Screen rotation on the HP Elitebook 2740p

The HP Elitebook is one of the best devices I ever used, but it has some serious issues with the screen rotation of the tablet. If you turn the screen around to use the pc as a tablet, you should be able to change the orientation of the screen with the rotate button.

In some cases, the screen rotates automatically, sometimes it does not, and the rotate button does not always work as expected.

This is what solved the issue for me:

  • install the latest Intel HD video driver from the HP support site
  • install or reinstall the HP Quick Launch button drivers from the same site

iBooks, the future of course material?

If you are in the training and learning business, you know that course material always has been the subject of many discussions. Some say it is necessary, others say that they are never used, but most students want “a manual”. Entire forests disappeared because of it, the added value of it is uncertain.

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:

How to publish a Captivate project to a SharePoint site

Microsoft SharePoint is an interesting platform if you quickly want to publish your e-learning content. These are the steps to publish an Adobe Captivate project to a SharePoint site:

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:

 

Microsoft OneNote available for iPad

Last week, Microsoft released the OneNote app for iPad in the app store. It is the first version of the app, and still lacks some functionality I would like to see added, but it is a great first step. These are the things you should know:

  • 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…

 

Sharing a OneNote notebook: always a good idea!

For a lot of people, Microsoft OneNote is the electronic alternative of their
“little black book” that they take to meetings, to write down their action items
and notes. But it is much more than that. One of my favorite features is the
sharing of notebooks. This allows you to store your notebook on
a central location (e.g. a SharePoint site, a file share, or even on Windows
Live Skydrive), and use it with multiple people. Why would you and your
colleague carry your own little black book if you are working on the same
project?

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.