Elearning! Fall 2007 - (Page 12) Trendline Touch Devices Are On Training Horizon Although haptics aren’t commonly found in training today, they soon may be, according to Brandon Hall Research. Haptics involves transmitting information through the sense of touch or force feedback. Haptic devices and interfaces are generally used with 3-D virtual environments to give a sense of realism to the action taking place within the virtual world. Haptic devices come in many forms, including pens, gloves, joysticks/joypads and force-feedback mice. Technology has advanced to the point that the sense of touch and force can be experienced in real time over a network. Touch is one of the most important sensations for growth and learning, especially when training motor skills and physical relationships. Haptic devices can also be used to provide feedback from hands-on models or simulators (such as flight simulators) and to try out procedures at a nanotechnology level, such as docking two molecules to see if they fit together. Haptics may sound exotic, but they are being used today in many different learning applications. And, as more hardware and software vendors integrate haptics into their solutions, you may soon find applications for haptics within your organization. For additional information about Brandon Hall Research products and services, please visit www.brandon-hall.com Google ‘Outsells’ Yahoo! Search Small and mid-size companies — but not large ones — rate Google’s keyword search offering as superior to Yahoo!’s, according to the second annual Outsell, Inc. study looking at companies’ ad budgets and strategies, broken out by business size. Fifty-eight percent of small and mid-size companies rate Google ads effective, compared to only 32% rating Yahoo! effective. But large companies see no such difference, with 63% rating Google effective and a nearly identical 62% rating Yahoo! keyword search effective. Outsell surveyed 1,010 advertisers who target the corporate, health care and consumer markets on a range of topics, from budgeting for print, broadcast and online media, to the effect of click fraud on spending decisions. These advertisers control $6.5 billion in spending. “Small, medium and large companies exhibit major differences in where they allocate their ad budgets and what strategies they find most effective,” says Leigh Watson Healy, chief analyst for Outsell. Among additional research findings: >> Small companies devote almost twice as much of their budgets to print as medium-size companies. However, midsize businesses rate the effectiveness of print trade magazines and events much higher than smaller companies do. >> Small companies’ share of online ad spending on search engines is more than double the share of medium or large companies. >> Medium-sized companies forecast the highest growth rate of online spending, an opportunity for publishers. >> Click fraud continues to deter some companies from payper-click advertising. Large companies estimate that nearly one-fifth of clicks on their ads are fraudulent, compared to small companies’ estimate of 14.4 percent. Companies that would like to purchase this report should go to http://www.outsellinc.com/store/products/504, phone (650) 342-6060 or e-mail info@outsellinc.com. 12 Fall 2007 Elearning! http://www.brandon-hall.com http://www.outsellinc.com/store/products/504
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