Dashboard going multi-lingual

It’s time for another sneak preview of the Dashboard. We have been hard at work for several months now trying to make the Dashboard unique, interactive and visually stimulating. New features include a multi-lingual function and has provisions so far for 6 languages, which are English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French and German. We will look at adding more languages as we get closer to the release date.

Another new and exciting feature is the Degrafa graph inside the datagrid. This allows the scores to be more visually stimulating.  The courses that the user is enrolled for is also listed as well as their quiz results and the course interactivity.

-Kirsten

Dashboard Demo

After a long process of development we are finally at a point where we can showcase a demo!

Log into http://www.ilite.co.za/eDash/#

User name:   james

Password: password

Remember guys, feedback is always welcome and appreciated.

- Kirsten

It’s been a while…

Time fly’s…Can you believe that we are heading into the middle on the first month of 2009. I thought to myself that I have all the time in the world to get down and write a paragraph or two about what is happening, and then I look again and the month is almost finished. I wonder to myself, how did that happen and where did all the time go too.

We ended 2008 off with a bang and are very happy with the results that iLite has achieved during the year. Now our focus shifts towards the new year and how we can make more of an impact and push ourselves further. We have a couple of projects that need to be completed within the first three months of this year. One of them being a new version of the iLite Moodle Dashboard.

We have been playing with various options for the iLite Moodle Dashboard for a while now, and seeing which way we would like to take the application. We know that our existing clients are due for an upgrade, and are eagerly awaiting the new version. So we have a deadline, and hopefully the project plan runs smoothly and we are ready to roll version 2 out the door.

Wazzok is another project that needs to come to an end now. Sean has been building this site since the end of December and it has taken a lot of energy, endurance and perserverance on his part to roll this one out. We are hoping to have this one done by the end of January at the latest and hopefully pursuing more avenues that this project will deliver.

For me, the beginning of a new year entails the start of a busy season. Yes its tax time again, and I will need to get everything sorted out so that we can start off the new financial year on a positive note.

What makes this time of year even more interesting, is that we only have about 70 days until the start of the formula one season and a very important decision needs to be made regarding our progress forward with our signature Mobile Application. We will be putting together a mobile version of the F1 application, but this year we are taking a different approach.  We are going to let loose an application that is not a Flash Application, but rather a PHP based application/website that can be used by all Mobile users and not just the Symbian devices that we usually develop for.

This is an interesting time at iLite and I will be posting blogs on upcoming events as the transpire. So stay tuned and you will be amazed at all that we accomplish in 2009. I hope that you are as excited about the prospects that this year will bring as we at iLite are.

-Kirsten

Final Countdown

We are entering the last part of the Formula One season. And as this season draws to an end, I find myself asking the inevitable question: What will the next application be like? Is there something missing that you think should be included in the next release?

So to make things just a little bit more interesting, I am asking you… What do you want in the next F1 application?

- Kirsten

LMS Stat’s

Have you ever wondered how the LMS you have chosen stacks up against the competition? Maybe you are thinking of investing time and/or money in an LMS. How would you choose one?

Would you:

1. Look at demo’s
2. Listen to a sales pitch
3. Go with something commercial
4. Phone a friend

What ever route you take does not matter. At the end of the day you will second guess your choice. Trust me, you will. I have work with Docent, IBM LearningSpace, Moodle, KEWL, and a bunch of others. The other day I came across a question in LinkedIn, where the person asked what you should look for when choosing a LMS.

Tricky question I think. Do you go with what’s popular, and adapt it to meet your needs, or do you go for a best fit, even if it’s not well supported.

This is what I answered:

1. How is it to install, maintain and upgrade the LMS
2. How much support is there in the global community for the LMS
3. How easy is the User and Course administration
4. How well is the course content presented
5. How good is the reporting on User progress and scores

Something I would add at this point is, how easy is it to backup and restore a course. Lets not even discuss the issue of off-line courses. But, coming back to your choice of LMS. I used Google Trends to have a look at how some of the LMS’s measure up.

blackboard

1.00

webct

0.53

sumtotal

0.01

ecollege

0

learningspace

0

Commercial LMS

moodle

9.60

kewl

1.00

olat

0

claroline

0.60

lon-capa

0

Opensource LMS

blackboard

1.00

webct

0.53

moodle

0.69

Opensource vs Commercial

I have linked the images to Google Trends, for those who would like more information. One last trend that I am including is one about authoring tools. Many LMS’s come with their own default authoring tool, but they are often not up to much. You will invariably want to build content using a third-party application like Authorware, Toolbook or Captivate. I have a personal preference for Flash, but did not include it in the measure. I also accept that you can use Dreamweaver to build SCORM content. Flash and Dreamweaver are so widely used that I was afraid they would not give a true reflection.

toolbook

1.00

captivate

3.30

authorware

5.90

lectora

4.10

scribe

8.90

Authoring tools

Let me know if you are using something else. Maybe I have this all twisted.

Sean

Moodle off-line

Moodle

Moodle off-line, now there is a thought. I don’t actually mean taking Moodle off-line, just a course. Wrap your head around this if you will.

When a User starts a course, they download a Flash file for each lesson to a know location on their local drive. When they start a particular lesson, the link in the lesson references the Flash file on their local drive. It passes in their ID, CourseID and any other parameters needed.

Once they have reached the end of the Flash file, they click Save/Submit and the information is sent back to Moodle and stored with Course.

I guess one of the problems with the above scenario is that the Flash Activity in Moodle is a bit dodgy. I know some people get it working, and others don’t. I also know that there is a group who are looking at rewriting the module. I am not to sure what the progress on that is.

There has been some discussions around this in the Moodle forums, but if you have any ideas, let me know.

Sean

Update on iLite

Can you believe another week has come to an end. It seems as if this year is flying past. The good thing about it is that we are busy and have lots of projects keeping us on the go.

It seems as if putting a blog together for iLite has been a success. We are starting to get a couple of visitors who seem to be interested in our little endeavored.

We have several little projects that are keeping us busy as well as our everyday routines that have to be maintained. Currently we are developing a new site for our F1-2008 mobile application. Yes, its really exciting, we have got the f1mobile.co.za domain and are working on a kick ass site that will demonstrate the F1 mobile applications that we build.

Our developers are in the building stages of a Flash Game for the mobile phone, and are in the planning stages of a 3D Flash Game as well as getting a couple of new releases of some mobile applications.

So we are having a busy couple of weeks, so this long weekend coming up is going to be put to good use. We get to knuckle down and get some work done.

The only headache that we have had recently is our Vodafone modem deciding to give us problems. One minute it is working and the next minute its down. It took us two days to get a new modem out of Vodacom, but lets just say, I am glad to be back on line.

Of course, Murphy’s Law, when you are down, you need to be online and working. So yesterday was very frustrating for me. I wasn’t on line and I needed to be. So on the hour I check my mail by connecting to the internet using my cellphone… not the most economical means of doing business. But when you have to work and keep your clients happy, you have to make a plan. But we have our little white monster back, and its working fantastically at the moment. So hold thumbs that it doesn’t decide to take a vacation anytime soon.

-Kirsten

Flash Lite 3 Bug

Yesterday we sold four mobile applications to users around the world (Denmark, Mexico, UK and Germany). that was the good part. The bad part was that these were the first users to buy our software with Flash Lite 3 pre-installed on their phones.

So now you would think that because our software is built for Flash Lite 1.1 you would think that Flash Lite 3 would play it. Right, that is what we thought too. But of course…. this is not the case. Flash Lite 3 has new security issues that decided to cause us a major headache.

The problem was this, our software requires network access for authentication Flash Lite 3 prevented the software from creating the connection. Without the connection the user can’t authenticate. If they can’t authenticate they can’t get access to the content in the application.

Long story short there are two possible solutions to the problem

1. Have the user create a Trusted folder in C:\Data\Others, and then load the application into this folder. This will play any Flash Lite 1.1 content.
2. Recompile the Flash Lite 1 application and change the Local playback security when publishing to Access network only. By default it is set to Access local files only.

For good measure we added in a crossdomain.xml file

So there you have it. If you have been plagued by this bug and still not sure how to solve this issue, please feel free to contact me.

-Kirsten

Great Results From SA

We have had incredible results with our new F1-2008 application and have decided to release a new version which contains the championship standings for both drivers and constructors. We are also including a race by race results that will be uploaded to our servers straight after the race. This feature is fantastic if you have missed the race and would like to know who finished where for which race.

We normally support the Nokia Series 60 phones because we know that our applications work on these devices and that there are no problems. We were pleasantly surprised when a client bought our application for his HTC device. The functionality of the application was normal. The HTC device has a touch screen and this feature was not available and the user had to rely on his arrow keys.

We did encounter one problem though… The series 60 handsets all have a 15 digit IMEI number that needs to be sent through to us in order for the application to be registered on our server. The IMEI number is a unique number for a handset and as such prevents people from hacking into our applications. The HTC Devices has a 17 digit IMEI number and only displays 15 digits, therefore not allowing the user to access the application because the IMEI number on our server does not correspond with the one on his phone. A special code *#06# needs to be typed to get the complete code.

The feedback from the client was incredible and and we are happy with the end result… a happy client.

“Hi Kirsten,

Thanks again for the brilliant support…
Thanks also for the Michael Schumacher Application, I am a Schummi Fan, and have been from when he 1^st got into an F1 car in Silverstone in 1991, and my fanaticism grew from there.

I was fortunate enough to get to see him race in Monza in 2006, and was in the stands opposite the pits when he announced his resignation from F1. With that as a background, you can understand just how much I appreciate the Application. On Schummi’s resignation, I picked a new rookie, and he is Sebastian Vettel, who I hope will soon show his form.

I have tested all aspects of the Application and it functions perfectly on the HTC. Only issue is that the HTC has a touch screen, and none of the selections work off the touch screen, and I have to use the buttons below the screen. Hey but with such a useful and informative App, I don’t mind leaving the stylus in its hideaway, and using the buttons. The same applies to the F1-2008 application.

I am very pleased that you are going to add in the 2008 race results and championship standings, as that completes a superb F1 Application.

Who is the F1 nut in your team, I can’t contain my interest in finding out, as it is even more evident from the Michael Schumacher Application.

Thanks again, it is a pleasure dealing with professionals.

BTW…. Do you ever sleep

Regards

Chad”

-Kirsten

A grey weekend for the prancing horse

This weekend saw the start of the new Formula One season and with it we started to sell our F1-2008 application for the mobile phone. It was an exciting start with several applications being bought and we know that this is only going to increase as the season progresses. To buy the F1-2008 application click here.

Our Movie Mania application could be a suitable product to be featured in the Orange Application Shop. I am thrilled about this development and the potential for iLite as a result. This application is a must have for every movie lover and to download a 7 day trial version of the application send an email to me at info@ilite.co.za

I would like to take this opportunity to send out a birthday wish to my Gran, Happy Birthday. 19/03/2008

- Kirsten