LibWorm.com provides a librarian RSS filtering service. Over 1500 RSS librarian sources are combined and output via different filters. This feed contains the latest headlines from journals and sites in the Wifi interest group. http://www.libworm.com/rss/librarianqueries.php Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:52:31 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LibrariansMatter/~3/LETh3CsmeZg/ Today I may be attending just two bootcamps and two keynotes, or I may be attending papers – I am unsure. Keynotes are: Karen Calhoun, OCLC, USA The emergent library: new lands, new eyes and Thomas Tague, Thomson Reuters, USANext up? The linked content economy . The workshops would be these: Video: Negotiating the Online and Mobile Space Facilitators: Simon Goodrich and Al Cossar, Portable Film Festival, Melbourne, Victoria  and Semantic Web APIs Facilitator: Thomas (Tom) Tague, OpenCalais, USA. I don’t fancy trying to do a video workshop if the wifi is as flakey as it was today – or if it sucks up my entire quota of 250MB for $33 … VALA has worked hard this afternoon to get the wifi upgraded, so hopefully it will improve. Here is my CoverItLive session for today, which will go live around 9am Australian Eastern Standard Time. KathrynVALA2010TueFeb9 (Source: Librarians matter) Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:34:35 +0100 816493 http://www.shore.com/commentary/weblogs/2010/01/rebirth-of-print-time-for-new.html Somewhere in the world today a printing press operation is preparing to go dark. Mind you, it's not a universal phenomenon; in markets such as India, where a burgeoning middle class is hungry for news and not yet equipped with an abundance of electronic media sources, print media is actually growing. Scholarly publishers are still doing well their premium journals and custom print for B2B and consumer markets is thriving. But in many developed media markets print operations are struggling to stay alive, with 2010 expected to be a year in which newsstands begin to display significantly fewer titles. Barnes and Noble, with its Nook ebook reader, offers free wireless in their stores as a bundled part of the service, trying to encourage both browsers and coffee-drinkers to make more use of their "big box" stores real estate. It's a Web-eat-paper world, and the publishing industry is wearing newsprint shorts.Yet the broader picture of print is that print publishing technology has never been more sophisticated, cost-effective and capable. Many of the same technologies that enable the Web also enable printing presses to deliver mass-customized printing runs, allowing wholesale book distributors such as Ingram to deliver profitable print runs for titles with as few as two ordered units. Mass print customization also allows ever more effective tailored marketing materials, allowing highly customized color post cards, brochures and other high-value communications tools at very competitive prices. In short, print rocks, if you do the right things with it.The wrong thing to do with print is to expect to do the same thing again and again and expect different results. That is, as many will tell you, the definition of insanity. Unfortunately, this is the insanity that grips much of the B2B and consumer publishing industry. ... Mon, 08 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 816430 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/02/06/recently-released-or-updated-mobile-web-sites-from-libraries-universities/ With new mobile sites being released daily, every now and then it’s interesting and take a look at how these sites are designed and what they offer users. In this group, we also have info about how a university is planning their mobile services. 1. Mt. Lebanon Public Library, Pittsburgh, PA 2. Seaton Hall University/SHU mobile (in Planning Stages) Hat Tip: Gerry M. 3. Flatirons Library Consortium (Boulder, CO Louisville, CO Broomfield, CO) Newspaper coverage via Daily Camera 4. Kingston University London, UK. Includes Access to Library Catalogue 5. Trinity College Library Hartford, CT (Source: ResourceShelf) Sat, 06 Feb 2010 18:24:46 +0100 815879 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/02/05/new-from-yahoo-its-the-yahoo-mobile-blog/ You can access the new blog at: http://ymobileblog.com/. The first post, an overview of what’s to come, is by Irv Henderson, VP of Global Mobile Products. From the Blogs First Post: We plan to make this site a resource for those of you interested in staying on top of what’s new with our products, consumer experiences, and the mobile business in general. You can expect to learn about new product launches and enhancements, quick tips and tricks, our take on market trends, and predictions for where we see the market is heading. Yahoo! is a leader in the mobile industry. We’ve developed best-in-class services, such as Search, Mail, and Messenger across thousands of mobile devices, and launched apps on multiple platforms for various phones, including iPhone and BlackBerry. We reach millions of people daily, and our Mobile Homepage is available in more than 30 countries. By designing simple, open, and feature-rich services that harness the unique attributes of mobile devices, we focus on providing better mobile experiences that are engaging and personally relevant to users like you, enabling you to connect to your world at anytime, anywhere. So what’s to come in 2010? Three developments will play a key role in shaping the mobile industry: Powerful browsers, the OS as a launching pad, and local content. Source: Yahoo Mobile Blog, Yahoo Anecdotal (Source: ResourceShelf) Fri, 05 Feb 2010 22:39:35 +0100 815541 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/RLy3-6_MT0I/ Especially since 9/11, the FBI has long been interested in being able to check up on the reading habits of ordinary people. In 2002, we covered a librarian’s concern about a provision of the Patriot Act that would allow the FBI to request information from libraries. In 2005, we covered an actual use of that provision. In 2008, David Rothman discussed FBI director Robert Mueller suggesting “that the bureau should have a broad ‘omnibus’ authority to conduct monitoring and surveillance of private-sector networks.” Since the Kindle uses wireless networks, David was concerned that it meant the FBI might take an interest in e-book reading habits as well as paper ones. Now Mueller is at it again. At a federal task force meeting today, an attorney for the FBI said that Mueller would like ISPs to keep records of web users’ “origin and destination information.” In other words, the FBI wants to be able to find out what web sites users visit, just as it can get call information from phone companies. A number of ISP representatives are cited in the story saying that it would currently be very difficult, and perhaps a violation of wiretapping law, to keep track of that information. Whether possible or not, it could certainly have the potential to be a major violation of privacy. Almost everybody visits web sites that might be viewed as subversive or undesirable by authorities, or that they otherwise do not want other people to know about. (Some are unfortunate enough to do so while on national television.) On the e-book side, this might include politically-sensitive reading matter, or even sexual fetish art and fiction sites. It is understandable that the government wants power to track down terrorists. We would like for the government to be able to track down terrorists. The idea is good in theory. In practice, it leads to things like full-body scanners at airports and Canadian author Dr. Peter Watts getting beaten up by the border patrol. ... Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:12:10 +0100 815518 http://sla-divisions.typepad.com/kentucky/2010/02/2010jsc.html It is Joint Spring Conference time again! The conference will be held April 28-30, 2010. This year it will be held at the General Butler State Resort Park in Carrollton, KY.  This is the address and contact information for the park: 1608 Highway 227Carrollton, KY 41008-0325Telephone: (502)-732-4384Toll Free: (866) 462-2253 Mention you are with the Special Libraries Association KY Chapter. Overflow housing is also available at the Holiday Inn Express.  Their phone number is 502-732-6770. Online registration is available through SurveyMonkey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JWMPJ6M, or you can mail in the paper registration form that will be mailed out shortly. The mailed registration brochure (http://units.sla.org/chapter/cky/files/JSCBrochure2010.pdf) and registration form (http://units.sla.org/chapter/cky/files/JSCRegistrationForm2010.pdf) can also be downloaded directly to your computer. The registration fees are: Full Conference, Member – Thursday and Friday, April 29 & 30: $70.00Full Conference, Non-Member – Thursday and Friday, April 29 & 30: $80.00Per Day Registration, Member (Thursday or Friday): $45.00Per Day Registration, Non-Member (Thursday or Friday): $55.00Student: $25.00Late Fee (for registrations after March 31): $20.00 You can pay by check or credit card. Make checks out to: SLA Kentucky Chapter Mail checks to: Alex GriggLexmark Library740 W. New Circle Rd.Lexington, KY 40550 Credit card payments will incur a $3.00 service charge and can be made using the PayPal buttons below: Conference Registration Fees: Member - Full Conference - April 29 & 30 $73.00 Member - Per Day Registration - Thursday, April 29 $48.00 Member - Per Day Registration - Friday, April 30 $48.00 Non-Member - Full Conference - April 29 & 30 $83.00 Non-Member - Per Day Registration - Thursday, April 29 $58.00 Non-Member - Per Day Registration - Friday, April 30 $58.00 Student $28. ... Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:40:13 +0100 815740 http://www.slaw.ca/2010/02/05/the-friday-fillip-183/ One of the great funny men of all time, in my opinion, was George Carlin — he’s famous for his Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television, the “hippie-dippie weatherman,” and many trenchant routines satirizing the powers that be. Towards the end of his life he had a routine about being “a modern man, a man for the millennium.” It consisted of a lengthy string of clichés delivered at a machine-gun pace from memory without a slip, a true tour de force. Here’s the video, followed by a transcript so that you, too, can practice telling the world who/what/how you are. I’m a modern man, a man for the millennium. Digital and smoke free. A diversified multi-cultural, post-modern deconstruction that is anatomically and ecologically incorrect. I’ve been up linked and downloaded, I’ve been inputted and outsourced, I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading. I’m a high-tech low-life. A cutting edge, state-of-the-art bi-coastal multi-tasker and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond! I’m new wave, but I’m old school and my inner child is outward bound. I’m a hot-wired, heat seeking, warm-hearted cool customer, voice activated and bio-degradable. I interface with my database, my database is in cyberspace, so I’m interactive, I’m hyperactive and from time to time I’m radioactive. Behind the eight ball, ahead of the curve, ridin the wave, dodgin the bullet and pushin the envelope. I’m on-point, on-task, on-message and off drugs. I’ve got no need for coke and speed. I’ve got no urge to binge and purge. I’m in-the-moment, on-the-edge, over-the-top and under-the-radar. A high-concept, low-profile, medium-range ballistic missionary. A street-wise smart bomb. A top-gun bottom feeder. I wear power ties, I tell power lies, I take power naps and run victory laps. I’m a totally ongoing big-foot, slam-dunk, rainmaker with a pro-active outreach. ... Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:28:40 +0100 816138 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TravelinLibrarian/~3/KIB4_Y45180/ Back in December Mary came to me and said “I want a computer in the kitchen.” On a certain level I’d been expecting this for a while. She has quite the cookbook collection and has been scanning her recipe cards for while now. Having to print a recipe to paper whenever she wants to cook something in the kitchen sort of defeats the purpose of scanning them into the computer in the first place. However, and she will admit this herself, Mary is a very messy cook. I love her cooking but I’m glad she does the majority of the cleaning up. (I take care of the dishes.) A computer covered various foods and other unnamed substances was not something I wanted to look forward to. Also, there isn’t exactly a lot of available counter space on which to put a computer, keyboard, mouse, and monitor. A-researchin’ I went. What we ended up with is shown in the photo above, which if you click will take you to some other photos at other angles on flickr. (There have been some minor tweaks since the photo has taken like better cable management but nothing too significant.) The computer is an Acer nettop which is sitting inside the cabinet. The monitor has been mounted under the cabinet so that it can be folded up and out of the way when it’s not in use. The keyboard is foldable for easy storage and rubberized for easy cleanup. The computer itself is connected to the home network via WiFi (802.11n) and stores all the scanned recipe files.(And is also backed up across the network to an external hard drive in my office.) Needless to say, Mary is happy with the results. It’s not a powerful computer but it does the job she needs it to do. All for about $300. Here are the detailed specs and links for those interested: Acer AspireRevo AR1600-U910H Black/White Nettop PC (1.6GHz Intel Atom 230 Processor 1024 MB DDR2 Memory, Multi-in-1 Digital Media Card Reader 160 GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive, No Optical Drive included Integrated NVIDIA ION LE Graphics, 6 USB 2. ... Fri, 05 Feb 2010 01:12:00 +0100 815899 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/02/04/new-from-the-white-house-mobile-advice-for-parents-to-be-by-sending-a-text-in-english-or-spanish/ A couple of weeks ago we learned that The White House an iPhone app. We also found out that http://mobile.WhiteHouse.gov will be available soon. Today, another new mobile service, this one utilizes text messaging (SMS). It’s called Text4baby. When users Text BABY (English) or BEBE (Spanish) to 511411, “parents-to-be will get expert pregnancy and child-care advice from health authorities.” More from techPresident. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has also released an announcement (PDF): The new program, called Text4baby, is a free mobile information service that provides timely health information to women from early pregnancy through their babies’ first year. The service sends important health tips that are timed to the mother’s stage of pregnancy or the baby’s age. [Snip] “Text4baby is the first free mobile health service to be taken to scale in the United States,” said Aneesh Chopra, Chief Technology Officer for the U.S. Government. “We know that mobile phones hold tremendous potential to inform and empower individuals,” said Chopra. “Text4baby represents an extraordinary opportunity to expand the way we use our phones, to demonstrate the potential of mobile health technology, and make a real difference for moms and babies across the country.” Sources: White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; techPresident; (Source: ResourceShelf) Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:31:12 +0100 815148 http://www.librarystuff.net/2010/02/04/social-media-and-young-adults/ Pew – “Two Pew Internet Project surveys of teens and adults reveal a decline in blogging among teens and young adults and a modest rise among adults 30 and older. Even as blogging declines among those under 30, wireless connectivity continues to rise in this age group, as does social network use. Teens ages 12-17 do not use Twitter in large numbers, though high school-aged girls show the greatest enthusiasm for the application.” Read the report (Source: Library Stuff) Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:25:38 +0100 815096 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/02/04/apples-ipad-a-gadget-killer-or-just-another-gadget/ Apple’s iPad: A Gadget Killer — or Just Another Gadget? Apple, which brought consumers such hits as the iPod and iPhone, is wading into a new product category with the launch of its iPad, a touch-screen tablet computer that CEO Steve Jobs has said puts “the Internet in your hands” — and apparently much more. At a press event on January 27, Jobs unveiled the 1.5 pound tablet computing device with a 9.7 inch screen and built-in Internet connectivity, which will be available for purchase sometime in late March. “We call it the iPad. What this device does is extraordinary,” said Jobs. “You can browse the web with it. It’s phenomenal. It’s way better than a laptop [and] way better than a smartphone.” Jobs positioned the much-hyped iPad as a companion product in Apple’s lineup: The device fits between the iPhone and its Macbook laptop, with prices ranging from $499 to $829 depending on options such as the amount of memory and type of wireless connectivity (wi-fi and/or an additional wireless data plan through AT&T). Competitively, the iPad is targeted at netbooks — popular mini-laptops with screens that measure 10 inches or less — and tablet-style e-book readers such as Amazon.com’s Kindle, Barnes & Noble’s nook and Sony’s Reader, according to experts at Wharton. In other words, Jobs positioned the iPad as a universal computing device that can play music, movies and video games, show pictures and hold a library of books. What’s unclear is whether consumers will buy into the idea of a universal device that meets all their needs — or whether the iPad will become just one more gadget to juggle. Source: Knowledge@Wharton (Source: ResourceShelf) Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:56:07 +0100 815157 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/02/04/paid-vs-free-content-publishing-pains-apple-tablets-and-all-that/ Paid vs. Free Content, Publishing Pains, Apple Tablets and All That … Two recent events have rocked the publishing world. First, The New York Times, which many regard as the newspaper of record in the U.S., said it would abandon the practice of providing free online content and start charging regular readers beginning in 2011. And second, Apple’s much-hyped tablet — the iPad — made its appearance. What implications will the Times’ decision have for newspaper publishers and other providers of free online content? How will the iPad re-define what a book means, as well as how it is produced, marketed and delivered? Peter S. Fader, a marketing professor at Wharton and co-director of the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative, and Stephen J. Kobrin, a management professor at Wharton and editor of Wharton School Publishing, weigh in on how these developments could reshape publishing. Audio available. Source: Knowledge@Wharton (Source: ResourceShelf) Thu, 04 Feb 2010 07:01:42 +0100 814914 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/02/03/new-report-social-media-and-young-adults/ From the Overview: Two Pew Internet Project surveys of teens and adults reveal a decline in blogging among teens and young adults and a modest rise among adults 30 and older. Even as blogging declines among those under 30, wireless connectivity continues to rise in this age group, as does social network use. Teens ages 12-17 do not use Twitter in large numbers, though high school-aged girls show the greatest enthusiasm for the application. Read the Complete Report (HTML) Read the Complete Report (PDF) The Summary of Findings are Quite Extensive. Here are a Few We Found to be the Most Interesting. Make Sure to Visit the Page to Review All of the Data.everal Findings that Blogging has declined in popularity among both teens and young adults since 2006. Blog commenting has also dropped among teens. 14% of online teens now say they blog, down from 28% of teen internet users in 2006. By comparison, the prevalence of blogging within the overall adult internet population has remained steady in recent years. Pew Internet surveys since 2005 have consistently found that roughly one in ten online adults maintain a personal online journal or blog. In December 2007, 24% of online 18-29 year olds reported blogging, compared with 7% of those thirty and older. By 2009, just 15% of internet users ages 18-29 maintain a blog—a nine percentage point drop in two years. However, 11% of internet users ages thirty and older now maintain a personal blog. 73% of wired American teens now use social networking websites, a significant increase from previous surveys. Just over half of online teens (55%) used social networking sites in November 2006 and 65% did so in February 2008. 47% of online adults use social networking sites, up from 37% in November 2008. Adults are increasingly fragmenting their social networking experience as a majority of those who use social networking sites – 52% – say they have two or more different profiles. ... Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:45:35 +0100 814919 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/nWNYkqvbRWw/ The Case for Books is the title of Robert Darnton’s new book. I am reading the hardcover print edition, my other Christmas gift after a Kindle. The physical casing of books seems in question in the digital age. Will ereaders replace print books? The book too is a technology. A better reading device must both preserve the best features of the print book for long form reading, and then enhance them. In this second post of my Kindle shakedown series, I give my personal take on the Kindle’s hardware and physical features. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, says that the essential design element of the Kindle is “bookishness”. My first impression was that the 6″ display of the Kindle 2 was not much bigger than my old PDA on which I had tried reading without satisfaction. I had second thoughts about whether I should have waited for the Kindle DX with its 9″ display and smaller keyboard. Perhaps I just needed time to adjust. I have grown content with the screen size. At first I felt the keyboard should have been touch screen, called up as needed then hidden, but there is a physical satisfaction to working the round keys. When I first flipped between pages I disliked the blinking screen but now I hardly notice it. The two week battery life makes me forget the reader is a device that needs charging.As for enhancements over the print book, the wireless connectivity is reliably available, though surfing Wikipedia is a bit slow. It is sweet to find my morning newspaper delivered each morning, but I would be just as happy to use my own home wireless, especially if it gave the extra wireless features not currently available in Canada. Long form reading does not require a persistent connection. The 1.5 GB disk space is plenty for storing multiple books, a commonly cited advantage of ereaders. Personally, I only read one or two books at a time. The Kindle only claims support for Windows and Mac but plugging the USB into Ubuntu works fine. ... Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:52:41 +0100 814761 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/GXdUMN2qtRk/ Stanza used to allow users to transfers books to the iPhone using a USB cable and WiFi via an accompanying desktop application. The latest update to Stanza removes the ability to sync books through USB, but leaves the WiFi ability alone. The version notes say “Removed ability to share books via USB as required by Apple.” More info here and here. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:08:37 +0100 814429 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TechsourceBlog/~3/IiG-YIsXyBE/finding-my-tribe-at-educause.html “I’ve found my tribe.” I surprised myself with the admission that I felt very at home with the attendees, speakers and organizers of the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative Conference 2010. I had never been to the conference before and I was rather nervous about my invited presentation. This was a step away from presenting in the library world. I'll confess that it felt a bit daunting. The theme of the conference was "Learning Environments for a Web 2.0 World,” and the featured presentations, concurrent sessions and “Experience IT” encounter groups centered around what it means to use technology in education today, and tomorrow. My session was an overview of what I think makes up “The Hyperlinked Campus” (based on my model of "The Hyperlinked Library") and the benefits of creative collaboration and immersive engagement in teaching. It was good for my own process to articulate the learning goals I have for my LIS students with technology and emerging trends in libraries. Validation, however, is a also good thing. At EDUCAUSE LI, I found folks doing and thinking the same things I am doing and thinking at Dominican GSLIS. I found conversations about delivering course content and classroom interaction via mobile devices. I found a lively discussion of trends like “simple augmented reality” that will create dynamic, information-laden environments out of city streets or any other locale. What I didn’t find was librarians. Some facts: the organizers reported at the start of the event that 40% of the 500 or so attendees were faculty, followed by 30% IT administrators. Librarians made up 7% of the registered attendees. In my opinion, that number should have been much higher. I would like to have heard more perspective from those folks actually working in libraries during the Q&A sessions. I’m using Wordpress multi-user blogs to create class communities, and giving my students experience with tools like Twitter. ... Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:21:20 +0100 815987 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.education.web4lib/15695 Even my blackberry has a delete key. Wilfred (Bill) Drew, M.S., B.S., Assistant Professor. Librarian. TC3 Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry -----Original Message----- From: Walter McGinnis <walter-mGsON310AOJIJsTUW+i+0g< at >public.gmane.org> Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 19:50:26 To: web4lib-Lfqs8nn97uZKgiwHgTXaBw< at >public.gmane.org<web4lib-Lfqs8nn97uZKgiwHgTXaBw< at >public.gmane.org> Subject: Re: [Web4lib] Mobenzi > Mobile-Phone-Based Empowerment On Feb 2, 2010, at 12:43 PM, B.G. Sloan wrote: I agree with Bernie. In fact I started to write a similar response several times, but couldn't quite get it right. Thanks Bernie for putting it succinctly. Cheers, Walter _______________________________________________ Web4lib mailing list Web4lib-Lfqs8nn97uZKgiwHgTXaBw< at >public.gmane.org http://lists.webjunction.org/web4lib/ (Source: gmane.education.web4lib) Tue, 02 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 814260 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/davidleeking/~3/53ykzLjbQcY/ This is a follow-up post to my original post, Foursquare and Libraries – Anything There? Lots of you left some great ideas in the comments, so I thought I’d do a little copy/paste and highlight some of them … because they’re really very cool ideas! So – here are what some of YOU are doing with Foursquare: Colleen Greene: Pollak Library (at Cal State Fullerton) is using it in beta mode, adding in a bunch of To Do items and Tips for students (i.e., get a Titan Card, set up their borrowing privileges, check their circulation record, use one of our AV or Group study rooms, visit the latest exhibit, etc.). our Social Media Team is exploring the idea of prizes. I am also teaching our campus social media working group how to use it and incorporate it into a campus culture. Jason Clark: Saw this in a tweet from NYPL which talks about the kernel of an idea – summer reading meets foursquare . A friendly reading competition in the mobile space? Job description provides some more detail. While this isn’t true foursquare integration, it points to how foursquare could lead to/inspire new library apps and services. Brad Czerniak: Canton Public Library offers a weekly prize to their Mayor. Just a concept. This week it’s a #totebag http://twitpic.com/ynn7x libmario: Harvard and UNC recently teamed up with Foursquare to encourage social engagement with the campus community ,including faculty. Innovative way to encourage learning and connections that could be extended to libraries. – http://mashable.com/2010/01/12/harvard-foursquare/ And one interesting sidenote. Sometimes, people can be a bit negative about our libraries while adding tips to Foursquare. For example, Stephen Francoeur said “Saddened to see that one tag already added to my library: shitty wifi. Hope to find a way to turn that perception around.” We’ve had one of those, too. Jason D. ... Tue, 02 Feb 2010 01:42:18 +0100 815568 http://maisonbisson.com/blog/post/14216/the-ipad-serves-a-new-demographic/ It’s doubtful that anybody reading this blog missed the news that Apple finally took the wraps off their much rumored tablet: the iPad. Trouble is, a bunch of folks seem to be upset about the features and specs, or something that made the buzz machine go meh. It’s just a bigger iPhone, complain the privileged tech pundits. They apparently missed the recent Pew Internet Project report on internet usage by demographic. While it shows white users most frequently access the internet from home, black and hispanic users more frequently get online from mobile devices. Further, internet use by hispanics jumped dramatically in recent years, far exceeding the growth among whites. The report further notes that while 83% of US adults have cell phones, only 60% use the internet from home. I’ve said it before: our notions of what a “computer” is have to change. The age of ubiquitous connectivity, Twitter, Facebook, and uncounted other tiny miracles has already changed the the reasons we use technology and shown us the difference between what it’s for and what it does. The Pew stats show our computers as historical artifacts of a different age, built for a different purpose. The iPad is built for the ubiquitous social internet. The iPad is built for everybody who enjoys mobile internet access and the remaining 40% of users who don’t have any, though I’m quite certain that experienced internet users will eventually fall in love with the device too. Remember, the then leading tech news site Slashdot panned the original iPod in 2001: “No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.” You might have to check Wikipedia to remember what the Nomad was today, though the manufacturer once enjoyed 65% market share. The market for MP3 players in 2001 was just under $2 billion, by 2006 it had tripled to almost $6 billion. ... Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:53:41 +0100 815596 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/02/01/nature-publishing-group-releases-iphoneitouch-app-will-publish-e-books-in-epub-format/ Two news items from NPG (Nature Publishing Group) today. First, an iPhone App and then word that the EPUB format for e-Book Material is Coming Soon. iPhone/ITouch App Features: Free: Download and Learn More Here About the App Here Browse, Read and Bookmark Full Text Content from Nature and Nature News; Search PubMed FREEBIES: Access to the full text of all Nature and Nature News content through the app is free as an introductory offer until the 30 April 2010. Users will need to be registered on nature.com… Read Nature Articles Immediately or Save Them For Later; Develop and Save Searches Nature Promises that the App was Developed So Articles Can Be Seen in High-Resolution; zoomable figures, and a special references view. App Will Work with iPad Once it Launches “Enhanced functionality is planned for the nature.com mobile app later in 2010, and personal and institutional pricing options will be available. NPG will be trialing site license access with selected institutional customers. Subject to feedback from customers, NPG intends to roll out access to other Nature branded journals and publications available on nature.com, including Scientific American. An application for devices using Android is expected to be available within the next few months.” e-Book Formats Nature Publishing Group Has Also Announced that They Will Begin Publishing and Supporting e-Books in the EPUB Format during 2010. Our guess, is that It will likely be sometime around the release of the iPad. Source: Nature Publishing Group (Announcement) (Source: ResourceShelf) Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:38:08 +0100 814214 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/YItlU-LYaKE/ The worst-kept secret in recent tech history, Apple’s iPad, was unveiled last week. Some folks were wowed by the announcement while others were left asking, “is that all there is?” I was somewhere in between. A buddy called me that day and said he bet Jeff Bezos was…, well, requiring an undergarment change. I told him I doubted it. Not because the iPad won’t have a significant impact on the Kindle…it will…but because Wednesday’s announcement was the confirmation of something Amazon, like the rest of us, already knew about. I’ll get to the Kindle effect in a moment, but first let me say why I think every publisher on the planet should warm up to the iPad. One word: Pricing. Not device pricing but content pricing. Ever since the Kindle arrived in late 2007 Amazon has led us on this downward path to lower and lower prices. On the one hand, I don’t blame them for this. After all, we, the publishers, are the ones trying to build a significant business around quickie print-to-e conversions.Amazon has been more than an accomplice in this regard though as they’ve developed a device that discourages and effectively prevents publishers from enriching their content offerings. Two plus years into the life of the Kindle and they’re just now announcing plans to open the platform to third-party developers?! Are you kidding me? Did they not notice that the App Store is one of the keys to the iPhone’s success? Compare the functionality of the Kindle to what the iPad will offer. Look at the rich content opportunities the iPad presents. Your newspaper won’t just be a lousy text feed with a few grayscale images; it will be full color with video and audio built in. ... Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:47:35 +0100 814187 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TechsourceBlog/~3/0d-LjwKqKbU/the-apple-ipad.html On Wednesday, the most anticipated technology product announcement of the last few years took place (video of the event here), and Apple finally showed off their tablet computer, the iPad. The iPad is going to dominate the technology discussion for the next several months, but here's a first-blush look at the tech specs and features that are going to be important for libraries and education. as well as what's missing and what we should be worried about. First up, the specs: the iPad is a roughly  9.5 x 7.5 inch slab of glass and aluminum, .5 inch thick, and weighs in an 1.5 pounds. The 9.7 inch LCD screen is LED backlit, and has a 1024-by-768-pixel resolution at 132 pixels per inch. Apple is producing 6 unique versions of the iPad, 3 different storage capacities with 2 different wireless connectivity options. Here's a table summarizing the different options:     16GB 32GB 64GB Wi-Fi $499 $599 $699 Wi-Fi + 3G $629 $729 $829 The iPad runs a version of the iPhone operating system, and does indeed look a great deal like an oversized iPod Touch. It will run all of the existing Apps that are available for the iPhone/iPod touch, at either the original resolution (windowed on the iPad screen) or something that Steve Jobs referred to as "pixel doubled" at full screen. Apple claims that the iPad will have 10 hours of battery life on Wi-Fi. For libraries,these are probably the interesting most details: Jobs announced a new iBook store and corresponding application on the iPad, putting the device squarely in the eReader category. Apple verified that it will use the EPUB format, but unfortunately Abode also verified that it won't be using Adobe DRM. ... Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:46:40 +0100 814049 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/OoXUHMXRqcU/ It is time for me to give an ereader a serious shakedown. In Slow Reading, I asserted that print books are still the superior technology for reading anything of length or substance; that view remains. However, it is clear that the writing and publishing world is changing. I am discovering excellent writers who are publishing their material independently, often as ebooks. I want to read this material, but not on a computer, and without printing it. A specialized reading device might fill the gap. Amazon’s ereader, the Kindle, came to Canada in late 2009. No doubt there are good reasons not to buy a Kindle. Personally, I find Amazon’s competitive practices too aggressive (such as disabling the buy button for publishers who do not use their print-on-demand service). Also, I was vaguely aware that Kindle uses Digital Rights Management (DRM) to try to restrict access to it content, unlike Sony’s Reader which uses the open epub format. I am better informed now. However, Amazon was the first to offer a wireless reader in Canada. I was curious and felt the need to play. I put the Kindle on my Christmas list. The Kindle was not previously available in Canada because Amazon had not reached a deal with local wireless providers. Even now the deal is limited. In Canada, Kindle wireless only permits access to Amazon’s store and Wikipedia. In the US, users can also browse the web, read blogs, and email documents to the device. My hope is that the Canadian wireless deal will eventually match the American one. Amazon has said as much about their document delivery service. Sony later followed with wireless capability but the equivalent product costs a hundred dollars more. I ordered the Kindle 2 with six-inch display for $259.00 CAD. (Just recently the larger Kindle DX has become available internationally.) It arrived very quickly, left on my front porch even though no one was home. It was a Christmas wish so I had to wait until Christmas to open the present. ... Mon, 01 Feb 2010 12:15:05 +0100 814007 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/MKuf/~3/ejWMovFULdY/wrapping-up-our-free-holiday-wifi.html In November, we officially launched our Free Holiday WiFi gift. 54 airports, one airline and many millions of connected WiFi users later, our two-month Free Holiday WiFi sponsorship ended on January 15. We're happy to have made this year's holiday travel season just a bit easier for the millions of people who logged on and connected at our participating airports and on Virgin America flights. Though some airports will no longer have free WiFi, we're excited that Burbank, Seattle and most recently, Boston airports have all decided to offer free WiFi all year. In the spirit of the season, passengers connecting to the networks donated over $250,000 to Engineers Without Borders, One Economy Corporation and Climate Savers Computing Initiative. With Google's matching donation, the three charities received over $500,000 in total. Finally, Edward Doan of Austin, Texas won the grand prize of ten Virgin America tickets, a Motorola Droid from Verizon Wireless and a Canon SX200 digital camera. You can view a complete list of winners on the contest site.Posted by Jeff Aguero and Missy Krasner, Product Marketing Managers (Source: Official Google Blog) Mon, 01 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 814680 http://librarytwopointzero.blogspot.com/2010/02/foursquare-for-libraries.html I had heard some months ago about Foursquare from an old colleague of mine. Wikipedia describes the service as:-Foursquare is a location-based social networking website, software for mobile devices, and game. Users "check-in" at venues using text messaging or a device specific application. They are then awarded points and sometimes "badges." You earn points for finding new places, tagging them and describing them. And if your the first there you can become mayor and win other titles. Anyway, I like Helene Blowers feel that :-It's been awhile since I've seen a new social technology emerge on scene that looked like it had that "explosion potential". The last real time for me was TwitterDavid King also has an interesting article on the use of Foursquare for libraries. Below are 5 ingenious idea's he has thought up:-1.Add your library as a place, or edit the entry if someone else has already added it. You can enter your street address (Google map is included, phone number, and your library’s Twitter name. 2.Add tags relevant to the library. For example, I have added the tags library, books, music, movies, and wifi to my library’s Foursquare entry. If you are in the area (Foursquare is a location-based service, so it knows where you are) and search for wifi – guess who’s at the top of the list? Yep – the library. 3.Add Tips and To Do lists. When you check in to a place, you have the option to add tips of things you can do there, and you can create To-Do lists of things you want to do there. For libraries, both are helpful – it’s a way to broadcast your services to Foursquare players. To Do lists are handy, because you can make the list and other players can add those To Do list items to their lists, too. When they do something on those lists, they gain points. Think of it as a fun way to get people doing stuff at your library! Just think – someone could gain points by getting a library card – how cool is that? 4. ... Mon, 01 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 814636 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/uw8FZeAFAz8/ipad-imapact-on-media Less than a week old, it has generated reams of copy and already changed the way Amazon deals with book publishers. Guardian writers consider what the iPad means for different sectors of the media industrySearch for "Steve Jobs iPad" and Google will offer you "about 86,000,000" results for the past year. Print those pages out – now including this one – and they would probably reach to the moon, which may be the only place left not reeling from iPad coverage mania (or ennui; delete as appropriate). But after all the build-up, the hype, the gushing reviews, is it really going to change media? Is it a lifeline for publishers, schedulers and newspapers – or just another toy?It's easy to write off the iPad, based on it not being like things you've seen before. Don't. When Apple introduced Lisa and Macintosh, it brought us the idea of "windows" and a "mouse". Hardened computer users of the time, accustomed to typing CP C:*.txt to copy files, didn't rush to it – though interestingly, journalists who tried it were gushing in their praise. How do you copy files on your computer now?Similarly the iPod, launched in 2001, was dismissed by geeks as having "no wireless. Less space than a [established MP3 player brand] Nomad." Conclusion: it was "Lame". And the iPhone? Right after the 2007 launch, people pointed out that it couldn't do 3G or photo messaging or even forward SMSs. There were no apps (or even a way to build them). A senior Microsoft executive sniped that it was a "closed system" that didn't support – oh no! – Microsoft Office. So obviously it must be a dud.Today? Apple has sold 250m iPods, of which more than 40m are iPod Touches, and more than 30m iPhones. Given that, are you seriously going to be against the iPad?Apple's track record is singular: it makes devices easier to use, and then refines them. ... Mon, 01 Feb 2010 00:06:08 +0100 813963 http://www.shore.com/commentary/weblogs/2010/01/noodling-with-nook-first-impressions-of.html My wife was bugging me before Christmas for a nice toy that I would like as a gift, so I thought that it couldn't hurt to get Barnes & Noble's new Nook ebook reader, which, at the time, was due for delivery before the holidays. With a hybrid eInk display for text and Android-driven touch interface for navigation combined with ePub-formatted documents, at least it would be a "walking the talk" gizmo that reflected how I saw what publishers should be doing with ebook distribution.Unfortunately on Christmas day I got a nice new traveling case and screen protector, but only a placekeeper for the unit itself, which finally arrived the day that the Apple iPad was launched. Hmm, interesting timing. There's really no comparison, though, between the "whats" and the "whys" of an ebook reader like the Nook and a device like the iPad. The nook is all about simplifying and in some ways enhancing the process of relating to printed material, where the iPad is about the multi-sense world of Web media, with books a nice part of its capabilities but one not necessarily likely to appeal to many of its core Web-raised customers.The Nook definitely has a leg-up overall on its Amazon Kindle rival, in the sense that it combines both the sophistication of a touch interface with a very simple and enjoyable page-turning experience via its eInk interface. I had my doubts about this combination, but, while not perfect, it works out pretty nicely overall. You can swipe your finger across a row of book, newspaper and magazine titles like you would on a touch-screen phone interface, tap once and start digging in. A second or two after your text is displayed, the color touch interface powers down and you're enjoying crisp eInk text, which only improves its readability in bright daylight. That's a boon when on a beach or in a sunny train or plane seat where moving to a better spot is not an option.The physical controls of the Nook are bone simple. ... Sun, 31 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0100 813991 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/aQHwshrWWxY/ Dedicated e-readers won’t die, Ficbot posted. But Lee Fyock compared them to dedicated word processors, now dead. Then Travis Butler posted the following, which merits a pickup in the main TeleBlog. Photo shows a dedicated word processor. – Chris Meadows. I think Lee was talking about dedicated word processing computers; systems from companies like Wang Laboratories or IBM that could only run built-in word processing software. Which are indeed dead, dead, dead, to the best of my knowledge. And I believe that was Lee’s point; dedicated word processing computers were popular in the 70s and early 80s, but died when word-processing software on ordinary personal computers got good enough to do most of what dedicated word-processing equipment could do—even if personal computers weren’t quite as good, they were good enough. And not too long after that, Word-processors on PCs far surpassed dedicated word-processing hardware; the keyboards were just as good if not better, they ran faster even with the overhead of a full general purpose OS, software could be tweaked and customized to a far greater extent, bitmap displays allowed WYSIWYG formatting, and laser printers reproduced that formatting well enough to put the daisy-wheel printers of dedicated systems to shame. I can easily see the same thing happening with dedicated e-book readers, over the next few years: Software will never be an advantage; the new generation of tablet hardware already has the performance to run everything mentioned in this article, and software on a general purpose device will be even more open to tweaking by and alternatives for the end-user than a dedicated device will be—just as PCs give users far more WP options than IBM ever produced for the DisplayWriter. Don’t like your current reader app’s interface? Use a different one. Want a different format? Get a reader app that supports it. ... Sat, 30 Jan 2010 08:41:00 +0100 813422 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/smwm/~3/lF6c5FnRw5I/digicmb How to get your iPhone/iPod to connect to the RuG-FN2 wireless WiFi network / by Hedderik van Rijn How to get your iPhone/iPod to connect to the RuG-FN2 wireless WiFi network To get your iPhone/iPod Touch to connect to the RuG-FN2 network, you have to enable TTLS authentication. To do so, open the iPhone Configuration Utility (download), and create a new "Configuration Profile" with the following information: (Source: DigiCMB) Sat, 30 Jan 2010 07:00:02 +0100 813348 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/jkbaumga/2010/01/29/praise-for-libraries-from-ing-customers/ Money conscious folks on the ING savings blog We the Savers share some great praise about libraries and benefits and money saving aspects of library use: “When I graduated and moved off campus, I quickly realized I’d have to give up the school library, too. So I got a library card from our local library. That’s when I discovered benefits like free WiFi and computer access, free DVD rentals, and (of course) the world’s greatest supply of free books and magazine subscriptions. And all I had to do was bring them back on time — or call to renew them. Pretty marvelous, I thought.” Savings Advocate Christy B. goes further to explain how to help bookworms save money in this economy: let them browse bookstores, but buy only 1 or 2 items at a time, borrowing the rest they’d like from the local library. In the comments, people remind us of the value of toddler story time, express surprise at the amount and type of library holdings, and discuss how the library can be a lifelong benefit. The savers don’t mention how the library most likely has a variety of resources about saving money, investing, managing money, budgeting, and doing things on the cheap (like inexpensive vacations, cooking {gourmet meals for less}, sewing clothes, passes to local cultural institutions {aquarium, museums, and historical sites}, and free or inexpensive activities in your community). Your tax dollars probably support your local library, so you’ve already invested in it. You may as well use it. Go to your local library. Just go. (Source: J's Scratchpad) Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:55:53 +0100 813129 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/9IqBE1Zp1nY/ According to E-Reader-Info.com, Delta of Taiwan will soon start marketing color ereaders suing Bridgestone’s color e-ink technology. According to the article Delta is still looking for partners to actually brand and sell the units, which can be equipped with WiFi and 3G modules, and they will also sell the units on there own. This is the first commercialization of Bridgestone’s new technology. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:10:45 +0100 813202 http://www.affordance.info/mon_weblog/2010/01/kindle-of-an-ipad.html Donc voilà la tablette d'Apple. Quelques millénaires après les premières traces d'écriture gravées dans la pierre. Ce qui donne lieu a quelques jolies infographies :-) Difficile de ne pas en parler quand on est un adepte du mac et que l'on se pique un peu de tenter d'expliciter les bouleversements à l'oeuvre dans nos supports et nos pratiques de lecture numérique. Difficile également d'en parler en racontant encore quelque chose d'original sur le sujet tant toute la presse (professionnelle ou non) et tous les blogs (y compris les plus fameux) nous ont déjà abreuvés jusqu'à l'écoeurement d'articles sur le sujet. Or donc, nonobstant, quelques impressions décousues. Il y a tout d'abord ce match. Bezos/Amazon/Kindle (BAK) contre Jobs/Apple/Ipad (JAI). Deux outils ou plus précisément deux conceptions de l'outil. Deux marchands qui ont, chacun à leur manière, compris la nécessaire dépendance d'une industrie culturelle devant à la fois se trouver dans les nuages et bien ancrée sur terre ; ainsi la boutique en ligne d'Amazon et ses gigantesques magazins sur le terrain, ainsi l'offre en ligne de contenus d'Apple et son industrie du software et du design, là encore parfaitement territorialisée. Mais je m'éloigne de mon sujet. D'un côté donc, le Kindle comme "emblématique" de l'ensemble des autres tablettes dédiées, c'est à dire se focalisant sur une pratique, celle de la lecture. De l'autre l'Ipad comme représentatif de l'ensemble des tablettes non-dédiées (smartphones compris), c'est à dire visant à englober un ensemble de pratiques (de la lecture ou visionnage de films, en passant par la musique et les jeux ou la bureautique). Sur la question de le lecture, l'Ipad est disruptif. Voici pourquoi. ... Fri, 29 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0100 814351 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.education.web4lib/15634 February 3 2010 1:00 p.m. ET (12:00 p.m. CT, 11:00 a.m. MT, 10:00 a.m. PT) Beth Schaefer / Associate Director / Client Services / University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Summary Your host, Steve Worona, will be joined by Beth Schaefer, and the topic will be "What Happened to the Computer Lab?" Over 80 percent of respondents to the annual ECAR study of undergraduate students report owning laptops, yet usage of expensive public computer labs remains high. Although computer labs might still be necessary, one can’t help but feel that traditional labs are anachronistic in a world of wireless connectivity, iPods, and smart phones. Labs are expensive to equip, staff, and maintain, and often the layout maximizes the amount of equipment that can be put into a given space rather than the creation of a comfortable or stimulating learning environment. Rather than predicting an entirely new model, this presentation will focus on low-cost changes that can be made to the design, layout, and operation of existing compute (Source: gmane.education.web4lib) Fri, 29 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0100 813018 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/01/28/monthly-report-operas-state-of-the-mobile-web-december-2009/ Access the Complete Report Summary Facts: + From December 2008 to December 2009, page views in the top 9 countries of Southeast Asia increased by 599%, unique users increased by 385%, and data transferred increased by 587%. + Facebook is now the dominant player in Southeast Asia among mobile-Web users, both in Indonesia — where Friendster has fallen to #5 — and the rest of the region, where Facebook is among the top visited sites in numerous countries. + By far, Opera Mini users in Southeast Asia prefer Nokia handsets. + Part 4 of this month’s report lists the most popular social-networking sites around the world visited by mobile Web users. Both global and country-specific site rankings are presented. + Given the popularity of Opera in Russian-speaking countries, VKontakte used to be in the top position (based on unique users), but it was overtaken by Facebook in 2009. + Twitter was the other big winner in terms of growth in 2009. + All of the listed social-networking sites, except for Friendster, showed significant user growth (via Opera Mini) in 2009. Access the Complete Report Source: Opera Software (Source: ResourceShelf) Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:15:08 +0100 812969 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/FneEOkfjGR4/ According to DigiTimes, Micro-Star International (MSI) has announced plans to launch a $500 tablet PC in the second half of 2010. The device would be based upon the nVidia Tegra processor, and sounds similar to the iPad in overall size and functionality. Though MSI has made computer parts for some time (I have an MSI wifi card in the desktop PC on which I am writing this post), they are relatively new to the laptop/tablet market. However, this past Christmas I received an MSI notebook as a gift, and have been quite pleased with it. It will be interesting to see how they do with a tablet. The story also mentions Asustek launching Asus@Vibe, a digital distribution service that can provide e-books as well as other content. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:15:44 +0100 812953 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/_iHqFOyjaSM/ I’m an Apple fan—the owner of a MacBookPro and MacBook Air and a compatible home network—and I’ve gone through tons of iPad stuff. Should I buy one? My preliminary conclusion is, No. Here’s why: –The iPad  will make a lousy ebook reader. What good is a reader with only 10 hours of battery life? You certainly can’t use it when traveling – you can’t even get to Hawaii, Japan or Australia on it. One major benefit of e-ink devices is that their batteries last forever. A couple of weeks on my Kindle and Sony if I’m careful with the wireless. If I go away for a week or more I don’t even need to bring a charger. I just can’t see using such a short-lived device like the tablet. –Second, the iPad uses AT&T as the 3G carrier. In the New York area, where I live, AT&T’s service can, charitably, be called horrible. Dropped calls are common and if you go into the City you can pretty much forget about getting 3G service, and the iPhone’s constant searching for a 3G connection drains the battery at an alarming rate. When you are with any large group of people who have iPhones, such as at Digital Book World, the concentration of phones in one area is guaranteed to kill AT&T’s 3G and it is common for not only data service but also phone service, as well, to become blocked. At DBW I got a kick out of all of us iPhone users bitching to each other about how our phones didn’t work. What use will you get out of the iPad’s Safari browser in this environment? Nope, at least for the present, I’ll keep my money and hope that the iPhone becomes available on Verizon. If it does I’ll use the cash to break my contract with AT&T and get a new iPhone (even though my 3GS is almost brand new) on Verizon’s network. Digg us. Slashdot us. ... Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:56:31 +0100 812808 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TameTheWeb/~3/_syOIgILSio/ I think a lot of us monitored the chatter or tuned into a faltering U-Stream yesterday to hear Apple’s announcement of the iPad. ( I think I was a bit more fond of iSlate or just “Slate” myself) But now the fact-finding, opinion sharing and general “what will it mean for consumers?” begins – as will all of the “what will it mean for libraries” conjecture. Phil Bradley, across the pond, weighed in this morning: http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2010/01/first-thoughts-on-the-ipad.html I’m really keen on the idea of using it as an e-Book reader. It’s the first item that I’ve looked at which actually makes me think I’d really actively enjoy reading from it. Again, I can read from the iPhone, and this is going to be a better experience. Not so keen that the iBookstore is US only at the moment – until I can buy a book there and then, download it and just start reading, I’m not going to be buying one. That for me IS a deal breaker. I want to go onto a site, choose a book that’s been published today, download it and start reading there and then. Download the morning newspaper? Grab my favourite magazine – absolute requirements for me. Is this going to kill the Kindle? I think it will, yes – at least if the Kindle stays in its current incarnation. Simply can’t see the value in buying one, certainly not on price comparisons. Price. £450 or thereabouts for the largest size wifi (without 3G) is going to be fine by me. I don’t need instant connectivity to the net – I have a laptop/dongle and iPhone combination for that. Though the idea of running around with iPhone, iPad and laptop and dongle and any iPad peripherals is not a great idea. I suspect that I’d use it at home on my wifi, download what I need, power it up and be on my way. ... Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:38:22 +0100 812803 http://medinfo.netbib.de/archives/2010/01/28/3617 Reuters Haben wollen! Vielleicht auch 20 Stück mit E-Books drauf in der Bibliothek zum ausleihen… Related posts Zweigbibliothek Medizin leiht nach PDAs auch iPODs aus… (0) Zitrone des Monats an Skyscape und Wiley: Cochrane Reviews für den PDA (4) WiFi comes to hospitals (0) Wien startet PDA-Projekt (0) Visite mit mobilem Endgerät (0) (Source: medinfo) Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:01:21 +0100 814303 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/davidleeking/~3/OXn7MYmuLro/ I don’t attempt to predict stuff very often, but I think this one’s safe – I think Apple’s new iPad is most definitely a game changer. Why? Because it combines so many things into one handy, easy-to-use device. Just watching the video about the iPad and poking around on the website a bit, you find out all that the iPad will supposedly do, including: web browsing email photo viewing watch videos (even YouTube videos) listen to music (it has iTunes built in) buy and read ebooks a cool map note taking a calendar Contacts list iWork (Apple’s answer to Microsoft Office) is rebuilt for the iPad, so you have word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation software The App Store works here, too, which opens up 140,000 apps that all do different things And of course, it’s multi-touch. So instead of having to use a mouse or keyboard shortcuts to operate the thing … you just touch the screen. I’m just amazed that Apple seemingly rolled up a Microsoft Surface, a tablet PC, a video player, a netbook, an iPod, and an ebook reader, and came out with something light, cool, and truly unique. Except maybe the name – sorry Apple, but the iPad is a silly name. Apple could turn this thing into a student’s best friend. Instead of carrying a heavy backpack around, students could use the iPad to carry all their textbooks (assuming Apple partners with textbook companies), any multimedia they need to watch, their word processor to write papers (or they could just use Google Docs via a wifi connection), multiple ways to take notes, communicate to classmates and teachers via email/IM/Facebook/Skype/etc. And still have their favorite photos, their grand music collection, and a couple of fun games with them, too. How about for libraries? Think Reference Desk and roving reference here. It’s the same price as a netbook laptop. ... Thu, 28 Jan 2010 05:24:12 +0100 813573 http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2010/01/first-thoughts-on-the-ipad.html Well, now we know. Well, we know some of it, though there's still lots of things that are not entirely clear. I thought I'd take a look at a few of the plusses and minuses of what I've seen this evening, and make up my mind a little bit. Physical appearance. Well, it's just a big iPhone, which is what I'd expected really - though it's a lot thinner and the weight isn't too bad at 1.5 or 1.6 lbs. The edge, or bezel doesn't cause me a problem either, although a few people are moaning about it already. No multitasking. This is a pain I guess; no listening to music while wandering around the web, or reading the morning newspaper. For me, this one of the really big minus points about the iPad. Does this mean that I won't buy it? It's certainly not a deal breaker in the slightest - if I want to listen to music I've already got my music player - my iPhone. And if I'm going to be using it for what I'd intend to - as an eBook reader, it's not an issue.Lack of camera. I honestly don't get why this is a problem for some people. It's not meant to be a camera! It's too big to be a camera - can you really see yourself trying to use it to take a photograph with? And you've already got a camera on your phone, or some other sort of camera. Sure, a webcam for video meetings would be nice, but there is an option to add one on as a peripheral, though I agree, that does mean more lugging around of devices. If you take photographs you already have a camera, and if you don't, you're not going to want one. Time to move on...Keyboard. Until I can actually try the keyboard I have no idea what it'll be like, but I can just about type on my iPhone, so something rather larger isn't going to be a problem at all. ... Thu, 28 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0100 812572 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/wZxZC7vt8J4/ The Apple Event is over. I followed three live blogs: Ars Technica’s (which is hard to get into, being at capacity), Wired’s, and Gizmodo’s (which has plenty of pictures). There is plenty of e-book-related detail, including a New York Times iPad-native app and the new iBooks app and store. I will hit the technical details first, then cover e-book matters in detail below the jump. Technical Details The interesting facts about the new iPad are being quoted in detail on dozens of news sources, so I will just summarize: it is basically like an iPod Touch only bigger, with 16, 32, or 64 gigs of storage, reportedly 10 hours of battery life and a month of standby power. Device price is to be $499/$599/$699 for 16/32/64-gig capacity (add $130 to each price point for a 3G-capable model), and it begins shipping in 60 days (90 days for the 3G model). This is an iPod Touch-style price: no contracts or obligations factor into it. This is an interesting price point, to be sure: for twice the price of a $259 2-gig Kindle 2, or just a little more than the $430 4-gig Kindle DX, you get a color device with four to eight times the storage and much more flexibility. Though unlike with the Kindle, the iPad’s 3G data plans cost extra. Wifi and Data Plans All devices will have 802.11n wifi, and some will have 3G capacity as well. Apple and AT&T will offer two optional pre-paid 3G data plans for the 3G model: a 250-megabyte plan for $14.99 per month, or an unlimited plan for $29.99 per month. Both plans will also allow free use of AT&T wifi hotspots, such as those at Starbucks. Unlike most wireless device plans, these optional plans will be pre-paid with no contract lock-in, and can be enabled or cancelled at any time from a control panel on the device itself. The device will be sold unlocked to permit possible use with other carriers. ... Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:27:00 +0100 812476 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/UXfP0dCNTqw/apple-ipad-tablet-reactions We asked a panel of leading commentators in a range of industries for their reactions to the launch of Apple's iPad tablet computer. Here are some of their thoughts …Jonathan Glancey: Guardian architecture and design correspondent Without holding one in my hands and trying one out, I can only say that the universally-hyped iPad looks very much like a giant iPhone.And none the worse for that. Designed by a team led by Jonathan Ive, Apple's British-born head of design, the iPad is slim, sleek and to use an overworked, yet appropriate word, minimalist. It reflects Ive's clearly expressedadmiration for the work of the self-effacing and supremely talented German designer, Dieter Ram – 45 years Ive's senior – whose electric and electronic products for Braun have been a byword for fine, simple design for half a century.Computer and communication buffs will have to tell us how well the iPad performs. If I works as well as it probably does, then it will sell like hot cakes – raising the perennially fascinating issue of why so very many people, worldwide, otherwise oblivious to such coolly sophisticated design, will fork out good money for Apple's latest gizmo. Because it's a gizmo is the most probable answer. Would a Jonathan Ive or Dieter Rams style house, or pad I should say, sell as well? I very much doubt it.Bigger than a mobile phone and smaller than a laptop, the iPad will be carried around the house and in bags to and from schools, colleges and workplaces. Will its shiny plastic and metal surfaces scratch? How will it cope when it drops on floors and pavements? Will it need, and does it come with, a special bag to carry it about in and protect it? Just how robust will it be?Apple has surely addressed such questions, yet the proof of the digital pudding will lie in the e-ting. ... Wed, 27 Jan 2010 19:58:36 +0100 812536 http://www.slaw.ca/2010/01/27/apples-ipad/ Simon beat me to the punch mentioning the iPad. I’ve been watching a live-blog of the event.  These are my first impressions. It’s meant for things like  “Browsing the web. Doing email. Enjoying and sharing pics. Watching videos. Enjoying music. Playing games. Reading ebooks”.  Jobs says it has to be better than either a phone or a laptop at these,or its not worthwhile. It certainly looks good in his demo – works like the iPhone — indeed,  iPhone apps work on it. Pricing:  $499 for 16GB.  32GB is $599, 64GB is $799. 3G models cost an extra $130. $629, 729, and 829 with 3G. Wifi versions ship in 60 days. Wifi plus 3G  in 90. Apple has negotiated some good 3G rates with ATT. That’s for data — doesn’t seem to do voice. But it has a mic and speakers — so Skype? So is this really, as Jobs has apparently said “ the most important thing I’ve ever done.”? Could it, as some have suggested, save the publishing industry, reboot education and maybe even change the way we treat medicine? Or is that just hyperbole resulting from the Steve Jobs reality distortion field? Frankly, while impressive, there was nothing that was really unexpected. The next few days will be interesting as the tech press dissects the good and bad of the iPad. This is not the first, or the only, slate type product. The HP slate  Steve Ballmer introduced at the CES is another example. It won’t be available until later this year. But is the iPad perhaps the one that, like the iPhone, will be the disruptive tipping point that will define the category? Frankly, I want a device like this — especially if I can use it to replace paper versions of newspapers and magazines. It could also be a great alternative to a laptop for taking notes in a meeting, or taking  to visit clients. ... Wed, 27 Jan 2010 19:39:18 +0100 813872 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/01/27/notes-from-apple-its-going-to-be-called-the-ipad/ UPDATE: A Video of the Keynote/Introduction by Steve Jobs is Now Available UPDATE: THE APPLE iPad WEB PAGE is NOW ONLINE!!! A seven page video is also included. Apple’s Steve Jobs is in the middle of an introduction and demonstration of the MUCH discussed “tablet” device that until now was just a rumor. You can read liveblogging coverage from the Wall Street Journal, The Unofficial Apple Weblog and The New York Times. Some Apple Recent Stats Before We Begin: 1) Apple Just Sold its 250th iPod 2) 140,000 Apps at the Onlne App Store 3) Those Apps Have Been Downloaded 3 Billion Times Fast Facts (IPad Features) ——– + “Netbooks are nothing but cheap laptops.”–Steve Jobs + Browse the web using a version of Safari + Listen to Music with Your iPad (It’s really an iPod as well) + “It’s Very Very Thin” (1/2″ thick (or thin), Weighs 1.5 pounds., (9.7 inch display) + Speaker and Mic + Portrait and Ladscape Viewing Options + Watch Video (including Hi-Def YouTube) + Access Your Mail, Maps Will Come from Google (Interesting) + Photo Browsing with iPhoto + The iPad is “much more intimate than a laptop.”–Steve Jobs + a 1 GHz A4 chip,, 16 GB 32 or 64 GB of flash storage. + It has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth + It also has an accelerometer and Compass + Ten hours of battery life. According to Jobs, He Can Watch a Movie from SF to Tokyo and Watch a Video During the Entire Flight + iPad Can Sync over USB using PC or Mac + iPad CAN RUN iPhone Apps + Demo: NY Times on iPad: Resize Fonts, Videos that are Attached to Stories can be Viewed at the Same Time) + eBooks: We’re Going to Stand on Kindle’s Shoulders and Go A Little Bit Further–Steve Jobs, Say Hello to iBooks. + Yukari Iwatani Kane writes, “A new iBookstore is fully integrated. ... Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:19:52 +0100 812613 http://www.lisnews.org/coming_out_nowthe_ipad_aka_apple_tablet Wired speculates about the up and coming new device that Apple will be announcing today. Will it be a glorified book reader? An iPod Touch/iPhone on steroids? We will find out very quickly here, and then we can all envision how we could use the device. Will it help you at work? Will it be the perfect commuting partner? Will you use it as the mother of all television remotes? Consider this, though. How will it affect our children? How will they use the tablet? If your children are anything like mine, they will want to play with it the moment it comes out of the box. They will be amazed at how large their favorite iPod Touch apps look on the larger screen. And the screen will be large enough that they can both play with it at once. We could watch videos from the internet or do interactive educational websites (I’m looking at you, BBC) without leaving our school table. When we go on a trip, we could bring our entire homeschool library with us. Of course, we’d have to have two tablets, since we have two children. Read More http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/01/how-will-the-apple-tablet-change-our-kids-lives/#ixzz0d... and in the NY Times. (Source: LISNews - Librarian And Information Science News) Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:56:51 +0100 813070 http://lisnews.org/coming_out_nowthe_ipad_aka_apple_tablet Wired speculates about the up and coming new device that Apple will be announcing today. Will it be a glorified book reader? An iPod Touch/iPhone on steroids? We will find out very quickly here, and then we can all envision how we could use the device. Will it help you at work? Will it be the perfect commuting partner? Will you use it as the mother of all television remotes? Consider this, though. How will it affect our children? How will they use the tablet? If your children are anything like mine, they will want to play with it the moment it comes out of the box. They will be amazed at how large their favorite iPod Touch apps look on the larger screen. And the screen will be large enough that they can both play with it at once. We could watch videos from the internet or do interactive educational websites (I’m looking at you, BBC) without leaving our school table. When we go on a trip, we could bring our entire homeschool library with us. Of course, we’d have to have two tablets, since we have two children. Read More http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/01/how-will-the-apple-tablet-change-our-kids-lives/#ixzz0d... and in the NY Times. (Source: LISNews.org) Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:56:51 +0100 812571 http://lisnews.org/coming_out_later_todaythe_apple_tablet Wired speculates about the up and coming new device that Apple will be announcing today. Will it be a glorified book reader? An iPod Touch/iPhone on steroids? We will find out very quickly here, and then we can all envision how we could use the device. Will it help you at work? Will it be the perfect commuting partner? Will you use it as the mother of all television remotes? Consider this, though. How will it affect our children? How will they use the tablet? If your children are anything like mine, they will want to play with it the moment it comes out of the box. They will be amazed at how large their favorite iPod Touch apps look on the larger screen. And the screen will be large enough that they can both play with it at once. We could watch videos from the internet or do interactive educational websites (I’m looking at you, BBC) without leaving our school table. When we go on a trip, we could bring our entire homeschool library with us. Of course, we’d have to have two tablets, since we have two children. Read More http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/01/how-will-the-apple-tablet-change-our-kids-lives/#ixzz0d... (Source: LISNews.org) Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:56:51 +0100 812444 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/tCszIAwIVSU/ Angela Bole, Book Industry Study Group; Kelly Gallagher, Bowker. First presentation of data from a major industry survey ofebook consumers. 95% confidence level Demographics: male 51%, female 49%; income over 75K 37%, 35K to 75K, 38%, under 35K, 25%; 23% RURAL, 24% URBAN, 43% suburban Whey e instead of P?: in order 1. affordability, 2. easy to download, 3. readability, 4. instant access, 5. portability 34% decreased their purchase of hardcover books What extras would you pay for: in order 1. connect with other readers, 2. color photos graphics, 3. give/lend 4. wireless access 19% now purchase ebooks exclusively and 25% now purchase mostly ebooks When asked about the major benefits of ebooks three of the major benefits relate solely to price. Would you wait to buy an ebook after print book comes out? 30% will wait, 24% will buy the print book, 34% not sure Effect of DRM on ebook purchases: 38% don’t know, 34% not an issue, 28% concerned Most popular devices: 47% computer/laptop, 32% Kindle, 11% iPhone Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:26:08 +0100 812417 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/QFuVepC43tQ/ I’m at Digital Book World in New York. The program begins at 8:30 EST and WiFi seems to work, so I’ll probably be able to post during the day. Here’s a shot of the main venue. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 26 Jan 2010 12:52:47 +0100 812083 http://blog.njla.org/archives/2010/01/#000663 January 25, 2009 JOELLE TESSLER The Associated Press WASHINGTON - The Agriculture Department is handing out nearly $310 million in stimulus money to bring high-speed Internet connections to 14 rural communities around the country. The awards being announced Monday amount to the largest round of government funding for broadband since Congress included $7.2 billion for high-speed networks and adoption programs in last year's stimulus bill. The money is intended to bring jobs and economic opportunities to rural communities, poor neighborhoods and other parts of the country that are falling behind in the information age. It is also intended to pay for the network infrastructure needed to deliver telemedicine services, offer online classes and provide other applications that require a lot of bandwidth. "This big batch of projects will create urgently needed jobs now and also build networks that will fuel rural economic development for years to come," said Jonathan Adelstein, who heads the Agriculture Department's Rural Utilities Service, which is awarding the money. The awards being announced Monday include: , an $88.1 million grant and loan to an Alaskan telecommunications company that will build "middle mile" networks to connect 65 Eskimo towns and villages in southwestern Alaska to the Internet. , a $19.1 million grant and loan to a Missouri electric cooperative to build a fiber-optic network that will reach nearly 5,000 homes, businesses, public safety entities and community organizations in rural Ralls County, Mo. , a $3.9 million grant to a unit of TDS Telecommunications Corp. to build a digital subscriber line network to serve homes, businesses and community institutions in sparsely populated parts of Alabama. , a $376,000 grant and loan to a telephone company to build a WiMax network that can deliver wireless broadband connections to nearly 325 homes in northeast Iowa. ... Tue, 26 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0100 812655 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/01/25/ohio-state-universitys-new-smartphone-ready-mobile-site/ The staff, students, faculty, and alumni at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio now have a new mobile site that’s optimized for smartphones (like the iPhone). Another version for traditional mobiles is also available. This page has a quick overview of what’s available for the smartphone version. 1. It’s location aware. 2. Directions to campus locations (freshmen will love this feature) 3. Real-Time arrival times for campus buses 4. Ohio State “backgrounds, ringtones, links to Ohio State on Facebook and Twitter. OSU’s devoted fans will love this. Smart move to include it. 5. Access the Library Catalog (but no other databases at this time). The smartphone mobile site is at: http://m.osu.edu. Users of “traditional” cell phones can go to osu.edu/mobile. Overall, they’re off to an impressive start. Source: Ohio State University via Gerry McKiernan, Lorcan Dempsey (via Twitter) (Source: ResourceShelf) Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:07:15 +0100 811919 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/01/25/report-from-deloitte-discusses-the-smartphone-becoming-a-search-phone/ A new report from Deloitte, 2010 Global Telecommunications Predictions, includes a couple of pages on search in the mobile space, specifically with smartphones. A second section on Mobile VoIP becoming a social network might also be of interest. Access the Complete Report (28 pages; PDF) Source: Deloitte (Source: ResourceShelf) Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:44:23 +0100 811925 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/davidleeking/~3/gbw_Imqc-cg/ Foursquare is a location-based game. From Foursquare’s website: “We’re all about helping you find new ways to explore the city. We’ll help you meet up with your friends and let you earn points and unlock badges for discovering new places, doing new things and meeting new people.” Basically, Foursquare works like last.fm or librarything, but instead of sharing music you’ve listened to or books you’ve read, you’re sharing places you’re visiting, and aggregating that list out to your friends. To play, install an app on your phone, via an iPhone or Android app (a Blackberry one is in the works). You can also use the mobile version of their website for other phones that have web access. Then go visit places … like a coffee shop, a restaurant … basically wherever it is that you go. Once there, “check in” with the app. Checking in gives you points and badges. If you visit a place more than anyone else, you become the “mayor” of that place (until your title is swiped by someone else). Friend people, and see your points tallied with everyone on your friends list. In the process, you can also create to-do lists and tips at each place you visit, and suggest things for your friends to try or do. Every time you do something, it can be shared with your Twitter and Facebook friends. So … how does this relate to libraries again? Well… here are some ideas for your library or organization on Foursquare: Add your library as a place, or edit the entry if someone else has already added it. You can enter your street address (Google map is included, phone number, and your library’s Twitter name. Add tags relevant to the library. For example, I have added the tags library, books, music, movies, and wifi to my library’s Foursquare entry. ... Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:33:14 +0100 811915 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/01/25/mobile-site-claude-moore-health-sciences-library/ Today’s mobile site comes from the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library in Charlottesville, VA (part of UVa). It’s accessible at: http://mobile.hsl.viriginia.edu and features numerous resources. Although, we were unable to access the mobile service from a desktop browser, this page lists all of the features that are available. We also looked at the site from our iPhone. The site is quite easy on the eyes which is important when you’re staring at a small screen for even a few minutes. Plus, well, it just looks nice. From the Health Science Library mobile site you can access: + Library Info + Useful Medical Related iPhone/Touch Apps + Connect with a Librarian + Events at the Hospital + More Medical Resources Ready access to School of Medicine iPhone/iTouch web resources including ref cards, clinical videos, epocrates, formulary and more. + Watch Clinical Videos and Presentations + Search for People at UVa + View Live Webcams of Downtown Mall, and UVA Rotunda web cams. + Access Bus Schedules Also, very minor but useful, the main number of the library is at the bottom of each page. That’s one robust set of resources. We wouldn’t be surprised to check back in a month or two and find more content. Kudos to the Claude Moore Health Sciences Center. Btw, the University of Virgina Library also has its own mobile site (beta) that’s available at: m.lib.virginia.edu. (Source: ResourceShelf) Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:27:02 +0100 811929 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/2EWOdSRh1ns/ The Asus DR-950 has been announced and should launch at the end of March or early April It has a 1024×768 resolution screen and uses SiPix technology, not E Ink. It is only 9mm thick and incudes a virtual keyboard, handwriting recognition, 2GB or 4GB of memory and an SDHC slot, along with a web browser and RSS feed reader. It will have a built-in dictionary and text-to-speech. WiFi will be included and there will also be an options 3.5G HSDPA,WiMax module. Formats include PDF, unprotected epub, html, text and various audio and picture formats. Price is £250, about US$450, and more details and pictures are here. Technorati Tags: e-readers, eReader, ereaders, Paul Biba, Asus Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:45:30 +0100 811895 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/P8BSPPbk9cM/ I’ll be at DBW on Tuesday and Wednesday covering the program for TeleRead. Given the vagaries of free time and WiFi, it may be that regular news postings will be a bit thin for those two days. Normal news should resume on Thursday. Meanwhile the conference looks quite exciting with a lot of targeted presentations that should be of interest to all our readers. Technorati Tags: Paul Biba, Digital Book World Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 25 Jan 2010 13:58:22 +0100 811902 http://mhclibrary.blogspot.com/2010/01/laptops-to-loan.html Occasionally students might find that they need to do a little mobile computing around campus, but do not have a computer where they want to work. To this end, Library Services now provides laptops to students that need some mobile computing power where and when they need it. Internet services can be easily accessed using the laptops' built-in wireless cards and our wireless network.Students can (Source: Medicine Hat College Library Services Blog) Mon, 25 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0100 812926 http://caslisottawainformation.blogspot.com/2010/01/ottawa-public-library-acknowledged-for.html When Ottawa made the short list for the 2010 intelligent communities of the year award at the annual conference of the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) on January 20, the Ottawa Public Library’s (OPL) digital inclusion programs were singled out as actively using broadband and information technology to excel in today’s global economy.“This international recognition confirms the important role that the Ottawa Public Library plays in the education of our future community leaders,” says Councillor Jan Harder, OPL Board Chair. Ottawa was commended for its commitment to using information technology for education that helps young people prepare for knowledge-based careers in the community.OPL offers a dynamic array of digital products and services to its patrons. It has seen consistent, year-over-year increases in visits to its web site, which numbered more than five million in 2008. And in 2009, electronic database usage was up nearly 20 per cent over the previous year.BiblioCommons, the new catalogue introduced in 2009, is an example of constant technical and usability enhancements to ensure that information is accessible in a way that keeps users engaged. The new catalogue is easier to use, has greater search relevancy and provides social networking tools so that people can share information and interests.In 2009, circulation of digital media such as audio books, e-books, and music increased by 90 per cent over 2008. Patrons can download these items from the OPL web site and many of the holdings may be transferred to a personal listening device such as an iPod or iPhone so that users can learn on the go.High-speed wireless Internet access was first piloted at the Ottawa Public Library in 2007. Since 2008, it has been available in all 33 branches of the OPL. Users enjoy online connectivity in OPL branches that allows them a place, other than school or home, to continue studying, working and living online. ... Mon, 25 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0100 812658 http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2010/01/big-conversation-predictions-past-and-present.html CILIPs ‘big conversation’ is posing the question ‘What should our professional institute look like by the middle of the next decade? And what’s the roadmap that will get us there?’ [1] These are both good questions of course, and worthy of discussion.  However, before we can start to answer those questions I think that there are other, more general points that we need to consider first. Clearly CILIP does not exist in a vacuum – it is there to support the profession, so we need to look at where libraries and librarians are, and before we can do that we need to consider what the Internet generally is going to look like, since that will dramatically affect us all. Consequently I’d like to spend some time considering predictions for the future, and try and tie some of those into librarianship (and I’m using that term as a catchall for the information industry). Then we’ll be in a position to view what CILIP can and should be doing. However, before we even do that I think that we need to look back a decade to see how far we have come. It’s very easy to take what we currently have for granted – we do it all of the time, but if we start to go back a few years it can be surprising to see just how far we have come.  Ten years ago we managed without  Broadband access, Creative Commons, Facebook, Flickr, Gmail, Google Docs and maps, the iPod, the iPhone, MySpace, Podcasts, Spotify, Twitter, Web 2.0 , Wi-Fi, Wikipedia, or YouTube. I went back and looked at a copy of the first edition of my book ‘The Advanced Internet Searcher’s Handbook’ as well, since I wanted to remind myself of the search scene at around the turn of the century.  There was no mention at all of Google (it had hardly come onto the scene at that point), and I was writing in detail about search techniques for AltaVista, index based search engines, getting the most out of Netscape, intelligent agents and the value of USENET groups. ... Mon, 25 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0100 811865 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/01/24/some-controlled-serendipity-in-the-the-time-of-search/ Resource of the Week — Some Thoughts on “Controlled Serendipity” By Gary Price and Shirl Kennedy, editors ‘Controlled Serendipity’ Liberates the Web (Nick Bilton, New York Times) If someone approached me even five years ago and explained that one day in the near future I would be filtering, collecting and sharing content for thousands of perfect strangers to read — and doing it for free — I would have responded with a pretty perplexed look. Yet today I can’t imagine living in a world where I don’t filter, collect and share. More important, I couldn’t conceive of a world of news and information without the aid of others helping me find the relevant links. Comments From ResourceShelf From Gary: “(F)iltering, collecting and sharing content” are things that info pros and many information companies have been doing for a long time, both in print and electronically — particularly in the area of aggregation. Now, many of us — both information professionals and information industry vendors — have to find new ideas and methods to make our services valuable to users. Which by itself is not enough. We must also make sure people know about our services rather than just going to the web and bypassing us completely. Which means information professionals need to adjust, learn new skills, and develop new services to go along with those skills. That doesn’t mean we should be forgetting our “classic skills”. It means we should be adapting them to the times and circumstances in which we find ourselves. On example — metadata creation and management (what some might call “cataloging 2010?) is more important now than ever. And facilitating information literacy is an ongoing process. Other new skills that come to mind are digital preservation, digital curation, organization of digital content, and working with/for the open access community. ... Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:15:24 +0100 811713 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/01/24/google-encourages-african-students-to-translate-english-language-wikipedia-articles-for-swahili-version/ Noam Cohen writes: The company is sponsoring a contest to encourage students in Tanzania and Kenya to create articles for the Swahili version of Wikipedia, mainly by translating them from the English Wikipedia. The winners are to be announced Friday, with prizes including a laptop, a wireless modem, cellphones and Google gear. So far the contest, Google says, has added more than 900 articles from more than 800 contributors. [Snip] In e-mail interviews, two of the finalists in the Swahili contest said the arrival of Google on their campuses changed them from passive users of Wikipedia to active contributors. Still, they expressed mixed feelings about receiving material rewards for sharing knowledge. Access the Complete Article Source: New York Times (Source: ResourceShelf) Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:03:19 +0100 811716 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bryanloar/~3/lFsDJBTA3_0/ Bryan Loar posted a photo: model RR This message has been sent using the picture and Video service from Verizon Wireless! To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture. Note: To play video messages sent to email, Quicktime@ 6.5 or higher is required. (Source: Brave New World) Sun, 24 Jan 2010 04:10:04 +0100 811245 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/eX2rQvbuMLc/ BeBook says that the Neo is the fastest reader on the market, up to 2.5 times faster than other units. It has a 6″ screen and a WACOM touchpad which can be used for sketching, annotations and text markup. It has WiFi, but no 3G, and 512MB on board, with an SD slot for more expansion. I can’t find any info on their site about formats, but other websites are reporting it reads Epub and PDF. It will retail, in the US for $299 and be available on Feburary 25. There is a series of YouTube videos about it here. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sat, 23 Jan 2010 16:43:31 +0100 811148 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/5pRaqFjyBvA/ I was visiting my library’s web site the other night and clicked on over to the digital downloads section to see if any new eBooks showed up. As an avid eBook reader and librarian, I know we’re pretty lucky with our public library services here in Ohio to have the opportunity to download eBooks and other materials to use. Problems and Challenges! However, Ohio libraries, much like others across the nation, are increasingly being stretched to the limit to offer both traditional services such as employment help and children’s storytimes as well as digital services such as eBooks, audio books and others. Other problems extend far beyond what libraries offer their communities. Nationwide, many politicians see the library as an easy target for cuts. In addition, voters are increasingly tired of additional tax levies on the ballot, even if they might be something for the common good such as libraries. A final challenge libraries face is mental, that is the mind of the patron. For anyone considering eBooks, do you go with a commercial vendor such as Amazon and the Kindle or Barnes & Noble and the nook—or do you first consider seeing what, if anything, your local library might have? If libraries do not even come to mind, then why should the voter be taxed for a public library when the commercial market can offer better services at a lower cost? You: The Patron! Library patrons are changing—and demanding their library change as well. Increasingly, you, me, us—we are all seeing increased digital usage of the library, even when it might not be fully capable of provisioning those needs. In a report made available from the American Library Association entitled Libraries Connect Communities 3, it’s interesting to read just exactly what people expect of their library. ... Sat, 23 Jan 2010 13:00:28 +0100 811152 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/kvmJMlnj4P8/ This weekend I am sitting at VisionCon, holding down the organization table for Eclectic Endeavors, the organization that puts on the other convention in town. As it happens, the Barnes & Noble is halfway between the convention hotel and the mall food court, so I had the chance to check out the Nook in person today. When I first saw the thing, it was showing a picture of some trees with a note to “press the power button” to wake it up. I spent a good thirty seconds turning the thing over in my hands trying to find that button. They had hidden it pretty well. Until I did find it, I wasn’t sure whether the Nook was an actual Nook or just a mockup. But when I did find it, the picture changed, and I fiddled around with it for a few minutes. The device was about the same size as the Astak or Sony I had reviewed, but considerably heavier. I can’t help thinking that would get uncomfortable to hold after a while. I can’t say I noticed page turns taking significantly longer than other e-ink readers I used, but I did think that the interface was often a bit unintuitive. When you had to move the cursor up and down to choose from a list of books, for instance, the arrow buttons appeared on the touch-sensitive color screen below. I also noticed the device took a rather long time to format a new book before it appeared. As I was looking at it, another man expressed an interest in checking it out, so I passed it on to him. We talked about it for a bit. He had a friend who had lots of e-books and had been talking to him about getting a device. I noted that if I had to buy a dedicated e-reader, it would probably be the Kindle, and he had said he had heard that you couldn’t put a lot of other books on a Kindle. I pointed out that would be true of the Nook, as well, and at least the Kindle would let you browse the web and download public-domain titles from other websites. Then I showed him eReader on my iPod Touch and he was fairly impressed. ... Sat, 23 Jan 2010 03:15:40 +0100 811009 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/rihlib/2010/01/22/library-news-notes-12210/ Rowland Institute at Harvard Library News & Notes January 22, 2010 This is the final issue of Library News & Notes. I am grateful to have served as librarian in the Rowland Institute these past twelve years. The science keeps getting better and better. Thank you. Quotes of the week There is no way unless you’re dead, and even then there is still a question, that you’re not going to offend somebody. There’s always someone that’s going to get offended over something that somebody does. ... Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:33:50 +0100 811863 http://joblist.ala.org/modules/jobseeker/controller.cfm?rssjobid=14283 Library Director (North Idaho College) ALL APPLICATIONS ARE SUBMITTED ONLINE VIA www.nic.edu/employment LIBRARY DIRECTOR - MOLSTEAD LIBRARY - NORTH IDAHO COLLEGE Embrace the opportunity to lead an outstanding library to its next level of service! Molstead Library is a busy, welcoming wireless facility with a $318,000 budget, three faculty librarians, five support staff and many student employees. Together we serve students and faculty with resources that include over 70,000 volumes as well as dozens of electronic databases. ... Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:10:02 +0100 810770 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/Rrh9g5mUlm4/ In yesterday’s post, I gave four reasons (five if you want to count returns separately) why the giant publishers are on their funeral march: they are too big to react quickly to market conditions; they haven’t learned the Dell lesson; they let others sit in the catbird’s seat of deciding industry policy; and they haven’t come to grips with who are their future customers. Essentially, the giant publishers are early 20th century behemoths who have yet to adapt to 21st century technology and consumers. These are interrelated problems, all stemming from the same root, which is the giant publisher having ceded industry leadership to outsiders. In a way, the Dell lesson – Tell the customer he can have it his way and then limit the options – was tackled in my end-the-paperback proposal. Publishers have to learn to create their markets, not be led by markets imposed on them. This is the difference between Amazon, Apple, Google, and the giant publishers. Amazon led the market by creating the Kindle and Kindle editions, and Apple and Google are inventing their own book markets. The giant publishers are trying to catch up. But Amazon (soon to be joined by Apple and Google), by leading the market defined it and is setting the terms. Amazon is also applying the Dell lesson: You can have an ebook in any format you want as long as it is a Kindle format. The giant publishers, who should have led, instead fumbled so badly that they are in disarray over how to catch up. More importantly, perhaps, for the publishers is that Amazon is turning them into the bad guys in the public relations war for the consumer soul. It’s the problem of the giant publishers being a sumo wrestler when a ballerina is needed — and not recognizing the problem.To survive the days ahead, the giant publishers need to lead the marketplace, not follow it. ... Fri, 22 Jan 2010 12:15:54 +0100 810853 http://www.shore.com/commentary/weblogs/2010/01/appfail-amazon-opens-up-kindle-only-to.html Amazon Kindle has always been an odd duck of a platform, a proprietary e-book reader that bundled wireless access with a device that offered a very limited range of functionality. But as the first major e-book platform with an integrated ecommerce function, it gained early followers and a lot of media hoopla. Enter Apple, which is trying to become the default delivery mechanism for a galaxy of mainstream media content sources via its soon-to-be-released whiz-bang iSlate platform, including book content from Harper Collins. All of a sudden last year's bright, shiny thing from Amazon seems not so bright and shiny after all, prompting a late move by Amazon to open up its Kindle platform more aggressively to software developers. As noted by CNET, though, this is way too little at a time in which software developers are inundated with platforms begging for appplications to make them stand out from the crowd. To boot, premium applications will have to pay a healthy chunk of their revenues to Amazon, presumably to cover the cost of downloads, which is bundled into the Amazon service from a consumer perspective. Kindle readers on iPhones and other platforms may help to buoy Amazon's overall e-book strategy, but it is highly doubtful that the Kindle itself has much of a lifespan as a multi-functional content delivery platform. In turn, this puts pressure on Amazon's overall sales picture, as a generation attuned to iTunes downloads may be more willing to add books to that list of items to cram into their portable devices than to shift to downloads on the Kindle platform that's centered around yesterday's content formats.The vision of the Kindle was myopic from day one, too bent on luring timid publishers into the e-book era before others became premium e-book download kings. ... Fri, 22 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0100 810820 http://digital-scholarship.com/digitalkoans/2010/01/21/amazon-to-release-kindle-development-kit-for-active-content/ Amazon will release a beta version of the Kindle Development Kit next month. Here's an excerpt from the press release: For the past two years, Amazon has welcomed authors and publishers to directly upload and sell content in the Kindle Store through the self-service Kindle publishing platform. Today, Amazon announced that it is inviting software developers to build and upload active content that will be available in the Kindle Store later this year. The new Kindle Development Kit gives developers access to programming interfaces, tools and documentation to build active content for Kindle—the #1 bestselling, most wished for, and most gifted product across all categories on Amazon. Developers can learn more about the Kindle Development Kit today at http://www.amazon.com/kdk/ and sign up to be notified when the limited beta starts next month. "We've heard from lots of developers over the past two years who are excited to build on top of Kindle," said Ian Freed, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. "The Kindle Development Kit opens many possibilities–we look forward to being surprised by what developers invent." The Kindle Development Kit enables developers to build active content that leverages Kindle's unique combination of seamless and invisible 3G wireless delivery over Amazon Whispernet, high-resolution electronic paper display that looks and reads like real paper, and long battery life of seven days with wireless activated. For example, Handmark is building an active Zagat guide featuring their trusted ratings, reviews and more for restaurants in cities around the world, and Sonic Boom is building word games and puzzles. Related Posts "Open Content Alliance (OCA) vs. ... Fri, 22 Jan 2010 03:03:46 +0100 810903 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DigitalKoans/~3/xiMtBv2K2Uk/ Amazon will release a beta version of the Kindle Development Kit next month. Here's an excerpt from the press release: For the past two years, Amazon has welcomed authors and publishers to directly upload and sell content in the Kindle Store through the self-service Kindle publishing platform. Today, Amazon announced that it is inviting software developers to build and upload active content that will be available in the Kindle Store later this year. The new Kindle Development Kit gives developers access to programming interfaces, tools and documentation to build active content for Kindle—the #1 bestselling, most wished for, and most gifted product across all categories on Amazon. Developers can learn more about the Kindle Development Kit today at http://www.amazon.com/kdk/ and sign up to be notified when the limited beta starts next month. "We've heard from lots of developers over the past two years who are excited to build on top of Kindle," said Ian Freed, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. "The Kindle Development Kit opens many possibilities–we look forward to being surprised by what developers invent." The Kindle Development Kit enables developers to build active content that leverages Kindle's unique combination of seamless and invisible 3G wireless delivery over Amazon Whispernet, high-resolution electronic paper display that looks and reads like real paper, and long battery life of seven days with wireless activated. For example, Handmark is building an active Zagat guide featuring their trusted ratings, reviews and more for restaurants in cities around the world, and Sonic Boom is building word games and puzzles. Related Posts Gawronski v. Amazon. ... Fri, 22 Jan 2010 03:03:03 +0100 811633 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/QeBZ9rfiuIQ/good-ramblers-hill-walking Originally published on 22 January 1923Anyone who is depressed by the thought of some fifty thousand able-bodied men, in every great ­English city, looking on at a few others ­playing football every Saturday ­afternoon should be cheered by a sight of the just-published "Rambler's Handbook" for 1923.The mere list of societies included in the Ramblers' Federation, in the Manchester district alone, indicates the hold that the joys of mountain and moorland walking have on the more strongly individual and less sheep-like types of townsmen and townswomen.It may not be fantastic to think that the extremely small print of this annual handbook indicates also the average excellence of the hill walker's eyes, those eyes, as Mr Rudyard Kipling has described them, with the pupils blown into pin-points by the astringent cold of moorland winds.Another surprising measure of the welcome ravages of the passion for upland rambling was furnished not long ago, when a walker was lost – and was afterwards found to have died of exposure – on Kinder, and many hundreds of men and women well qualified for the work turned out and scoured every square yard of a great tract of broken moorland till he was found. To live submissively in great towns, without ever going out to get an embrace of mother earth and renew one's acquaintance with ­solitude, is a deprivation, almost a creeping disease.In an appreciable degree one is remade, and made better, every time one spends a long day among the heather or the peat; a ­coating of the almost inevitably ­incipient parasitism that comes of living always in a crowd falls from you; you "breathe deep and are yourself" – a phrase that underwent some mockery a few years ago and yet represents something not all unreal or ignoble.It is good to see that some thousands, at any rate, of northern townsmen have found out the secret. ... Fri, 22 Jan 2010 00:05:25 +0100 810538 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/01/21/archived-webinar-from-educause-now-available-library-in-your-pocket/ Yesterday, EDUCAUSE held an “Live!” webinar about the mobile web. It’s official title, “Library in Your Pocket: Strategies and Techniques for Developing Successful Mobile Services. The event was hosted by Steve Wrona. David Woodbury (Libraries Fellow, North Carolina State University) and Jason Casden (Digital Technologies Development Librarian, North Carolina State University) were the guest speakers. Here’s the Abstract: Students are arriving on college campuses with the ability to connect to the web with a diverse array of mobile devices. However, some online services aren’t a good fit for the small screen, and new services can also be developed that take advantage of the mobile user context. Developers of the NCSU Libraries Mobile site ((http://m.lib.ncsu.edu) will share their strategy and techniques for creating a suite of mobile services that are optimized for a majority of mobile web platforms, from iPhones to flip phones. The session will also include a discussion of site usage and promotion as well as plans for future mobile services. To access the archived presentation (it’s free) head to this page. You’ll find slides, transcript, and selecting “seminar archive (off-site) will open the complete presentation (with audio). EDUCAUSE uses Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro. Source: EDUCAUSE (Source: ResourceShelf) Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:05:45 +0100 810623 http://www.teleread.org/2010/01/21/kindle-tip-pre-ordering/ One of the nicest things about the Kindle is that it takes advantage of all the ecommerce applications that Amazon has built. Pre-ordering is one of them. Just like with any physical product that Amazon sells, you can pre-order an ebook and when it comes out it will appear magically on your Kindle when you turn wireless on. And if the price goes down after your pre-order you will only be charged the then-current price. This has happened to me a couple of times. Today I read a review of Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, by N. K. Jemisin, on io9 and then checked with Amazon. It will be released on February 25, so I pre-ordered it and next month it will show up on my machine. Neat. Technorati Tags: e-book, e-books, e-reader, e-readers, ebook, ebooks, ereader, ereaders, Paul Biba, Amazon, Kindle Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:25:52 +0100 810467 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/UWlta_OG0N0/ One of the nicest things about the Kindle is that it takes advantage of all the ecommerce applications that Amazon has built. Pre-ordering is one of them. Just like with any physical product that Amazon sells, you can pre-order an ebook and when it comes out it will appear magically on your Kindle when you turn wireless on. And if the price goes down after your pre-order you will only be charged the then-current price. This has happened to me a couple of times. Today I read a review of Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, by N. K. Jemisin, on io9 and then checked with Amazon. It will be released on February 25, so I pre-ordered it and next month it will show up on my machine. Neat. Technorati Tags: e-book, e-books, e-reader, e-readers, ebook, ebooks, ereader, ereaders, Paul Biba, Amazon, Kindle Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:25:52 +0100 810404 http://www.teleread.org/2010/01/21/big-news-for-kindle-owners-amazon-to-release-a-kindle-sdk/ According to a news release from Amazon, next month they will be releasing an SDK (software development kit) that will allow software developers to build and upload active content that will be available on the Kindle store later this year. The release states that Handmark is developing an active Zagat guide, Sonic Boom is building word games and puzzles and EA Mobile is porting some of its games. Of course the Kindle can never be real competition in this area for anything Apple might offer. The slow-drawing e-ink screen and low horsepower CPU will severely limit the type of applications that will run well on a Kindle. On the other hand, the long battery life and free 3G wireless, along with the new games and applications, will ratify the purchase of a Kindle to current owners, and will draw a continued stream of buyers given the Kindle’s unparalleled ease of use and large, low priced book supply. Further, it gives Amazon more clout with publishers as it enhances the popularity of the already most popular reader on the market. The continued spin and publicity that this announcement will generate can only make awareness of ebooks even greater. Good for everyone. The full press release is after the break. Thanks to Aaron Pressman for the heads up. Technorati Tags: Amazon, Apple, e-book, e-books, ebook, ebooks, Kindle, Paul Biba For the past two years, Amazon has welcomed authors and publishers to directly upload and sell content in the Kindle Store through the self-service Kindle publishing platform. Today, Amazon announced that it is inviting software developers to build and upload active content that will be available in the Kindle Store later this year. The new Kindle Development Kit gives developers access to programming interfaces, tools and documentation to build active content for Kindle–the #1 bestselling, most wished for, and most gifted product across all categories on Amazon. ... Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:21:49 +0100 810469 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/-J6H2r392eQ/ According to a news release from Amazon, next month they will be releasing an SDK (software development kit) that will allow software developers to build and upload active content that will be available on the Kindle store later this year. The release states that Handmark is developing an active Zagat guide, Sonic Boom is building word games and puzzles and EA Mobile is porting some of its games. Of course the Kindle can never be real competition in this area for anything Apple might offer. The slow-drawing e-ink screen and low horsepower CPU will severely limit the type of applications that will run well on a Kindle. On the other hand, the long battery life and free 3G wireless, along with the new games and applications, will ratify the purchase of a Kindle to current owners, and will draw a continued stream of buyers given the Kindle’s unparalleled ease of use and large, low priced book supply. Further, it gives Amazon more clout with publishers as it enhances the popularity of the already most popular reader on the market. The continued spin and publicity that this announcement will generate can only make awareness of ebooks even greater. Good for everyone. The full press release is after the break. Thanks to Aaron Pressman for the heads up. Technorati Tags: Amazon, Apple, e-book, e-books, ebook, ebooks, Kindle, Paul Biba For the past two years, Amazon has welcomed authors and publishers to directly upload and sell content in the Kindle Store through the self-service Kindle publishing platform. Today, Amazon announced that it is inviting software developers to build and upload active content that will be available in the Kindle Store later this year. The new Kindle Development Kit gives developers access to programming interfaces, tools and documentation to build active content for Kindle–the #1 bestselling, most wished for, and most gifted product across all categories on Amazon. ... Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:21:49 +0100 810406 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/EIflvs3N5Eg/amazon-apps-kindle Developers are being sought to produce iPhone-style apps as Kindle faces Apple tablet challenge in ebook marketAmazon is inviting developers to build iPhone-style apps on its Kindle ebook reader, in what is seen as a pre-emptive strike against the expected launch next week of an Apple tablet computer.Developers are promised the capacity to "build and upload active content that will be available in the Kindle Store later this year". The first developers will be allowed to join a test programme – a limited beta – from next month.The Kindle development kit page is soliciting email addresses for applicants to join the beta programme. It offers the same 70% royalties available from Apple – minus "delivery fees" for using the Kindle's Whispernet wireless system, which gives Kindle owners in the US free access to shop for books and soon, presumably, apps.Early releases are said to include an active Zagat restaurant guide, word games and puzzles from Sonic Boom, and games from Electronic Arts.Amazon also looks to be following Apple by planning to filter apps through a set of guidelines, unlike Google's Android app platform which has no restrictions. It says that it will ban "voice over IP functionality, advertising, offensive materials, collection of customer information without express customer knowledge and consent, or usage of the Amazon or Kindle brand in any way", but adds that it will "refine" these guidelines during the beta.This is the second time in as many days that Amazon has improved its Kindle offering, while Apple appears to be getting ready to move into Amazon's territory: there are widespread reports that it is negotiating with publishers to carry their content on its forthcoming tablet.Yesterday Amazon doubled the royalties available through its Digital Text Platform, which lets authors and small publishers upload books for sale on the Kindle, again to an Apple-style 70%-30% split. ... Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:00:53 +0100 810320 http://www.teleread.org/2010/01/20/interview-daniel-hazelton-tech-admin-of-the-shifti-org-transformation-fiction-wiki/ When I was writing my series about “Paleo E-Books”, one of the sites I mentioned was Shifti.org, the wiki successor to the defunct Transfomation Stories Archive. In the course of writing about it, I came to read some of the stories there—and found I enjoyed them enough to contribute a few myself. While independent e-publishing sites such as Smashwords or unfiltered document hosts such as Scribd are what generally come to mind when you think of independent e-publishing, smaller themed fiction sites such as Shifti represent another way—one which does not tend to get as much media coverage. As you might guess, Shifti.org hosts mainly stories that involve some form of transformation taking place.  It lists 722 pages in the “Story” category at the time of this writing. Some of these stories center around transformation as fetish (as Hazelton says below, “Rule 34” applies), but most of them simply use it as a metaphor for exploring what it is like to be different. (Or, for that matter, exploring what it would be like to be turned into a furry animal.) I interviewed Shifti’s technical administrator, Daniel “ShadowWolf” Hazelton, through Google Wave about how the site works, the stories that are hosted there, and whether sites such as Shifti might represent the future of fiction on the Internet. Here is what he had to say. Whose idea was Shifti.org? Where did the idea come from? Originally Shifti lived on menagerie.tf and was BD’s idea. When the administrators and owners of menagerie moved to their current residence the site died. Moved forward a couple of years and people on the TSA-Talk mailing list started really complaining about how the "Transformation Story Archive" had not updated in ages. Rather than just join in on the bitching, I took the cues from BD and installed the MediaWiki code-base, then handed BD the keys for all the configuration. ... Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:13 +0100 810474 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/cU5osYS2vhs/ When I was writing my series about “Paleo E-Books”, one of the sites I mentioned was Shifti.org, the wiki successor to the defunct Transfomation Stories Archive. In the course of writing about it, I came to read some of the stories there—and found I enjoyed them enough to contribute a few myself. While independent e-publishing sites such as Smashwords or unfiltered document hosts such as Scribd are what generally come to mind when you think of independent e-publishing, smaller themed fiction sites such as Shifti represent another way—one which does not tend to get as much media coverage. As you might guess, Shifti.org hosts mainly stories that involve some form of transformation taking place.  It lists 722 pages in the “Story” category at the time of this writing. Some of these stories center around transformation as fetish (as Hazelton says below, “Rule 34” applies), but most of them simply use it as a metaphor for exploring what it is like to be different. (Or, for that matter, exploring what it would be like to be turned into a furry animal.) I interviewed Shifti’s technical administrator, Daniel “ShadowWolf” Hazelton, through Google Wave about how the site works, the stories that are hosted there, and whether sites such as Shifti might represent the future of fiction on the Internet. Here is what he had to say. Whose idea was Shifti.org? Where did the idea come from? Originally Shifti lived on menagerie.tf and was BD’s idea. When the administrators and owners of menagerie moved to their current residence the site died. Moved forward a couple of years and people on the TSA-Talk mailing list started really complaining about how the "Transformation Story Archive" had not updated in ages. Rather than just join in on the bitching, I took the cues from BD and installed the MediaWiki code-base, then handed BD the keys for all the configuration. ... Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:13 +0100 810233 http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/index.cfm?fa=viewfeature&id=2416 On January 5, Google launched the Nexus One -- its new "superphone" -- with a good deal of fanfare. Although the launch itself was quickly overshadowed by the online giant's surprise showdown with China over censorship, the company's attempt to rewrite the rules of the wireless industry has not gone unnoticed. Through its online store, Google is selling the Nexus One directly to consumers, sidestepping service providers that operate as device gatekeepers under the traditional sales model. The operation is off to a somewhat rocky start, leaving some observers to wonder whether Google can adapt to its new role in direct sales, but the bigger question is whether Google can alter consumer behavior and the economics of an entire industry. (Source: Knowledge@Wharton) Wed, 20 Jan 2010 21:35:09 +0100 810929 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/01/20/university-of-alberta-libraries-launches-mobile-site-beta/ As you know, we do our best to share with you some of the new mobile sites available online with a focus on sites and services coming from libraries. Of course we can’t get to them all but we try our best to include a few new ones each week. It was less than a week ago when we posted and linked to the new mobile site from the University of Toronto. Today, let’s stay in Canada and Go West from Toronto. Here’s a link to the new (beta) mobile web site from the University of Alberta Libraries. The site includes: + Contact Info + Library Hours + Mobile e-services Including links to mobile versions of PubMed, Academic Search Complete, and Refworks. The page also says more mobile e-services are coming. Perhaps these updates will include access to their catalogue. + Account Information + Ask Us (via e-Mail, Chat, or Visiting the Library) + Access to a Feedback link along with a link to the “Full” web site are also included. (Source: ResourceShelf) Wed, 20 Jan 2010 21:23:42 +0100 810250 http://www.teleread.org/2010/01/20/stepdad-vs-kindle/ My new Kindle could be a reader not just for me but also for my parents. Stepdad has lately been complaining that with his arthritic hands, he finds it hard to hold and carry a book. He also has trouble getting out on cold days, and I thought he would enjoy being able to buy books from home. He is not a voracious reader on my level (I read over 90 books last year) but he does enjoy books. What’s more, he plans to retire this year and become a “Snowbird”—an older Canadian who flees the cold to spend much or part of the winter in Florida. Florida Srub Jays lead easier lives than birds up north, so why not join them? He will have more time to read, and wants to. I figured an ebook reader which does not require a computer or Internet connection would be just the thing for him as he would be staying in vacation rentals and might not always have computer access. And as a bonus, he could use the Kindle for newspapers as well as books. How nice would it be to wake up in sunny Florida to a fresh Toronto newspaper, delivered to your Kindle while you slept. His one obstacle to getting a Kindle has been its lack of retail presence. He may be able to accept a newspaper auto-delivered to him electronically in time for his morning coffee, but he cannot accept spending hard money on something from the internet that he has never touched or seen. So I thought my Craigslist Kindle score would be a perfect remedy. I could enjoy the Kindle while he dithers for another half a year, and if he decides he likes it, I could buy myself the next model when it comes out and give him mine. He seemed amenable to this idea and was eager to see my new Kindle and try it out for himself. The initial hands-on When I first saw the Kindle buttons, I was worried he would have trouble with them. The letter keys are small and the five-way controller requires a certain precision at times. ... Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:44:00 +0100 810475 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/Snq9LTvPZzo/ My new Kindle could be a reader not just for me but also for my parents. Stepdad has lately been complaining that with his arthritic hands, he finds it hard to hold and carry a book. He also has trouble getting out on cold days, and I thought he would enjoy being able to buy books from home. He is not a voracious reader on my level (I read over 90 books last year) but he does enjoy books. What’s more, he plans to retire this year and become a “Snowbird”—an older Canadian who flees the cold to spend much or part of the winter in Florida. Florida Srub Jays lead easier lives than birds up north, so why not join them? He will have more time to read, and wants to. I figured an ebook reader which does not require a computer or Internet connection would be just the thing for him as he would be staying in vacation rentals and might not always have computer access. And as a bonus, he could use the Kindle for newspapers as well as books. How nice would it be to wake up in sunny Florida to a fresh Toronto newspaper, delivered to your Kindle while you slept. His one obstacle to getting a Kindle has been its lack of retail presence. He may be able to accept a newspaper auto-delivered to him electronically in time for his morning coffee, but he cannot accept spending hard money on something from the internet that he has never touched or seen. So I thought my Craigslist Kindle score would be a perfect remedy. I could enjoy the Kindle while he dithers for another half a year, and if he decides he likes it, I could buy myself the next model when it comes out and give him mine. He seemed amenable to this idea and was eager to see my new Kindle and try it out for himself. The initial hands-on When I first saw the Kindle buttons, I was worried he would have trouble with them. The letter keys are small and the five-way controller requires a certain precision at times. ... Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:44:00 +0100 810234 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/01/20/white-house-unveils-free-iphone-app-look-for-a-site-for-other-mobile-users-coming-soon/ It was just a couple of weeks ago when we posted about a new iPhone app from the Sunlight Foundation that allows users (for free) to watch Congress in real-time. The app is appropriately named, Real Time Congress and also includes links to a bunch of “congress related” documents. This app is well worth your time. Today, the White House announced that they have released an iPhone app. As expected, it’s a free download and can be accessed here. The app will feature live streaming of presidential events, press conferences, and other events live. The app also provides access to the White House Blog, White House Briefing Room, and access to an archive of on-demand video including recent speeches, press conferences, and “special events.” This is exciting news for iPhone users but what about those who use other phones? According to the White House, they’ll soon launch a version of WhiteHouse.gov that should work with just about all mobile phones. It will be located at: mobile.WhiteHouse.gov Source: White House Blog See Also: Looking for a Brief (about 90 seconds) Tour of the New iPhone App? Nancy Scola at techPresident has made one available. (Source: ResourceShelf) Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:53:47 +0100 810260 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/01/20/mobile-access-to-library-catalogs-an-iphone-app-from-sirsidynix-say-hello-to-bookmyne/ UPDATE: It appears (at least on our iPhone that BookMyne might be having some opening day jitters. We’re looking into it. The app is free to download and use. You can find it here in the App Store. From the Announcement (PDF) BookMyne uses the iPhone’s GPS capabilities and the Google Maps API to identify participating libraries nearby. Users can identify the libraries they use frequently, and can search for other participating libraries from a global view. Libraries can become discoverable through BookMyne by installing SirsiDynix Symphony Web Services, which gives libraries unprecedented access to their Symphony data. Symphony Web Services 2.0 is available at no cost to institutions using Symphony version 3.3 or later. According to the App Store Page, BookMyne Users Will Be Able to: + Search the Library Catalog + Place and Cancel Holds + Check Account Details + Navigate to the Library’s Home Page We’ve just downloaded BookMyne and will spend some time using it during the next few days. More to say soon. (Source: ResourceShelf) Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:04:54 +0100 810264 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/01/20/survey-findings-daily-media-use-among-children-and-teens-up-dramatically-from-five-years-ago/ From the Findings: With technology allowing nearly 24-hour media access as children and teens go about their daily lives, the amount of time young people spend with entertainment media has risen dramatically, especially among minority youth, according to a study released today by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Today, 8-18 year-olds devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes (7:38) to using entertainment media across a typical day (more than 53 hours a week). And because they spend so much of that time ‘media multitasking’ (using more than one medium at a time), they actually manage to pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes (10:45) worth of media content into those 7½ hours. The amount of time spent with media increased by an hour and seventeen minutes a day over the past five years, from 6:21 in 2004 to 7:38 today. And because of media multitasking, the total amount of media content consumed during that period has increased from 8:33 in 2004 to 10:45 today. Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds is the third in a series of large-scale, nationally representative surveys by the Foundation about young people’s media use. It includes data from all three waves of the study (1999, 2004, and 2009), and is among the largest and most comprehensive publicly available sources of information about media use among American youth. Mobile media driving increased consumption. The increase in media use is driven in large part by ready access to mobile devices like cell phones and iPods. Over the past five years, there has been a huge increase in ownership among 8- to 18-year-olds: from 39% to 66% for cell phones, and from 18% to 76% for iPods and other MP3 players. During this period, cell phones and iPods have become true multi-media devices: in fact, young people now spend more time listening to music, playing games, and watching TV on their cell phones (a total of :49 daily) than they spend talking on them (:33). ... Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:44:05 +0100 810266 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DigitalReference/~3/FdrBcZVNuGs/ups-and-downs-of-video-reference.html Earlier this January, Chad Boeninger wrote on his blog, Library Voice, about the lackluster use of the library's video reference service at Ohio University, which is advertised on the Skype portion of the library's Ask a Librarian pages. The library had also been using Skype to power a video reference kiosk located far from the reference desk (the service was ended last fall due to lack of use). Although Boeninger believes that his users may never get on board with the idea of requesting help via video chat, he does not have regrets about the project:In many circles, our experiment with Skype video reference might be considered a failure.  At my library, we tend to try something while studying it, rather than study it for ages before attempting something new.  While we didn’t get the results we expected with our video kiosk experiment, setting up the service cost us almost nothing.  In the process, we learned about video calling software options, how to configure pages to close automatically with javascript,  discovered how flaky wireless connections and computer applications can be, and much more.  We also learned to be flexible, patient, and try different things to improve the service.With his post in mind, I was intrigued to see that the Hennepin County Library is considering setting up its own video reference system. At the upcoming Library Technology Conference (March 17-18) at Macalester College, a pair of librarians from Hennepin County Library will give a talk titled, "Video Reference: A Pre-Test and Pilot Project." As noted in the description of the talk, the rationale for piloting such as a service is to address limited staffing options in two new libraries that the library system is opening and to see if the service might also help out in smaller libraries that also want to expand their reference options. ... Wed, 20 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0100 812165 http://www.teachinglibrarian.org/weblog/2010/01/ups-and-downs-of-video-reference.html Earlier this January, Chad Boeninger wrote on his blog, Library Voice, about the lackluster use of the library's video reference service at Ohio University, which is advertised on the Skype portion of the library's Ask a Librarian pages. The library had also been using Skype to power a video reference kiosk located far from the reference desk (the service was ended last fall due to lack of use). Although Boeninger believes that his users may never get on board with the idea of requesting help via video chat, he does not have regrets about the project:In many circles, our experiment with Skype video reference might be considered a failure.  At my library, we tend to try something while studying it, rather than study it for ages before attempting something new.  While we didn’t get the results we expected with our video kiosk experiment, setting up the service cost us almost nothing.  In the process, we learned about video calling software options, how to configure pages to close automatically with javascript,  discovered how flaky wireless connections and computer applications can be, and much more.  We also learned to be flexible, patient, and try different things to improve the service.With his post in mind, I was intrigued to see that the Hennepin County Library is considering setting up its own video reference system. At the upcoming Library Technology Conference (March 17-18) at Macalester College, a pair of librarians from Hennepin County Library will give a talk titled, "Video Reference: A Pre-Test and Pilot Project." As noted in the description of the talk, the rationale for piloting such as a service is to address limited staffing options in two new libraries that the library system is opening and to see if the service might also help out in smaller libraries that also want to expand their reference options. ... Wed, 20 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0100 810153 http://dbl.lishost.org/blog/2010/01/19/using-ux-to-move-beyond-%e2%80%9cthe-library%e2%80%9d/ It seems about that time for my bi-annual post here at DBL: the original hotspot for UX and Design-Thinking in the library blogosphere. There has been a lot of recent hype in this area so I thought I’d add to the conversation. One of my favorite projects at UCSB is serving on a new Biology Building Committee. This venture is located in the Library’s backyard and so I’m on the team to represent our interests, which include a shared loading dock. Recently, I had the opportunity to step outside that role and offer some insight about workspace. The building is predominately labs and offices, as opposed to classrooms or teaching spaces. It will be very interdisciplinary featuring scientists, biologists, and engineers. And it will house faculty (Principle Investigators), researchers, graduate students, undergrads, as well as administrative & support staff. One of the interesting themes that is emerging is the idea of workspace. We’re still in the conceptualization stage but I have tried to pull from my UX days at Georgia Tech during this discussion. Originally we had envisioned a suite of offices. (See image #1 below.) The faculty get a window view, the grad students and researchers share a room, and likewise, the undergrads are bunched together. I didn’t really think to question this arrangement because it seemed like traditional hierarchy that one would expect to find in an academic building: row after row of offices. Then the architects shook us up. They presented a “what-if” scenario by dropping some walls and crafting a more open design. (See image #2 below.) And even the more ambitious one, image #3. This really clicked with me. It allowed me to stop thinking of people working in an office, but rather, to imagine a space that fits users’ needs. I urged the committee not to think in terms of Student #1 using Workspace #1 (and Student #2 using Space #2) but instead to think of creating various zones. ... Tue, 19 Jan 2010 17:13:56 +0100 809817 http://www.slaw.ca/2010/01/19/practicing-law-on-the-road-the-role-of-the-cloud-and-the-emergence-of-the-virtual-law-firm/ Even as recently as the early 2000’s, the idea of achieving full in-office productivity while traveling on the road seemed difficult to imagine. The laptop, smartphone, cloud infrastructure, and internet access technologies of the day simply weren’t capable or ubiquitous enough to match in-office facilities and resources. But fast forward to 2010, and these ingredients have evolved and shifted significantly. Firms like Heritage Law are predicated on the reality that any lawyer or staff member can work effectively from practically any remote office on a full time basis with nothing more than a Voice Over IP (VoIP) telephone, a broadband internet connection, a netbook grade PC, and combined printer/scanner. In this game changing model, each user is remotely served by the same set of highly integrated applications from their own personal Microsoft Windows desktop. These virtual desktops are hosted on servers in a centrally located, private and secure cloud. The private cloud is 100% firm owned and operated and is connected to the internet over a high speed dedicated line. On the Road in the Virtual Firm In a virtual firm, the requirements necessary to maximize productivity as a ‘traveling lawyer’ shrink dramatically when compared to the traditional IT deployment model, which requires the installation, periodic rebuilding and maintenance of every core application on both individual PCs and separate laptops for out-of-office travel. In the hosted or Desktop as a Service (Daas) model, the requirements for nomadic access from the road reduce to: 1. A sub $300 netbook PC running a basic installation of Windows from vendors such as Acer, Asus, Dell, or HP; depending on preference and budget, this “thin client” PC could be more capable with a larger screen, or even an Apple Macbook running a Terminal Services client, the key point being that compute requirements on the client side are minimal and therefore the required hardware cost very low; 2. ... Tue, 19 Jan 2010 06:43:30 +0100 811580 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/6aD6sFppFGI/ This time its a 9 inch reader with an e-ink display. According to BestTablet Review, the Asus DR-950 uses a traditional E-Ink display with a 9-inch touchscreen and a 1024×768 resolution. It will come with either 2GB or 4GBs of internal storage, an SD slot for expandable storage, WiFi, 3G, audio port and USB. The DR-950 features text-to-speech, RSS feeds, internet browsing and translation in addition to supporting ePub, PDF, TXT, HTML, Audible, MP3, JPG, GIF, BMP and PNG formats. It’s a minuscule 0.35 inches thick, measures 8.74 inches high by 6.34 wide and weighs 13 oz. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Mon, 18 Jan 2010 16:16:27 +0100 809613 http://theshiftedlibrarian.com/archives/2010/01/17/january-17th-stream.html Posted Bobbi Newman: headed to the convention center all day today, anyone know if there is free wifi? is it worth schlepping my netbook? #alamw10. Shared Mayor Kenley. @artgeeklibraria thx for explaining #alaconnect yesterday! lmk if u run into any problems with the connect part of the trifecta #alamw10 [shifted] @kgs would love to hear details about your #alaconnect complaints [shifted] Posted ljmorrisey: @infowidget @shifted. Yes to cleaner/leaner whitespace #alaconnect. Maybe it is customizable and I just don’t know it. Info overload for me.. Posted awd: @kgs @ljmorrisey @shifted when using #alaconnect I use search feature *a lot* — joined lots of communities & the unread new is helpful too. RT @infowidget: We just got a two minute warning on envisioning the future of ALA. Um…need more time, please? #alamw10 [shifted] Posted artgeeklibraria: @shifted no prob! wanted to clear it up for our GODORT peeps; i was reluctant at first but now looooove ALA Connect, so thank YOU! . @artgeeklibraria yes, you can set email frequency from #alaconnect in your profile (immediately, daily, weekly) [shifted] @ljmorrisey yes, once we implement the opportunities exchange next month, we’re going to redesign. send me ur ideas (jlevine [at] ala.org) [shifted] @ljmorrisey following up on @awd’s suggestion, have you looked at the "my unread items" page? (link is in lefthand column) we’ve improved it [shifted] Posted ljmorrisey: @shifted Brief description of "Opportunities Exchange" (?). @ljmorrisey blog post about it at http://bit.ly/81sZQN #alaconnect [shifted] Posted ljmorrisey: @shifted Thanks for your quick replies. Will explore. ... Mon, 18 Jan 2010 05:01:04 +0100 810012 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/01/17/gartner-facebook-will-be-the-common-denominator-in-social-net-by-2012-mobile-phones-overtake-pcs-by-2013/ The consulting firm is out with their predictions for the next few years. It’s a long document. Here are a few highlights: By 2012, Facebook will become the hub for social network integration and Web socialization. Through Facebook Connect and other similar mechanisms, Facebook will support and take a leading role in developing the distributed, interoperable social Web. As Facebook continues to grow and outnumber other social networks, this interoperability will become critical to the success and survival of other social networks, communication channels and media sites. Other social networks (including Twitter) will continue to develop, seeking further adoption and specializations with communication or content areas, but Facebook will represent a common denominator for all of them. By 2015, context will be as influential to mobile consumer services and relationships as search engines are to the Web. Whereas search provides the “key” to organizing information and services for the Web, context will provide the “key” to delivering hyperpersonalized experiences across smartphones and any session or experience an end user has with information technology. Search centered on creating content that drew attention and could be analyzed. Context will center on observing patterns, particularly location, presence and social interactions. Furthermore, whereas search was based on a “pull” of information from the Web, context-enriched services will, in many cases, prepopulate or push information to users. By 2013, mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide. According to Gartner’s PC installed base forecast, the total number of PCs in use will reach 1.78 billion units in 2013. By 2013, the combined installed base of smartphones and browser-equipped enhanced phones will exceed 1.82 billion units and will be greater than the installed base for PCs thereafter. ... Sun, 17 Jan 2010 20:12:10 +0100 809384 http://www.docuticker.com/?p=31439 FCC Adopts Order to Clear the 700 MHZ Frequency for Public Safety and Next Generation Consumer Users (PDF; 71 KB) Source: Federal Communications Commission Today the Federal Communications Commission adopted an Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking prohibiting the further distribution and sale of devices that operate in the 700 MHz frequency. This action helps complete an important component of the DTV Transition by clearing the 700 MHz band to enable the rollout of communications services for public safety and the deployment of next generation 4G wireless devices for consumers. The order will primarily impact the use of wireless microphone systems that currently operate in the 700 MHz band. These unlicensed devices cannot continue to operate in this band because they may cause harmful interference to public safety entities and next generation consumers devices that will be utilizing the 700 MHz frequency. Thus, the Commission is making clear that no devices utilizing this frequency may be sold or distributed. In order to ensure that individuals and groups currently using unauthorized devices in this band have ample time to transition to appropriate frequencies, the FCC is providing a sunset period until June 12, 2010, one year from the DTV Transition. The Commission is also unveiling an aggressive consumer outreach plan in order to assist consumers who have previously purchased wireless microphone systems and other related devices that utilized the 700 MHz band. Through the Commission’s website, www.fcc.gov/cgb/wirelessmicrophones, consumers can learn whether their wireless device is currently operating in the prohibited band and whether their devices may be retuned to operate on another band. Consumers may also call 1-800-CALL-FCC to ask questions regarding this transition. ... Sun, 17 Jan 2010 13:04:28 +0100 809305 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/01/16/when-does-tim-spalding-sleep-the-new-services-keep-coming-from-librarything/ Wow, LibraryThing is on a roll of late with the introduction new services and Founder and Developer, Tim Spalding, must not be getting a lot of sleep these days. (-: Of course, Tim’s reduced hours hitting the pillow means new, cool and useful services for info pros and the public. In other words, his lack of sleep is our gain. On January 6th we posted about a new (and free) iPhone app named “Local Books.” It offers a bunch of features including information from a database of 51,000 libraries and bookstores from around the globe. If you’re looking for “bookish” events “Local Books” is essential. That announcement was almost two weeks ago. Today, at ALA Midwinter LibraryThing is “showing off” some new services. We can’t wait to use them (we’re not attending ALA In Boston). First, an “enhancement” for LibraryThing for Libraries (a library 2.0 online catalog for sale to libraries) named Shelf Browse. What’s It All About? Browse your library’s shelves visually, just as you would do in the physical library. Shelf Browse lets your patrons see where a book sits on your actual shelves, and what’s near it. It includes a “mini-browser” that sits on your detail pages, and a full-screen version, launched from the detail page. Awesome. Why? Although many OPAC’s allow browsing by call number allowing shelf browsing it’s to difficult for many users and to use it they would need to know about it in the first place. I have a feeling this is going to be much easier to use and therefore allow a bit of serendipity to hopefully make a users experience even more productive. Shelf Browse has been released. Next, LibraryThing is getting even more into mobile library business (remember, they have the iPhone app) with the release (Coming Soon, they are looking for beta testers) of Library Anywhere. ... Sat, 16 Jan 2010 22:35:29 +0100 809185 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BabyBoomerLibrarian/~3/nYLVsnO5xqo/have-you-seen-this-awesome-blackberry.html I found a stunning weather application called BerryWeather for your BlackBerry and thought you might like it. You can download a free trial at http://m.bellshare.com/berryweather Wilfred (Bill) Drew, M.S., B.S., Assistant Professor. Librarian. TC3 Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry Posted via email from billdrew's posterous (Source: Baby Boomer Librarian) Sat, 16 Jan 2010 22:31:00 +0100 809245 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/I8OWwJuzJi4/ Back in April John Hagewood wrote us to tell about his Kindle 2 was losing screen contract and how Amazon replaced it. Now it seems that the problem has recurred, and Amazon stepped up again. Here’s what John wrote: Today a friend of mine in the office showed me his brand new Kindle2 (International Wireless, or course, the only one they sell). When I saw the screen I just about blew a gasket. The background color was NEARLY WHITE compare to my smudgy grayish one. I could not BELIEVE IT. He of course had the default font on there, and it looked GREAT….I have always had to put the Georgia2 Font Hack on mine to make it somewhere CLOSE to being as readable as my old Sony 505. So I called Amazon tonight and told them that I STILL believe my Kindle2 screen is devective (I already got a replacement a year ago). I told them “either it has gotten a LOT darker in the last year, or the new Kindle2’s have a VASTLY better screen”. He said that NO, the original Kindle2 and the new ones should have the same screen and screen contrast, and that his supervisor said the screen on mine is probably indeed “going bad”. They agreed to overnight me a replacement, though when I pressed them they admitted this will be a refurbished Kindle2 US Wireless, like I have now. Never mind that I paid $359 for mine, and the new ones are $100 cheaper. He said if the screen didn’t look as good as the guy at work to call them back and he would “see what they could do”. My 10 month old Kindle2 is really starting to have POOR battery life too…barely 2 days with the wireless on, so at least that will be fixed by the refurb. He assured me they had new batteries in them Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sat, 16 Jan 2010 16:15:34 +0100 809041 http://blog.njla.org/archives/2010/01/#000658 Posted on Thu, Jan. 14, 2010 philly.com Libraries more wired, financially stressed HILLEL ITALIE The Associated Press NEW YORK - The state of the country's public libraries: Higher demand, tighter funding and much more connected. "The Condition of U.S. Public Libraries, Trends 1999-2009," compiled by the American Library Association and released Thursday, shows a steady upward trend of visits, from 1.23 billion in 2002 to more than 1.4 billion in 2007, and a struggle for money since the recession began. Out of 45 states reporting, 24 decreased library funding in the previous year, and money for an additional 11 states was unchanged. Nearly 15 percent of libraries said hours had been cut. "As the poor economy continues to fuel deep library budget cuts, I'm haunted by the notion that for each hour a library is closed, and for every service lost, thousands will lose the opportunity to better their lives through education," American Library Association President Camila Alire said in a statement. A separate report, funded by the ALA and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, shows one notable improvement: Internet access. According to the study, 76 percent of libraries had wireless access in 2009, compared to just under 18 percent in 2004. E-book availability increased from less than 40 percent of libraries in 2006-2007, to well over 50 percent in 2008-09. During that same time, the percentage of libraries offering online video jumped from less than 15 percent to just over 50 percent. (Source: NJLA Blog -- The Official Weblog of the New Jersey Library Association) Sat, 16 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0100 810285 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/01/15/donating-to-hatian-earthquake-relief-via-text-message-sms/ Here are two articles that discuss the popularity of donating to Haitian relief efforts by simply sending a text message. Yes, an increasingly popular way to donate to this and/or other charitable causes can now be done by simply pressing a few keys on you phone/smartphone/superphone. First, Text to Help Haiti: A Record Outpouring of Help (via PC World) points out that a Verizon Wireless spokesperson said, “the Haitian Relief Effort is “‘the largest outpouring of charitable support by texting in history – by far.’” Second, MocoNews says that donations received by text have already topped seven million dollars (and that was as of yesterday). Remove the barriers to giving, and people will give. That seems to be the lesson many charities are learning in the wake of the earthquake in Haiti on Tuesday. If you’re interested in making a contribution to one or more of the organizations offering text donations, both articles linked above have lists of charity names and the shortcodes you’ll need to text to. (Source: ResourceShelf) Sat, 16 Jan 2010 00:11:55 +0100 808874