the secret behind lorem ipsum dummy content

For the latin text that supposedly served as the source of the “lorem ipsum” dummy placeholder content, see lipsum.com.

According to this site, it’s from The Extremes of Good and Evil by Cicero in 45 BC:

Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?

There’s even an English translation:

But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?

The site also has an application that generates so many paragraphs of the stuff from the source. You can use these generated paragraphs in your template layout designs to test styles and image placements, without  distracting your reviewers with the actual content. At least until they approve the design and the real content can take its place.

using DATEDIF to figure years of service in Excel

For our employee birthdays and anniversaries message, I get the data from HR in a spreadsheet. But it’s pretty raw, a mere list of employee names & their dates of hire. People like to know how many years of service are being celebrated, so I’ve worked out the following formula.

=DATEDIF(VALUE(C4),”1-Jan-2008″,”y”) & ” y “

Notes:

• The fomula is by default DATEDIF(startdate,enddate,unit)
• The start date variable (hire date) is in cell C4. However, since I actually concatenated columns that included Month, Day, and Year into a string, and strings don’t work for calculations, I needed to get the VALUE of C4.
• The end date for comparison should be the first day of the following month. You could use the variable Now(), which tells the system to use the current date and time, but then the number of years would be off for a few folks.
• I’m only looking for years of service, so I use the unit code “y”. This is in quotes so as not to be confused with the Y column.
• To make it clear to readers that this number is a year, I added the string &” y” to the end of the result.
• This formula is copied down a new column for all employee names & dates.
• The spreadsheet is sorted by hire date.
• Then I just copy & paste the cells into a message blast to our employees.

You could also use this formula to calculate age, but I wouldn’t recommend sending that information out to a world where many people prefer not to reveal their age!

You could also use this formula to calculate project time, using the NETWORKDAYS function. For more tips on this and other Date functions in Excel, see OfficeArticles.com.

best ways to help adults learn difficult concepts through interactive design

I know this doesn’t sound much like the “adult” way to learn, but…Let them PLAY!

When I worked for Creative Education Institute, a good portion of the target audience for the reading and math software was adult literacy programs. They may not seem like difficult concepts, but tell that to someone who can’t read or figure. The programs are very interactive, designed for specific cognitive goals. In the math program, manipulatives (like learning toys) are used in tandem with animation to teach basic operations including addition and division of fractions.

When I taught DOS way back when, one of my most effective lessons was having the students role-play parts of the computer during startup. It was fun, and they actually remembered the sequence.

w3schools.com has tons of Try It examples, where you can play with different HTML, CSS, and other script source code and see the results.

When I was at the SBC (now at&t) Center for Learning, most of the network tech training consisted of lecture and lab. That’s a good thing, as long as the lab exercises are real-life tasks, and it’s fairly easy to restore the system if a student screws up.

Back in ‘97 I was lucky to be involved in the design of a telecom technician training simulation, that turned out like a video game. The tech was first instructed with animation how to use metering equipment and a little bit of theory (with quizlike questions interspersed), and then was given a job assignment in a virtual world. Assuming their truck was well equipped, they had to perform all the troubleshooting techniques and procedures required to solve the problem.

But the simulation program had to run on special Silicon Graphics machines, which SBC (now at&t) had to have an instructor travel around with on a truck. And once the monitoring equipment was upgraded (a frequent occurrence), the simulation became outdated. It was expensive to maintain.

Nowadays the game engines are so advanced that it’s cheaper to develop and much cheaper to distribute and maintain. Granted, the last games I’ve actively played/watched were:

• Planescape Torment — a great RPG exploration of factions holding philosophies such as anarchy, hedonism, entropy, chaos, order, freethought, cabalism, and so on.
• San Andreas — a stupendous playhouse of a first-person shooter/driver/dancer/whatever. My husband thinks that game companies should integrate all kinds of play, so you only have to have one world, but be able to play all kinds of games in it, including his favorites: golf, racing, and shooting.
• Half-Life 2 — a groundbreaking sci-fi first-person shooter that gives the user control over so many unexpected items in the environment.

SecondLife looks interesting as a mechanism for developing such environments and training labs, where a gamer or trainee won’t hurt anything in the real world, and I’ll be watching to see what comes out of it.

7 Web conferencing technology providers compared (part 2 of 2)

In part 1, 7 Big Considerations When Shopping for Web demo or conference services (part 1 of 2), we looked at seven questions you need to answer before you begin shopping for a Web conferencing technology.

In this part 2, let’s take a look at the pricing and particulars of 7 Web conferencing technology providers. Most of the following rated well in a Patricia Seybold Group report on web conferencing technology, but Linktivity and Ilinc were positively responsive to my queries even though they weren’t on that report:

1. Linktivity has a hosted service that gives you 10 connections for 30 days for $450 (5 for $300). We’ve been really happy with our Webdemos and Virtual Classes, hosted ourselves on our own server. Our setup is limited to 50 concurrent connections for the visual portion of each demo or class. We have audioconference lines set up through our Telecom provider.
2. ReadyComm/Genesys I saw 24 cents per minute per user on their site for both audio and Web.
3. ilinc Under Buy ilinc, I saw 10c/min for audio plus 10-30c/min for the web conferencing portion, depending on how much collaboration you choose.
4. Macromedia Breeze had options of 32 cents per min per user, or $375/mo for 5 users, or $750/mo for 10 users. Partnered w/ Premiere Global for audio, but can’t tell if audio is included in price. Like Webex, Microsoft and Adobe/Macromedia may charge an additional 20 cents a minute for each audio connection, or let you rely on your telecom provider.
5. Microsoft LiveMeeting had similar options of 35 cents per min per user, or $375/mo for 5 users, or $750/mo for 10 users. Again, can’t tell if audio is included.
6. Raindance.com seems like more of a long-term provider, requiring you to purchase and install software in order to manage your conferences. I couldn’t tell you about their pricing.
7. WebEx. The current Pay-Per-Use rate is $0.33/minute per user with an additional charge of $0.20/minute per user.

7 questions to answer before buying Web demo or conference services (part 1 of 2)

I wanted to share what I’ve learned while shopping for online demonstrations or Web teleconference services. Here are seven questions you need to answer before you begin shopping.

1. How many? Gather the information about the number of users you want to meet, and how many sessions.
2. How long? Do you want a small, short-term solution to train a customer who has remote sites? Do you want a hosted solution, rather than install the software on your own server? How long each session is going to be?
3. How will your audience connect? Can you assume your customer’s users all have broadband Web access, Windows, Internet Explorer 5.5+, and enough administrative privileges to install a requisite browser plug-in? Some corporations previously standardized on a specific older version of Netscape. Make sure you understand the end-user minimum requirements for the conferencing system you choose, and maybe check with your client’s IT department to be sure they can comply.
4. Is Audio separate or integrated? Some conferencing systems rely on a separate teleconferencing line, and some integrate audio with the web. But your customers’ PCs may not have the sound cards or speakers that will deliver the audio to your audience. You’d hate for them to miss out on your trainers’ words. If audio is integrated, look for an alternative phone number to be made available and easy for participants to find.
5. How easy is it to use? Your should be able to schedule and host a session with ease, and it should be crystal clear for your clients to connect and get support if necessary. The fewer steps the better. Ask for a pre-sale demo from cradle to grave that includes scheduling, hosting, user connecting, and any post-conference reports, which can help you determine whether the initial sessions had technical difficulties that you need to address with the provider.
6. What’s the cost basis? Pay-per-use can be 20-40 cents (US) per minute per user, or you may be limited to a 5-10 seats for $300-750/month. With pay-per-use, look to be charged for actual minutes used. If you’re charged for all the minutes you reserve, it can certainly cost more.
7. Can you customize with your branding? If it’s important, consider a hosting provider that lets you show your logo on the registration page and/or web conference interface.

In part 2, 7 Web Conferencing Technology Providers Compared (Part 2 of 2), we’ll take a look at the pricing and particulars of 7 Web conferencing technology providers.