Blackboard vs. Desire2Learn

In the lawsuit going on for a number of years Desire2Learn is ruled to have tread on Blackboard's patent and ordered to pay 3.1 million dollars and recently ordered not to sell their product in the United States.

In a more recent ruling the Patent Office is proposing to invalidate all of Blackboard's patents in this area.

Stay tuned... this is not over yet.

Toolbook 9.5 for the Mac/Iphone

SumTotal Systems has announced that Toolbook 9.5 will produce e-Learning for the Safari browser and the Iphone/Ipod.

I am not totally sure what this means -- will audio/video content be supported? Will AICC, SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004 packages be created? The initial information does not make it obvious. I am guessing "no" to the first question, "yes" to the second.

I will certainly be watching the activity.

Wildform Flair

I downloaded the demo version of Wildform Flair to have a look. I like Articulate a lot but am frustrated by its inability (for video) or clumsiness (audio) in handing a prerecorded audio or audio/video track as the time line.

What would be a straightforward production of a prerecorded presentation in Producer becomes a massive job in Articulate.

Toolbook V9.01

The long awaited update to Toolbook V9 is finally released.  It seems to have fixed the problems that were show stoppers for me before (and were in my mind potential lurking disasters) but has uncovered a number of new problems (at least for me). I may be able to work around those though.

Toolbook version history

I have a long history using Toolbook (since V1.53 in the early 90's). Asymetrix, Click2Learn, SumTotal Systems (the various incarnations of corporate custodians) during that time have never subscribed to the "under promise, over deliver" adage when it comes to release dates.

In fact it seems they have another mantra -- "sort of or never promise, under deliver":

• they never commit to delivery dates of anything though broad hints in various forums are made -- but never delivered upon (I am sure at some point in my 15 + year history they did make a date but none within recent memory)
• management seems to have always gone by the slogan -- "we are not going to communicate with you our loyal customers regarding any delivery times -- only when we are ready to deliver will we deign to inform you". This seems to have been a constant throughout various management regimes so it seems not one individual is responsible but the whole corporate DNA

The latest backhanded "promise" - to provide a downloadable update to Toolbook 9 before Christmas. Not delivered upon.

In this age of more corporate transparency, SumTotal has failed miserably.

What I expect them to do:

• make a public commitment on delivery dates
• deliver to that date (or keep customers intimately involved in reasons why the date is not being met)

Latest newsbywire (#18)

The latest edition of our newsletter, newsbywire can be found here.

Toolbook 9.01 announced

Toolbook V9 service pack release announced. Still not available for download though. There is no explicit indication that it fixes the problem I was having (but previous indications implied that it would). So I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Still waiting for Toolbook V9 service pack

Despite the fact that the recent Toolbook V 9.0 release is extremely flawed (certainly for my use) and early indications that an updated version would be available "near the end of September or early in October" still nothing.

All seems to have gone quiet.