What if you could avoid using paper, and make the manual really deliver added value? I spent some time playing with iBooks author, a manual in Word format about an IT application, and Adobe Captivate software demo’s, to see if this could be a valuable alternative.

The workflow to replace all your paper based manuals by this solution would be:

• Get yourself a Mac :–)
• Get yourself an iPad if you want to preview your iBooks
• Download a copy of iBooks author
• Import your Word document into iBooks author
• Publish your Captivate demo’s as .mp4 (standard publish function in CP 5 and higher)
• Convert your .mp4 files to .m4v with QuickTime
• Insert the demos in your iBook using the Media widget
• Add some interactivity if necessary, e.g. multiple choice questions
• Publish your project
• Distribute your iBook (via the store or as a file)
• Get an iPad for all your students :–)

I will let you judge for yourself. This is the result:

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1. Publish your Captivate project as Flash(SWF), and make sure that you have the option Export to html checked. This will produce a set of files: a .html file, a .swf file and a .js file.

2. Upload these files into a document library on a SharePoint site. You can start your project by clicking on the .html file.
If you are running SharePoint 2010 and the file does not open, you might need to change a security setting in SharePoint. Also, SharePoint has a default file size limit of 50 MB. Your system administrator can increase this limit.

3. Optional, but recommended: to make it easier for your users to start your course, you can include a link to the .html file on the home page of your site.

Watch the demonstration below for more detailed instructions:

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• the app is free, but is limited to 500 notes; if you want more, you can unlock this limitation with an 11,99 EUR in-app purchase. I consider myself a heavy OneNote user, and I am currently at 320 pages. So with some management, you can stay under the limit.
• Notes are synced with Windows Live Skydrive, so you will need a Windows Live ID to use the app. Advantage is that you have an online backup of your notes, and you can even edit them on Skydrive in the web app.
• If you use formatting extensively in OneNote, you will be disapponted that a lot of these features are not supported in the iPad app. You get plain text. There is some room for improvement here.
• Written notes (ink on a tablet pc) are not visible in the iPad app. Sometimes the app crashes on pages that contain a lot of written notes.

There is also an iPhone version of the application. And if you are thinking about converting your entire Evernote archive to OneNote, my colleague Frank pointed us to a conversion tool. Although you might want to wait with that until the 2.0 version of the OneNote app is released…

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Facebook chat

Follow this procedure:

• in iChat, go to Preferences, Accounts
• add a new account
• select Jabber as account type
• as account name: type <your facebook username>@chat.facebook.com
• in the advanced section, enter chat.facebook.com as the server name
• set 5222 as the port number

If you don’t know your Facebook username, open the General Account Settings in your Facebook profile, or check the Facebook Help Center.

Windows Live Messenger (MSN)

To connect with your MSN contacts, you will need to install the Cocoon plugin. Caution, this only works on Lion and is still in beta.

Once you have installed it, there will be an extra account type called MSN, where you can configure your MSN username and password.

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Even if you do not want to share your notes, it is still a good idea to store
your notebook on SharePoint or Skydrive. If you put it on a location where only
you have access, this will create the perfect backup of your
notes, because your notebooks will automatically synchronise between your pc and
the shared location. You don’t want to lose your little black book, do you?

The video below shows you how to setup a shared notebook. Tip: maximize the
video and watch in HD for a better viewing experience.

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• Twitter: the best way to generate your own “information streams” about various subjects
• SharePoint 2010: Microsoft’s enterprise collaboration platform. Fan of the “My Sites”, that allow you to create your own “portfolio”
• Adobe Captivate: by far the best e-learning development tool of the moment. Looking forward to the future HTML output
• Diigo: social bookmarking tool that replaced my delicious account
• Tweetdeck: invaluable for organizing my twitter stream. Like the fact that it is cross-platform
• Google Reader: allows me to follow more than 400 websites or other information sources (RSS) in one single web-based application
• Feeddler Pro: iPad app that connects to your Google Reader account and displays your RSS feeds on iPad
• Microsoft OneNote: the best note-taking application on the Windows platform. Unbeatable in combination with SharePoint and a tablet pc. If only they would release the iPad app in Europe…
• Office 365: brings the power of Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint and Lync to your home network
• WordPress: one of the most user friendly blogging platforms

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• Jane Hart – C4LPT – The New Workplace Learning
• The Office 2010 screensaver
• The SharePoint Lunch & Learn kit
• The Xylos e-learning course “New in Windows 7 and Office 2010“
• QR code generator
• Microsoft Lync IM an expert
• Nokia Indoor Navigation

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As I do not want to reconfigure all the devices that use my 365 account every 90 days, I decided to disable password expiration. The only way to do this is via a PowerShell command, explained in every detail in this blog post.

Security is a good thing, but it would have been nice to get a little reminder e-mail that your password is about to expire. I am on the P1 plan, which is the “dummy” plan for individuals and small businesses; if I need to change a setting, I want to do this via the portal, not via PowerShell.

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A lot of people cursed the cute little paperclip for popping up at any time, but the idea of giving people small tips for common tasks is not that bad. Well, the tips are back, this time in your… screensaver. Microsoft recently released the Office 2010 “Getting Started” screensaver. 

Of course, we are no longer in the nineties, so the tips are animated, flashy… but the content is still very valuable.

Some caveats:

• you need the .Net framework 4.0 (installed automatically if you don't have it yet)
• the content is pulled from an RSS feed on Office.com, so you do need access to that site

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• pricing is very good; I already had some Exchange mailboxes, and for about the same price I get more storage (25 GB mailbox!), SharePoint and Lync;
• there is a one month trial program; however, in the trial, you cannot link your own domain to Office 365;
• you can add multiple domains to the same account; the fact that you have to point the name servers of your domain to Microsoft was a surprise to me. I expected that it would be enough to point the mx records to Office 365, but apparently in this plan this is not the case. There are some rumours that it works, but it is not supported;
• you can configure A and CNAME records in the Office 365 DNS manager; it took me a while to figure out that you can use an @ to create a record for your root domain (http://mylearning.be)
• the Office web apps are included in the package, and are very useful, e.g. if you need to edit Office documents on a mac and have no Office installed;
• the primary support channel is the Office 365 community; content is relatively good, but sometimes it is difficult to filter issues from the beta program or from the enterprise subscription if you are looking for a specific issue; I filed a service request and got a response within 24 hours.

I’ll post more experiences once I explore the possibilities of the SharePoint part of Office 365, but for the moment I am very happy with it.

More info and trial on http://www.office365.com.

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