What an adorable promotional video!

Via Suzanne at userslib.

What she didn’t mention though, is that along with the iPod touch’s wifi capability, the iTunes Music Store got wifi capability too. ITMS junkies no longer have to slog over to their computers to buy music. Apple also will be delivering content through Starbucks. The new iPods will provide the details of the song that you’re listening to in Starbucks and of course make it easy for you to buy it. This Starbucks feature is cute, maybe clever, but isn’t as significant as the general concept of wireless delivery of purchased content to iPods.

If this move ushers in the age of anywhere on-demand download of music (which seems eventually inevitable) it will widen the gap between the soon to be normal way of doing things and the library way of delivering content. And will our users feel like crossing this big gap to visit us?

I read about this right before I read Jessamyn’s post (with comments worth reading) about Overdrive, audiobooks, and the iPod. I love her attitude about making the most of a crappy DRM situation and using the inevitable patron iPod denial as a teachable moment about free audiobooks online.

Similarly, I doubt libraries will be circing titles to patron iPhones anytime soon. Instead we can tell them about Project Gutenberg and iPhone formatted PDFs from manybooks.net.

Since most of today’s students can appropriately be labeled as “Digital Learners”, why do so many teachers refuse to enter the digital age with their teaching practices?

This presentation was created in an effort to motivate teachers to more effectively use technology in their teaching.

The more we know about this device, the easier it will be to stop people from using it in our libraries. From the loud calls, to the 2MP camera snapping photos, people find their way with google maps, checking their mail and screeching fingers gliding over the *buttonless interface,* let’s be prepared to stop this menace!

Bokilur is Swedish for book on phone. And the company offers exactly that: audiobooks for cellphones. …

Books are usually split into 5 parts, each of which costs SEK 30 (USD 4.10/EUR 3.25), and is between 50 and 150 minutes long. Payment is processed through the user’s normal phone bill. Available titles include popular fiction, literature, children’s books, business titles and language courses. …

For consumers, downloading on the go is far more convenient than downloading to a non-phone mp3 player, does away with the need to carry multiple devices, and allows for spontaneous downloads. …

Bokilur definitely benefits from 3G bandwidth being cheap in Sweden, which has made for far wider adoption of mobile services than in countries where mobile downloads are prohibitively expensive.

I don’t know if the cell phone situation in the US is fertile ground for this type of service. We aren’t (yet?) as attached to our mobile devices as Europe and Japan, but certain segments of the popular are certainly getting there. Telco download offerings so far have been pretty poor, DRM-laden, and expensive.

I wonder if Sweden’s libraries feel the need to compete with Bokilur. I suppose that might depend on just how popular the service is.

Today I came across some very potentially important news . Sprint is partnering with movie ticketing giant/annoying ad purveyor Fandango to sell and issue movie tickets via cell phones. The issuing mechanism is pretty novel. Once tickets are purchased, a message including a scannable barcode is sent back to the phone. The specific of this aren’t what’s most important however. Just the fact that it is happening is important. Asia has been buying things out of vending machines with their cell phones for years, and we might be *slowly* catching up. But remember, we’re 7 years behind. Here’s a bit more on Asian eCash.

While I think it’ll be neat to pay for a cab or Mountain Dew with my phone, what I’m most concerned about is how libraries will or will not embrace the delivery of content and services via cell phone. Now I know…we’re having a hard enough time letting people pay their fines or apply for a card online, but we should probably be thinking about both today’s problems and tomorrow’s.

About two years ago I wrote a post titled the power of texting in which I mention incorporating texting into holds notifications. Recently, Michael Casey linked to Teleflip, a universal email to text service, and highlighted how it could indeed be used to send a hold notification.

Phones aren’t getting any less featured, right? Right now, it’s more difficult to find a phone without a camera than it is to find a cameraphone. Wow. These little devices will increasingly be an always-on link to the Web and will give us a convenient digital interface to the physical world. But instead of just talking to a physical human being, we could be unlocking our cars, doing our laundry, and feeding our dogs. Perhaps we’ll even be using them as our library cards and paying library fines with them.

“Parents let their kids go out because they think they’re only a phone call away. And even if the kid doesn’t come home, parents don’t call them because they believe the child’s mobile phone offers them an unbreakable link…”

What does this have to do with apes? These liberated kids are evidently losing a sense of home, and aren’t distinguishing between private and public space. Chimps in the wild also tend to walk around in groups, eat wherever they get hungry, and rest wherever and whenever. I don’t think this phenomena is strictly Japanese. I often see tribes of kids walking around the town in which I live. They hang out at the local cafe, ice cream shop, and sometimes, just sometimes, the library. One thing that so fascinating about their behavior when they’re in the library is that they often tell us what they want out of a library. They come in packs, and they come for a space in which to collaborate. Group work is huge. Use of our resources is secondary. If kids act this way in this area, they very well may act this way in your area. We all have the task of thinking how we can get these people into the library more often.

This article is interesting for what it says, but it is also interesting because it doesn’t even say what these kids are doing with their phones. We know that texting, IM, and ringtones, let alone voice communication, have had a huge impact on people’s behavior, but phones are going to get even more interesting .

Take for instance Sprint/Nextel’s new walkie-talkie picture sending service. It combines the ultra-annoying bleeping and blooping instant talk found on some phones, and picture sharing on phones. It allows users to send cameraphone pics instantly, look at them simultaneously, and discuss them all the while. This real-time interaction and collaboration seems really web-like to me, which is great to see in a portable device. This, however, has the advantage that it can be used anywhere.

Nokia has developed a peer-to-peer network for mobile phones, and they are looking to develop support for the sharing of mp3 files. This is another activity leaving the desktop and coming to the little computers we carry around.

Speaking of mp3s, Japan’s largest cell phone provider, DoCoMo, is buying Tower Records. I wonder how long it will be until we see direct to cell phone downloading from the iTunes Music Store.

A bit closer to home we see Google Local for Mobile which is “downloadable application that lets you view maps and satellite imagery, find local businesses, and get driving directions on your phone.” In English, this means, Google Local for Mobile is “the first step in getting location-based advertising on your phone.” Pondering primate reminds us that they’ve been keeping track of all the text messages sent to GOOGL and are compiling a database to see what people search for on their phones. “Google knows what services were used most and where they were requested.”

Technology like this makes the development of ubiqutous computing easy to imagine.

So it turns out that South Eastern Louisiana University Library’s SMS Reference program was covered way earlier in the year by tame the web and teaching librarian.

At any rate, this afternoon I phoned JB Hill who is their head of Reference. He was kind enough to speak to me for over 20 minutes about the program. Things I learned:

bq. -They are indeed using Altarama’s product, mentioned last year here in a post titled RefSMS.

bq. -Even though the server by which this operates is Down Under, and ever though the number to text is international, there isn’t an additional fee for texters beyond the price of a text. However, not all cell phone providers handle international texts. Hill stated that the fact that some people can’t text internationally, and the fact that some people would be unlikely to text internationally (for fear of additional costs) are barriers to entry for this service. Clearly the fact that one must have a cell phone is another barrier, but that’s slightly different.

bq. -Response to the program has been decent, but not yet stellar. This makes sense, considering that they’re quite ahead of the curve with this.

bq. -The variety of questions they are getting are different from other forms of digital reference. Namely, they are getting ready reference type questions. Hill surmises that these must come from students who have their phone on them, but no connectivity with which to consult Google. Their browser-based chat questions are generally more sophistacted than ready reference.

bq. -Altarama transforms emails to text messages (and vice versa) and has a neat function which optomizes text for delivery via SMS. It scans messages for words like “for” and “to” and automagically transforms them to “4″ and “2.”

JB and I agreed that texting makes great sense in the ILS, for things like overdue and hold notices. Oh, one more thing, they have an appointment-based reference service, and would like to use text messages as reminders for students. He’ll be talking about their program at the next Virtual Reference Desk Conference in San Francisco.^1^ If you’re going, check it out and give us a report.

As cell phones merge with wireless devices that do VoIP, I wonder if texting will be outmoded by a richer, more powerful IMming. Many phones presently have, for instance, AIM on them, but many people prefer texting because it is less expensive than using data transfer. But will people still want to be limited to 160 characters if cost is no concern?

^1^Looks like there is a decent amount of content about IM at this conference, which of course warms my heart. As does the session titled, ““Hurry! Hurry! r u dum? *#%@!”… Assessing the Extent of Inappropriate Use of AskColorado” because I swear I’ve helped that person on MyWebLibrian.

I don’t have much time for commentary, but I feel compelled to point to South Eastern Louisiana University’s Text A Librarian program. All I can say is “Wowza!”

They’re also holding a “Text A Librarian” contest which is Australian themed because the servers processing the SMS traffic are in Australia.

Could this be a first for the US?

Percentage of cell phone owners that are texters
Gen Y (18-27) – 63
Gen X (28-39) – 31
Young Boomers (40-49) – 18
Older Boomers (50-58) – 13
Over 60 types – 7

Percentage of age group that use cell phones
Gen X – 76
Young Boomers – 68
Gen Y – 68
Older Boomers – 62
Over 60 types – 60

According to the ‘Comment,’ ”[t]he findings come from a nationwide phone survey of 1,460 cell phone users…” Make of that what you will.

These figures above look very high, but perhaps not as much when you really consider what they’re looking at. One thing that they didn’t include is the percentage of the total population (not just cell phone users) that are texters. With some mathematical wizardry I deduced the following:

Percentage of age group that are texters
Gen Y – 43
Gen X – 24
Young Boomers – 12
Older Boomers – 8
Over 60 types – 4

These figures are lower, yes, but they’re not small enough that we should be ignoring them, especially with what we know about how phone trends move East to West. Bigger numbers are coming. Remember of course that statistics are statistics, but I think this is good for looking at general trends. We need to be reaching out to the Gen Yers (18-27), not only because we have a mandate to serve them (and they don’t deserve to be ignored) but also because they are going to be the people voting on our referenda in the not so distant future. What have you done recently to make them feel warm and fuzzy about the library?

Consider yourself warned: As SMS increases in popularity in the United States (it has already become fully integrated into the continents of Europe, Asia, and Australia) our patrons will have questions about it. There are statistics about SMS in the US which tell us use is on the increase, but that’s not how I know more people are using it. How do I know then? I nearly fainted when I recieved a text message from my mother one day out of the blue (even if it said something like “gdjjm”” – i don’t think she quite knew how to press the buttons to change letters).

If you want to get up to speed, or have some staff that need to learn about this here is a decent Introduction to SMS.

Previos posts on walking paper about SMS

• RefSMS
• a thought on sms

Bonus SMS Links

• Insights into the Social and Psychological Effects of SMS Text Messaging” [pdf]
• Text Messaging: More than Just an Add-on to Cellphone Plans

I think that this anecdote affirms what Jenny wrote the other day:

A bet: if you’re under age 35, you probably will do just what the survey says and take your phone, use it during parties, and communicate while multitasking F2F (face to face). If you’re over age 35, you probably view this behavior as rude and you don’t want to be interrupted by phone messages (text or voice) during F2F parties.

A generalization that will naturally have exceptions, but I think we’re getting to the point where the U.S. is starting to catch up to the numbers in this article….

Meanwhile, there are reports of kids ignoring more than commercials.

This is a film that invokes awe, but totally fails to induce it. At the screening I attended, most of the young audience spent the second half text-messaging friends.[via textually.org]

Libraries have a significant opportunity to increase their cultural relevancy by responding to this information trend. How should we respond? A start would be having mobile friendly websites and reference availability via text messaging.

For those of you not familiar, Short Messaging Service (SMS) is the feature available on the majority of cell phones that people use to send not voice messages but text messages to other cell phones (or some IM services too). SMS is catching on in the United States. I phrase it this way because it is absolutely huge in other parts of the world. It is so big in Europe and Asia that they are making airline reservations via SMS over there. European broadcasters have made SMS voting a source of income and American Idol “received over 2.5 million SMS votes for their show. Jenny recently linked to a good article about SMS catching on if you’d like to read more.

Also, you might remember from a few weeks back that SMSers can query google with this technology. This is where libraries come in, no? I’ve been waiting some SMS integration in libraries for a while now. Even something as simple as Innovative living up to their name and offering SMS hold/overdue notices would make me happy.

A very nice colleague sent me an announcement from an Australian company, Altarama, that is now offering an SMS product for libraries to use for Reference. Excerpts from their site follow.

Altarama introduces Reference by SMStm at VRD 2004 in Cincinnati Complementing its range of products that enhance the reference function of libraries, Altarama announces Reference by SMS, the first service designed specifically to allow libraries to seamlessly expand their reference delivery methods to include SMS (“simple [sic?] message service”).

More commonly knows as “text messaging,” SMS has seen its popularity explode among students, business people, and nearly everyone else with a cell phone.

Reference by SMS provides a phone number specific to a library that can be advertised for sending text messages to the library, which are automatically converted and delivered to an email address that the library specifies. The librarians monitoring that email address create responses in their normal email using a plug-in tool designed to assist with short replies, and the responses are automatically converted from email to text message, and delivered to the patron’s cell phone. No new operating procedures are required!The page also states that it costs libraries about $75 per month to use their service (after an initial setup fee, I’m sure). This leads me to believe that their pricing scheme could be $x per bundle of messages or something like that.

The only thing that I’m not totally crazy about is the email component to their system. Perhaps they thought an email plugin would be easier or less invasive for librarians but maybe it was just easier/cheaper for them to make. However, I’d rather see a small program that would pop up SMSs as people send them. This would really look the same as IM Reference to the librarians, so there wouldn’t be much more to learn*. The real gain would be for the user, who would have a reference librarian in their pocket. What a good way to make ourselves a bit more ubiquitous.

*Librarians might be forced to learn some SMS fonetic shortcuts because text messages can be a maximum of 160 characters. It is doubtful that this would be a huge limitation though. Software could either split longer messages and send them sequentially if there was the need. I bet people would mostly use SMS Reference for simple short things like phone numbers and directions.

GEOFFREY NUNBERG: The more you write, the better you write. The best way to learn to write is not to learn the rules or take courses. Just sit down and write. To that extent, I think you could argue that the kids who are now doing text messaging and email and, and IMs and so on and so forth, will wind up writing at least as well as and possibly better than their parents or than any generation in history.

NAOMI BARON: We know that children learn to talk because there are some people—we call them adults or older kids—who already know the system, and the younger kids pick up an awful lot of what we model for them. My question is not “Can you have a range of different registers -some informal, some formal, some texting, some essays that you turn in for class”—but “Are we modeling those more formal forms of writing that we used to?” And I don’t think we are so much any more.