Whenever I have "one of my ideas" and I tell them about it at work, they roll their eyes and pretend to listen to me. Wait until they hear this one. If you thought the AT&T's mLife concept was just BigCo hype, well... you were right. But here's an "m" we can all get behind: mLearning! Their Powerpoint presentation of the same name describes this U.K.-based project's goal of using cell phones and PDAs to teach literacy and numeracy to young adults. They even show some valid examples.

There are some stunning statistics in there, too, all of which are from Europe because they're so far ahead of us in implementation and acceptance of wireless services. For example, in August 2000, when the m-learning bid was first written, 75% of Net Gens ages 15-24 owned cell phones. And that was a year and a half ago! One month earlier in July 2000, "70% of Italians have mobiles including 'every' Italian male aged 17-21." As Elaine would say, "GET OUT!"

I really love this whole project, and I'm definitely going to find out more about it. And you thought my previous post about video and cell phones was ridiculous. Go on, admit it - you did. For shame. (I think I hear Walt groaning.)

[part of Canarie Canadian National E-Learning workshop-Presentations, via Serious Instructional Technology]

Sprint to Deploy 3G Imaging

"In an attempt to make its forthcoming next-generation wireless network more attractive, Sprint said Monday that users of that network will be able to snap pictures and automatically transmit them wirelessly." [allNetDevices Wireless News]

When I do my Information Shifting presentation, I always get skeptical looks when I talk about MP4 and the use of video over cellphones or wireless PDAs. While I agree that I don't see myself watching movies on such a device any time soon, that scenario won't be the entry point into the mainstream. Instead, it will be Grandpa, who doesn't have one of those new-fangled computers, watching a video of his grandchild on his cell phone. It will be insurance agents snapping pictures of your car accident and sending them into the home office (which is actually happening already). Or it will be a moving, 3D, GPS-based map giving directions with real images to point out landmarks. It never starts where you think it will.

So today's lesson is don't be so quick to scoff. At my house we have a minivan with one of those screens mounted on the ceiling and a VCP installed. It came with the car, and it's not that special a request anymore. Eight-year old Kailee and six-year old Brent will probably never remember a time when TVs didn't come pre-installed in cars (and you think you already felt old!). They don't think twice about taking their media with them, especially when you're talking about Brent with his Gameboy. So why do you think a cell phone that snaps pictures or shows videos would be any different?

Russ Lipton educates us regarding What Is Publish and Subscribe? I'm pointing to it because I truly do believe this is a major piece of the news gathering future (it's already the major piece of my present). Russ' essay is an excellent introduction to that future. [via Scripting News]

"Without a publish and subscribe model, the Web suffers from forcing users to make explicit proactive decisions to go to a website of interest. If I want to read the New York Times online, I go there. It doesn't come to me.

This is one reason both discussion groups and mailing lists have been so popular on the Web. Mailing lists (always) and discussion groups (often) provide methods for notifying us that something of interest awaits.

Radio's delivery of weblog subscription feeds to us through the news aggregator is one of those 'simple' features that (will) revolutionize actual behavior on the Web."

Although he doesn't explicitly say it, Russ is describing how Web users will be information shifting their news. Their information will come to them in the format they prefer (Web-based news aggregator, text message notifications, news feeds downloaded onto their PDAs, etc.), instead of waiting-and-hoping-and-praying for them to come to it. Lori gets this, too, when she writes:

"Fairly soon, it will not be enough just to put your web page out there and hope google picks it up. You will have to put your page into an xml newsfeed as Jenny says because that will be how people are picking up their news instead of reading the paper, looking in google, etc. Libraries will need to put their pages in feeds, for people reading news, finding things on the net, and getting news in a handheld format. I wonder if newsfeeds may become the new search engines on the Internet." [The Handheld Librarian]