Archive for News

Happy Halloween!

I’d like to wish you a Happy Halloween! To help you have fun and stay safe, one of our users created some NanoLearning on safe Trick-or-Treating with your family. Click here to view it.

We have the capability to embed NanoLearning inline with a blog entry, and I would have done it here. However, WordPress does not allow their users to embed Flash into blog entries. That happens to be one of my personal “pet peeves” about WordPress, and most likely one of the reasons for us switching blogging platforms pretty soon. On the page with the NanoLearning title and description, you will see a link titled “Blog this” where you can create a blog entry that links to a piece of NanoLearning, or embed’s the NanoLearning directly into the blog entry.

You may have also noticed some changes on the Explore tab. Instead of giving you a big list of NanoLearning things we’re showing you the Top 10 most popular NanoLearning objects. Any NanoLearning can still always be accessed via it’s URL, or you can type part of it’s name in the “Search” box just like Google.

From the Explore menu, there is a submenu named Advanced Search. You can use that to search even the content of a piece of NanoLearning. So if you can’t remember the title or description, but you know it mentioned the planets, then search the content for “planet” and you will find it.

I know it sounds simple to be able to search in the content of a piece of any learning, but actually it isn’t. Most learning is built in Flash, and seach engines like Google can’t dig into the textual content of a Flash movie. Luckily we have designed our system in a way that lets you search learning content, and lets Google index NanoLearning content.

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Good News for Mac Users

We tracked down and fixed some issues that Mac users were having with NanoLearning this week. Our top notch technical team found some functions that Mac browsers don’t support, so we crafted a workaround for that. You will also notice some popup tooltips on certain icons, letting users know what they do. Just a couple little usability enhancements for you.

We’re working on a user forum so that people can create and share ideas, suggestions, and issues, and we can reply and interact with you in a forum. That way future generations can search all the forum discussions and find all our your great advice and ideas.

We’ve had some bloggers cover NanoLearning in the past few weeks. People are talking about us on microlearning.org, HotFromSiliconValley.com, TechCrunch (what’s hot at DEMO), and StartupSquad. Join the conversation!

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New Features and Fixes

Coming back from DEMO we had some great feedback and ideas. Plus now that we have opened the door to everyone, we have thousands of users from all over the world! The launch is not the end for NanoLearning, but quite the opposite. We’re just getting started!

Here are some of the things we have been hard at work on, and are rolling out in the next few days:

  •  Some usability enhancements, including better instructions on your homepage, and hover tooltips.
  • We had an issue with some accent characters, noted by some of our users in Brazil. That has been fixed.
  • Google indexing of your NanoLearning content. We’re integrating with Google to allow them to scan the actual contents of your NanoLearning, and not just the name and description. With lots of other people linking to great NanoLearning, it will rise in page rank. We’re still waiting for the day when Google returns NanoLearning on the first page of hits on a particular topic.

We are still working on some issues that Macintosh users are having.  Mac users are a large and creative community, and we want to make sure our applications works flawlessly on the latest version of Firefox for the Mac.

Technorati tags:  NanoLearning

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News Release – Launch of NanoLearning

NANOLEARNING™ LAUNCHES AT DEMOFALL

A Marketplace for User Generated Learning Content

AUSTIN, TEXAS and SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA – September 25, 2006 NanoLearning™, the peer-produced learning marketplace, launched today at DEMOfall ‘06, a premier showcase for launching new, cutting edge technology products. The event takes place in San Diego from September 25-27, 2006 and features the most innovative new companies in the world.

Everybody has unique expertise to share, but not all subject matter experts are computer experts. With basic computing skills anyone can create NanoLearning™ for the marketplace that contains not just text and images, but interactive activities and assessments. Without any programming, people can create rich, interactive learning in minutes and publish it in the marketplace where anybody can find it, review it, and provide feedback on it. NanoLearning™ is always online and immediate, so authors can incorporate feedback from learners to improve the quality of their learning constantly. Enterprises are finding NanoLearning™ a great way to provide performance support by hyperlinking learning to operational systems and business process flowcharts. Key features of NanoLearning™ include:

  • The ability to create learning content that is accessed via a standard URL, without any programming
  • NanoLists to aggregate and publish learning collections
  • RSS feeds to notify authors and users upon updates or new comments
  • Change the skin (look, feel, and screen size) with one click
  • Go mobile instantly with no changes

Chris Shipley, executive producer of DEMOfall ‘06 handpicked NanoLearning from a highly competitive field of companies. “Until today a public marketplace for learning didn’t exist, yet learning is something we all do every day,” she stated. “NanoLearning is empowering everyday people to create, share, and aggregate interactive learning experiences.” Organizations are embracing rapid learning tools that empower users and efficiently deliver small chunks of learning, according to Josh Bersin, president of Bersin & Associates, a leading research firm specializing in enterprise learning and talent management. “Our recent studies show that over 50% of the training issues in enterprises are time-critical, and many are dependent on information from subject matter experts,” he said. “Speed is essential in today’s competitive business environment, fueling a 60% growth in the market for tools such NanoLearning.”

About DEMOfall
Produced by Network World Events and Executive Forums, the semi-annual DEMO conferences focus on emerging technologies and new products, which are hand-selected from across the spectrum of the technology marketplace. The DEMO conferences have earned their reputation for consistently identifying tomorrow’s cutting-edge technologies, and have served as launch pad events for companies such as Palm, E*Trade, Handspring, and U.S. Robotics, helping them to secure venture funding, establish critical business relationships, and influence early adopters. Each DEMO conference features approximately 70 new companies, products and technologies. For more information, visit www.demo.com.

About NanoLearning™
NanoLearning™ is the marketplace for user-created learning. With NanoLearning™ anybody who can access the web can create, share, and aggregate interactive learning content. Bersin & Associates estimates the market for rapid learning tools to be approximately $500 million, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 60%. The company is privately held and is headquartered in Austin, Texas. To learn more about NanoLearning™, visit www.nanolearning.com.

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NanoLearning in Brazil

We are very fortunate to have a great article on NanoLearning in today’s “O Globo” newspaper in Brazil. O Globo is one of the top newspapers in the country with over three quarters of a million readers. The article included some great screen shots, and appeared on page 4 of the paper.

In the event that you can read Portuguese I have attached a PDF of the page.

The technical architecture for NanoLearning was created to support Unicode, and therefor multiple languages from the start. Users in Brazil can create NanoLearning in Portuguese and share it with other users. We would really enjoy seeing content in all kinds of languages.

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