Groceries Delivered to the Library

I am way into this program from the Baltimore City Health Department and the Enoch Free Public Library:

On a bright spring morning in Baltimore, retiree Gwen Tates goes over her weekly grocery list — oatmeal, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, pea soup. But it’s where she’s shopping that might surprise you: at the public library.

Under a new city program, patrons can order groceries online and pay with cash, credit or food stamps. The orders are filled by Santoni’s supermarket, a longtime Baltimore grocer. They deliver the items to the library the next day. Tates says she loves the convenience.

“I pay with my charge card. They swipe it right here. I come back to the library tomorrow and they’ll have it all bagged up and ready to go,” she says.

[via].

Libraries can become so much more than content mausoleums by facilitating a suite of useful community services. I do worry a bit about feature creep, however. More about this in a forthcoming post about the Garage Library in Malmö.

Library of Birmingham

It is really neat how much of a role the library is playing in the City of Birmingham’s revitalization plan.

The Library of Birmingham, opening in 2013, will occupy a prime site on Centenary Square, the city’s largest public square, acting as the flagship for the regeneration of Birmingham, and celebrating the ‘Global City with a Local Heart’.

Sited between the 1970s Birmingham Repertory Theatre and the 1930s Baskerville House, the new Library of Birmingham will “bring the spoken and written word together to inspire creativity and discovery.” [via]

See libraryofbirmingham.com for more.

more augmented reality for the iphone

A bit of a parlor trick but still interesting as a proof of concept is the easter egg in Yelp’s iPhone application.

After launching the app and shaking my phone I saw a heads-up type display containing an overlay of restaurants and bars down the block. Turning about and pointing the phone in the opposite direction loaded watering holes towards the East.

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Another AR app for the iPhone is one for the Metro in Paris but none of this is as cool as AR for contact lenses.