In many instances existing users of the site are given a number of invitations themselves that they can disperse to friends, family, or co-workers, allowing them to join the site.

When to use Invitation Systems:
An invitation system is appropriate when software is in a controlled release period and systems may not be able to handle an over abundance of traffic, or during a beta testing period. Invitations can also be utilized to build buzz around a product or event. By simply offering invitations, outside users become interested in what exactly they think they’re missing out on. Invitations can fulfill one of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: belongingness.

Invitation systems can also be utilized to keep out the rif-raf. One forum I found moved to an invitation system to “screen new members to ensure as much as possible that we only have Invited Members who are intelligent, mature and genuinely interested in being a productive, long-term part of the” community.

My initial encounter with software invitations was with Google Gmail. Although the Gmail system received great hype when first announced, the general public was not allowed to sign-up. Infact a public signup page did not exist. Instead Google utilized an invitation system which allowed them to control the growth of the Gmail systems use.

Actual Value of the Invitations:
With Google Gmail a market arose for the invitations on eBay, with hundreds of invitations per day selling from between $.99 to $217.50 per invitation. In total there were roughly 3,135 auctions for Gmail invitations auctioned on eBay from 5/06/04 to 6/08/04.

Sample Invitations:

So I decided to do some research to see just how active Google Ventures has been. Without going back too far, since the beginning of 2005, Google Ventures has acquired 56 companies. Below I’ve broken down their acquisition activity by year, with some of the notable companies highlighted and what products they helped Google launch:

2005: 11 – Android Inc. (obvious), Urchin Software Company (Google Analytics)
2006: 10 – YouTube, Endoxon (Google Maps), Neven Vision (Picasa)
2007: 16 – DoubleClick, GreenBorder (Google Chrome), Postini, GrandCentral (Google Voice)
2008: 2
2009: 6 – On2, AdMob, reCAPTCHA,
2010: 11 (< 5/20/10) - Plink, BumpTop, Simplify Media (Google Music)

The interesting angle or piece of information that I find after reviewing some of their recent acquisitions is that it appears Google is in the business of purchasing innovations rather than developing them from within. Now I'm sure Google has an abundance of talented developers, each working on the next big thing, but if you look at this list of acquisitions you'd see where many of Google's most popular applications were born, and not within the walls of Google headquarters.

Obviously this method of growth is not without risk and not considered new, but looking from the outside in, I think it makes great sense. Let’s quickly examine one of Google Ventures more recent acquisitions, the purchase of BumpTop on April 30th, 2010 for $30 million. This is an exciting company with a very relevant touch screen desktop application. Check out this video for more: BumpTop. Now obviously this acquisition will likely be a key part in some future tablet PC operating system, or possibly a new extension of Android, and it just seems to fit and make complete sense from a technology aspect, but does it make financial sense.

$30 million dollars is quite a large capital investment, but what would it have cost Google to develop the software in house. Likely it could have been done for less, but then again, maybe not. When factoring in certain variables, such as salaries, benefits, general overhead, opportunity costs, and other intangibles, I think Google has made a wise decision. Acquisitions like BumpTop have given Google the edge it needs to remain a global technology leader.

Another requirement was for the image and photo section of the site to be easily updated by themselves. Take a look at the site. I really like the simple clean layout and design of the site. Take a look: Morpheus Studio

There are a two ways I know of to handle this. First you could set all of your courses in Moodle to have an enrollment period of 365 days or less. This could however pose problems for larger systems with many users. You wouldn’t want to have to re-enroll, and track a large set of users.

The better solution is to make a code change to the upload code on your Moodle system. In the uploaduser.php file in the /admin/ directory of your Moodle installation. Somewhere around lines #660 you’ll want to make these code changes:

if ($courseit->enrolperiod) {
$timestart = time();
$timeend = ($oldtimeend-$timestart) + $courseit->enrolperiod + $timestart;
}

if($timestart == “”){
$timestart = time();
}

if($timeend == “”){
$timeend = (time()+630720000);
}

You can’t have no unenroll time for Moodle uploads, so what this code change will do is set the un-enroll period to be 10 years from the date of upload. Please contact me if you have any questions about the code.

Please remember that if you do choose to upgrade your Moodle release that this change may be overwritten. So I generally note files which I’ve changed code on, and be sure to either copy those over after an upgrade, or make similar changes to the new Moodle release files.

public void showTextBoxes(){
    //
    TextBox txtBox = new TextBox();
    txtBox.ID = “txtBox1″;
    txtBox.TabIndex = 1;
    txtBox.CssClass = “textBoxClass”;
    //
    form1.Controls.Add(txtBox);
}

Now this all works fine, but is somewhat limiting. Many times when your going to want to add controls you won’t know exactly how many at runtime. The number of controls needed may hinge on a users input. Possibly the value entered into a TextBox. This would then be handled with a loop:

public void showTextBoxes(){
     form1.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl(“<table>”));
    //
    int i = 0;
    //
    int numberOfDays = Convert.ToInt16(txtDays.Text.ToString());
    //
    while (i <= numberOfDays){
         //
         TextBox txtBox = new TextBox();
        //
         txtBox.ID = “txtBox” + i;
         txtBox.TabIndex = i;
         txtBox.CssClass = “textBoxClass”;
         //
         form1.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl(“<tr><td>”));
         //
         form1.Controls.Add(txtBox);
         //
         form1.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl(“</td></tr>”));
        //
         i++;
     }
    form1.Controls.Add(new LiteralControl(“</table>”));
}

This function will create TextBoxes for however many days that the user has entered into the txtDays TextBox. The loop will also give each new TextBox a unique ID and TabIndex. This method though has some drawbacks, such as any information entered into the TextBoxes will be lost on a refresh of the page. So if your using C# and not Javascript for form validation you would lose all dynamically created Controls on validation.

In future posts I will look into ways to handle this issue and other similar situations.

Sketchup has a specific, cartoonish, drawn look. I was looking for a bit more realistic output, and I’d seen some renders of Sketchup models, and was impressed with the examples. However, I didn’t want to have to purchase a plugin for a few hundred dollars, as this is just a hobby for now. So I did some research into free plugins and stumbled upon Kerkythea immediately.

The download and installation was easy. Kerkythea has a set of about 20 lights which can be added into Sketchup, everything from desklamps to spotlights. Kerkythea adds export buttons right into Sketchup, so exporting is extremely easy. Below you will see my first attempt at rendering in Kerkythea. I have not even attempted to change any settings, this is straight out of the box with a spot light and the sun for light sources.

Sketchup:

Kerkythea:

With these promising results I plan on continuing to use Sketchup and Kerkythea to create realistic export images.

You will receive this error message if you have the course visibility set to Hide in the SCORM/AICC settings of the course.

To fix the issue:

• Log into your Moodle site as the administrator.
• Navigate to the administrator section.
• Select Courses->Add/edit courses, then click on the course you want to edit.
• Once at the course page, click the Turn editing on button.
• Click the small Update icon at the end of the course name.
• When the Editing SCORM/AICC page loads, scroll to the bottom of the page and change the Visible drop-down from Hide to Show, in the Common module settings section.
• Click the Save and return to course button.

You should no longer receive the error.

It made our job easy – if the course functioned correctly in IE, then it was ready for deployment. We really had no reason to cross the compatibility bridge till we came to it.

Recently, some of our projects have become completely web-based, and only delivered on-line to an unknown audience, and we really have no idea which browser or operating system our users are utilizing. Browsers such as Firefox and Safari have seen a signifigant increase in adoption over the past few years, and must be taken seriously. Below are some general browser usage statistics as of March 2009.

IE 6.0+ – 57%

Firefox 1.5+ – 31%

Safari – 6%

Opera – 1%

For us to ignore roughly 38% of our audience would be to ignore 38% of our potential customer base, and that was just not acceptable. Our eLearning needed to be cross-browser compatible and yours should be too. It was time to cross the bridge.

So in an effort to try to make our content available to as large an audience as possible, we created a cross-browser compatible interface. In terms of development, it may have taken a bit more time. We found though that we really didn’t have to make many, if any, sacrifices to our design or user experience. Infact, our interface could be considered simpler and more user friendly.

So what is the point of creating a cross-browser compatible user interface? You’ll be able to reach more customers, and those customers viewing the content on different browsers will have consistent functionality and a consistent look.

Failing to plan is planning to fail.