learnandteachonline.com

While the cool kids talk of nothing but socializing, Microsoft and Google, with their health records initiatives, will be going to the bank.

When I heard each and every Democratic candidate say in a recent debate there will be required electronic recordkeeping in healthcare, I thought "somebody's going to clean up."

Don't you think sometimes the Silicon Valley gang is so obsessed with shiny and hip consumer fluff that it misses real business opportunities -- and that it's part of a myopia that makes the bubble bigger and more fragile? I'd even go so far as to say that what they often seem to be selling is youthful coolness itself, a frighteningly intangible commodity!

With Dems in real control of the U.S. government in a couple of years, it would be smart to anticipate a ton of reinstated and new regulation, and think about the online opportunities. Many Web 2.0 principles could apply. Consider mandated training, for example. Lots of government regulations require organizations having a given number of employees to offer training on safety and other topics. Much of it has gone online, but companies have to buy it. What if it were offered on a free model, like social apps, which could be supported by advertising?

OK, I just reminded myself I was going to try just that with harassment training, based on free materials from California. Such training is required in California, and is starting to spread to other states. The training also can be used voluntarily by companies who care about these matters (or wish to appear to care).

I'll use Moodle. I'll let you know how it goes.

If you use any sort of content management system or flexible blogging software, you don't have to junk up your site with commercial widgets and build somebody else's business. You can roll your own.

I work on a number of online and email newsletters having regular sidebar features that can be repurposed for use on other internal pages, or offered to constituent groups. Expression Engine makes it easy with its flexible templates.

Nope, EE doesn't pay me; I just love it. Decided to make my new hobby site, Sidebarstuff.com, using the free version. The only trouble is it feels too much like I'm at work when I'm building it at night. ;-)

When you look at online job listings like those at paidContent.org they're always dominated by sales and marketing jobs. Is there an imbalance of content sellers to content creators? (And could that be another sign of a bubble?) Or is it just that recruitment advertising isn't needed as much to locate the maker class?

Have you noticed there's a slight drift away from tech boys talking about making things so simple their moms can figure them out? I've heard more references lately to grandmas. Sorry, it's no better in my book because we're still talking about a female held up as the clueless one. And, sorry, the fact that it's usually guys who are saying it gives it meaning. I still like the idea of calling this representative icon, "Uncle Charley." Though, now I think of it, he was the housewife on My Three Sons. Lovable character played by William Demarest -- eh, maybe he was more like the household's wagon train cook than a housewife. Either way I'd like one in my home.

I read Techcrunch for the comments. They can be smart and witty. The overall level of discourse has improved some in recent months, seems so anyway.

Poor Scoble.

I bought the domain, sidebarstuff.com, a year ago or so when I started getting interested in widgets, but ignored it when I did not seem able to come up with a cool enough looking home page for it. Widgets are so ultra 2-ohish it seemed like it should be the very epitome of round-cornered-gradient-light-blueness.

But concerns like that ebb and flow -- don't they for you, too? -- and at the moment the design doesn't seem so important. I'm going to start putting some of my little projects there. Like this form that leads to a mobile page visualizer.

I've been writing some fiction on my OPML blog, an experiment using paid posts as product placements within the story. (Except after doing it for a few days, my enthusiasm about the paid post aspect is waning.)

I'll be archiving the story here, using the Drupal book module.

Yahoo Answers' design is all Web 2.0ish.