Vocre -- translation app

From DSC:
Here are some items related to what I call “Learning from the Living Room” — a trend that continues to develop that involves:

  • Using high-end, personalized, multimedia-based, interactive, team-created content — packed with new reporting tools for better diagnostics/learning analytics — available via a cloud-based “education store”/marketplace/exchange
  • Web-accessible content that’s available 24x7x365
  • The power of social networks/learning
  • Riding the wave of the massive convergence of the computer, the telephone, and the television.

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Smarter TV: Living room as digital hub from Samsung and Microsoft to Apple and Google — from wired.com by Tim Carmody
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
  • In the future, the living room will replace the home office as most households’ home for the stationary personal computer. Instead of printers and mice and other corded accessories, networked appliances and post-PC machines share data with one another and with the cloud. Play and productivity both become decentered; gaming and entertainment might be on a tablet or a television, with recipes at the refrigerator, a shopping list for the smartphone, and an instructional video on the television set. All of these experiences will be coherent, continuous and contextual. And like the personal computer at the height of Pax Wintel, the living room will be a platform characterized by triumphant pluralism.“The thing about the living room is that it’s universal; everyone in the household uses it,” Samsung VP Eric Anderson told me at today’s event. “We know that we’re not going to capture every single member of the household. In my family, my wife and my daughter are Apple, me and my sons are Android,” he noted, pointing out that the majority of devices introduced today can interact with either mobile platform.

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The modern mechanics of app stores: today, tomorrow and connected TV — from guardian.co.uk by Dean Johnson

Excerpt:

What’s next for app stores?
It’s time for each platform to up its game – smart TVs are coming. The small and medium screen experience will shortly be translated to the bigger screen as connectivity and discoverability takes on even greater importance.

Google and Apple will further interweave themselves into our daily lives as iOS and Android seamlessly combine our smartphones and tablets with our new smartTVs. Electronic Program Guides (EPGs) and the programmes themselves will suggest related content, from apps to music to film to books. This must all be presented in an approachable, then browsable manner to encourage additional discovery.

The quest for the perfect meta-data will become increasingly important and voice commands will need to deliver the best search results with the minimum of fuss. This time next year, the battle of the app stores will be fought on the move, on the desktop and on the living room wall.

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Samsung Launches Smart TVs With Gestures, Voice Control — from by Douglas Perry

Excerpt:

A Kinect-like feature is made possible via camera and microphone integration that comes standard with the LED ES7500, LED ES8000 and Plasma E8000 models. According to Samsung, consumers can launch apps such as Facebook or YouTube, or search the web via voice commands. Waving the hand will move the cursor and select links. The TVs integrate a Samsung dual-core processor as well as a new Webkit-based web browser to improve overall performance. The high-end 7500 and 8000 TVs ship with a remote with an integrated touchscreen. A wireless keyboard that is compatible with Samsung’s TVs as well as the Galaxy Tab tablet is sold as an option.

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New TV experiences through companion apps — from moxie pulse

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How to make music with your iPad — from pcmag.com by Jamie Lendino
The iPad is capable of real music composition work, and in ways that you’ve probably never seen before; here are the apps you need right now.

Addendum later on 3/5/12:

Rafter™ launches to revolutionize the entire course materials process for students, educators, and administrators, making education more affordable, accessible and effective — from Rafter
Rafter Delivers First-of-its-Kind Technology to Manage Textbooks and Digital Content On Campus and Online

 Excerpt:

SAN MATEO, CA–(Marketwire – Feb 28, 2012) – Rafter today launched as a new education technology company offering a network of software services that enable administrators and educators to better control costs and manage course materials for their students. Addressing higher education course materials management at an enterprise level, the Rafter Course Materials Network™ is the first suite of cloud-based software services that helps reduce costs for students and stores, helps educators discover and adopt the best materials, and provides college administrators with unprecedented power to control the complexities and reduce the costs of the entire course materials management process.

Rafter evolved out of one of the fastest growing education technology companies, textbook rental company BookRenter, which has saved millions of students more than $175 million across more than 5,000 campuses nationwide. In 2010, the company began to partner directly with schools to co-develop services to reduce the cost of and improve the experience associated with textbooks. Today, more than 500 schools have adopted BookRenter’s solution.

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See also:.

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rafter.com

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Also see:

GoodSemester.com

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https://www.goodsemester.com/?p=featuretour

From DSC:

  • Tie this type of cloud-based platform in with learning analytics, new types of certifications/assessments/badges, web-based learner profiles, and the ability to continue building your own cloud over a lifetime, and you may find yourself enjoying a very powerful learning ecosystem!!!

 

 

 

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The Evolving Digital Ecosystem - from Moxie's Trends for 2012

  • The Always On Web
  • Web of Things
  • Big Data
  • Next Gen Search
  • Mobile Sharing
  • Mobile Social Activism
  • Impulse Commerce
  • Brands As Partners
  • The New Living Room  <– From DSC: This is one of those key areas that I’m trying to keep a pulse check on for re: our learning ecosystems of the future 
  • Personal Data Security

 

Also see:

 

Top 10 Sites for Educational Apps — from Technology Tidbits: Thoughts of a Cyber Hero by dkapuler

Head in the clouds? Ten free Web 2.0 tools to support faculty research — from FacultyFocus.com by G. Andrew Page, Ph.D.

2012 tech predictions: From IDG’s editors worldwide– from InfoWorld by David Bromley
Consumerization of IT is the consensus choice of the new year’s major technology force, one that will manifest itself in several forms

Several other commonly-mentioned items were:

  • Mobility
  • Patent disputes
  • Apple & Steve Jobs
  • BYOD (bring your own device to work) movement

Also see:

Marc Andreessen: Predictions for 2012 (and beyond)  — from cnet.com by Paul Sloan

Excerpt:

Software has chewed up music and publishing. It’s eaten away at Madison Avenue. It’s swallowed up retail outlets like Tower Records. The list goes on.

No area is safe–and that’s why Andreessen sees so much opportunity.

Fueling his optimism: ubiquitous broadband, cloud computing, and, above all, the smartphone revolution. In the 1990s, the Internet led to crazy predictions that simply weren’t yet possible. Now they are.

WeVideo.com -- Using the cloud and digital video to bring stories to life

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A cloud-based video editing platform that allows you to create, collaborate and share video-based stories.

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Also see –> projeqt.com

How the cloud is revolutionizing gadgets — from cnet.com by Paul Sloan
When Greg Duffy shopped his business idea around in 2008, investor after investor told him the same thing: you’re crazy.

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Dropcam lets you view live video on your phone.

7 mobile trends for 2012: NFC, Nokia, Apps and HTML5 — from gottabemobile.com by Josh Smith

Excerpt:

Given the importance of apps to the overall success of a phone and a platform, and this wide number of devices, we invited Bjorn Hildahl, VP of Product Management at Kony to fill us in on what to expect in 2012.

Kony is a 5 year old development services company that enables companies to write apps once and turn them into native apps for 7 platforms, the mobile web and tablets. Kony boasts a collection of clients like SouthWest and Citi, and focuses on delivering apps that feel like they were written specifically for a platform rather than wrapping a mobile webpage in a shell and calling it native.

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