Who is using Adobe Digital Editions? And what are your experiences with it?

I have started reading the Un-Book I had downloaded from Lulu in ADE as I do not have Acrobat installed on all my computers. This allows me to digitally read the book and still follow Jay’s recommendation ‘to jot down my thouts’ – and – I do not have to look for any white space as I can bookmark / annotate a page, a phrase or a word and add my notes to it.

In addition to that I could (if I would have one) also read the Un-Book on a Sony® Reader PRS-505. The initiative certainly is an attempt of one of the big players in the industry to be ready for DRM and probably more to come.

On the other hand I can see some advantages in Un-Book projects like this one for both the author/publisher and for the participant (reader as mentioned above).

For the publisher this could be a secure way to make distribution of digital content safer (copy protection without limiting the usage for the reader). That said I would suggest Jay to anyway add some metadata to the Un-Book published:

Un-Book metadata as displayed in Adobe Digital Edition

1) and 2): Author and Publisher unknown and 3) Digital Rights without any limitations.

My personal experience as a reader (on an old PC with XP and only 512 MB of RAM) is that the tool is slow. So sometimes it takes a while until a bookmark with annotations is being displayed. What I like is the lean and intuitive interface.

This is my Feedback given to the Informl team:

The Unworkshop was a great experience for me. I have started to use my blog to communicate and to use aggregators on a regular basis (still room for improvement, but the start was much easier for me then if I would have done it just on my own).

In addition to the ‘bus rides’ (guided tours by Jay) and the ‘bike rides’ (small groups with great coaching by Harold and Judy on topics of personal interest) I was fascinated by the Personal Knowledge Management process which has kept me busy for some timevisualizing the steps involved in my previous posts ( http://tinyurl.com/yxy44a and http://tinyurl.com/y8am47). This additional loop after the Unworkshop has helped me to make the information offered in the training to become part of my own business live.

I would at any time join the Informl Crew (Jay, Harold and Judy) again to find new ideas and great resources and shall be monitoring their activities on their own blogs to be inspired. And yes – I am convinced that Informal Learning does work, if …

• you are curious to learn
• you are willing to do more then just participating in the live tours via web
• you are ready to invest some time to explore the ideas shared openly and really give it a try introducing it into your daily business / live

Thanks to the team for this exceptional experience.

After a conversation with Harold Jarche last week I have given my Visual of the Personal Knowledge Management process a new dimension, adding the stage “Dialog” at the end of the process.

The new stage “Dialog” can also be seen as a source for research / retrieval of the next level of development in the growing spiral. I actually like this representation better and it can also be seen as a metaphor for the old format of the web: Knowledge was produced, published and that’s it.

Web 2.0 seems to add more value to the process including dialog with the audience and the spiral shows the growing value of the Information (Knowledge) while passing through the process.

After our Unworkshop we had started a training supporting the moderation process in webconferencing and in presence events with visuals (kind of more formal training but with lots of informal options).

As a result I have been able to overcome my believe from early childhood that I would never be able to draw or visualize …

Because I have chosen to visualize the PKM process stages I thought this might also be of interest to those still monitoring our informL blogs:

As you can see I did draw my own pictographs for the stages on paper, scanned them and then (in my drawing program) placed them on an arrow symbolising information coming in and going out again.

The whole process of visualizing helped me getting an even better understanding on what the process is and will certainly help me remember the stages involved …

Sorry to all that have been on the last trip of our UnWorkshop #3.

After a long working day I have been taking a nap early in the evening – and slept through the night, missing our tour (1030 pm our time).

So at least we have got one more experience as to what can happen if you collaborate with a global group spread around the world
I would have loved to participate in the conversation and hope Jay will make the Breeze recording available so that I can at least see and hear what you did.

Sorry again and hope to ’see’ you again in the virtual spaces and maybe one day even in real live …

Have just come across the newsletter from the Training Doctor. It seems that Informal Learning is getting more and more attention:

1 IS THIS TRAINING?
==============================

IBM has cataloged the skills of about 100,000 employees.
That database is used to connect employees who have
questions to others with the answers, using the
Internet and instant messaging.

Is it “learning” if someone teaches you something
outside of a formal class? Is it learning if the
person supplying you with the new knowledge or skill
is not a designated “trainer?” Sure! Why not?

What is difficult is cataloging what people have
learned each year when you cannot count ‘butts in
seats;” but really, what is our goal as trainers?
Isn’t it more important to get individuals knowledge
when and where they need it? We think so. And so does
IBM, which estimates that 80 percent of what it
considers “learning” falls outside of traditional
classroom instruction.

(c) 2006 The Training Doctor, LLC http://www.trainingdr.com

Just having finished participating in today’s bus-ride I would like to get two ideas off my mind:

• Jay, you are on the right track (my opinion). But the moment it hearts most – and that we feel to never get to reach the goal – that is where we are very close to getting a BIG step ahead. So please just keep on going.
• How about asking the questions the other way around – instead of what is web 20 going to bring us: asking something like ‘how do we make a community participate’ or ‘how do we make an audience in a conferencing event interact’?

Both these questions are very central to what I am doing at the moment.

I have so far got very much out of your UnWorkshop thanks to your personal involvement and thanks to you team. Looking forward to our next steps.

Sometimes we face a situation where presenters in a web event bring their presentations (as big as 30-50 MB) and we have to transport them in a webconferenencing event.

What I am using to reduce the size of the presentation within less then one minute is a tool called nx PowerLIte (http://www.nxpowerlite.com/index.php?ld=n ). As a result presentations are often reduced by 80-90 % of their original size without any reduction in quality)

This is another web service I like: http://www.doodle.ch/index.php.en Doodle helps scheduling meetings – it’s simple, quick, and free.
If you look at ‘What else?’ you can find a link to a second polling format called AnyDoodle.

If I have to send a large file to someone I use http://www.yousendit.com (the free service allows up to 100 MB).
P.S.: To write this post I am using the WordPress Sidebar (Firefox Extension) from https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2996/