The trouble is that this requires your movies to be in .wmv format. Captivate currently ony produces Flash output (of course).

If you are starting from scratch, you can use a screencasting tool that produces .wmv files directly. You can use Camtasia Studio, or Microsofts Expression Encoder 3. This will give you a nice .wmv file that you can then embed in your authoring tool, or play directly with a Silverlight player (e.g. the free one on Codeplex.).

But what if you have tons of Captivate movies ready to be published? Or if you like Captivate better than Camtasia? Well, no worries, you can follow these steps:

1. Remove the “interactive” elements from your Captivate movies. This includes buttons, playback controls, question slides, anything a user can click on. This is important, otherwise your conversion will fail.
2. Publish your project  and get the .swf file.
3. Convert the .swf file to .wmv. I used Camtasia to do that (via Import media you can import an .swf file, and publish your project as .wmv), but I heard of other people using tools like Prism to do this.
4. Integrate the .wmv in your Silverlight authoring tool or in your player.
5. Done!

You can view an example of the final result. Requires the Silverlight Player (duh!).

Any tips or tricks? Share them in the comments!

But recently, I read this post of Amanda Perran. The lack of performance seems to be related to a setting in Internet Explorer: under Tools, Internet Options, Connections, LAN Settings, you need to uncheck Automatically detect settings. This magically increases the speed of your Explorer View, but what is even better: drastically decreases the load time of Office documents when opening them from SharePoint.

So this is something every user should know. Spread the word!

• authentication in Moodle via Windows Live ID
• a Windows Live Services block in Moodle that allows students to access their Windows Live Services (mail, messenger…)

This extension could allow a school or institution to use Microsoft’s Live@Edu offering, together with a full blown LMS like Moodle.

More info in this video (Silverlight required):

You get free access for one year. Access to the site is usually rather slow, but still acceptable. And a tip for the Internet Explorer 8 users: make sure you activate Compatibility View for the site, otherwise content is not displayed properly on a lot of interactive pages!

The links:

• What’s New in Windows 7 for Consumers
• What’s New in Windows 7 for IT Professionals
• What’s New in Windows 7 for Information Workers

Only, on my pc it did not do that. It would try to load the page forever.

But finally, I found the solution. If you have VMware on your pc, or any other software that adds “virtual” network adapters: go to Network Neighborhood and disable all network adapters except the one you use to connect to the hotel network. Magic, it works!

I will probably have to wait until september to get my hand on a new device with 6.5 preinstalled. As the hardware requirements seem to be different for this release, it is better to wait than to upgrade. 

Have a look at Miels overview of the new features.

Have a look yourself on the Windows 2008 learning portal (click the Learning Snacks tab). Microsoft uses very simple, but effective interactions: mouse-overs, software demonstrations, click-to-reveal-more, …

What I like about it:

• simple but very nice layout
• good performance
• easy to navigate interface

What I do not like about it:

• voice-over quality is not consistent: sometimes good, sometimes very bad;
• it does not work on my Mac. There is a Silverlight version for Mac, but the learning snack player does not seem to load the content, not in Safari, not in Firefox;
• clicking on some of the links is blocked by the IE popup blocker (althoug it seems to be a simple hyperlink)

Still a great initiative. Wouldn’t it be nice if this Silverlight player could load SCORM manifests? What if Microsoft made it freely available? Wouldn’t that be a great promotion for Silverlight?

Two things I did not like about this:

• the “old” communicator 2005 had the possibility to do screen sharing. In OCS2007, it’s not there anymore. Of course, you can upgrade your conversation to live meeting, but we do not have that yet.
• after installation, my presence icons in Outlook 2007 did not work anymore.  And this made me realise how convenient these things are, and how quickly you get used to them: you start a new message, type in your recipient, you notice that he is in the office,… you close the message and go see him!
  Fortunately, I got them back to work by installing a microsoft update.

A quick feature overview:

• sites and subsites: you can create different workspaces, based on a template (class workspace, household workspace, job search workspace).
• new documents can be created directly from a workspace, but the list is limited to Word, Excel, PowerPoint.
• built-in lists: tasks, contacts, events.
  
• custom lists: you can create your own list, but the available columns are fairly limited:
  
• interface: is very cool and easy to use. Unfortunately, Safari for Mac is not supported. You can uses Firefox 2 though.
• Office integration: you can install an add-in that adds the option to save or open files directly from Office. It did not work on Vista immediately, I had to install an additional update to get it to work.  
  Some of the lists can be exported to Excel, and calendars and contacts can be synced with Outlook. For the calendar, I encountered some issues with time zones and/or daylight savings, but that seems normal as the service has not been “localized” yet.
  
• Storage: you get 500 MB of storage. Not very much, but the purpose is not to distribute your divx movies .
• Alerts: there is a nice Activity pane that shows you recent changes to the list; you can specify if you want to receive activity mails, but you don’t have all the options you have in SharePoint for configuring the mail frequency.
• Sharing: you can share a workspace with up to 100 people; two security levels: viewer and editor. That’s it.

Check out the Frequently Asked Questions for the service. Or watch the demo.

It seems like a small version of Windows SharePoint Services Team sites. The interface is much slicker and easier to use, integration with Office is very good. A great service for occasional collaboration. There is even an option to collaborate in real time on documents (with SharedView ) but I haven’t tried that one yet.