I’m pretty much a beanpole, so I don’t have room to complain, but nobody likes to pop a button off their pants the day they turn a year older. I did that today; kind of demoralizing. Getting older is not my favorite thing, but at least we humans have an opportunity to up our worth each year.

The software we use can’t share that hope. A ridiculous comparison, but I couldn’t help make it after the timing of two events: Only mere minutes after the demoralizing button pop I found myself reading yet another Federal Government RFP including yet another requirement for Windows 98 compatibility. Me, I can shed a pound or two. Windows 98 couldn’t be more obsolete. Buried next to it is Netscape Navigator.

Here’s the skinny on Windows 98:

The most recent edition of Windows 98 was released in mid-1999, so it’s coming up on being nine years old. To put that in perspective, Windows 98 is older than the birth of SCORM and Flash-based video.

Stats released in January of this year tout Windows 98 as holding a whopping .4 percent of the browser market. Even Linux claims 4.4 percent! We don’t have to cater to that bugger! Windows 98 was officially dropped from Microsoft support in summer of 2006, and finally, Windows 98 can’t run either the latest Microsoft browser or the media player. All that means it can be challenging to create cutting-edge web-based products when they MUST function on the Windows 98 dinosaur.

Sure, we can chalk up this archaic requirement to an RFP template being reused for the last 9 years. But let’s not forget that RFPs beget contracts. And contracts beget lawyers. Let’s do a favor to the developers and in turn to our audiences.

Dear RFP authors, please update the specs!

A recent article in eLearn Magazine by Jane Hart, head of the Centre for Learning & Performance, delivers the results of a survey she conducted on the Top 100 Tools for Learning. I was pretty shocked at the results of this survey, to which 109 learning professionals replied. For some reason I wasn’t asked to be one of them (joke).

What shocked me? Out of the top 10 learning tools, none of them is an e-learning product! How can that be? We use several great tools to create a powerful e-learning experience, many of which earn us lots of client kudos.

The top tool, according to Ms. Hart, is (drum roll, please) the web browser Firefox (now imagine the sound of cymbals crashing to the floor). The rest of the top ten list included del.icio.us, Skype, Google Search, PowerPoint, Wordpress, Gmail, Google Reader, Blogger, and Word. Word? Really? PowerPoint I understand and could defend, but Word? Skype? I’m certainly a little confused here. We were talking about top tools for learning, right?

How does Ms. Hart defend these survey results? She says:

“Most of the tools are not dedicated learning tools, but rather ones that are being commonly used by people in their daily lives, which suggests to me that learning, working, and living are actually becoming one and the same thing. I believe that therein lies the enormous power of these tools for learning.”

Okay, I’ll buy that, but think there may be another answer as well. If you are developing e-learning, users really don’t need to know what tool was used to develop it. They just want something that works, that is effective.

Ms. Hart does mention many products that first came to my mind: Captivate, Articulate, Dreamweaver, and SnagIt. This is still just the tip of the iceberg, of course. Nowhere in the article does Flash come up, which is certainly one of the most important e-learning products to come along in quite a while.

So why was Firefox number one on the list? In trying to rationalize the thinking here, I could only come up with one good reason: Firefox is a more reliable browser to play back e-learning products developed in the programs that show up later in her list.

I can’t argue how important playback is for the user experience. As developers, we want to ensure a flawless user experience, and Firefox is just plain more reliable as a playback system. That I can’t and won’t argue. But I think we have to start recognizing the technology behind the mere means of delivery. There are so many great ways that e-learning is developed that maybe the next survey can be broken into development tools and playback tools.

Actually, l think I might develop that survey myself.

Recently, Ammon’s blog post “Will Younger Workforce Ease Fed New-Media Fears?” mentioned the impending wave of Baby Boomer workforce retirement.

A younger, tech-savvy labor force is arriving ready to prove their digital prowess, but lingering security concerns remain. I was wondering, though, even if the Federal administrators and training decision makers were open to letting the kids play, what of the retirees that will be targeted for full-time, part-time or encore work? Plenty of Boomers are leaving the public sector, but many from the private sector are showing up, sharing their experience and enjoying a late-career shift to public service.

How will they be recruited? How will their skills be matched to Government need? And will they be prepared for next-generation of digital work environments?

Last year the Partnership for Public Service initiated a campaign to recruit passionate, experienced retirees from nonprofits and the private sector into the Federal workforce, banking on the echo of JFK’s initial call to duty.

While tapping into this pool makes sense, the Partnership describes several obstacles that make the task difficult, one the most obvious being recruitment. The Partnership describes the Federal Government as “isolated” and gun-shy of hiring “outsiders.” Largely a cultural issue, but HR issues of preferred promotion from within, security clearance, and general flexibility remain issues they are actively seeking to improve.

In order to recruit these individuals, it seems a combination of new and traditional media will come into play. Why do I say this? The older generation (in an ageless cycle) will get their information from younger new-media junkies. A Gen X or Gen Y parent will call Boomer grandparents to remind them that the grandkid wants a Webkinz for his or her birthday. The call (or IM exchange) will go something like this:

>”WEBKIDs? what’s a Webkid?

>”Webkinz, Dad…with a z.”

>”{expletive}”

(Note: Actual conversation heard at recent party.)

After twenty minutes of attempted explanation, Grandpa was fascinated but still unclear about the whole process. Someone whipped out a laptop, got onto the Internet via wi-fi, and gave him the virtual tour, which has Flash animation and audio commentary. In less than five minutes, Grandpa understood Webkinz. As luck would have it, he then opened a present—a Magellan GPS navigation device. In half an hour a former technophobe was ready to navigate both virtual and real landscapes.

How do you connect GPS devices, cuddly web denizens and next-generation Government employees? Simple: Retirees have experience and leadership that could surely help alleviate the impending Federal workforce crisis, provided they can be quickly trained and are able to easily access and implement emerging training architecture.

If the Government can quickly train Grandpa for his new Federal job while simultaneously getting him comfortable with new technology, it will be able to more quickly tap his expertise and avert its organizational mission-performance concerns.

Bottom line? Be nice to Boomers. They just might be our ticket to a well-trained, technologically proficient, high-performing Federal workforce.

Sometimes it’s when you experience something that affects how you experience it. Timing is everything, right?

Today my friend, a fellow new parent, sent me to Gever Tulley’s TED presentation titled 5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do. Obviously that was meant to be taken for what it was, an enlightening commentary on countering the ever-tightening safety regulations that, to paraphrase Tulley, are essentially stunting our children’s educational experiences. I couldn’t help taking more from it, due largely to when I watched it.

There’s been a lot of talk around Mind & Media lately, and in the press in general, about the impending retirement of baby boomers. The federal government in particular is facing huge a wave of boomer-based workforce retirement, with a younger generation that just doesn’t have the numbers to fill in. In response, we’ve had agencies turn to us, as far back as 2003, to help recruit job candidates and train existing workers. After a few years of navigating those waters, I couldn’t help draw some comparisons to Tulley’s talk.

As Tulley tells it, we are ever-increasing the safety measures around our children to the point of immobility. Society as a whole is so concerned with a bruise-free existence that experimentation and experiential learning are stifled, and real breakthroughs in understanding and education are missed. Secure, sure, but stunted.

Back to the fed. They need to recruit and train to tackle an impending disaster. Online media should be the cornerstone of those efforts, but all too often agencies are cocooned in safety and security and watch-dogging to the detriment of the effort.

No hard data to back up this claim, but I’m certain that folks who access federal agency websites or intranets actually use the public Internet as well. They’ve heard of YouTube, they’ve seen a Flash animation, and they’ve listened to streaming audio. To pound it home, do you think 20-something college graduates may be familiar with such things? Graduates who may consider employment in the federal workforce? They live it. They expect it. They want to be engaged. And yet use of, and access to, the so-called new media is often outside scope for federal agencies.

Some examples: I’ve come across folks within federal agencies who want us to stream media for their audience but can’t access the media while at work due to policies that forbid it. I’ve had folks request we use Flash animations to aid in training, only to find that they are unable to install Flash player on their agency computers. And I’ve seen just-in-time online training get mired in months of legal review. Not so just-in-time anymore, eh? What’s frustrating is that they are workers in those agencies who get it and who want to evolve the media that is coming out of those agencies. It’s just an uphill climb.

Perhaps federal agencies are scared of new media or dynamic websites, what with viruses, bandwidth constraints, employees watching streaming music videos, and what have you. Maybe they don’t know how to leverage the technology. I understand the gargantuan federal government isn’t nimble, but a systemic shift in thinking is necessary if they are to compete for recruits or are going to effectively train the workforce that remains after The Great Retirement. Static doesn’t do it anymore. Static content doesn’t attract, engage, or help retain. It sure as hell doesn’t compete. Agencies may consider it playing with fire, but, hell, if we can let our kids do it, how bad can it hurt?

It’s time to let folks get dirty, get a little banged up. This is no time to be timid.

Blogger Seni Thomas shares some profundity at Conversation Agent about the nature of social networks in the forthcoming year.

The primary purpose of online networks, up to this point, has been to congregate around interests, hobbies, and passions to create communities. In 2008 I predict networks will become more tha[n] social. In 2008 we will see the growth of innovation networks, or i-Nets. Networks that allow ideas to attract people and people to discover ideas.

i-Nets, in a nutshell, are networks that layer advanced people search capabilities, democratic content voting, and collaborative applications over a social foundation. Think of a mash-up between Google Apps, Spock, Digg, and Facebook.

i-Nets, according to Seni, will be catalysts for strategy consolidation, allowing research, planning, design, and creative functions to work with unprecedented efficiency and effectiveness. It’s the kind of prediction made at the onset of every new business year — but the explosion of social networking interconnectivity and communications suggests that this generation just might be able to follow through on the promise.

If you look a week or so back on the M&M blog, you’ll see the post “Well, since they asked so nicely…” But you can’t watch the video. It’s gone.

Just recently, this video went flying through everyone’s email boxes, making fun of the newest “bubble” of Internet companies, such as social networking sites, being valued at 57 megananotrabillion dollars. Now it’s been taken down by YouTube and other sites, due to a single photographer, Lane Hartwell, claiming copyright infringement.

I found out about the takedown from Wired. What I found more interesting than the actual story was the comment trail. It blows my mind how wide the spectrum of belief is. From copyright-backers to “it should all be free” backers. (On a related note: I once had someone tell me that if you posted something…ANYTHING…to the Web, it automatically became public domain!) As a professional in a creative field, I find the misinformation quite disturbing.

While wading through all the comments from people about the whole thing, I came across this gem:

“I realize this is a hard concept for most of the “Copyright-infringement-is-theft” crowd to wrap their heads around, but copying a photo found online is *NOT* the same as stealing a painting from a gallery.”

Well, sure it isn’t the same, but only in that online you are not taking the original physical item. But make no mistake, as far as copyright is concerned, there is no difference between hard drive or canvas. Both are physical media.

Obviously, people are very much in the dark when it comes to copyright law. I don’t pretend to be an expert, but it’s my job to know at least the basics. There are three things that I think most people don’t quite understand: first, the concept of intellectual property; second, the fact that copyright is automatic. The minute a work is put to physical media, it is copyrighted. One doesn’t have to register a work to have it copyrighted. (The role of copyright registration is a story for another time.) The third, and most egregious, is the concept of Fair Use.

The crowd who thinks the photographer is in the wrong will scream “Parody! Satire! FAIR USE!” They are wrong.

While the work as a whole may be a parody, it’s not a parody of her picture—and therefore is not fair use. Had it parodied her picture, she probably wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. Hartwell has every right to ask that her photo be removed. It belongs to her. Her claim is legitimate.

Is it not the same as using a bit of a song. They are not using a small bit of her picture.

They will argue that Richter Scales isn’t making any money off the picture. Again, they are wrong. How many people knew who the Richter Scales were before this? (I think I hear crickets.) They perform…they now are better known—if I’m not mistaken, that will translate into more ticket sales to their performances. Or maybe more sales of their album. They are available on iTunes.

This is, of course, not the first time this has happened. It’s not the most newsworthy (well, until someone starts aping the heavy-handed ways of the RIAA). But it may be the most insidious. People think that if you put it up on the Internet, you know the risk you take of it being stolen. Does this really matter? What if I wanted to sell copies of my pictures online? I shouldn’t be penalized because I posted them online. They are mine, after all. And yet it happens, day in and day out.

The thing is, all of this could have been avoided if the Richter Scales had simply asked for permission (make no mistake, they did have the ability to contact her, through her Flickr page). They most likely would have gotten the permission. Instead, they just took it anyway. What’s truly sad is that it wasn’t an individual who took the picture, but it was an ENTITY that took it. A creative group at that. You would think they would have known better.

Oh, and as I write this, I found that it IS still available, but for how long, who knows.

After posting my thoughts on Google Docs versus Word, I got caught up wondering how many other players were in the game.

Richard MacManus put together a great rundown that shows there is more to the world of document creation than Google and Microsoft. Digging through his article and following some of links, I found that some folks are liking specific apps from some of the lesser-known players more than the comprehensive suite offered by Google. Right there is power of brand, eh?

Clearly I aligned myself with the Google tribe, and by doing so went straight to their offerings in whole. So I’m basically no different than the folks I chided for aligning with Word simply because it’s the biggest and most familiar—also brand power. Well, what’s different is that my brand of choice happens to be innovating in ways that appear more forward-thinking.

The website best-practices watchdogs at A List Apart published an interesting article on the improvements of HTML 5, discussing new controls, structure, and a host of other changes. As explained by author Lachlan Hunt:

“To give authors more flexibility and interoperability, and enable more interactive and exciting websites and applications, HTML 5 introduces and enhances a wide range of features including form controls, APIs, multimedia, structure, and semantics.”

But really, this is just a description of a draft. Work on HTML 5 actually began about three years ago, and even though it may start being used within the next few years, it probably won’t be complete for another 15 years! That’s right—a decade and a half. That’s an absolute eternity for an “upgrade,” especially in an industry that is basically in a constant state of accelerated evolution.

Work on HTML 5 is being carried out as a joint effort from many key players, the W3C HTML WG, the WHATWG, and representatives from the four major browser vendors: Apple, Mozilla, Opera, and Microsoft.

I’m all for advancements in HTML, but I can’t help but think there are bigger problems that this high-powered group could be tackling. Instead of giving us new markup for structuring, such as header and footer tags, how about focusing on standards compliance, rendering differences, and overall cross-browser incompatibilities? Truth is, Web developers aren’t being held back by HTML 4. They are being held back because of Internet Explorer; Microsoft doesn’t follow any rules and renders differently from all other browsers.

Even though we’ve seen many improvements in IE7, IE6 is still the browser of choice by over 60% of the population, including all major federal agencies. Like the article states, Web developers “seeking new techniques to provide enhanced functionality are being held back by the constraints of the language and browsers.”

These problems, however, are not in the structuring and layout of the HTML code. They’re on scripting and styling (JavaScript and CSS), and the incompatibility of old and new browsers.

If this group really wants to produce something new that will “give authors more flexibility and interoperability, and enable more interactive and exciting websites and applications,” they should throw out this draft, force Microsoft to play by the rules, and figure out how to get users up-to-speed on what’s current.

In 2000, someone at a party told me that very soon books would be obsolete. The Rocket eBook had been around for less than a year, billed itself as the “first usable, mass-marketed electronic book,” and could hold a whopping 10 novels. Other competitors were also generating a lot of press—these included the Gemstar, the Everybook, the SoftBook, and the confidently named Librius Millenium Reader (I can’t help hearing here the theme to Conan O’Brien’s “In the Year 2000″ skits). The “death-of-the-book” meme—as old as the computer—had once again been revived.

Today we know that reports of the death of books had—yet again—been greatly exaggerated. In fact, the e-book bubble quickly burst, and the digital text utopia did not arrive. People were buying neither e-books nor e-book readers. While the analog book had been evolved to gratify human sensibilities over millenia, e-book readers still had significant problems to overcome in the area of user interface. A 1999 article in the New York Times on whether such devices meant “the end of the story for books” offered some good reasons for skepticism—or at least cautious optimism:

Robert Darnton, a professor of history at Princeton University who has championed electronic publishing for scholarly dissertations, said, ”I think it’s only a matter of time before we can have mechanical devices that will make possible a satisfactory but new experience of reading.”

But he conceded: ”One thing that seems to be missing is paper, the feel of a book when you hold it, its grain, its texture, its elasticity, its whiteness. The sensation of paper is bound up in the experience of reading. We have a long-term kinetic memory of paper. How will we substitute a new medium for it or improve on it?”

Designers of e-book readers were well aware of the need for them to be book-like. The Rocket eBook was the size of a paperback. Other devices were weighted to the heft of an actual book. One device, by Everybook, tried to get closer to the feel of traditional books by using facing LCD screens. But these were not innovations that readers wanted to curl up with. The problem seemed to be the screen itself.

User reticence about digital reading was already a well-known fact. Electronic texts weren’t themselves new: The Gutenberg Project had been digitizing texts since 1971. Yet computer-based reading hadn’t taken off, even on the Palm Pilot, which had been around since 1996. Usability guru Jakob Nielsen was prescient at least in part:

“It’s a pure matter of technology: The screen resolution is too bad. We know from human-factor studies that reading speed is 25 percent lower on the screen than on the printed page.”

Nielsen thought that 300-dpi screens might solve the problem by providing the same clarity as that of print.

But as resolution improved, it became clear that it wasn’t the only problem. The fact that electronic screens are back-lit makes it both un-book-like and unpleasant for long-term reading. What was required was “digital ink” on a screen (or even paper-like medium) that reflected light in the same way as a real book. Xerox and MIT had been diligently working on this problem while the first wave of e-book reader hype came and went.

Eight years later, the fruits of work on “digital ink” (and “electronic paper”) are only just making themselves known. Today we have the iLiad (2006), the Sony Reader (2007), the soon-to-be iRiver eBook Reader, and the just-released Amazon Kindle.

With the Kindle, Amazon has one-upped other available readers by offering a wireless connection (via Sprint’s EV-DO network) that allows access to Web content and does away with the problem of synchronization to a computer. Unfortunately, the device costs $399, books at least $10 apiece, newspapers $15 a month, and blog subscriptions $2 a month. A $399 price point for the device is a problem, and history has not been kind to paid subscription models when it comes to Web content. And as Jay points out, we can’t yet be confident that we can get the books we want in electronic format. Further, PDFs will need to be converted to the Kindle’s proprietary format to be read on the device. So despite digital ink and wireless access, there are still some significant barriers to entry for users interested in e-books.

But beyond cost, content, and format, there is still the question of user interface. Do we yet have a device that gives readers enough of the full experience of reading a regular book to be a real breakthrough (as Robert Darnton puts it, “the feel of a book when you hold it, its grain, its texture, its elasticity, its whiteness”)? Perhaps we’ll need something that is much more book-like in look and feel—including multiple (digitally inked) pages that bend—before reading on an electronic device doesn’t seem, at a primal level, sterile and less gratifying than the real thing.

Amazon recently announced that, for the holiday season, they are going to serve up videos to accompany the listings of 450 top toys. So what qualifies a toy for the top? Sales, reviews, or maybe payola from the manufacturer. Speaking of manufacturers, according the Publish World Update, an e-newsletter from Publish.com, where I read the news:

“It’s unclear whether the videos were produced by Amazon or the manufacturers of the products—although the guess is that it’s the manufacturers, to start. But the power of this video effort from Amazon will depend on the content as well as the continuing volume. Will these videos mostly be commercials, demos or candid reviews? Based on the initial few videos on the site—and not all links worked—they’re commercials, and not especially informative ones at that.”

Here’s what I found…commercial indeed.

Amazon, what are you thinking? You guys were one of the first big guns to offer customer reviews, and that social networking aspect of your super store is a big hit with me. Based on how many reviews I see when I visit, it’s big with others, too. Why not stick to that approach?

Rather than slap up commercials, how about letting visitors submit video reviews? You do? Oh.

So, I’m writing this post and I scroll WAY down the Spidey page to see if they offer written reviews to counter the commercial. Damn if I don’t see:

New feature! Amazon now allows customers to upload product video reviews. Use a webcam or video camera to record and upload reviews to Amazon.

OK, then that’s cool. Now all we’re talking about is real estate. So the Spidey commercial gets sweet placement on the page, but at least savvy Amazoners know to scroll WAY down, where they’ll find video reviews. Nice. Sing it, Spidey!

I love how Amazon artfully walks the line to appease manufacturers and consumers alike. They may be offering support for certain “top toys” via manufacturer-produced commercials, but they’re continuing to elevate the way in which consumers can voice their opinions. Manufacturers just better hope their “top toy” is indeed top in the eyes of the consumer, because glossy commercials just don’t win the game these days.