Australia's Kath and Kim successfully transitioned to UK TV and probably a large number of other countries.  In the US, however, they prefer their sitcoms home grown.  So in October NBC launches the US version called:  Kath and Kim (unsurprisingly).  You can check out the previews here.  Not much to go on but one of the great stars of the original was the shopping centre butcher and aging lothario Kel Night and he does not appear to survive the transition at all well and Sharon does not survive at all.  Magda Szubanski refused to let her character cross the Pacific and is replaced by a gay male.

I am slightly loathe to add to the volumes that have been written on the iPhone but I was reflecting today on why I like the beast so much, and that has a lot to do wiht how I use it.

I txt every day; use the internet a lot (83 mgbt download in the last month) and have Google Maps save my life on numerous occasions.  I use Google search on the run a lot, to find stuff, plus the phone is my calendar and my address book.  I check names and addresses as well as names and numbers.  Plus a bit of podcasting, a bit of calculating, coverting currencies, temperatures weights and more plus the time zones so i always know what time it is in San Francisco.  And then I use the 'Pocket Watch' function to have a big clock on my desk when I am working at home, and iSolitaire occasionally keeps me occupied on a train, tram or bus.  Did I mention that I use it as a phone as well.

So what makes it different?  For me, it is the fact that it is delivery agnostic.  The web works as well as the phone.  Using numbers to dial or click on a contact is as easy as making a favourite list or checking voicemail.  Therefore it works like i do.  It is not a phone that struggles with the internet or a computer that can make calls at a push.  And everything is one click off the home screen, using my clumsy, podgy fingers. A delight that has genuinely made my life easier and I have no intention of moving back to Blackberry or Nokia or even Palm.

The Economist Debates are here again.  The latest is:  Is there an upside to the present increase in world food prices? The initial vote is quite close but the 'ayes' have it.  It made me look again at past debates and I found my little comment on the technology in education one.  I reproduce it here as it struck me as worth saving.  Particularly as I sat through a fatuous debate on whether technologoy was the silver bullet as far as Knowledge Management was concerned. One more comment on 'it is all about people' and I will throw up.  One more debate about whether Powerpoint is a delivery  system or enabler and I will scream! Anyway to all of those detabates here are my short, sharp and pretty obvious points!

It is funny how most of the comments are anti technology but the vote is pro. The vast majority of learners get on with it using the tools to hand. To be anti-technology is to fly in the face of reality. Education uses what is available from books to text messages and the richer the technology the richer the opportunities to learn in different ways. Powerpoint is not learning: Powerpoint is a delivery platform for information, and it can be good and bad. But give me a powerpoint presentation any day to an illegible blackboard that is erased before I can write it down; give me a word processor rather than read and organise my handwriting: give me google than a futile search in a library for an article that can be at my fingertips in two seconds.Technology enhances my life AND my learning why try to separate the two processes??

McKinsey's Newletter!  I have hundreds of them.  Yet as soon as the delete button hovers over the list, I sopt something that could  be interesting so I keep them all!  And not just McKinsey's, there are countless other newsletters and articles that have a great column or make a good point or introduce a new piece of software or contain a fact I should retain... and so it goes on.  I can shift them into folders but it still causes harddisk bloat.  So what do I do?  I have no idea,  and the problem gets worse every week.  And if I explode and delete a thousand of them, I know the next week I will be trying to find an elusive article or quote that was there...

Somebody pointed out that my Skype id listed me currently 'at Learn X'.  I checked and was horrified to find that she was right! Lots of water has flowed under the bridge since Learn X and I had forgotten to change the tag. And then I realised how many things have to be changed or at least monitored on a regular basis and I began to despair.  How to keep track, how to be up-to-date; how to maintain links, how to avoid neglecting friends and colleagues.

The panic and then the wave of relief.  Ultimately the aim is to remain visible.  Everything else is trivial.  So Skype has changed to something a little less time sensitive and one thing can be crossed off the list for a while.