A Reuters newswire article by Ross Kerber, via MSNBC, reports that:

An attorney for the hacker whom U.S. authorities painted as an organizer of one of the largest payment-card thefts ever said his client was no ringleader.

“He wasn’t directing traffic or anything,” attorney Rene Palomino told Reuters in a telephone interview on Monday.

Albert Gonzalez, a 28-year-old from Miami, last week agreed to plead guilty to charges in Boston that he helped engineer the theft of more than 40 million card numbers from retailers like TJX Cos. and BJ’s Wholesale Club.

Earlier this month in New Jersey, the U.S. Justice Department also charged Gonzalez and two others with conspiring to steal another 130 million payment card numbers, the most ever.

Both cases put Gonzalez at the center of the action — especially bold conduct since authorities say he was a Secret Service informant earlier this decade.

Palomino also described his client as a less-important figure than the Boston case made out, saying he was one of 11 co-conspirators worldwide, some still at large. “Did he have knowledge? Yes. But others were also involved,” Palomino said.

More here.

The Walt Disney company announced on Monday that it is buying Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion in cash and stock. Naturally, on the Disney buyout news, Marvel stock opened up nearly $10 or more than 25%.

Under the terms of the deal, Marvel shareholders will receive $30 cash and 0.745 shares of Disney stock for every share of Marvel stock owned. That values each Marvel share at $50 based on Friday’s closing stock price for Disney.

The obvious question: what happens to existing licensing deals? Disney said in a conference call that there’d be no issue with existing Marvel licensing deals, and that when they expire, they wouldn’t necessarily be brought in-house (though they could be).

Going forward, Disney noted that the Disney XD channel, targeted at boys, is already running 20 hours a week of Marvel content. They have been looking to licensing more Marvel characters in the future, and this just makes it all the easier. Additionally, with Disney’s resources, Marvel content can better reach international markets.

Disney said the acquisition will hurt its earnings per share by a mid-single digit percentage in fiscal 2010. They expect the impact to be positive by the time 2012 rolls around, fueled in part, they said, by 59 million new shares and also by a number of new Marvel Comics-based movies: “Iron Man 2,” “Spider-Man 4,” “X-Men Origins: Magneto,” “X-Men Origins: Wolverine 2″, “Thor” and “The First Avenger: Captain America.”

An interesting thought came to my mind: Disney’s Donald Duck meets Marvel’s Howard the Duck! Some crossover that would be. The Fantastic Four could also team with the Three Little Pigs.

Me? I’ve always been a DC Comics fanboy, and am looking forward to “Green Lantern,” with the one, true GL, Hal Jordan, as well as a “Justice League” movie. Disney and Marvel vs. Warner Bros. and DC Comics. It ought to be interesting.

The Walt Disney company announced on Monday that it is buying Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion in cash and stock. Naturally, on the Disney buyout news, Marvel stock opened up nearly $10 or more than 25%.

Under the terms of the deal, Marvel shareholders will receive $30 cash and 0.745 shares of Disney stock for every share of Marvel stock owned. That values each Marvel share at $50 based on Friday’s closing stock price for Disney.

The obvious question: what happens to existing licensing deals? Disney said in a conference call that there’d be no issue with existing Marvel licensing deals, and that when they expire, they wouldn’t necessarily be brought in-house (though they could be).

Going forward, Disney noted that the Disney XD channel, targeted at boys, is already running 20 hours a week of Marvel content. They have been looking to licensing more Marvel characters in the future, and this just makes it all the easier. Additionally, with Disney’s resources, Marvel content can better reach international markets.

Disney said the acquisition will hurt its earnings per share by a mid-single digit percentage in fiscal 2010. They expect the impact to be positive by the time 2012 rolls around, fueled in part, they said, by 59 million new shares and also by a number of new Marvel Comics-based movies: “Iron Man 2,” “Spider-Man 4,” “X-Men Origins: Magneto,” “X-Men Origins: Wolverine 2″, “Thor” and “The First Avenger: Captain America.”

An interesting thought came to my mind: Disney’s Donald Duck meets Marvel’s Howard the Duck! Some crossover that would be. The Fantastic Four could also team with the Three Little Pigs.

Me? I’ve always been a DC Comics fanboy, and am looking forward to “Green Lantern,” with the one, true GL, Hal Jordan, as well as a “Justice League” movie. Disney and Marvel vs. Warner Bros. and DC Comics. It ought to be interesting.

L-to-R: Myron Knox, Brent Ray Potter, Bryant Rather

It’s unclear how many MobileMe subscriptions Apple has sold, but this might produce a sales bump. Last weekend, an unidentified victim, robbed at gunpoint of his wallet, PIN, and iPhone, used MobileMe’s “Find My iPhone” feature to track them down.

“Find My iPhone” debuted with iPhone OS 3.0 this year, and allows you to find the device using GPS, wipe the device, or send a message to be displayed on the home screen, like “Call me if you find my iPhone.” Naturally, that last feature wouldn’t work too well with crooks.

The victim was accosted by two men at 1 AM in Shadyside, PA. The city’s name alone would make me detour around it. At any rate, he went home, fired up his computer, and tracked it Wal-Mart in North Versailles, PA, where the suspects were using the victim’s credit card.

Police eventually caught the robbers, along with a third person who was with them when they were arrested. Bryant Rather, 22, of West Mifflin, Brent Ray Potter, 22, of Swissvale, and Myron Knox, Jr., 22, of Homewood, will be charged with two counts each of access device fraud, conspiracy, receiving stolen property and possessing instruments of crime. Rather and Potter, who were the original pair of miscreants, will also be charged with armed robbery.

It’s great that these features can be used to thwart thieves, but a reminder: it’ll cost you for MobileMe, in order to use “Find My iPhone.” $99 / annually, but hey, that’s a lot less than an unsubsidized iPhone if it’s lost or stolen.

Someone was just asking me about the big trends in learning and the implications of those trends on corporate learning and development.  I initially said – "Look at my blog," but when I looked, I realized it might be a bit harder than I thought to pull out the central themes.  So, here’s a bit of a compilation of some of the things I’ve been talking about in my blog which points to some of the major trends in learning.

Environmental Changes

Some of the common trends I discuss in presentations are:

• Decreased L&D budgets
• Faster pace
• Increased workforce mobility
• Shorter job tenure
• Increased job fragmentation – fewer numbers in any one role
• Constant increase in complexity
• Greater concept work
• Need for faster proficiency
• Changing expectations for learning

The bottom line is that Learning and Development needs to do more with less these days or they will be marginalized. 

And the risk is pretty severe as described in the Business of Learning. 

Trends in What L&D Organizations are Doing

As a result of these trends, some L&D organizations are looking to social and informal learning.  Training Method Trends suggests that social learning tools are beginning to take off.  This will be a slow evolution.  And surveys such as Web 2.0 Applications in Learning suggest that this will be scattered.

There’s considerable discussion throughout my blog around topics that relate to social / informal / learning 2.0:

• Formalizing and Investing in Informal Learning
• No Informal Learning and Blended Learning Mix – CLO Panel Surprises
• Action on Informal Learning – Leads to Great Questions
• Numbers and Informal Learning
• The Real Challenge around Informal Learning
• More on the Form of Informal
• The Paradox of Informal Learning (Form of Informal?)
• Informal Learning and Learning Management Systems
• Informal Learning – Let’s Get Real – Part II
• Informal Learning – Harold Tells Us Where To Put It – Now What
• Informal Learning – Let’s Get Real
• Elves, Measuring Results and Informal Learning
• eLearning 2.0: Informal Learning, Communities, Bottom-up vs. Top-Down

The whole social / informal / elearning 2.0 discussions implies some very Disruptive Changes in Learning.

In Long Live, I discuss how we are not talking about eliminating instructor-led, but that organizations are looking at alternatives.

The whole problem is Long Tail Learning. There is just way too much stuff that people need to learn that we have to make choices about what we spend our time publishing into formal learning events. The audience has to be large enough. As concept workers, we quickly go past formal learning opportunities. There’s no course on what I do every day. And you cannot Separate Knowledge Work from Learning.

One option is to say that limit of training / workplace Learning Responsibility is formal learning. Once you go beyond formal learning, then there’s an immediate question of what else you will provide. I know from Data Driven performance improvement solutions that often informal learning can be very effective in driving results. To me, the answer is pretty clear. You’ve got to look beyond formal.

The Result

When you look at Examples of eLearning 2.0, none of them individually seem all that radical.  Many organizations are using SharePoint to implement these kinds of solutions.

But when you look at the difference in control in Learning 1.0 vs. Learning 2.0, it’s a pretty radical change.

There are significant opportunities around Online Coaching.  I’m hearing more on this all the time.

Examples of how social and informal learning is happening in the consumer space:

• Social Learning
• italki – Social Network for Language Learning 
• Social Learning Objects – Flash Cards

Approach to learning strategy needs to be different: Learning 2.0 Strategy

You need to think about systems quite different: LMS and Social Learning 

You have to prepare workers for web 2.0

L&D professionals and organizations having changing roles and responsibilities:

• Leading Learning and New Skills

• Social Learning Designer

• Workplace Learning Professionals Next Job – Management Consultant

• Improving Personal Learning – A Continuing Challenge for Learning Professionals

Other Thoughts

In Corporate Training, I look at the challenges learning and development organizations face in heading towards these kinds of solutions.

There are lots of possible Objections to making this happen.

Social Learning Measurement is still an issue.

Corporate Policies on Web 2.0 are emerging.

Desired Learning Outcomes may differ based on these changes.

---

eLearning Technology
Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

Someone was just asking me about the big trends in learning and the implications of those trends on corporate learning and development.  I initially said – "Look at my blog," but when I looked, I realized it might be a bit harder than I thought to pull out the central themes.  So, here’s a bit of a compilation of some of the things I’ve been talking about in my blog which points to some of the major trends in learning.

Environmental Changes

Some of the common trends I discuss in presentations are:

• Decreased L&D budgets
• Faster pace
• Increased workforce mobility
• Shorter job tenure
• Increased job fragmentation – fewer numbers in any one role
• Constant increase in complexity
• Greater concept work
• Need for faster proficiency
• Changing expectations for learning

The bottom line is that Learning and Development needs to do more with less these days or they will be marginalized. 

And the risk is pretty severe as described in the Business of Learning. 

Trends in What L&D Organizations are Doing

As a result of these trends, some L&D organizations are looking to social and informal learning.  Training Method Trends suggests that social learning tools are beginning to take off.  This will be a slow evolution.  And surveys such as Web 2.0 Applications in Learning suggest that this will be scattered.

There’s considerable discussion throughout my blog around topics that relate to social / informal / learning 2.0:

• Formalizing and Investing in Informal Learning
• No Informal Learning and Blended Learning Mix – CLO Panel Surprises
• Action on Informal Learning – Leads to Great Questions
• Numbers and Informal Learning
• The Real Challenge around Informal Learning
• More on the Form of Informal
• The Paradox of Informal Learning (Form of Informal?)
• Informal Learning and Learning Management Systems
• Informal Learning – Let’s Get Real – Part II
• Informal Learning – Harold Tells Us Where To Put It – Now What
• Informal Learning – Let’s Get Real
• Elves, Measuring Results and Informal Learning
• eLearning 2.0: Informal Learning, Communities, Bottom-up vs. Top-Down

The whole social / informal / elearning 2.0 discussions implies some very Disruptive Changes in Learning.

In Long Live, I discuss how we are not talking about eliminating instructor-led, but that organizations are looking at alternatives.

The whole problem is Long Tail Learning. There is just way too much stuff that people need to learn that we have to make choices about what we spend our time publishing into formal learning events. The audience has to be large enough. As concept workers, we quickly go past formal learning opportunities. There’s no course on what I do every day. And you cannot Separate Knowledge Work from Learning.

One option is to say that limit of training / workplace Learning Responsibility is formal learning. Once you go beyond formal learning, then there’s an immediate question of what else you will provide. I know from Data Driven performance improvement solutions that often informal learning can be very effective in driving results. To me, the answer is pretty clear. You’ve got to look beyond formal.

The Result

When you look at Examples of eLearning 2.0, none of them individually seem all that radical.  Many organizations are using SharePoint to implement these kinds of solutions.

But when you look at the difference in control in Learning 1.0 vs. Learning 2.0, it’s a pretty radical change.

There are significant opportunities around Online Coaching.  I’m hearing more on this all the time.

Examples of how social and informal learning is happening in the consumer space:

• Social Learning
• italki – Social Network for Language Learning 
• Social Learning Objects – Flash Cards

Approach to learning strategy needs to be different: Learning 2.0 Strategy

You need to think about systems quite different: LMS and Social Learning 

You have to prepare workers for web 2.0

L&D professionals and organizations having changing roles and responsibilities:

• Leading Learning and New Skills

• Social Learning Designer

• Workplace Learning Professionals Next Job – Management Consultant

• Improving Personal Learning – A Continuing Challenge for Learning Professionals

Other Thoughts

In Corporate Training, I look at the challenges learning and development organizations face in heading towards these kinds of solutions.

There are lots of possible Objections to making this happen.

Social Learning Measurement is still an issue.

Corporate Policies on Web 2.0 are emerging.

Desired Learning Outcomes may differ based on these changes.

---

eLearning Technology
Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.