Creating Losing Designs – great ideas on using low stakes losing to motivate learners.

“The Smart Worker Needs Job Aids Rather than Courses” – this is a great series. Read ‘em all.

Learning is Social. Training is Irrelevent? – Yes.

The Death of the Traditional Enterprise

Review: DesignJot – the first iPad app for learning development? Great review.

Spanning Sync’s 1 Year Anniversary – congratulations, guys! Great product.

Book Review: ‘Game Frame’ by Aaron Dignan

In an attempt to generate some new money for charity, I’m throwing out a ridiculously cheap hosting coupon code for Dreamhost.

Use coupon code REDONK (short for redonkulous) to get $87 off a year of hosting, or other discounts on different plans.

For the rest of 2010, all proceeds will go to charity (Charity:Water, American Diabetes Association, Kiva, or make a suggestion in the comments).

So if you need hosting, or know someone who does, send them here (use coupon code REDONK)!

First off, their Save $5, Make $5 program is still going strong. It’s easy money folks. Use code D8BYCM when you sign up for the subscription, and you get your own discount code. Find four people who need this sync functionality, and you’ve made your money back. Find more and you’re making money for using a tool that you’ll use anyway. Pretty sweet.

In addition, Spanning Tools are available, and they’ve recently announced a Spanning Backup service that is looking for beta testers. They also helped Postbox develop their referral program. Pretty sweet. It’s a Save $10, Make $5 program. For $10 off Postbox, use coupon code R7AJZ. Postbox is a mailbox manager for Windows and Mac.

If you’re on a Mac, and you use Google tools, or if you just want to make some easy money, you need Spanning Sync.

**These links are affiliate links. As always, 50% goes to charity.**

From SS Blog: “Spanning Sync 3 is fully compatible with Snow Leopard and takes full advantage of its support for 64-bit processing. (And for those of you with an eye for the technical details, the Spanning Sync pref pane is now garbage-collected.)”

Full details here.

Save $5, then make $5 (or more than $5) using coupon code D8BYCM

For only $20, using the discount code below, (or $60 if you get the lifetime license), it’s worth every penny. (plus you can make referral money too). I’ve been using this tool for over a year now, and it’s been great. One, because it backs up my contacts and events, and two, because it’s such a transparent app, you never know it’s there. You just run it and it works.

Save $5 by clicking here or using coupon code D8BYCM.

What’s New in Spanning Sync 3:

• Much faster sync times—up to 10x faster on large syncs
• Calendar alarm syncing
• One-way syncing of calendars and contacts
• Syncs more contact properties, including birthdays and nicknames
• Option to not sync older calendar events
• Reduced memory usage
• Easier installation process
• Snow Leopard compatibility

So, almost one year later, I’m still using Spanning Sync. I’ll be honest, the main reason, even with all the new technologies, is that I don’t have to worry about it. It’s been running in the background on my systems for 10 months. I kept it when I moved to my Macbook Pro earlier this year. It just freakin’ works, so I had no reason to change anything.

SS is also doing a nice job of adding new features and keeping up with Google, so, again, I haven’t had any issues with compatibility or sync issues. Quite remarkable, since I had just moderate expectations.

Anyhow, if you need to sync Google and Mac and/or iPhone, I still highly recommend Spanning Sync.

**Disclaimer: Those are affiliate links, and 50% goes to charity.

In the end, we get direct feedback from the teachers, which is awesome. Here are some pictures from one of the causes I donated to. I love the direct response and being able to see the results.

Anyway, I’m about to receive another check from Spanning Sync, and thought instead of me donating it, I’d open up a little contest and give the winners a DonorsChoose gift card to give to the project(s) of their choice.

Simply post a comment detailing what social responsibility means to you. 1st place will receive a $50 card, and two runner-ups will receive $25 each. It’d be even better if you would match my donation and double the donation amount when you choose your project(s)!

This is just another fun way to give back to a great cause and take care of the less fortunate.

Be good, people.

With my recent wonderful experiences with non-profits and charity organizations, and the current state of our lovely economy, I’ve decided to make a change in the way we give around here during the holidays.

While I understand my kids (and especially my wife) need to unwrap presents on Christmas morning, there’s just something that bothers me about all that waste.

1. The ridiculous amount of paper, ribbon and packaging really gets to me. Such a waste.
2. The excess this creates. My kids aren’t any more spoiled than most kids with three sets of grandparents, but when you walk into their rooms and see all the crap they have, it’s an awakening.

So, getting to my point…in recent years I’ve pleaded with family to consider donating to the kids’ college funds, maybe in tandem with a smaller number of packaged gifts. I’ve only had limited success.

This year, I’m going to continue that request, but also add another. In place of gifts, or in addition to a smaller amount of gifts, I’m asking for a donation to charity.

I’m working with the kids to pick their favorite charities, and the wife and I are each picking one ourselves. Of our current budget for holiday gifts, I’m taking half of that and putting it to charity.

If you have the wonderful opportunity to shower your kids and/or family in gifts, please take a moment to consider the rest of the world. The less fortunate. Then, sit down with your family and discuss what you’re doing and why they should consider giving back. Give them the responsibility to pick their own charities to donate to.

• Brian: St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital
• Emily: Family Time
• Ryan: Village Learning & Achievement Center
• Megan: Toys for HAAM

If you can’t think of any yourself, consider the causes we listed above, or some of the opportunities below. Or check with the stores you’re shopping at. Most will be doing something for charity.

Also, even if you don’t want (or have the resources) to donate money to charity, consider donating time as a family to volunteer at a local charity handing out gifts, feeding the hungry, or some other wonderful and much-needed opportunity.

So, if you can, give back in some way. It’s really important, for all of us. Giving back feels good. It is necessary given the current state of the world, and, we’ll all be the better for it.

Happy Holidays!

P.S. Do you really need to use all that wrapping paper? Try recycling some packing paper, newspaper or anything else you have lying around. I promise, it feels just as good to rip apart as the fancy wasteful stuff. Every little bit helps.

Green Tips from Amazon

Donation Opportunities:

• Build a well in Africa
• Donors Choose
• Epic Change
• End Breast Cancer
• Help entrepreneurs in developing countries
• Help a child at Texas Children’s Hospital

• Spanning Sync now sends changes to Google in small batches. Batching has the following benefits:
• Greatly reduced memory usage on large syncs
• Eliminates various timeout errors on large syncs
• Information will show up on Google faster
• Total time to finish the sync is about 25% faster
• Fixed a rare crash
• Syncs that were canceled or aborted at just the right time would miss records on the next sync
• Better UI for over-quota conditions
• Reliability fixed
• Small fix to French translation
• Human readable log now includes event dates & times

Save $5 by clicking here or using this code: D8BYCM.

I’ve posted plenty of session summaries, but I thought I’d share my experiences in a chronological storyline with a few photos – mostly for my own archival purposes.

Thursday, November 6th:

My trip to California was interesting.

Friday, November 7th:

Great round of golf with my dad, uncle and their boss. Gorgeous day, despite a bit of wind. Shot a 105 with an old set of borrowed clubs. Had some killer drives that I was very happy with. I really need a new driver when I get home (thank you Spanning Sync).

Sunday, November 9th:

After a too-short, but very nice trip to Simi, it was time to head up to San Jose. Thankfully, no issues on this flight. I settled in to the very nice Fairmont San Jose with some Clam Chowder and a Club Sandwich and some Sunday Night Football.

Monday, November 10th:

Adobe Learning Summit. I learned a lot about where Adobe is headed with learning products. They’re launching an eLearning Suite, which will include modified versions of Dreamweaver and Flash. It, as well as Captivate 4, will be released sometime in 2009. I met up with Philip Hutchison, who I’d only known electronically before today.

I also met Doug Welch via Twitter, and Steve Howard and Shameer (Adobe Product Mgr.) at the Adobe reception. We had a great dinner at Gordon-Biersch. Afterwards, Steve and I went over to a Pub and talked about life and politics over a couple rounds of Guinness. It was a great evening.

Links:

• Steve Howard on Captivate 4
• Philip Hutchison on Captivate 4
• Captivate 4 Notes from IconLogic

Tuesday, November 11th:

DevLearn begins. Day one is workshops and symposiums. I was a little disappointed in the workshop I attended, but I was able to provide some input and help a few folks out, so it wasn’t too bad.

Dinner was great – Amici’s pizza with my manager and coworkers.

Wednesday, November 12th:

The day started with a wonderful keynote on technology, alpha geeks and the future from Tom O’Reilly. The sessions were pretty good. Twitter was going strong and it was a great way to share session experiences and notes. Mark Oehlert live-blogged some sessions. (one guy I really wanted to meet in person, but never synced up).

I snagged a quick lunch/coffee with Doug Welch and we chatted about podcasting and technology. Check out his handouts – he had a workshop and a concurrent session.

Links:

• Day One Recap from BJ Schone

Thursday, November 13th:

Another great keynote to kick off the day. Dan Roam and the Back of the Napkin. Brilliant stuff that I can actually use in real life, which is great. My Amazon wish list is getting longer. The sessions were pretty good again, except for the vCom3D sales pitch I went to that was supposed to be about learning portals. I hate that.

Links:

• It All Begins with Paper
• Notes on Roam
• Notes from Schone
• Deeper Instructional Design

Friday, November 14th:

Well, this keynote definitely woke everyone up. Medina (Brain Rules) is hilariously hyper, but in a good way. He used an odd method of presenting by using 30+ Director movies – he had to open each one and click play, rather than using Keynote or PowerPoint or just combining all the movies with a “next” button. Weird.

I would have loved to have had this guy as a professor. He’s brilliant, but passionate and entertaining, and even though he talks 100mph, you’re able to learn from him. Yet another book I’ll be buying. Great stuff around how screwed up our learning environments are, both in education and in corporations.

I have a new exercise goal, now. Thanks John!

Went to a great session with Paul Clothier on using PowerPoint to develop animations. Very clever examples and shows how far you can push PowerPoint with enough vision and time. He also backed what Dan Roam was telling us, that we need to detach ourselves from technology now and again and just brainstorm, draw, doodle and map on a piece of paper or a whiteboard. This is definitely something I will be doing moving forward.

I didn’t get to stay for all of Avron’s session on LETSI and SCORM, but I’ll be more directly involved with that moving forward and Aaron promised to fill me in a little, as well.

Links:

• Medina’s Brain Rules
• Brain Rules Notes
  
• Clark Quinn’s Mindmap of Keynote
• LETSI
• Objections to Social Learning

General Thoughts:

I had a great time. I met some great people, and Brent did a great job getting people to use Twitter. I found it to be a great tool for sharing information quickly and also for networking. Total tweets sent all time before DevLearn: ~250. Total tweets sent while at DevLearn: ~300.

Overall, the theme of the conference was great, but the sessions could have been a little better. I want more panels and discussions rather than presentations. I want workshops that are actual workshops.

I will take a lot away from this conference. Thanks to blogging and Twittering, I retained a LOT more than last year, when I just took notes on paper and didn’t record much or share anything and it was lost. I hope to keep the conversations going on this site, Twitter and a few other ideas I have brewing.

I’m excited about the future of learning and eLearning. This trip, and my recent promotion, have really stimulated my passion for teaching people, improving the learning environment with new technologies, and carving a path for myself in this industry.

Thanks to the EG folks, Adobe and all the peeps I met at DevLearn. It was fun.

Full List of DevLearn 2008 Handouts

Check it out here.

Three things:

1. Charity gets half, as promised.
2. Thanks Aaron.
3. Drobo on order.

Charlie from Spanning Sync:

“Last night at 6:33pm CST you made your 200th Save 5+Make 5 referral. Congratulations on being our first $1,000 affiliate! I’ll be writing a blog post about it.”

Be good, people.

Synchronize iCal and Address Book with Google Calendar and Gmail Contacts. Share calendars and contacts among multiple Macs. And while you’re at it, connect Google Apps to your iPhone or iPod.

Spanning Sync, my favorite synchronization tool as a Google Apps user and a Mac user, has released an update, version 2.02, with some minor bug fixes and improvements to overall speed and a smaller memory footprint.

Get this app, sync your life, save $5, and give to charity, all by clicking here.

I have a category on my site that is “Be Good.” I frequently come across wonderful deeds being done in this crazy web 2.0 (I hate that term, but it’s sort of relevant here) world.

I posted earlier about the September project, and it’s success, and, unfortunately, it’s failure to meet the ultimate goal by the end of September. With as much money that there is flowing around in this world, with campaigns, blog revenues, and whatever else, it’s a shame we can’t all come together to meet the needs of these charities and their reasonable goals.

About a month ago, I posted about Spanning Sync, which has in turn yielded an incredible return for doing very little on my part. To date, I have made over $700 on Spanning Sync referrals. All for doing nothing but writing a silly post and review about it. This is from a software program that I don’t even use much outside of syncing contacts.

I also get referral money for hosting, WordPress themes, contact management and online accounting software that I love.

As Aaron did a few weeks ago (thanks for the thoughts on our Ike situation), I am pledging 50% of my referral profits back to charity. I volunteer, I donate time, money and items to good causes, but it’s never enough. We can do more. I support Kiva, DonorsChoose and many more.

Poverty is another huge issue we can fix, hence the Blog Action Day link at the top of this post. Think about your situation and then think about what you can do to help. It’s the right thing to do.

If you read this entire post, and you need anything technology related (themes, software, hardware), please let me know because I might have an affiliate account, and you’d not only be helping me out, but helping out a charity as well. I’ll even support the charity of your choosing if you’d like to post a comment and let me know.

The important thing in all of this is social responsibility. We all have a place in this world (and this World Wide Web), and we need to make sure we’re giving back.

The new stuff I thought was substantial:

• Contact syncing! Spanning Sync now syncs Address Book with Google contacts.
• Contact photo syncing! (Awesome)
• Changes in iCal and Address Book are automatically pushed to Google as they’re made.
• Improved, easier-to-use preference pane UI.
• Dramatically improved network performance.
• Improved support for syncing huge (10,000+ events) calendars
• Improved support for syncing large numbers of contacts
• Improved support for multi-Mac configurations.
• Improved compatibility with MobileMe.

Speaking of Google Contacts, did you know there was a dedicated site for your contacts now? Pretty cool, though it’s still very rough around the edges. I’m surprised Google hasn’t done more with contacts yet. It’s a huge market for them, and no one has conquered it yet.

Anyhow. For now, I’m mainly using Spanning Sync to sync my contacts. I rarely use iCal, but I’m thinking my kids might use it more, thus making this software/service much more useful. But even if I was only using it for contact syncing, it’s worth my $20.

I wouldn’t be bragging about this software if it weren’t such a steal. If you use my coupon code, D8BYCM you’ll save $5, and, in turn, get your own coupon code allowing you to make $5 for every referral. I covered my $20 about two days after I posted my referral code. (Thank you Aaron.)

Try it out for yourself – and let me know how much money YOU make!

You can read more below, but if you just want your $5 savings, use this code: D8BYCM when you buy Spanning Sync ($20 for a year with this coupon, or $60 forever).

On top of that, when you buy a license, you are automatically part of their Save 5+Make 5 deal, allowing you to make money off of referrals. How cool is that? I’ll make $5 if you use my code. It could end up being pretty lucrative, as Aaron has shown. Heck, if you use my code, all you have to do is refer 4 friends and Spanning Sync is entirely FREE for you.

Spanning Sync synchronizes your Google Calendar with iCal. It also (in the upcoming version – releasing very soon) syncs your Google Contacts with your Address Book.

This app basically fills the void that Google hasn’t yet. I love Gmail, and I love Google Calendar, but I was often frustrated by the fact that my contacts were not in sync. Now they are.

I’m also doing some tests on using iCal versus strictly Google Calendar, and this app has been great while I perform my tests, allowing me to use Google Calendar at work and iCal at home.

The only thing it doesn’t do is sync tasks from iCal to Google Calendar, but that’s Google’s fault, because they don’t have a task feature in their calendar, for some ridiculous reason.

More on calendars, tasks, and productivity in the VERY near future.