collaboration, networking and commenting alongwith many other terms. With web 2.0 one of the things being said about learning is that content creators will be thing of past and SMEs will take over in creating the content. And web will be delievery medium in form of blogs and wikis.

will it replace content ? The content will still be there. It could change in terms of quality and quantity of information. Probably the profile of content creators can change. It will be SMEs who will take over.

and will it be end of e learning tools even if wikis and blogs take over? E learning tools create content, the things that will change is who is creating the content and how it is being delievered. The tools can still survive if they become dead simple to use so that SMEs can use – it takes care of who part. And they can change the delievery medium to more web based with reduced file size – it will take care of how part. And they are in win win situation as the no of people using the tool will increase.

in other development youtube has incorporated a online video mixer. This is powered by Adobe premiere express. This is a case of how tools are changing themselves in web 2.0 context.

watching play .. . . .

saturday - 16 june – got an invitation from a friend to watch a play at Gurunanak bhavan. One of friend’s friend was involved in organising the play and he arranged for tickets.  Not very enthusiastic about watching plays but since it was ages we watched any play so we decided to go ahead. It was being done by some groups who were not professional actors and the publicity was only by word of mouth.

impressions -

• the auditoriam was what it used to be in old days. Multiplexes has changed everyone expectations.
• the actors now carry cordless microphones. Earlier it was some mikes fixed at stage and actors has to come near it to speak. In professional plays the mics were hanged at multiple positions on stage so roughly it would cover most of the space. And actors can be at their place while speaking. Bit more comfortable.
• the dialog delievery is at normal pitch now. Earlier it was at high pitch so that mics can pick up the sound.

the same venue is hosting a quiz festival to mark KQA 24th anniversary this saturday.

Adobe Apollo is now AIR(Adobe Integrated Runtime)

adobe apollo is renamed as AIR(Adobe Integrated Runtime) and its beta is released. Download runtime and SDK here. Flex 3 public beta is also release simultaneously.

some of the sample applications are also showcased here. You can see some of the applications which are perfect to be created in AIR. Some of the online CRM applications are good cases to be migrated to AIR.

and the good part is that one can create application anywhere and migrate it to AIR. One need not necessarily know flash or flex laying out route for its better adoption.

vista good things and bad things (perceptions) –

1 . Startup time is less.
2 . Looks more stable. Less crashes.
3 . handles crashes well. A white layer is shown for applications which has crashed and it always exits without causing restart or anything like this.
4 . UI is good.
5 . General performace is good.
6 . Does not detect network easily when I come to work after leaving the machine locked in night. Has to restart 90 % of times.
7 . Does not behave well with files on network. I try to copy a file which does not have permission for me. Does not show clear message. Just keeps on showing Try again dialog again and again.

how to make applications vista conscious..

one of the most visible things in Vista apart from User interface is User Account control or better known as UAC and at the background security features. Some of the things you should know in order to be familiar with the changes in the way it can affect applications -

1 .  there is a standard mode in which every application is expected to run normally. Some operations needs more permissions like access to some directories and registry location. If one can avoid this they should. Vista takes care of legacy applications for this by Virtualization. If they request such directories or locations they are given a dummy location. If they still needs such permissions they needs to run as administrator which give them more permissions. And this transition cannot happen in between . One has to close the application and restart as administrator. If at all one needs to run in standard mode for most of the things and yet to make this transition only for some tasks then these specific tasks can be moved to some other exe which can be spawned as adiministrator. Example is – try to create a file at ..\program files. A dialog will come up asking for permissions. Explorer runs in standard mode and to make a file at the high security location on needs more permissions so a new process is spawned with administrator mode.

2 .  in standard mode you cannot even query other admin mode processes about its state. It will be to the extent that from standard mode you cannot even determine if other process is admin mode if at all it is in admin mode. So you have to rely on few apis failing to say probablistically that other process is admin mode.

3 .  internet explorer by default runs in protected mode with even lesser rights. This is to prevent websites or plugins to silently access system resources.

4 .  hooks cannot be set by standard process in admin process. There is no way to do it except move subset of application containing hook injection code to admin process. Standard proceeses can set up hook in IE but IE wont send messages back to the standard process. To do this one has to use ChangeWindowMessageFilter. In this one can specify the message which one wants to accept.

5 .  to make applications go along with Vista they need a manifest file embedded in them which alongwith other things define the level of execution.