Software 7 - gonnalearn.com

Wii’d like to learn

After reading that moderate physical activity makes it easier to memorize stuff, I attached a wireless trackball to my home training machine and used it to control Rosetta Stone language learning software running on my Mac Mini attached to a flat screen TV. I was sure I had mcguyvered the perfect learning and exercise machine.

That was before I bought a Nintendo Wii. Just like the DS, this machine is begging to be used for something more serious than shooting “rabbids” with a plunger-gun (as addictive as that might be). My killer application would be a combination of a flashcard software like Supermemo with the physical activity and entertainment value of mini games. The result would be quicker, more enjoyable learning plus the general benefits (and downsides) of waving your arms around.

If that’s not enough, add an option for users to sell their self-produced content (flashcards) and you could even make money (or at least Wii-points) with your game console. While I’m at it, why not integrate a virtual meeting room where Miis learning the same subject can meet and support each other? Then you could learn more efficiently, have fun, improve your health, make money and find new friends – all in one application. If this can’t change the world, what else could? 😉

Please feel free to implement my idea and make more money you could ever spend while I go back to my learning and exercise machine… either that or the plunger-gun.

P.S.: Nintendo says 45 new games are currently being developed/translated for the Wii (including Big Brain Academy: Wii degree) and 79 for the DS (as reported on golem.de, in German) and in an interview with brand eins, Langenscheidt‘s Hubert Haarmann announced e-learning applications for the DS (and Sony PSP; brand eins 05/2007, p. 98).

Weblin explained in one sentence

Imagine taking the avatars from a virtual world like Second Life and setting them free on the World Wide Web. That’s my explanation of Weblin (formerly known as Zweitgeist).

So instead of logging in to a virtual world and flying your avatar to a virtual showroom of your favourite car manufacturer where he could inform himself about the newest car models, he could now just go to the manufacturer’s website… I mean, you could go to the website and your avatar would be there, too, like the avatars of other people just visiting this website at the same time. Presumably, you could then do whatever it is that avatars do. Or think about IBM: Instead of meeting somewhere in Second Life, IBM’s teams could meet right on the company’s website, eliminating the need to invest a lot of money in a new virtual presence.* The WWW’s virtual enough already!

If you see it from this perspective, Weblin makes a lot of sense. I might actually install it after having had a closer look at their privacy policy.

*If I just saved your company a lot of money, feel free to send me huge cheque. 😉

vtiger CRM 5.0.3 release announced for April

vtiger announced today that the newest version of its popular open source CRM software is going to be released at the beginning of April.

I had installed their software some months ago and found it to be very powerful and promising, but still a bit too buggy for my taste. I’ll certainly have a look at the new “solid and bug-less” 😉 release and post a review.

Netobjects Fusion 7.5 kostenlos (upgradefähige Vollversion)

This post is available in German only as is the web site and software mentioned here.

Während meiner Recherchen zu dem unten genannten Site-Style-Problem habe ich ein interessantes Gratis-Angebot von nof-club.de gefunden: Unter diesem Link lässt sich die Vollversion von NOF 7.5 gratis herunterladen sowie die Registrierung zur Erteilung einer Seriennummer vornehmen. Beides funktionierte bei mir problemlos. NOF 7.5 bringt gegenüber der Version 7.0 einige nützliche Neuerungen mit und sollte sich auch auf die aktuelle Version upgraden lassen (Seriennummer genügt zur Installation des Upgrades).

How not to import your site styles from previous versions of NOF

If you want to import entire sites from previous versions of NetObjects Fusion to the newest NOF 9.1, just follow these migration instructions. However, what if you only want import site styles?

Well, here’s how you should NOT do it for versions prior to NOF 8 (unless you don’t want to work with your older version of NOF anymore). I have been using NOF 7 and now wanted to use some of my site styles for NOF 9 too. I didn’t want to import (migrate) entire existing sites at that time. So, I simply used the Style > Add Site Styles Source command to point NOF 9 to the NOF 7 site styles directory.

Bad idea. Using this procedure, NOF 9 leaves the site styles where they are, but transforms them into its new format. This means NOF 7 couldn’t read them anymore and my existing sites looked broken in NOF 7. Unfortunately, when I realized this several days had passed since I had used the Add Site Styles Source command. Therefore, it took me some time to figure out what had happened (first, I wrongly assumed NOF 7 and NOF 9 had problems running on the same machine, which is not the case).

After discovering that NOF 7 couldn’t use the site styles anymore because of the modifications NOF 9 had made, I simply removed the site styles location from NOF 9 and restored the files from my backups. To use them in NOF 9, I made a copy outside the NOF 7 directory tree and included them again in NOF 9. As expected, everything looked fine again in NOF 7.