Maybe I’m out of the loop but I haven’t seen too much about mobile site from North Carolina State University. It is very nice and had the feel of a standalone app. You can preview it without a mobile device on their site: NCSU Libraries Mobile.
What an adorable promotional video!
Via Suzanne at userslib.
Sarah scooped me and posted about the new iPod touch, redesigned iPod nanos. See her post Apple news on iPods and iPhones: prices down, features sweet for some details.
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?
The (much deserved) hype surrounding the iPhone has spread to the publishing world. HarperCollins has released 14 Books for the iPhone. This lame attempt is unlikely to finally get ebooks right (an impossible task in our highly DRMed world), and might get people excited for only a limited amount of time. I do see the iPhone as an interesting piece of the eBook puzzle, though, considering it is the first high PPI device that people are carrying around on a daily basis.
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.
From YouTube user jsdt4, a must see video. He writes:
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.
Maybe you didn’t hear that Apple, Inc. released their much awaited “phone” this morning. Learn more about it at their iPhone page.
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!
The other day, Springwise.com had a post titled “Audiobooks for phones” about a product and company in Sweden.
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.
While I’m on the topic of phones…
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.
While I’m on the topic of phones…
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.
A Japanese primate researcher announced the other day that mobile phones are turning Japanese youth into apes. Or at least that’s the sensational way to put it.
“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.
update, 20 october: fixed link to the SELU Library, thanks rob!
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.