Take online learning, mix in some video, audio and other off-line methods, and you have the latest wave in the booming Web-based instruction trend: blended learning. "Blended learning is better, faster and cheaper than traditional methods," says Tom Graunke, the 37 year-old co-founder of KnowledgeNet, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based provider of e-learning solutions.
He should know. Graunke and co-founder Mark Rukavina, 38, started KnowledgeNet in 1998 with the $2.5 million they earned from selling their previous company, Mastering Computers, a corporate training company they'd run for 10 years. Today, Graunke's company boasts more than 7,200 clients, including Cisco Systems Inc. and McDonald's.
According to research firm IDC, the training industry overall is estimated to bit $60 billion worldwide this year, with $6.6 billion coming from c-learning. The e-learning market is expected to reach $23.7 billion by 2006.
"Blended learning is the fastest-growing area of e-learning in the last 18 months," says Brandon Hall, CEO of www.brandon-hall.com, an e-learning consulting service in Sunnyvale, California. Hall says three segments in particular are moving to blended learning: IT training is the first, regulatory training and safety training is the second, and the soft-skills market--management training, sales training and other people skills--is going to see the next big wave.
John Alonso is the founder of Boston-based OutStart, makers of Evolution software, which allows the authoring, management and delivery of educational content. He has watched his company grow from four employees to 100 since launching in 1999, and he estimates 2003 sales will more than double 2002 sales, to be in excess of Sin million. Says Alonso, 36: "Blended training is the ability to create a training program that says 'We think this part of the training program is good with an instructor, but we're going to augment the classroom experience by having you watch a video before you come to class and continue learning online after you leave the classroom.'" For a growing number of entrepreneurs, this mix is obviously making the grade.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Google Launches Online Payment System
Starting today, online shoppers in the U.S. will begin finding a second checkout icon at some Internet retailers. You can now not only search for products using Google or its other products like Froogle, but you can use the new Checkout online payment service. Think of it as an alternative to the traditional—and still present—checkout process you find at online retailers, in which you fill out your pertinent personal information, shipping address, and credit card.
With Google Checkout you'll follow this traditional process just once when you register for the service. Then when you are headed to a partnering retail outlet's checkout process, you'll simply click the blue Google Checkout icon (see our slideshow) and all the other stuff will be taken care of for you. One of the big selling points the folks at Google are hyping is that if you already have a Google or Gmail account (or some other Google account), you can easily add Checkout to it and then make use of the service with a single login. There are other perks, too. For example, Google will reimburse you for fraudulent purchases; you can keep your e-mail address(es) invisible to merchants to prevent getting unsolicited e-mails from them; and you're able to view a purchase history that includes all your online purchases and the shipping status of your orders.
Google has agreements in place with all the major credit card companies, including American Express, Discover, MasterCard, and Visa, and also has a special promotion in the works with Citi customers.
While buy.com was the single largest online retailer mentioned during my interview with Google, a handful of other well-known brands were also disclosed, including Jockey, Starbucks, and Timberland. Google representatives hastened to add that there would be many more rolling out use of the service soon; in fact you should start immediately seeing Google Checkout logos on retailer advertisements that use Google's search advertising program AdWords.
That makes for a good segue into another component to all this that may be of less interest to consumers: online merchants that utilize AdWords will find they save a lot on the transaction processing if they in turn sign on as a Checkout partner. Specifically, Google will process $10 in sales free of charge for every dollar a merchant spends buying AdWords advertising. Google representatives explained that this represents an ongoing commitment as well.
The folks at Google have tried to make it easy to integrate Checkout into retail Web sites as well. There are cut-and-paste buy buttons , as well as an advanced API for building the service directly into existent merchant shopping carts and order-management systems.
With Google Checkout you'll follow this traditional process just once when you register for the service. Then when you are headed to a partnering retail outlet's checkout process, you'll simply click the blue Google Checkout icon (see our slideshow) and all the other stuff will be taken care of for you. One of the big selling points the folks at Google are hyping is that if you already have a Google or Gmail account (or some other Google account), you can easily add Checkout to it and then make use of the service with a single login. There are other perks, too. For example, Google will reimburse you for fraudulent purchases; you can keep your e-mail address(es) invisible to merchants to prevent getting unsolicited e-mails from them; and you're able to view a purchase history that includes all your online purchases and the shipping status of your orders.
Google has agreements in place with all the major credit card companies, including American Express, Discover, MasterCard, and Visa, and also has a special promotion in the works with Citi customers.
While buy.com was the single largest online retailer mentioned during my interview with Google, a handful of other well-known brands were also disclosed, including Jockey, Starbucks, and Timberland. Google representatives hastened to add that there would be many more rolling out use of the service soon; in fact you should start immediately seeing Google Checkout logos on retailer advertisements that use Google's search advertising program AdWords.
That makes for a good segue into another component to all this that may be of less interest to consumers: online merchants that utilize AdWords will find they save a lot on the transaction processing if they in turn sign on as a Checkout partner. Specifically, Google will process $10 in sales free of charge for every dollar a merchant spends buying AdWords advertising. Google representatives explained that this represents an ongoing commitment as well.
The folks at Google have tried to make it easy to integrate Checkout into retail Web sites as well. There are cut-and-paste buy buttons , as well as an advanced API for building the service directly into existent merchant shopping carts and order-management systems.
Tower Records Sets Up Shop, Online
Tower Records is dancing its way into the digital music industry, and carefully around Apple's iTunes Music Store.
While Apple's iTunes could care less if a physical CD was ever manufactured again, the new Tower Records Digital was made to complement the physical CD market, which Tower claims is still very much alive and kicking.
Individual songs sold on the site will be priced at 99 cents and full albums will begin at $9.99 each, with bitrates beginning at 192-Kbits/s, rather than the industry-standard 128 Kbits/s. Apple's chief executive officer Steve Jobs seems to be the only person committed to this price structure, however; Tower Digital executives hinted that they expect prices to rise in digital music stores sooner than later.
Tower Records Digital, which launches on Tuesday, is a Web-based store rather than a downloadable application. Users can search for songs, artists, and albums on the substantial database of music, find recommendations, and purchase music to be played with Windows Media Player. They cannot however, create playlists, tag songs or receive recommendations from other users directly, like on social networking sites such as Last.fm.
"The majority of sales in music still [comes from] CDs but a lot of people who are buying CDs aren't really experiencing digital music," said Mike Jansta, vice president of marketing for Tower Records. "Being able to offer a digital music experience is very important. This store was created to give people a lot of flexibility with their content."
"This is a web-based application and this is the decision we made," said Jason Munyon, vice president of business development for Tower. "It's going to be a for-sale site so it's not going to manage your playlists or anything like that. It was never intended to have playlists, because that is what Windows Media Player is for."
The store was designed to work mainly with Internet Explorer. Although Tower executives say that it should work well with Firefox, they admit that testing still needs to be done with other browsers.
Tower was able to license all major record labels for the store using PureTracks, a third-party downloading store in Canada. Executives said it was a relatively easy process, although anyone who has tried to license and sell digital content knows better.
"We are looking to acquire content that is 100 percent tied to what we're known for, which is depth of selection," said Russ Eisenman, chief marketing officer for Tower. "We will have the categories of music [on which] music fans truly spend time and shop, and also developing artists, [which] is another great category for us that we're focusing on."
Eisenman hinted, however, that the 99-cent price point may eventually increase.
"The marketplace still has to adjust," Eisenman said. "The 99 cent price point is an established price point but the marketplace will adjust. I know that there are a lot of tracks available on iTunes and on Tower Records Digital that are not 99 cents but the marketplace will vary distribution company by distribution company."
Tower is particularly proud of the quality of music that will be sold in the digital store. Most download sites offer tracks at 128 kilobits per second. Tower's digital songs are sold at a bitrate of 192 kilobits per second.
"We waited until we could have better quality," Jansta said. "We don't encode at 128 because it just doesn't sound good so if you're listening to music in the car and your home stereo. It's flat and unexciting."
Music purchased on Tower Records Digital can be burned to a CD or played on any MP3 player other than the iPod, which is locked out to iTunes-only content.
Industry analysts did not give the online store very high marks last week. Paul Resnikoff, editor of Digital Music News , said that the program has "significant usability and setup issues." Munyon says that it is still very much a work in progress and that the number one design goal was simplicity.
"We're going to be constantly improving the site," he said. "We're trying to really bring users a unique experience so that we can target things that they like and target things to them. So we're going to constantly improve it and we hope to have innovations throughout the next few years."
While Apple's iTunes could care less if a physical CD was ever manufactured again, the new Tower Records Digital was made to complement the physical CD market, which Tower claims is still very much alive and kicking.
Individual songs sold on the site will be priced at 99 cents and full albums will begin at $9.99 each, with bitrates beginning at 192-Kbits/s, rather than the industry-standard 128 Kbits/s. Apple's chief executive officer Steve Jobs seems to be the only person committed to this price structure, however; Tower Digital executives hinted that they expect prices to rise in digital music stores sooner than later.
Tower Records Digital, which launches on Tuesday, is a Web-based store rather than a downloadable application. Users can search for songs, artists, and albums on the substantial database of music, find recommendations, and purchase music to be played with Windows Media Player. They cannot however, create playlists, tag songs or receive recommendations from other users directly, like on social networking sites such as Last.fm.
"The majority of sales in music still [comes from] CDs but a lot of people who are buying CDs aren't really experiencing digital music," said Mike Jansta, vice president of marketing for Tower Records. "Being able to offer a digital music experience is very important. This store was created to give people a lot of flexibility with their content."
"This is a web-based application and this is the decision we made," said Jason Munyon, vice president of business development for Tower. "It's going to be a for-sale site so it's not going to manage your playlists or anything like that. It was never intended to have playlists, because that is what Windows Media Player is for."
The store was designed to work mainly with Internet Explorer. Although Tower executives say that it should work well with Firefox, they admit that testing still needs to be done with other browsers.
Tower was able to license all major record labels for the store using PureTracks, a third-party downloading store in Canada. Executives said it was a relatively easy process, although anyone who has tried to license and sell digital content knows better.
"We are looking to acquire content that is 100 percent tied to what we're known for, which is depth of selection," said Russ Eisenman, chief marketing officer for Tower. "We will have the categories of music [on which] music fans truly spend time and shop, and also developing artists, [which] is another great category for us that we're focusing on."
Eisenman hinted, however, that the 99-cent price point may eventually increase.
"The marketplace still has to adjust," Eisenman said. "The 99 cent price point is an established price point but the marketplace will adjust. I know that there are a lot of tracks available on iTunes and on Tower Records Digital that are not 99 cents but the marketplace will vary distribution company by distribution company."
Tower is particularly proud of the quality of music that will be sold in the digital store. Most download sites offer tracks at 128 kilobits per second. Tower's digital songs are sold at a bitrate of 192 kilobits per second.
"We waited until we could have better quality," Jansta said. "We don't encode at 128 because it just doesn't sound good so if you're listening to music in the car and your home stereo. It's flat and unexciting."
Music purchased on Tower Records Digital can be burned to a CD or played on any MP3 player other than the iPod, which is locked out to iTunes-only content.
Industry analysts did not give the online store very high marks last week. Paul Resnikoff, editor of Digital Music News , said that the program has "significant usability and setup issues." Munyon says that it is still very much a work in progress and that the number one design goal was simplicity.
"We're going to be constantly improving the site," he said. "We're trying to really bring users a unique experience so that we can target things that they like and target things to them. So we're going to constantly improve it and we hope to have innovations throughout the next few years."
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