A reader last week wrote me and asked what PC I would recommend for her fledgling eLearning development shop. The answer to me was a no-brainer. I’m sure to her it was not the answer she expected. Nonetheless, I thought I’d share it here too. I’d be interested to hear your opinions.

First off, whenever one recommends anything from Apple, he/she is immediately perceived as a nutty zealot. I’m not sure where this came from - effective Microsoft marketing perhaps? Fortunately, the times, they are a changin’, but today this perception is still prevalent. Allow me to counter based not on some irrational religious-like devotion, but actual personal experience.

I’ve used both Windows (XP and prior OSes) and Mac (OS X and prior OSes) many thousands of hours over many years - starting in about 1991. Windows full-time in the corporate environment and mixed Mac and Windows at home. If given the choice, I would choose a Mac for everything but games. No question. I don’t need to delve into all of the reasons here, but I will make a case for the Mac being the ultimate eLearning development box.

First, the hardware I’d choose:

24″ iMac with 4G of RAM, 750GB hard drive

The 24″ iMac gives you a speedy Core2 Duo processor, a massive amount of screen real estate with a high-quality display, a sleek built-in webcam for video conferencing or desktop video capture (talking-head video or stills), a small, clean footprint on your desk, and whisper-quiet operation that’s great for narration recording (and your general sanity). You get Wi-Fi (802.11n), Bluetooth, USB, Firewire, dual-layer DVD burning, Gigabit Ethernet, a solid aluminum enclosure and a real glass screen (ah, just like the good old days).

Disclaimer: you will almost certainly pay more for this machine than an equivalently-specced PC. Period. But is it worth the extra money? Yes. The hardware is beautiful and powerful, but the real killer features aren’t evident from a product photo or spec sheet.

Here are three reasons the Mac is the ultimate eLearning development machine:

1) You can run all major operating systems on a single machine.

Run OS X, Windows, and Linux - simultaneously - at native speed. With Apple’s transition to Intel processors a few years ago, they effectively made the Mac the all-in-one miracle computer (while making all of my wildest dreams come true). Running Windows in VMware Fusion allows me to jump back and forth between Mac and Windows apps seamlessly, as if they were running in the same operating system. So I have the best of all worlds. I record and edit my narration in GarageBand. Create my charts and graphs in Keynote. Then import it all into PowerPoint 2007 (for Windows) for creation of my course using Articulate Presenter, Quizmaker, and Engage (Windows-only apps). Maybe I want to use ScreenFlow (review coming soon) instead of Camtasia. Perhaps I want to create a beautiful Timeline for my course. Or do some bargain-priced usability testing with Silverback. There are no limits to the software I can run, free or commercial. This kind of flexibility just can’t be quantified with a dollar figure.

This multi-platform capability also gives you the ultimate testing environment. Many work in mixed Widows/Mac shops, particularly at schools and universities where students use a wide range of hardware and software. Test your courses in each OS quickly and easily on your Mac. At home I used to have a big, noisy PC tower next to my big, noisy PowerMac tower on my desk, sharing a screen and keyboard/mouse with an irritating KVM switch. That’s all gone now, replaced with a single machine that is smaller than my CRT monitor alone used to be. And it puts out about a tiny fraction of the noise (and heat).

2) Great multimedia software out of the box.

GarageBand is free with any Mac, and makes a great environment for recording and editing your narration. iPhoto manages my images, and iMovie gives me a great little video editing tool. And I don’t get all the junkware/trialware that comes pre-installed with the typical PC (which smart users immediately remove, if not just reformatting the drive and starting fresh). And for paid software, I often find Mac stuff to be cheaper than the Windows stuff (yes, this surprises me too). ScreenFlow is $100 vs. $300 for Camtasia. iWork is $80 vs. hundreds for Office. There is more shareware/freeware on the Windows side, but I often find the Mac equivalents to be of higher quality yet with lower prices.

3) Kiss virus and spyware worries goodbye.

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve had to clean spyware off friends’ and relatives’ PCs, I’d be sitting sitting in front of a shiny new 24″ iMac right now (I currently use a 20″ model that’s a couple of years old). I don’t have spyware and virus fears on my Mac. Period. Could I pick up viruses and spyware while running Windows in VMware? Sure. Which is why I do almost all of my Internet-related stuff on the Mac side. And if I do happen to pick up something ugly in Windows, it doesn’t effect the Mac side of the house. It stays quarantined on the Windows side, where it belongs. The Windows virus and spyware plague is the primary reason many of my relatives and friends have moved to Macs over the past few years. They don’t miss the grief. Nor do I.

There are plenty of other reasons I love developing eLearning on my Mac, but I’ll stick with the Big 3 in this post. Ultimately, my iMac is like that James Bond Lotus Esprit that turns into a submarine. Wherever I need to go, it takes me there, no matter what operating system or software application I need to use.

In upcoming posts I’ll give you a more detailed look at VMware Fusion, narration recording in GarageBand, and reviews of some of my favorite apps on both the Mac side (ScreenFlow, etc.) and the Windows side (Articulate).

Until then, please feel free to opine in the comments section.

I recently talked about the Blue Snowball USB desktop microphone I use for my eLearning narration work. Despite the explosion of consumer desktop PC audio recording and podcasting in recent years, the selection of good USB microphones is still inexplicably limited. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just plug an XLR mic into some kind of magic dongle to give it USB connectivity without needing a breakout box or mixer cluttering up your desktop? Yes it would. And Blue agrees. Hence their new Icicle inline USB converter and preamp for XLR mics. Hooray!

The Icicle is scheduled to debut next month for around $60. Now maybe I can check out some pro-level headset mics as I haven’t been thrilled with the USB headset mics I’ve tried thus far (which seem geared mainly for casual gaming and Skype/VOIP and not studio-quality audio recording).

Also of interest: a brief how-to video on Blue’s website demonstrating the use of the Blue Snowball for podcasting (thus, eLearning narration recording). They’re using GarageBand, which is what I use for my narration work (I hope to post a brief tutorial on my GarageBand workflow in the near future). Worth a watch.

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been pushing hard to get a new eLearning development team established within my recently-reorganized training department. Inexplicably, nothing was included in the new structure to specifically address eLearning development. In 2008. The 21st century. Yes, truly baffling.

Bygones.

The miles of red tape have nearly been traveled, and we’re on the cusp of becoming “official” again. But…what do we call ourselves?

The group (of which I was not a part) responsible for eLearning development under the previous organizational structure had one of those clumsy titles created only because it formed a catchy acronym (because it’s all about a catchy acronym, you know - ah, the joys of government thinking). It might make sense to retain that title, if not for the fact that the previous group was known for a lot of talk, but little action. A “Think Tank,” as my current director likes to derisively refer to them. They served mainly as liaisons to shamelessly overpriced vendors, who did most of the actual work. The other training folks were understandably suspicious (and resentful) of this mysterious group and the vaporous services they provided. I’m not saying they didn’t do anything, only that the others perceived them that way.

The new vision is to do a lot of that work ourselves, only relying on vendors to provide specialized services that we may not have the in-house expertise (or equipment) to provide. And because it is a new group, with a new vision and a new mandate, why carry the baggage of the old group? Why be saddled with their lousy reputation right out of the gate? I say it’s time for a fresh start! A rebirth. A new identity.

But what to call ourselves?

If you work in a corporate training shop, I’d love to hear what your eLearning development group is called. Your suggestions would be appreciated. Feel free to share in the comments section.

And if your organization’s name is as pointless as our previous one, well, we’ll just laugh about it together.

Yes, I’m digressing to the topic of Apple’s App Store again, but I am ever baffled that developers/creators/authors could allow glaring flaws to appear in their eLearning courses, presentations, websites, printed ads, etc.

Everyone is trying to grab some of that sweet, sweet App Store cash right now. With the iPhone rising to the top-selling smartphone spot (and the number two handset in the U.S. overall - no mean feat given its $199 price tag and required monthly data plan), there is much booty to be made selling iPhone apps to the masses. Ahhh, why did I lose interest in programming after my Apple II+ days? Note to self: never follow the advice of a high school career counselor again.

Sorry, I’m getting way off track.

So your app finally makes its triumphant appearance to the clamoring horde in iTunes after many months of development. Cause for celebration! Time to kick back and watch the flood of money pour in.

But wait, you failed to spell the name of your own company correctly on the app’s icon? The first thing your millions of potential customers will see, and thus judge (fairly or not) your product on???

Wow. Just wow.

Worth my $3.99? Probably not.

Next!

Note: to add insult to injury, the link to the Definition Fitness company website in iTunes is broken. Double fail!

In an April post, I made my case for narration in eLearning. As a learner, I love it (when done right). So as a developer, I like to create narrated courses. Many of us, for budgetary reasons, have to do our own in-house narration work. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing - I made the point in that earlier post that professional voiceover work can sound synthetic if you don’t get the right voice for your project. And I won’t even start griping about those robotic text-to-speech tools that are being foisted upon the eLearning development community (note my rant on that topic in the earlier post as well).

In addition to the cost savings, doing your own narration recording makes it quick and easy for you to go in and make changes - which, based on my experience, your customer will ask for. No matter how many times they’ve supposedly “reviewed” and “approved” the script. (Note to self: I need to better explain the definition of the words “review” and “approve” to my customers.)

While I won’t claim to have been born with a professional voiceover voice (far from it), I have managed to create narrations that sound good despite the lack of golden vocal chords and the budget for an expensive recording setup. I thought I’d share with you my setup as it may be helpful if you’re just getting started yourself. Or perhaps you’re not happy with the results you’re getting from your current equipment.

Personally, I have never been able to get decent results from a headset microphone. I even purchased the headset recommended by the folks at Articulate (a Plantronics model), and while the results sound OK, they don’t sound good. I would love the convenience and script-reading ease of a headset mic, but until someone creates a really good one, I’ll stick with my desktop mic: the Blue Snowball.

Now, professional narrators would probably never consider using a USB microphone. But I don’t want to deal with a breakout box/mixer for an XLR mic. I like the convenience (and small desktop footprint) of a simple USB mic I can plug directly into my computer. There are now a handful of good desktop USB mics that are well-suited to narration work. I chose the Snowball. It sounds good. And it looks good. I added the ringer shock mount (which is probably overkill for my needs) and a pop filter (which I consider a must-have accessory). I picked up my metal-screened pop filter at Guitar Center for around $40. The Snowball can also be found at Guitar Center, or various online outlets.

To squeeze the best possible sound out of my budget setup, I created my own little desktop sound booth with four 16″ acoustic tiles from Markertek glued to 16″ square pieces of foam core I bought (and had cut to size) at a local art supply store. You can see my setup in the photo below. Note in the photo I don’t have the pop filter attached, which I always do when recording. When I need to record, I place a towel under my mic and stand three acoustic tiles around it. Laying the fourth tile on top keeps the whole thing from toppling over (note the big open gap in the back top edge is not normal - this was a quick rush setup for the photo).

My rig won’t win any awards for looks, but it gets the job done on a budget. The only real downside is the difficulty in reading my narration script. I record at an angle, looking off to the right to read my narration script. Sure, I’m a bit cross-eyed by the end of my recording, but the angle helps reduce the plosives and the foam tiles give me pretty good sound isolation.

Once I’m done with my recording and editing, I simply stack my tiles under my desk and slide the mic back out of the way until the next project. Cake. And who doesn’t love cake?

For software, I use Apple’s free (with any Mac) GarageBand, which has been a great tool for narration recording. I will detail my process and the narration-friendly features of GarageBand in a future post.

My iMac is whisper quiet, which helps. You don’t realize just how noisy the world is until you’re focused on trying to achieve complete silence. My old desktop PC sounded like a vacuum cleaner compared to my iMac.

So this is my setup, and it works well for me. The whole thing (minus the iMac of course) was around $200. More than the $75 I spent on that Plantronics headset mic, but the results are far better.

If you have a different setup that works well for you, I’d love to hear about it.

Happy narrating!

I’ve read a lot of computer training books in my time, most of which I’ve gotten through about a third before giving up. Dry, boring, completely uncompelling (hey, just like most eLearning!). I don’t consider myself particularly dense (perhaps I am, but am too dense to realize it?), but I think I’ve always been more of a “show me, then let me do it” type of learner, not a “read about the whys, hows, and what fors” type of learner.

A couple of years ago I was trying to wrap my head around CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) once and for all. I had tried several books, online tutorials, and lots of websites, but for some reason the concept never really “clicked” for me. Not even Lynda.com’s “show me, then let me do it” approach was working. Which was unusual.

Then I read Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML by Eric and Elisabeth Freeman. It was like a revelation. The teaching style used was unlike any I’d seen in a training book before. CSS finally made sense.

After that experience, I realized I wanted to try to incorporate the Head First approach into my eLearning courses.

Just today I discovered the Creating Passionate Users blog, where they are “passionate about the brain and metacognition, most especially–how the brain works and how to exploit it for better learning and memory.” Wow, I’ve really been missing out. This is a great learning-oriented blog.

Authored by Kathy Sierra (co-creator of the Head First series) and Dan Russell (research scientist at Google), it almost certainly deserves a spot in your RSS feed reader. And it’s going on my blogroll right now.

The post entitled Crash Course in Learning Theory is a great place to start.

Great stuff. Check it out.

UPDATE: in my excitement about the content of this blog, I didn’t even notice that it is no longer active. Kathy stopped the blog after being harassed and threatened by blog commenters. I remember reading about this at the time (it created quite the uproar), but didn’t associate the name (she wasn’t the author of the HTML/CSS book I had read). It’s sad what the anonymity of the Internet compels some idiots to do. So forget signing up for their RSS feed. But their past content is still worth review. Thanks Caspar for pointing this out.

After what seemed like an endless wait, my favorite eLearning development apps have finally been refreshed. Articulate Studio ‘09 was released last night, including all-new versions of Presenter, Quizmaker, and Engage, as well as a new app, Articulate Video Encoder.

In addition to fixing the niggling flaws with the previous versions that bugged me (for one, notes text can now be formatted - something users have been pleading for forever), they’ve added some amazing new features (branching, yay!) that, in concert, simply leave other eLearning development apps I’ve seen in the dust. In the coming weeks I plan to look at some of these new features in detail, so stay tuned.

Quizmaker, once the ugly duckling of the Articulate family, got the most extensive makeover of all. I was once somewhat embarrassed to include the inevitably janky-looking Quizmaker quizzes with my beautiful Presenter and Engage-based courses, but no more. Quizmaker now provides complete control over the look and feel of your knowledge checks, allowing visually seamless integration with the rest of your content. Quizmaker, girl, you look good all growed up!

These are slick (and fun!) apps to work with, the learning curve is minimal, and they produce beautiful output. Win, win, and win. The new versions are more gorgeous and easier to use than ever. And the price (for eLearning development software) can’t be beat. What more can one ask for?

If you’re already an Articulate user, get your upgrade orders in. Trust me. And if you’re not, what are you waiting for?

Articulate apps are about the only reason I fire up Windows in VMware on my Mac any more. Now if only we could get a native Mac version…

Guys?

Disclaimer: I’m Chris of eQuixotic, I am not paid in any way by Articulate, and I approved this message.

I have to say, I’m a sucker for a beautiful font. And there are plenty of them out there. But it’s often hard to find one that hits the sweet spot. In my case, something new, but old. Modern, yet classic. Cutting edge, yet comfortably familiar. Something that catches the eye, but doesn’t overpower.

They say no one ever got fired for using Helvetica, and that may be true, but I still try to steer clear. And (heaven help us all) we’ve seen plenty of Comic Sans (the font with its very own hate site, and rightfully so) in eLearning courses and presentations.

I’ve been through my Tw Cen MT, Futura, and Century Gothic phases. I enjoy Avenir and Akzidenz-Grotesque. But in the end, none of them have ultimately cried out “I’m you, baby!”

Proxima Nova says “I’m bold, but not brash. Sophisticated, yet lighthearted. Chic, while timeless.”

Yes, if I were a font, I’d want to be Proxima Nova. Check it out at Mark Simonson Studio.

eLearning and presentation designers don’t have to be limited to the fonts that came with Windows, you know…

(And for those of you who work for organizations oppressive enough to mandate a single typeface for all your eLearning and presentations - I’m sorry).

Like many other tech nerds, I awaited Google’s announcement of its first Android-based device yesterday with bated breath. Alas, like many other tech nerds, I was ultimately disappointed with what I saw.

Without a doubt, the mobile device user has been abused for years by poorly-designed and implemented operating systems that seemed to delight in the befuddlement (and subsequent rage) of their hapless victims owners. Then Apple unveiled the iPhone in January 2007, essentially telling pocket computingdom “You’re mad as heck, and you don’t have to take it anymore!” The response has been overwhelming. Not only evidenced by sales of the iPhone itself (I myself being a shamelessly enamored owner), but by the frantic responses of its competitors, including HTC’s new TouchFLO interface, which is basically a shiny new coat of paint covering up the much-maligned rusty heap that is Windows Mobile.

So when Google announced its new Android mobile operating system, was anyone really surprised? Well, yes, actually - as Google doesn’t really do operating systems (or great software for that matter) - but handheld computing is the new It Girl, and everyone is rushing to bring her flowers. So why not Google?Fast forward several months to yesterday, when the first device featuring Google’s Android platform, the HTC G1, was finally revealed to the world. Me, I had an immediate and undeniable “Uh oh” moment. Yes, the hardware looks homely and clunky and outdated right out of the box, but I had seen “leaked” photos of the device already, so I was already prepared for that letdown. But looking past the ugly hardware in the promo pics, my eyes immediately went to a single element: that huge, Vista-esque analog clock haphazardly placed on the screen.

My brain instantly asked itself two things.

First, “What’s up with the big, ugly clock?”

And second (and more importantly), “Why does the big, ugly clock say 9:11 when the digital clock immediately above it and to its right says 2:47???”

Now, I consider it a personal curse to obsess over what some would consider meaningless details (typos on my blog notwithstanding). So I tried putting this inconsistency out of my mind. “Self,” I said, “it doesn’t matter. No one else cares. You’re just being you again.”

But then Gizmodo noticed. And if Gizmodo noticed, then perhaps countless others did too (with many more noticing, obviously, because Gizmodo pointed it out). Which leads to the obvious question: “How could Google/T-Mobile/HTC not notice this too???” I mean, typos in body text on a website or in a brochure are bad enough. But for the G1 to throw aside the curtain and step, arms outstretched, into the blazing spotlight, under the anxious gaze of a billion curious souls, with its fly wide open and toilet paper stuck to its shoe? Inconceivable! Yet, there it was, for all the world to see.

The issue therein was so aptly described by Jesus Diaz of Gizmodo:

The problem with the clocks would have never escaped Apple’s ferocious attention to detail, but it is not the image itself that’s so troubling. It is what it symbolizes, what is missing at Android’s most fundamental level: Attention to detail. 

“Ferocious attention to detail.” A beautiful phrase. And a rule we should all live by. How many times have you seen a big, important PowerPoint presentation featuring a glaring typo on the title screen? (With much audience forehead smacking ensuing.) Had such a thing as the Google G1 faux pas happened when the iPhone was announced, Steve Jobs would have had a public hanging of the employees responsible. Right there. On the stage. On that you can set your watch and warrant (whatever that quaint old saying means).

Equally perplexing is the fact that despite this glitch being publicly outed by Gizmodo last night, T-Mobile hasn’t scrambled to rectify the situation on its website. At least not as of the time of this writing. Which to me implies that they don’t see it as a problem at all. Which in itself is yet another problem. And now I’m rambling.

Lest you think I’m making a mountain of a molehill, Diaz does point out other obvious Android interface problems. Alas, it’s not just the clock. Though the clock is bad enough to be alarming. (Heh, unintentional pun!)

As I mentioned in my Judging a Book By Its Cover post, the problem with prominent, glaring flaws like this is that they imply a legion of other, less-glaring flaws lurking slightly below the surface. And they convey an “I don’t really care what you think” mentality. Whether true or not.

How many eLearning courses have you seen featuring such spectacularly visible errors that you naturally asked “Did anyone actually read this thing before publishing?” Some of them may have even been yours.

God is indeed, as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe so succinctly put it, in the details.

Sidenote: a friend of mine who has been singing Android’s praises for months, boldly proclaiming it the true “iPhone Killer,” called me last night to ask how much I thought he could find a used iPhone for, and how he could hack it to run on his T-Mobile plan.

Ouch.

Google, you lost them at “Hello.”

Anyone who has ever taken an eLearning course or watched a PowerPoint presentation (i.e. all of us) knows that the effective use of color is not a common human ability. Based on countless cans of unused interior house paint I have chosen with much deliberation, only to become horrified once I actually put the paint on the wall, I can attest to this assumption.

Fortunately, there are tools available to compensate for these shortcomings. Adobe Kuler comes to mind. Create your own color theme for your eLearning course with the online tools, or choose from thousands of themes created (and rated) by design professionals.

Best of all, it’s free.

And Adobe TV even offers a short (and also free) how-to video for Kuler.

Now there’s no excuse for offensive color combinations in your eLearning courses.

Helpful hint: unless you’re designing a Christmas card, red + green = NO.