As Associate Manager of New Media for Cambridge University Press, I was responsible for the entire Classware product line. Compatible with projected PCs and interactive whiteboards, Classware is a streamlined classroom presentation system for ESL classes using particular coursebooks.In essence, the software puts the book pages on a wall at plywood sheet sizes, integrates multimedia such as audio and video, and provides a useful but simple set of annotation tools like pens and masks. Its focus is on ease of use for lightly trained teachers.

Screen Shot: 

I'm lucky to attend the International Society for Technology (ISTE) in Education's annual conference this week. Especially since, it seems clear, technology in education is now just the way things are done-- you're a backwater if you're not on board.

Some headlines:

ISTE is global and effective

• Membership in 89 countries.
• 79 countries have representatives at this At this year's conference.
  

At the D8 conference, Steve Jobs noted that in his experience digital content had attenuated success when expensive around 41:15 here (embed also down at bottom). Therefore he was trying to convince publishers to "price aggressively" and seek volume. And why not? As Jobs notes, manufacturing and distribution costs are much lower in the digital.

The most popular entry on this blog so far has been on using a Google Docs spreadsheet for time tracking. So I thought I'd add another personal productivity entry, this time on traveling task management.

Recently I received a set of preliminary project plans. On the face it was normal: 18 month duration, relatively standard product set, expected functional groups and staff assignments.

But there was one very disturbing feature: The details increased further along the timeline.

Of course, milestones might increase in frequency as one approaches launch. An agile development cycle might take 2 weeks while final sign off may follow gold by 3 days and golds may be sent to the manufacturer the next day after that.

Mobile task management supplies much of my oxygen. By 2006 I had fallen in love with Life Balance on various Palm Treos. But when I got my iPhone 3G in 2008, Life Balance wasn't available and I had to go with
OmniFocus.

Recently I discovered Life Balance is available for the iPhone. So I decided to give it a try. I've also used both OmniFocus and Life Balance in conjunction with their desktop clients.

Yesterday I received the best compliment in a while. I helped a company focus.

Recently I was asking for an XML API, preferably something simple like REST. This company is the electronic equivalent of a printing house and they have the contract for some of the best reference content available.

But the services delivered HTML. It was easily digested as whole content of course, everyone and -thing can do HTML rendering. But it was hard to process. HTML mixes presentation and data, as they say. That complicates processes which are interested in the data only.

All of those nouns go together.

Today Apple released the "God" tablet, I mean iPad, and it is indeed good. After all the hype there will surely be quick and harsh critics. AT&T and it's 'generous deal' (or whatever Jobs said) of wifi will probably be seen as apology for lousy 3G service and overburdened networks. There's no camera for web conferencing (relax, it's probably saved for next year's model and there'll be peripherals).

I've recently been an observer on two strikingly similar projects, massive programs really, that have had two strikingly different outcomes. In the first week of this year I received memos from the heads of each program, and they couldn't have been more different.

One memo invited me to a demonstration of the project output. The other warned me that project delays would trigger cascading time constraints across several, previously unrelated products.

The year I succeeded at moving firmly into the cloud. I hesitated-- like Star Wars, would a corporate Emperor arrive in my cloud city to tax my data at an arbitrary and unpleasant price? I use online services, but I don't like common trends in terms of service, with Facebook perhaps having the worst.