What are the dos and don'ts for using public Wi-Fi?

Happy Friday folks! I hope everyone is doing well. This week's topic is on the safety concerns of using public Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) and was submitted by Margaret. For those of you who are new to using Wi-Fi publicly, pay attention because there is a lot of great information provided by our members that will likely help you learn the dos and don'ts. Let's get started.

Public Wi-Fi access (free or paid) is one of those services that I find invaluable, and I really can't imagine being without it now. In fact, a few times in an emergency, it saved me because I dearly needed Internet access. Margaret, I remember the first time I used public Wi-Fi access. I was skeptical and hesitant and never knew what to expect; after all, it was public and information in the airwaves can be captured. So I'm glad you asked and shared your concerns and want to know more about this topic. While I will let our members' answers address your questions (a few picks below in the Q&A), I do have a few pointers that I'd like to share. Margaret, you ultimately are the first line of defense for staying safe and a little common sense goes a long way. So make sure you have a firewall set up and running. Keep your antivirus protection up to date and your sensitive data secured--even separately on a drive that is not connected to your laptop when accessing public Wi-Fi. Free Wi-Fi service is great. Paid Wi-Fi may be a bit safer (offering you better protection since most have encryption in place), but a wired connection is always best. But then again, wired or wireless--there are no guarantees. And when accessing public Wi-Fi (free or paid), don't transmit anything that you wouldn't write on a postcard and send for the world to see, unless it is absolutely necessary. So with that said, good luck with your first experience, and I hope it is a positive one.

We have many great answers in place for you from our members--ranging from technical setup to ensuring your safety for using public Wi-Fi to some general good practices. So read on up and learn! For all members, if you have any additional dos and don'ts about accessing public Wi-Fi, please join us in this week's discussion and share a little about your public Wi-Fi experiences--good or bad. The more we advise one another, the more we'll all be safer using public Wi-Fi services with confidence. Thanks everyone! And have a great weekend!

Cheap camcorders

If you're accustomed to capturing clips with the movie feature on your point-and-shoot still camera or want something better than gimmick-marketed-for-YouTube models, you might be pleasantly surprised at the quality you'll get from these models. And one thing's for sure: cheap video is (usually) better than no video at all. Read more

Camcorder buying guide
Best camcorders

What Everybody Ought to Know About Instructional Design

In an earlier post, we looked at how to build better courses by trimming out some of the content. Many of the follow-up comments and questions speak to your role as an instructional designer. In fact, it’s a question I was asked in a recent email:

What is the role of the instructional designer? And how do I convey that to my clients and subject matter experts?

As I was contemplating a response, I stumbled upon this video that does a great job illustrating the value of instructional design. Watch the video first and then I’ve got a few observations. If you don’t have access to YouTube, click the link below the video.

Click here to watch video.

As humans, we’re wired to learn and we’re always learning. There’s really not a time where we’re not learning. Learning is just what we do. And we have a natural way of learning that is not dependent on taking a formal course.

Learning happens through our experiences and through the things we see and hear. We learn in our quiet moments as we reflect on life. And we learn in our social interactions and conversations with others. And sometimes we even learn through elearning courses. :)

A formal course intrudes on the learner’s natural learning path. This intrusion is neither good nor bad. Essentially, we’re just circumventing the natural learning process by not waiting for the learner to stumble upon what we need them to know or do. So we manufacture a learning experience. And in that sense, the role of the instructional designer is to help the learners make sense of the new information they get.

The video above is an excellent illustration of some key points concerning instructional design. Imagine the video was the content of an elearning course. There’s a lot of information and a lot going. If you sat the learner down in front of the video and offered no guidance, who knows what they’d focus on?

Some might try to understand the big picture and spend time figuring out where they’re at and why they’re in two teams. Some might just observe the basketball skills. Still others might try to pick up clues listening in on the conversations.

There’s a lot going on and if you just left it up to the learner to figure out, you’d waste a lot of time and probably won’t get the results you need. So, instructional design is more than just an information dump. Instead it’s about helping the learners make sense of the information.

The Rapid E-Learning Blog - Instructional design is more than just putting information in front of the learners.

Fortunately, as you watch the video, the narrator does offer some guidance. He provides a basic objective: “This is an awareness test.” And he gives some direction to look for passes by the team in white. That’s easy enough to do.

For the moment, let’s discount the bear and just look at what happened. There’s so much activity and information that without clear instructions you’d focus on the wrong things. Because he gives clear instructions, you’re able to answer his question. In fact, while the moonwalking bear is obviously intended to catch you off guard, the reality is that the clarity of the instructions helped you see past the bear and focus on the goal of counting the passes. You were able to do what he asked despite the distractions of all of the other activity.

And that’s one of the critical pieces of instructional design. Because you’re manufacturing a learning experience, you don’t want the learners focused on twenty things. Instead, you’re trying to get them focused on very specific pieces of information.

The Rapid E-Learning Blog - Instructional design has clear goals and gets you learners focused on the right things.

Now let’s flip it around a little. Admit it. Unless you already saw this video, it was kind of shocking to think that something as obvious as a moonwalking bear could have passed before your eyes with you completely unaware.

There’s a lesson in there for us all. We can become so intently focused on our perspective that we miss the “moonwalking bear.” This is true of our clients, our managers, our subject matter experts, and even us. We don’t know what we don’t know.

This is why collaboration and good analysis comes in handy. It helps expose us to multiple perspectives and keeps us from counting passes, when the critical information is walking right passed us. And we’re able to pass that on to our learners.

The Rapid E-Learning Blog - Instructional design provides context and perspective.

Make a mental list of everything that is going on in the scene. How many people are there? How many teams? What type of ball? What are the people saying? What is the ethnic makeup of the people? Is that a police siren or ambulance? Which team has the best ball handling skills? The list could go on. And as you can see, there’s really a lot of information to collect and process.

Without instructional design, the learner might or might not get the information they need. Because of instructional design, you can get the learners to cut through a lot of extraneous information and get right to the important stuff.

What you do as an instructional designer is take the information and expertise of a tenured subject matter expert and deliver it to the learner. And in doing so, you compress the learning process saving time and money.

The Rapid E-Learning Blog - Instructional design compresses the learning process.

Now let’s look at the video in its entirety. It’s clever. I’ve watched it a few times and I’ve shared it with others. I’ve reflected on how to use the video as an illustration for this post. I’ve also used it in conversations with my kids and some friends. So the video makers have done a great job engaging me.

There something for us to learn here: good design engages us. When we’re mentally engaged, we’re more apt to remember and learn. And as you can see from the video, it’s not interactive. Yet it is effective.

Not all of our content can be cleverly packaged like this video. In fact, most people would rather have clarity than cleverness to start. And that is the first step in engaging your learners. The information needs to be clear and have real meaning and purpose for the learners. Once they understand why it’s important to them, they’ll be more apt to have a meaningful learning experience.

The Rapid E-Learning Blog - Instructional design engages learners with clear and meaningful content.

Learning is a complex process and there’s a lot more to be said about instructional design. The key point is that instructional designers provide value when they’re able to pull the content together to craft courses that are focused and meaningful. What do you think? Feel free to add your ideas by clicking on the comments link.
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Pioneer's new Kuro: The holy grail of plasmas?

Sure, last year's Kuro earned our editors' choice award. And now Pioneer is claiming its newest line is darker, sleeker, but is it better? Pioneer didn't garner the award this year--find out why. Read more

Last year's Kuro review
Top 5 HDTVs
Best plasma HDTVs

Remote access everywhere

With all of the fancy new portable devices like iPhones, BlackBerrys, and ultrathin laptops that can go anywhere, it's no surprise that VPN (virtual private networking) and remote-access software are booming markets. Products such as GoToMyPC, LogMeIn, and WebEx allow users to read documents, check e-mail, or install and run applications from anywhere in the world. Specialized software Simplify Media allows music fans the ability to listen to their iTunes or Winamp libraries wherever they may roam.

A new, free application called Remobo aims to combine its VPN and remote-access features with screen-sharing functionality found in programs like CrossLoop and Yuuguu. The software is still in development, so there are a few bugs here and there, but the all-in-one remote functionality that offers complete access to off-site PCs and share files with yourself and friends is a sure sign of things to come.

Read more about Remobo with a full walk-through from Seth Rosenblatt.

Read more

Visit Download.com

Always one of the first downloads

I recently got a new test Mac here at work. It's a MacBook Pro, which I'm using for our First Look video shoots (expect many new First Looks of Mac software in the coming weeks). People often ask me what is the first program I download on a new Mac, and the last few times it has been Adium X. Adium X is a solid chat program that can connect to multiple chat clients simultaneously. Once set up, I can chat with the IT folks if I'm having problems with my new machine, and I can quickly send messages to co-workers about what we're working on. The chat client is an indispensible tool in many users' working environments and Adium X is the best option for Mac.

Also this week, we have OmniGraffle, which helps you make flowcharts, graphs, diagrams, and just about any presentation, easy to understand and elegant. Our game this week is "Midnight Mansion," the popular 2D arcade platformer that's fun for all ages.

Alternative music software

There's been a lot of hype about the new iPhone and iTunes updates, but for those of us who don't use Apple portable devices, there's no reason to care. Frowny face.

However, aside from the leading music player software on Download.com--iTunes and Windows Media Player, at 58,707 and 44,495 downloads last week, respectively--there are a bevy of alternative digital music players/jukeboxes on the site. For example, user favorites Winamp and Foobar 2000 both work with the recently revamped Web service Last.fm.

Check out this week's collection of alternative digital-music players to see the other three that made the Top 5. (Hint: Zune didn't, and neither did Songbird.)

Visit Download.com

Integrating my computer as part of the entertainment center

Happy Friday folks! Many years ago the topic of integrating your computer as part of your home entertainment center was a fairly uncommon practice, and for the few folks who did it at the time, there were a lot of ooohs and ahhhs! All because back then broadband was not readily available. Hard-drive storage was at a premium, video cards with video connections were very limited and costly, and let's not forget the 2.0 sound cards. This short list of hurdles mentions just a few of the many that existed back then.

Today, the whole landscape has changed. Many prepackaged computer systems are meant to hook up to your home entertainment center, and operating systems are written specifically for the media center. The necessary hardware to hook it all up is now readily available and ranges from large capacity hard drives to video cards with an analog connection, and DVI and HDMI to cover the HDTVs, all the way to 7.1 channel surround sound cards. And with broadband available to most people, online purchasing of music and movies couldn't be easier, and it only takes seconds to minutes to download the content. With all this media at your fingertips ready to be viewed, played, and listened to from a computer and enjoyed as an integral part of your entertainment center, who wouldn't want to look into setting this up?

However, the question from member Phil is: Is it still expensive to do this? Is it difficult to build or set up? Is it possible to eliminate the physical media and incorporate it into the computer so he won't have to put up with the space that it all takes up? And last but not least, are there any new technologies or methods that he may not be aware of? Well, Phil, I've gone through the answers and let me tell you that while we didn't get the sheer volume of answers as we normally get for certain topics, we sure have a lot of great informative suggestions and answers from our members that we hope will give you and all the folks out there an idea of what is involved in integrating a computer into your home entertainment center. I have selected a few member answers to get you started in the Q & A section, but please read all the advice from our members. So grab a seat, read up, ask more questions if you have any, discuss, and learn from our helpful members. For those of you who have a computer as an integral part of your home entertainment center, I urge you to join us in the discussion and describe your system to us and how you got started and all set up. We are all here as a community to learn from one another, so your contribution to the discussion is appreciated! Have a great weekend everyone!

3 Graphic Design Principles for Instructional Design Success

Because a large part of elearning involves the learner viewing the screen, it’s critical that the visual elements you choose enhance the learning experience.

Today, I’ll touch on three graphic design principles for instructional designers. They will help you build visuals that support your design and help you build more effective courses.

Use layouts to convey meaning and relationships.

When you place text and graphics on a screen, you can’t assume that the learner automatically understands what it means. Your job is to create relationships and guide the learner’s understanding.

Look at the image below. Without explanation, you’re left to wonder what the relationship is between the characters.

Now, look at the next image. Same characters, only they’re organized better. Because of proximity and spacing, you’re able to imply relationships without even presenting other information. This helps guide the learners with less explanation.

However, the reverse can also be true. Through poor design, you can imply relationships between information on the screen that doesn’t exist.

Use patterns and repetition to organize your content.

Since you’re introducing new ideas, you can assist the learning process by using repetitive elements and patterns. They help organize the content and bring a sense of unity to the course.

For example, there’s a lot of information in the image below. However, it’s not easy to understand it because it’s all chunked together. I get tired just looking at all of that text and I have no inclination to explore more. In addition, because of the way it’s presented, I don’t know what the information is and what it means to me.

Give the learner visual cues so that they’re able to follow the course content and understand how it all fits together. This is especially true for online courses because people have developed web surfing habits, where they quickly scan the screen for information.

If you look at the image below, you’ll notice that by using some repetitive elements the information is easier to process. In this example, bold headline means title and underlined text represents sections. As you can see, the learner can quickly scan the information and determine where it fits into the scheme of things. By repeating something like the underlined text, the learner intuitively knows that those things are related.

You’re not limited to text. You can also do the same thing with the graphic elements. Whatever you design should help the learner sort the information and create a sense of comfort with knowing how the content on the screen is related to each other and the overall objective of the course.

Use just the right images. No more.

Whether you use text or graphics, all of it needs to support the objectives of the course. If it’s on the screen, then it should contribute and not detract from your course. This includes the visual style, fonts, colors, and symbols. They all contribute to the communication process. Make sure that they’re contributing to your message in the right way.

Suppose you’re watching an elearning course on public parks and you see the image below on the screen. What does that image tell you? If you’re like me, you’re expecting something about the environment or litter in the park.

Without communicating anything else, the image is already starting to tell you something. That’s how you want to use images, symbols, or any other graphics on your screen. You want them to contribute to the course.

On the flip side, there’s a tendency to put decorative images on the screen to fill in blank spots. Or sometimes, the client wants to “jazz things up a bit.” Avoid that. Don’t litter the screen with useless elements. Some studies show that decorative graphics can negatively impact how learners process the information. So you run the risk that you are actually impeding the learning process. Not only that, but like the image above, if the image communicates information and it is not related to the course content, you end up confusing the learner.

You don’t need to be a Photoshop pro or a professional graphic designer. However, to craft an effective elearning course it’s important to understand the principles of graphic design. I touched on a few in this post, but there’s a lot more to learn.

If you’re looking for a good book to get started, I highly recommend The Non-Designer’s Design Book. The book covers the basics of visual design. It has great examples and is easy to get through.

An important part of instructional design is the use and layout of your visual elements. How you design your screen tells your learners where to look and what’s most important. And you want the information on the screen to support the learning objectives of the course.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to share them by clicking on the comments link.

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Download your free 46-page ebook: The Insider's Guide to Becoming a Rapid E-Learning Pro

Onkyo's new receiver is even better

Last year, if someone wanted to buy an AV receiver and wasn't flush with cash, our recommendation was easy--the Onkyo TX-SR605 offered an unparalleled feature set for the price, and sounded great to boot. This year, Onkyo has released an updated model, the TX-SR606, and has made a great product even better. Read more

Best AV Receivers
Two Onkyo receivers with Faroudja video processing
Best 5 in home audio

Do you know this free bird?

Is iTunes not your style? Just because it comes on your Mac doesn't mean you have to use it. The great thing about working with software is that there are many options available if there's some feature you wish you had, or another you could do without. Songbird is the open-source answer from Mozilla that offers tons of features to make music and media management easy. If you're looking for an alternative to Apple's popular media player, check out Singbird.

Also this week, we have AppCleaner, so you can make sure when you uninstall an application, you uninstall all of its associated files. Our game this week is "In-Poculis Mahjong Mac," a tile-matching game with a few twists that make it stand out from the rest of Mahjong game genre.

New, fabulous freeware round-up

As you readers likely know, Download.com is primarily a secure and reliable source for free and "free to try" software applications. In the early days of online "shareware" distribution, only generally smaller publishers offered free software trials, but now everyone from Adobe and Microsoft to Autodesk and Intuit features downloadable demos of their software.

However, as much as you Download.com users like to test popular commercial software and PC games before you buy, you seem to love our freeware even more. Top freebies like AVG, Ad-Aware, and ICQ perennially lead the Most Popular list. Luckily for you, Seth Rosenblatt shares your passion for getting something fantastic for nothing, and he chronicles his favorite finds in daily Featured Freeware posts on the Download.com blog.

Recent highlights in the Featured Freeware have been the all-in- one social-networking and IM app Digsby, the top-rated open- source encryption software TrueCrypt, the flexible video converter FormatFactory, and the no-frills photo-project software PhotoZig Albums Express.

Read more Featured Freeware articles in the Download.com blog to discover classic and brand-new applications for your own personal freeware arsenal.

Read more

Visit Download.com

Olympic Games downloads

Not without a bit of extra controversy about censored Internet access for journalists, the 2008 Olympic Games are about to get started in Beijing, China, with more than 10,000 athletes from 200-plus countries. On August 8 at 8:08:08 p.m. local time, the Games are on!

Get in the Olympic spirit with this week's collection of screensavers and other downloadable software related to the 2008 Olympic Games.

In other download news, Orbit Downloader flew up last week's Most Popular chart to land at No. 10 and lead our Top Movers. The Game of the Week is a demo for Death Track Resurrection, a sequel to the classic car-combat game Deathtrack. In music, listen to the latest Batman soundtrack with a full stream of The Dark Knight.

Visit Download.com

CNET TechSpecials

Happy Friday everyone! This week's topic is external hard drives and how to use them to back up your data. Before I start, I'd like to point out a few things about this topic. While Ben's questions do ask for recommendations on what external hard-drive brands are reliable and durable, it's almost a moot point to say one brand is better than another, because everyone will have an opinion on their favorites. And we could probably go in circles trying to debate what company has a better hard drive. So, for those of you seeking a brand-name external drive, read what has worked for our members and keep those thoughts in mind, stick with a well-known brand, and run with it. The second point I have to share (which is mentioned in many of our members' answers) is if you are planning on using an external hard drive to back up your important data, you better darn well have another backup of that backup--meaning do not trust your data on your external hard drive to be foolproof, because hard drives can and will fail. And if your only backup fails, you will be miserable! I cannot express this enough. Here is a post by member and forum moderator MarkFlax, on why external hard drives aren't the best backup.

In this week's topic of discussion, a lot of ground is covered by our member answers to Ben's questions--the answers range from brand recommendations and the methods folks use to back up their own data to many great software recommendations to synch up your data for backing up. For instance, member kknudson posts his advice on having a backup plan in place, whereas member rlessmue advises on the simple balance of life regarding storage volume. These are only a few samples of what has been brought to the table. All in all, with this information at hand from our member contributions, it's a great starting point to get a glimpse of what external hard drives are available and what are some available solutions to back up your data. So pull up a comfy chair, and digest and discuss this with your fellow members. I've picked out a few great answers in the Q&A section to get you started, but if you have additional experience or advice to share, bring it on! Thanks everyone for your awesome contributions. Have a great weekend! And don't forget to play it safe and back up your data if you haven't already!

Nikon's pro shooter gets the gold

With its great photo quality, excellent low-light performance and tough-as-nails build, what's not to like about Nikon's top-of-the line dSLR? Darned if we know. Read more

Nirvana: Which Nikon dSLR?
Best professional dSLRs

Here’s Why Unlocking Your Course Navigation Will Create Better Learning

Recently, I was talking to a manager who let me know how much he hates the elearning courses he has to take at his company.

“As far as I’m concerned, the people who design these things are elearning fascists. It’s bad enough that the courses we take are pointless, but the navigation is also locked so we can’t click to advance until the course lets us. I hate that!”

“But, I have to lock the course.” says the instructional designer. “If I don’t, the learners will just click the next button and skip to the end. I want to force them to watch the videos and other content so that they get the information.”

No one likes wasting time and in the process being treated like a child. However, the organization commits a lot of its resources to the training and they want to make sure that people take the time to learn the information. They definitely don’t want the employees skipping through information that might be critical to the organization’s success.

So how do we make this a “win-win” for the learner and instructional designer?

Understand Your Learners

Sometimes we treat people liked they’re scanners. We think that since they SEE the information that by default an exact duplicate is scanned into their brains that they can reference anytime it’s needed. That might be the case for Bill Clinton, who’s rumored to have a photographic memory (except under deposition). But it’s not the case for the rest of us.

Suppose you’re teaching a class on how to make coffee. While the students are all exposed to the same information, they’re not necessarily focusing on the same things, let alone learning the same. One person might be thinking about ways to roast beans and another wishes he had a cup of coffee right now. Yet another person is following what you’re saying, but wonders if there’s another way to make coffee. And someone in the back starts crying because she thought you said “coffin” which reminded her of a recent funeral she attended.

So no matter how well you think you designed the course, each person looks at the content from a slightly different perspective, which creates different understanding. Courses need to be designed to accommodate the uniqueness of each learner. And that doesn’t happen by trying to control them.

Free Up the Navigation

It’s true that a lot of learners just start clicking on the next button until they can leave the course. So our gut reaction is to lock the navigation and force them to look at all of the content. But does this really make sense?

People aren’t scanners. Even if they did look at all of the content, it doesn’t mean they know it. Locking the navigation and exposing the learner to information doesn’t make it more understandable. In fact, it most likely gets the learner to focus on when the slide ends rather than what’s on the slide.

Frustrated learners don’t learn. Let’s say you want to learn how to add cells together in Excel. The first 20 minutes of the course is all about the interface, which you already understand. However, you notice in the menu that on slide 20 you can learn about “adding cells.”

So you click on slide 20 and get the message that you can’t access it without looking at all of the previous slides. Of course, you can’t click through them because some instructional designer thought you needed to learn about interfaces before you can learn to add cells. And to make matters worse the next button doesn’t appear until the narration is done. So you end up wasting 20 minutes before you can get the information you need. How do you feel about the course at that point?

People don’t learn the same things from the same content. The reason we value collaboration so much at work is that we understand that diversity of thought and varying perspectives help fill gaps and remove blind spots in our thinking. If we acknowledge that about problem solving at work, then we also need to acknowledge that when crafting elearning courses. Each person is unique and will approach the course from a unique perspective. That influences how they understand what you’re trying to teach them. Shouldn’t the learning experience accommodate the uniqueness of each learner?

Step Away from the Solution and Work on the Problem

Locking the navigation is a solution to stopping learners from clicking through the course. However, it doesn’t address why they’re clicking through it in the first place and not focusing on the content. Instead of locking the navigation, create a course that removes the reason to just click the next button.

Guide the learner through the course, rather than forcing the navigation. The player navigation is just a way to get from one piece of information to the other. That’s not instructional design. Instructional design is about guiding the learners through the course content so that they can learn.

Think of the course like a 400 page reference book that contains all of the information you need to do your job. Whenever, you have a question you go to the reference manual. How effective would it be if the reference manual’s page turning was locked and you always had to start at the first page rather than go to the information you need?

Give the learners the freedom to demonstrate their level of understanding. Now let’s apply that to elearning. Essentially, the course content is like the reference manual. The goal isn’t to get them to read all of the content. Instead, the goal is to get them to DO something. The content only supports the DOING.

Considering this, don’t design your course to navigate through content. Instead, create an environment where the learner has to demonstrate understanding of the content by doing something. By focusing on the desired action rather than the content, the learner’s better prepared to learn. The content is just a resource to help them gain understanding. When you lock access to the content, you’re actually hindering the learning process.

Make the content relevant to the learners. Instead of just dumping screen after screen of information, present a problem for them to solve. The problem solving requires them to demonstrate their level of understanding which is what you want to assess. If they don’t know how to solve the problem, they’ll look for a solution in the content you provide.

Most likely the course exists because the client wants something to be done a certain way. That means you build your courses around the behaviors or actions you expect from the learners. Thus, you assess them on those expected outcomes. Having the learners VIEW information is rarely an effective measure of a successful course. If it is, you’ll probably be out of a job soon.

If you focus on the desired outcome, that will allow you to unlock the navigation. It also helps accommodate each learner who will come to the course with different levels of expertise and experiences. Some will go through the courses in a linear process. Some like to take a quick look through what the course covers and then go back. Even others, will look for things they don’t already know. How they access the information really isn’t that big of a deal because that’s not the objective of the course.

Your ability to measure their understanding will come from the problem solving that you build in the course. If they know the information, they’ll prove it through the problem you give them. If they don’t, you’ll know exactly what they’re missing and you can give them feedback specific to their real needs.

This approach creates courses that are relevant to the learners and you won’t have to worry about them clicking through the course just to get to the end. Even if they did click through the course, they wouldn’t be able to work through the case studies you give them unless they know the content, which forces them back to the information they don’t already know.

In either case, you have a win-win situation. You get people to go through the course successfully and have a way to truly assess the learner’s level of understanding. And the learner has the flexibility to access the information to really learn based on their unique perspective, experience, and current level of understanding.

How would you build a course that frees up the navigation for the learner and still meet your learning objectives. Share your ideas here.

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Download your free 46-page ebook: The Insider's Guide to Becoming a Rapid E-Learning Pro

Vizio's smallest plasma TV

Vizio is taking the flat-panel HDTV market by storm, slashing the dollar signs off its televisions, and becoming one of the best-selling names in the country. The VP322 continues this trend, sporting the smallest plasma screen available at 32 inches. While the set is not a particularly good performer, evincing inaccurate color and lighter black levels, it does avoid the uniformity and off-angle problems of similar-size LCDs. Read more

Best flat-panel LCDs
Top budget HDTVs: 42 inches or less
Best HDTVs (32 inches or less)

Better image browsing with PicLens

I've often said one of the greatest things about Firefox is the ability to use add-ons to improve your Web-browsing experience. I can't think of a better example than one of this week's download picks, PicLens. With this add-on for Firefox, whenever you perform a search for images on Google, Flickr, and many others, PicLens displays the results on a browseable 3D wall. Now offering video browsing on YouTube as well as shopping by image on Amazon, PicLens is the free add-on every Firefox user should check out.

Also this week, we have Pixelmator, an excellent image editor featuring filters, effects, a layer manager, and much more at a relatively low price. Our game this week is "Vendetta Online," a massive multiplayer online game in which you pilot your spaceship, explore, and fight your way through an enormous online universe.

Power up your photos with PicLens

Digital photos are one of the lifebloods of the Internet, and regular newsletter readers know that I'm always looking for new ways to manage my pictures and show them off to friends and family.

Users who are accustomed to the new iPhone/iPod method of "swiping" their way through photo albums and other jazzy Web 2.0 forms of navigation should take a look at PicLens, a collection of photo slide show tools that let users browse or create 3D slide shows that can include photos and video.

The PicLens browser add-ons--for Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox 3--highlight the image content of Web sites to let users whip back and forth through 3D galleries using mouse gestures instead of clicks. They also recently added support for Amazon and YouTube for 3D video galleries.

Even cooler, two free tools let you create your own digital photo slide shows for the Web. With PicLens Publisher, you simply select the photos you want to use, and the tool creates all the HTML and components you need to upload to your site. The PicLens Plugin for WordPress lets bloggers using the popular publishing platform easily add integrated, immersive slide shows.

Read more about PicLens and tell us your opinion

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