technical communication

A quick link to a quite interesting essay of Don Norman, a leading design consultant and one of my favorite authors in the area of various design issues especially on “smart” technology. I would call him a leader in x-design. The x is there the variable for the different past, presents and future design issues addressed. He has shown this with his books on Emotional Design, User-Centered System Design, Design of Everyday Things etc. and his upcoming book on Sociable Design.

See: Technology First, Needs Last

There are many more useful information e.g. for researchers on his WebSite.

WEAVE is a new German magazine for designers,developers and companies using interactive media. It reports on important trends, actual projects and interesting technologies.

Basing on case studies WEAVE investigates conceptional and technological aspects of real projects.
A workshop section provides step-by-step instructions and gives advices regarding tools, workflows, usability and many more.

For further information see: WEAVE

Just for fun phdcomics.com gives a satiric view on the daily life of a PhD student.

E.g. ‘Graph - Motivation level’ see:

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=125

Some good reference for literature resources that got posted on the e-learning blog seems to be the presentation about free e-Learning eBooks by Zaid Ali Alsagoff.

See the slideshare presentation: Amazing FREE e-Learning eBooks Collection

Amazing the content you also can get nowadays online. Galileo Computing also offers some software presentations and videos from tech talks on actual topics online.

Video Trailer on Software:

see under: Video Trailer.

Techtalks:

especially the tech talks are interesting to follow like:

Game Design - made in Germany

• Rund um die Console, Dirk Primbs (Microsoft Deutschland) (00:35:23)
• Spieleentwicklung mit XNA, Dirk Primbs (Microsoft Deutschland) (00:43:46)
• Dramaturgie in Interaktiven Medien (Games), Prof. Linda Breitlauch (Mediadesign Hochschule Düsseldorf) (00:40:04)
• Intelligente Programmierung heute, Dietmar Meschede (Blue Byte) (00:28:19)
• Welten und Avatare gestalten, Oswin Skomroch (Blue Byte) (00:33:35)
• Die CryENGINE® 2, Bernd Diemer (Crytek) (00:43:37)
• Irrlicht – 3D-Engine und Director-Xtra, Christophe Leske (Multimedial) (01:00:21)

Web 2008: conception & practice

• Das Web 2007 und 2008 - Kristallkugel reloaded, Tobias Hauser (00:44:53)
• Kundenkommunikation und Konzeptionierung, Nils Pooker (00:58:07)
• Design & Typografie, Gerrit van Aaken (00:31:16)
• Usability 2.0, Stefan Nitzsche (01:17:08)
• CSS-Layouts mit YAML, Jens Grochtdreis & Dirk Jesse (01:03:28)
• Aktuelle Web 2.0-Tools, Vitaly Friedman (01:05:09)

If one is looking especially for german IT literature Galileo Press offers a very interesting possibility to read some of their extensive books online or to download them locally like e.g.:

• Python
• Visual C# 2005
• Joomla!
• Dreamweaver 8
• Adobe Photoshop CS2 professionell

and many more.

See their WebSite:

http://www.galileocomputing.de/openbook

Tracking always the latest news and mainly literature in the research field is quite work intensive. So search engines and tools like WorldCat can make the job easier.

WorldCat offers following advantages:

WorldCat is the world’s largest network of library content and services. WorldCat libraries are dedicated to providing access to their resources on the Web, where most people start their search for information.

WorldCat.org lets you:

• - Search many libraries at once for an item and then locate it in a library nearby
• - Find books, music, and videos to check out
• - Find research articles and digital items (like audiobooks) that can be directly viewed or downloaded
• - Link to "Ask a Librarian" and other services at your library
• -Post your review of an item, or contribute factual information about it

An interesting blog-post from an European and also Austrian view can be read in german language in the blog of Univ.-Prof. Dr. Peter Baumgartner.

For a research student the tracking of its own literature research is one of the essential points in order to keep a certain overview.

Some software I recently came across and which could be useful:

- Zotero, which is a free (open-source), easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work — in the web browser itself.

- CITAVI , which is a reference management software and available in different versions at different prices.

Jay Cross has recently published a real good book on formal and informal learning. Furtheron on his blog there are some visualisations of formal and informal learning which give a real good picture on the situation and relation between these to forms of learning:

1. The Dutch 80/20

2. The Spending/Outcomes Paradox

3. Inside Out