There's been a lot of rubbish talked about whether games are an alternative approach to e-learning. The fact that I used the term "rubbish" implies that I disagree. They're just another set of conventions, visual and interactive vocabulary that we, as trainers and educators can pilfer from as we see fit. They provide us with more tools to help people learn; whether we call our products "games" or not is largely a matter of the degree to which commissioners of these products are resistant to that term or not.

Anyway - there's a new beta release of spacetime, a tool I posted about a while ago. Basically, it's a 3D browsing interface. I love it. The reason that a sizeable proportion of potential users will share my view is because 3D games have trained them to expect this level of engagement, flexibility and downright aesthetic gorgeousness. This kind of thing is likely to become the default style fairly shortly (see the music functions in the new ipod, for example). We'll look back with amusement, and wonder why on earth we put up with 2D representations of data for so long.