Mobilemind » tools http://mobilemind.net Thoughts on mobile computing and elearning Fri, 25 Jun 2010 02:17:31 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 iPhone Travel Apps: Me v. National Geographic http://mobilemind.net/2009/07/iphone-travel-apps-me-v-national-geographic/ http://mobilemind.net/2009/07/iphone-travel-apps-me-v-national-geographic/#comments Fri, 03 Jul 2009 23:23:00 +0000 Tom King http://mobilemind.net/wp/?p=739 Continue reading →]]> One screen of my iPhone is dedicated to essential travel apps and I’d like to share that list with you. For comparison I’m also including a link to and the short list of Travel Tech: Top 20 iPhone Travel Apps from National Geographic Adventure.

My key travel apps for iPhone (prices as of July 3, 2009):

  1. TravelTracker with TripIt $7.99If you take more than 6 trips a year get this app and sign up for TripIt service on the web. TravelTracker shines over the free TripIt app because it keeps past trips and has many more features. Silverware is a good company and this is a good app. Loved the previous TravelTracker incarnations on the Newton & the Palm, and I got it on iPhone as soon as it came out as a new-from-ground-up, smarter app. I’d hold off on getting the “Pro” version for now though… there are some iPhone 3.0 issues to sort out. In a few weeks I will be upgrading to TravelTracker Pro though, so I can get live flight status plus download and upload to TripIt. Update: A new version of TravelTracker posted to the App Store today—July 3, 2009.
  2. TripIt for iPhone FreeHuh? You just said TravelTracker. I use both. The TripIt app is less cluttered and faster— for the current trip, but I can not easily forward an itinerary or do many other things that TravelTracker does so well. I use TripIt for quick access to info on the current trip, like hitting the rental car info with my big fat thumb as I dash away from baggage claim.
  3. The Weather Channel FreeAs National Geographic puts it:

    [The Weather Channel app] gets the nod for customization and the ability to check out conditions in multiple locations at a glance.

  4. AroundMe FreeI admit it, Starbucks pwns me. AroundMe helps me quickly find that essential latte, or a local equivalent and other conveniences (ATM/bank, restaurant, pharmacy, retailer). I’ve tried coffee-specific apps and a few brand-name bank/retailer/restaurant finders. This particular app works well and seems current most places I go, and does away with having a slew of category/vendor-specifc apps.
  5. Currency FreeFantastic currency converter that auto-updates exchange rates. Shows a purchase amount in multiple currencies of your choice at the same time. Easily switch from entering in one currency to entering in another. Very helpful on my trip to Singapore when trying to figure out what $5 USD was in SGD or what $900 SGD is in USD (answer: 1 nice watch).
  6. Taxi Magic FreeGreat app for getting a taxi when you aren’t in an urban center or near a taxi stand. It electronically hails a taxi and sends your current location to your choice of cab companies. You can even create an account & use it to pay for the ride, without using cash or credit in the cab. Cities supported include: Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Kansas City, LA, Minneapolis, Nashville, NYC, the OC, Pittsburgh, Phoenix, Portland, Sacramento, San Antonio, San Diego, Dan Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, St. Louis, and Washington DC.
  7. Urban Spoon FreeThe best way to break the logjam of “I dunno, where do you want to go.” Also nice to find something interesting & local instead of the shopping mall-perimeter chain restaurant defaults.

Then there are the airline superstars of iPhone web app-friendliness. The standout here is JetBlue, who has a very useful and colorful web app. Honorable mention to Southwest Airlines, who made great use of the very cool iUI iPhone templates found on Google Code.

To make the most of any of the web apps below, just visit the URL on your iPhone and then bookmark with the “Add to Home Screen” option.

Great iPhone web apps from airlines to add to your iPhone homescreen (actual iPhone/Touch home screen icons shown):

I heard back from @Alaska Airlines on twitter that Alaska is working on it. Go Alaska! No word from United Airlines on when http://ua.flightlookup.com will become more iPhone-aware. Sadly, the very-cool, but Flash-dependent site of Virgin America doesn’t make the iPhone cut either (as of July 3, 2009). Btw, lots of airlines are on twitter, as I found out working on @AICC followers.

A Few Extra Travel-related Apps
Rounding-out my travel page I have Aeroguide Lite (Free) to recognize things like that rare Ilyushin Il-62 I once saw over SFO (an Il-62 looks like MD-80/DC-9 with 4 engines or a Vickers VC10).

Other miscellanneous items on the page include: Gas Cubby ($9.99) for recording and charting the MPG, etc. of my own car; FedEx Mobile (Free) for help with shipping; and Google Earth (Free) for miscellaneous mapping and geographical visualization.

The National Geographic Adventure List
To get more detailed information on their picks, please see Travel Tech: Top 20 iPhone Travel Apps from National Geographic Adventure. I’ve add my opinions to their list below where I had feelings one way or the other. For reference, here is their list:

  1. Next Flight $2.99
  2. Urban Spoon Free
  3. HearPlanet reg $5.99 (on sale for $1.99 on July 3, 2009)
  4. Air Sharing $4.99(Nix I say, get FTP On the Go)
  5. Tweetie $2.99 (Nice, but nix say I. Get free TweetDeck or Twittelator Pro for $4.99, or both as I did)
  6. IAmHere $0.99
  7. World Customs $0.99
  8. Wi-Fi Finder Free
  9. The Weather Channel Free
  10. Google Earth Free
  11. Packing $1.99 (on sale for $0.99 on July 3, 2009. This one *I* might try)
  12. Room Free
  13. FlightTrack Pro $9.99 (Nix, I say, get TravelTracker w/TripIt)
  14. Lonely Planet Phrasebook $9.99
  15. Skype Free (I totally agree here–a very popular app, 4M downloads & estimated to be on 10%+ of iPhones)
  16. WriteRoom $4.99
  17. (Amazon) Kindle for iPhone Free (I totally agree here too)
  18. Cheap Gas Free
  19. Babelingo $3.99 (on sale for $1.99 on July 3, 2009)
  20. Where Free
]]> http://mobilemind.net/2009/07/iphone-travel-apps-me-v-national-geographic/feed/ 3 Geek Cribs Follow-up: “The Setup” http://mobilemind.net/2009/01/geek-cribs-follow-up-%e2%80%9cthe-setup%e2%80%9d/ http://mobilemind.net/2009/01/geek-cribs-follow-up-%e2%80%9cthe-setup%e2%80%9d/#comments Fri, 23 Jan 2009 05:18:00 +0000 Tom King http://mobilemind.net/wp/?p=732 Continue reading →]]> Via Daring Fireball, I learned of “The Setup”; a series of posts/interviews with techno glitterati describing their work setups. A much cooler (and computer-centric) approach than my early December post, What if… MTV Cribs for iPhones.

So far The Setup covers Alex Payne (of twitter), YACHT (I can’t describe YACHT), Gabe Newell (of Valve videogames), Steven Frank (of Panic Inc and Transmit fame) and John Gruber (the famous fantastic Daring Fireball and Markdown maker).

]]> http://mobilemind.net/2009/01/geek-cribs-follow-up-%e2%80%9cthe-setup%e2%80%9d/feed/ 0 What if… MTV Cribs for iPhones and Macs http://mobilemind.net/2008/12/what-if-mtv-cribs-for-iphones-and-macs/ http://mobilemind.net/2008/12/what-if-mtv-cribs-for-iphones-and-macs/#comments Sat, 06 Dec 2008 07:22:00 +0000 Tom King http://mobilemind.net/wp/?p=730 Continue reading →]]> It’d be cool if there was a “geek work cribs” that showcased the preferred tools of geek celebs (and minor celebs). If there is, I don’t know about it. Nonetheless, we all find posts and pages to that effect here and there. Recently, fellow geek (and elearning celeb) Aaron Silvers kindly posted a page-by-page list of what’s on (and no longer on) his iPhone. There are some cool ways to do things like this that I’ll share too.

First, get an account (or two) at iusethis.com, but do NOT populate it- yet.

Next, get AppFresh, a Mac OS X application that helps you keep apps, widgets, preference panes and plugins up-to-date. Conveniently, it also connects to you iusethis account for Mac OS X. Run AppFresh, and it will create a list of your Mac apps and check for new version. Add your iusethisaccoutn via the AppFresh preferences.

Once the list is populated by AppFresh, you can easily click to add items to iusethis.com from AppFresh. Now you have a readily updated list that you can share as a page or RSS feed (see link at bottom of your apps or event page on the iusethis site).

The iPhone section of the site isn’t quite as auto-magically updated. I’d love to see AppFresh or something like that scour your iTunes directory to populate such a list though (hint). Fortunately, the folks at iusethis do make it easy to find iPhone apps on their site or add your favorites while their forms pull in data from the iTunes App Store.

Now for the mobilemind iusethis lists:

Once you are signed up and sharing like this, iusethis will also identify like-minded neighbors by way of your application set. Note that the respective OS X and iPhone sites also have overall lists for New, Interesting and Top apps.

Hey Aaron are we iusethis neighbors? (PS- I too dropped Appigo To Do for the freeRemember the Milk app.) Poor Appigo, first To Do dropped for the free RTM app, and now AccuFuel has been replaced with the $4.99 Gas Cubby. All good apps, just a matter of preferences and $4-$5.

]]> http://mobilemind.net/2008/12/what-if-mtv-cribs-for-iphones-and-macs/feed/ 3 Flex for Learning Integration, Visualization and Actualization http://mobilemind.net/2007/04/flex-for-learning-integration-visualization-and-actualization/ http://mobilemind.net/2007/04/flex-for-learning-integration-visualization-and-actualization/#comments Thu, 26 Apr 2007 16:01:00 +0000 Tom King http://mobilemind.net/wp/?p=676 Continue reading →]]> These are exciting times for learning & talent management systems and for Adobe Flex. A few weeks ago at LMS 2007, Elliott Masie addressed what he saw as the powerful potential of Flex for visualization of enterprise learning and human performance information. As a follow-up, the Masie Center is working with Learning Consortium members and vendors to create a powerful proof-of-concept that demonstrate web services integration of enterprise applications. This proof-of-concept project will demonstrate how applications like HR, LMS/LCMS, ERP, CRM can be integrated for a "performance dashboard" to visualize related information from these systems, and even allow for taking action that spans applications.

Now, weeks after kicking-off this project Adobe has announced that Flex will become open source, over the course of 2007, under the Mozilla Public License.

May you live in interesting times.

]]> http://mobilemind.net/2007/04/flex-for-learning-integration-visualization-and-actualization/feed/ 0 New Cool Tool- Articulate Engage http://mobilemind.net/2006/10/new-cool-tool-articulate-engage/ http://mobilemind.net/2006/10/new-cool-tool-articulate-engage/#comments Wed, 04 Oct 2006 15:39:00 +0000 Tom King http://mobilemind.net/wp/?p=656 Continue reading →]]> Articulate Engage is an awesome tool to add to your rapid elearning quiver. It isn’t the standard PowerPoint-to-Flash tool, nor is it another capture-based tool like TechSmith Camtasia or Qarbon ViewletCam.

Engage gives you interactions that break out of the rapid elearning tutorial "box" that can corner you into only "click next to continue" or "insert multiple choice here." Instead it gives you bigger, broader user interactions like a timeline for discovery learning and common interactions to communicate business concepts like nested circles, marketecture pyramid diagrams, glossaries, etc.

The interactions in Articulate Engage are simple to build and you don’t have to snap together a dozen of the tiniest legos in the box to get complete useful interaction structures. Even better, they also give some contemporary looking eye-candy, so business content can look great without making you struggle to become a Photoshop wizard just for clean, current-looking buttons.

Engage isn’t intended to replace a tool like Breeze/Connect, or Captivate– in fact it integrates nice & tight and adds value to the Articulate Presenter PPT-to-Flash tool. Check out the free trial while it is available-
  Download Articulate Engage trial copy.

]]> http://mobilemind.net/2006/10/new-cool-tool-articulate-engage/feed/ 0 pOddcasts?? http://mobilemind.net/2006/09/poddcasts/ http://mobilemind.net/2006/09/poddcasts/#comments Tue, 26 Sep 2006 15:19:00 +0000 Tom King http://mobilemind.net/wp/?p=654 Continue reading →]]> Why is it that sometimes animated characters make content more compelling and sometimes they seem, well, creepy? It seems like this can be the case, even for the same use, but just with different viewers. My friend and colleague, Professor Mark Salisbury, produces 2-3 minute segments on Knowledge Management for an NPR affiliate in Albuquerque, New Mexico among other locations. There are quite a few of these segments (and some supporting graphics) available on his web site (sample radio segments). I genuinely enjoy the segments for their content, as well as the recollections they inspire of good times and good fun working with Mark.

Recently he started using the Oddcast hosting service SitePal to make what I would call "pOddcasts" like this, The Knowledge Worker. I’ve heard about the research on animated characters and understand the need to more clearly personify the characters or vignettes in elearning– I even encouraged it while at Macromedia (Animated Talking Characters for Elearning). However, in this case the technology just doesn’t add value for me. I don’t know if it is because I know Mark and have seen him speak, or because of my demographic (40+, non-gamer), or whatever.

Has anyone else run into this experience with virtual characters? I saw a presentation at the Learning 2005 conference that was titled, Can Virtual Characters Produce Real Results in Simulations? I really enjoyed the presentation by Tomas Ramirez and Greg Sapnar of Bristol-Myers Squibb. They cited some good fundamental research on use of virtual characters and included tools like a Virtual Character Decision Maker’s Matrix job aid (from Night Kitchen Media) for selecting and developing characters. They referenced the work of Clark/Lyons and Reeves-Nass on virtual characters. This makes me wonder, was the issue for me that there already was a real character in my mind, so there is some sort of disonance when I see the virtual Mark? How can one ensure that virtual characters increase effectiveness and comfort for the learner?

Does anyone have other thoughts about this or pointers to relevant research?

]]> http://mobilemind.net/2006/09/poddcasts/feed/ 0 Flashform: Form-driven SWF-output Elearning for AICC and SCORM http://mobilemind.net/2006/09/flashform-form-driven-swf-output-elearning-for-aicc-and-scorm/ http://mobilemind.net/2006/09/flashform-form-driven-swf-output-elearning-for-aicc-and-scorm/#comments Wed, 06 Sep 2006 16:27:00 +0000 Tom King http://mobilemind.net/wp/?p=647 Continue reading →]]> Rapid Intake took on the task of updating CourseBuilder and Flash Learning interactions last year. Now they’ve released an updated forms-based elearning tool that is AICC and SCORM compatible- Flashform Rapid eLearning Studio 2.

Flashform looks a lot like the server-based tools you might see from Qmind, Mohive or CourseAvenue. However, it is client side and advanced developers can customize or extend it using Flashform source FLA and XML files. This is a sort of third category of Flash tool. It falls between the sometimes intimidating option of coding Flash content from the ground-up and the constraints of Powerpoint-based elearning converters (Articulate Presenter or Breeze) However, it doesn’t assume that one needs the content management and workflow capabilities of the flexible server-based template and form authoring solutions like Qmind. Check it out. Check them all out; there isn’t one tool that is a universal solution for all needs.

]]> http://mobilemind.net/2006/09/flashform-form-driven-swf-output-elearning-for-aicc-and-scorm/feed/ 1 Return to client-side blogging http://mobilemind.net/2006/09/return-to-client-side-blogging/ http://mobilemind.net/2006/09/return-to-client-side-blogging/#comments Tue, 05 Sep 2006 01:55:00 +0000 Tom King http://mobilemind.net/wp/?p=645 Continue reading →]]> My preferred offline/client-side tool, w.bloggar, is back online after some time away. Something went weird with w.bloggar for me July-ish and I couldn’t post using it. I looked for a new copy, but the site was down since at least early August. Meantime, I had been using the Blogger site to do my entries and felt some frustration, so I tried another free blogging client, Qumana. I had tried it once before in a sort of w.bloggar versus Qumana shoot-out. Although Qumana 3 beta 5 is significantly nicer than what I tried before, but still not my cup of tea. If necessary (like w.bloggar doesn’t work for THIS post), I’ll go back to Qumana.

For now, w.bloggar works best for me and I’m now using w.bloggar v4.00.193 which you can download from the resurrected bare-bones site. Don’t let the placeholder-style site fool you. This is a great tool. Then again, if there’s something better… just let me know.

]]> http://mobilemind.net/2006/09/return-to-client-side-blogging/feed/ 0 Portable Firefox 1.5.0.2 Released http://mobilemind.net/2006/04/portable-firefox-1-5-0-2-released/ http://mobilemind.net/2006/04/portable-firefox-1-5-0-2-released/#comments Sat, 29 Apr 2006 16:43:00 +0000 Tom King http://mobilemind.net/wp/?p=637 Continue reading →]]> From PortableApps.com | Your Digital Life, Anywhere™:
"Portable Firefox 1.5.0.2 Released"
Submitted by John T. Haller on April 28, 2006 – 12:38pm.
Portable Firefox 1.5.0.2 has been released. Portable Firefox is the popular Mozilla Firefox web browser packaged with a PortableApps Launcher as a portable app, so you can take your bookmarks, extensions and saved passwords with you. New in this version is:
  • Update to Firefox 1.5.0.2
  • New self-extracting package download (only 5MB)
  • New App/Data internal directories for easy backups
  • New localization instructions so you can use PFF in your own language

Get it from the Portable Firefox homepage at PortableApps.com.

Now to figure out if it is worth it to add the Authorware Player (lots of read/writes to the USB Flash drive) or not. I’m pretty sure I’ll add the Flash plug-in and a few other key Firefox extensions though.

]]> http://mobilemind.net/2006/04/portable-firefox-1-5-0-2-released/feed/ 0 Must-have Resources for Authorware http://mobilemind.net/2006/03/must-have-resources-for-authorware/ http://mobilemind.net/2006/03/must-have-resources-for-authorware/#comments Mon, 20 Mar 2006 05:50:00 +0000 Tom King http://mobilemind.net/wp/?p=635 Continue reading →]]> It has been 18 years since I first saw Authorware (then Course of Action) in grad school and 15 years since I first drew a paycheck from using it. Once again I am deep into Authorware development. I’m updating some projects to make better use of Javascript and XML technology as well as improvements to Authorware itself. Here are 3 "must-have" resources:
  • Click Craft Find & Fix Command- A multitasking necktop known as Ron Lubensky offers an incredible, scriptable, automated way to find and fix virtually anything in an Authorware file. A nice intuitive UI lets you select properties to find/change, including content of Calculation icons or even the ability to paste in new models. If you use Authorware, go buy this. It is the best $36 USD you can spend if you already own Authorware.
  • Table of Contents for a better idea. A veryhandy reference by Joe Ganci and Chris Swenson of DazzleTech. (if you have trouble finding it on their site, follow this path: Products > Digital books > Javascript for Authorware). It costs $50 USD.
  • JavaScript Quick Reference for Authorware 7.0- Again, Ron comes from down under and goes over the top. A free Javascript-Authorware reference that integrates with Authorware 7, including "snippet integration" with the Calculation icon. Most excellent!

I bought/downloaded all of these myself last week and am quite happy. There’s nothing in it for me to recommend these resources, other than sharing good authoring karma. While I’m at it, be sure to check out Andrew Lucking’s blog. I’ve seen Andrew on Authorware forums and around the net, and I finally had a chance to meet him at the AICC meetings in January 2006. His blog has good stuff on elearning, Authorware, web development, video encoding Flash and more. Moreover, I actually find the occasional flyer about boat construction to be quite interesting.

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