Despite the global growth of the e-learning market, it is difficult to find standard resources for education and training in the Web 2.0 paradigm. The primary inclination of the e-learning industry has been towards applications for enterprises and educational institutions till now.

A new player had hit the ground three years back in 2007: iKnow. It is a clever social learning platform that offers numerous courses on English vocabulary extension, SAT preparation and Japanese language. More content was to be added to the system. A beta version had been started by Tokyo based Cerego in October 2007 with English courses for Japanese people. iKnow saw 350,000 unique visitors in September 2008, up 40% from just two months prior in July 2008.

However, the popularity could not stretch longer as  iKnow gradually faded out of people’s minds. It is necessary that platforms like iKnow evolve to foster smart social learning.

Microsoft announced the launch of its latest social media project, Spindex at the recently held Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. Spindex will help to aggregate information from social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Bing, and RSS.

This latest application from Microsoft will help you to know the latest updates from your social networks. You will also be able to gather more relevant information at a short span of time. Spindex application will be in line with FriendFeed and Google Buzz. The project is still in trial stage and there is no intimation of it becoming a core Microsoft product.

For more information, click here.

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Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised.

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised.

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised.

We have a confession to make before we start. We’ve never used Xing before today, when we actually had to subscribe to its services in order to write this review. And we don’t even half-regret that we did.

For all our business networking requirements, we always had LinkedIn to turn to. If we could only overlook its somewhat pricey subscriptions, we were, on the whole, quite happy with it. So it was only when somebody enthusiastically mentioned Xing (much to our surprise) that we thought of finding out what the buzz was all about.

Many of us, especially those to the east of the Atlantic, know Xing by its former name of OpenBC (for Open Business Club). So why the sudden change of name? The best guess is, it was getting in its way of global domination. Let me explain. The term “Open”, when applied to online technology and services, is frequently associated with a certain sense of being “uncontrollable”, especially in the US. Moreover, BC was fostering further confusion as the most common association of those letters was with “Before Christ”.

Xing, on the other hand, sounded too abstract to attract any such unpleasant or misleading associations. It was shorter, sleeker, oh-so-very Web 2.0-ish, and seemed so much more cosmopolitan. Indeed, it was no longer German (Xing is developed by OPEN Business Club AG, based in Germany), nor even European. Xing was 100% global, fit to belong anywhere.

As of writing this, Xing is leading the business networking arena in Europe with over 7 million members. Let’s face it, Xing is big in Europe. And with its not-too-secret expansion plans (including the recent name-change, lowered subscription costs, and recently added features such as Xing Mobile and Xing Best Offers), it’s going to get bigger over the coming months. It is tempting to compare Xing with its nearest (and most powerful) competitor, the US-based LinkedIn. Apparently, the differences are few. But believe me, there are some major distinctions between the two that may cause the balance to tilt in one’s favor over the other.

The most significant of these, of course, is the price. While both have a basic membership plan that comes for free, the paid services for LinkedIn appear too pricey when compared to Xing. The latter has a flat fee structure of $5.95 per month for its only paid plan, viz. Premium Membership. LinkedIn, on the other hand, offers 3 plans – Business ($24.95/month), Business Plus ($49.95/month) and Pro ($499.95/month).

If you’ve used LinkedIn, you’d find using Xing very intuitive. Xing has excellent worldwide reach, supporting 16 languages instead of LinkedIn’s 4. The user-friendly interface is a joy to use and lets you create your profile easily in a matter of minutes. Making changes to your profile as well as adding new contacts is also a cinch. Unlike LinkedIn, Xing is not heavily recruiter-oriented, attracting mainly small-business users and independent advisors. With much anticipation, we look forward to creating our profiles in Xing knowing that each keyword we use would be indexed and thus, made searchable. Way to go, we say!

If you’re wondering what the buzz about Woopra is all about, go ahead and take a look at this new traffic statistic tool launched by iFusion Labs LLC. Chances are that it could soon replace your favorite stats application. And here’s why.

Woopra: Serious Eye Candy and Real Time Reporting

Woopra has a great interface to begin with. The information is detailed, and very neatly displayed. You can see which part of the world your visitors come from, what page they are viewing, and even what operating system or browser they are using. Add to this the ability to view the information in bar and pie charts. The software has a very intuitive feel to it, and the server architecture is certainly radical. And what’s more, Woopra offers a desktop application that will allow you to monitor your stats on your PC and MAC.

Another great thing about Woopra is that it doesn’t keep you waiting. The stats programs are updated at least once every day, and this will let you track over 40 different statistical analytics and events instantaneously. You can track your visitors as they come and go.

If you’re thinking of similar real-time tracking features that are available at pMetrics, Woopra scores again. With Woopra, you have the additional benefit of chatting with visitors. Here is one web analytics service that believes in the importance of communication and feedback, and effectively breaks down the virtual barrier between visitors and the webmaster.

Admittedly, Woopra has left me feeling very enthusiastic. However, in case you are wondering if there’s a flip side to it, I have to say that it does come with its share of shortcomings. Using Woopra is likely to take a toll on your server bandwidth.  Even though the installation process in itself is quite simple, the application’s real-time reporting functionality has a good chance of increasing the page-load time.

Woopra users also need to be aware of its one big slip. With all that jazz, Woopra does not provide adequate support to online businesses. Not right away, that is. If you’re the kind who would use web analytics services not just for the feel-good factor, but also some actual money-making stuff, it might be a good idea to stick to Google analytics for the time being. Woopra does not really offer any special features for businesses with an online presence. However, the good part is that it’s still under development, and they might just think of something to work around this problem.