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Friday, January 25, 2002 |
Write Here, Write Now: And you thought you were overloaded with information now, just wait. Hewlett Packard is working on a technology to let folks print messages in mid-air based on their location incorporating GPS technology. I find this stuff fascinating, even if no one seems to have thought of a good use for it yet. The first sentence of the article is right, though: "The kids are going to love this." [in New Scientist via RCPL's Liblog]
When the ALA summer conference was in San Francisco in 1997, the SF Museum of Modern Art had a fascinating exhibit called Icons: Magnets of Meaning. I spent hours browsing through it, but one of the pieces that has always stuck in my mind was called @: Marking the Electrosphere . It talked about the meaning of that one little symbol. How it can define, place, and root you in the world, but at the same time let you be found anywhere. Integrated, widespread use of GPS is going to take this to a whole new level.
11:55:18 PM Permanent link here
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Fun new library blog: she can be taught. I plan to use the same referrers and comments script to offer these services on my site, too. Someday. Really. I mean it this time.
5:42:45 PM Permanent link here
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Consortium of 12 Universities Begins Project to Deliver Academic E-Books [in The Chronicle of Higher Education] "Last month, leaders of the 12 universities committed from $50,000 to $100,000 to develop a prototype for the joint e-publishing venture, says Tom Peters, director of the consortium's center for library initiatives. The institutions have worked together for decades as part of a group called the Committee on Institutional Cooperation.
The hope is that university presses in the consortium might one day offer all of their books in electronic form in a version that could be linked to a joint online library catalog that the group already operates. It could quickly become be a sizable collection: The university presses publish about 1,000 new books each year."
3:26:21 PM Permanent link here
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For Bruce: Lawyers Go Wireless [in ZDNet Tech Update] Mostly with Blackberrys for now, but they understand that unified messaging is the future.
It's a big future for libraries, too, because it means multiple ways of patron contact can be funnelled through one channel. I believe that in the future, libraries will have their own version of the Wal-Mart greeter. This person will field incoming emails, chat requests, phone calls, etc., and re-direct them appropriately. And you thought Ernestine the telephone operator was dead....
11:10:23 AM Permanent link here
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If you've been tracking blogging this year, you should cast your votes for the Second Annual Weblog Awards. If you haven't been tracking blogging this year, browse through the sites that are nominated in each category for a great primer on the state of the art. History lessons included at no additional cost!
10:23:44 AM Permanent link here
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Hey Verizon, don't kill the wireless Internet! "Verizon Communications, the big New York-based mobile telecommunications company, appears poised to launch its new 3G network--with effective data throughput in the 120kbps range--as early as next week. Verizon is expected to roll out this new data service on a market-by-market basis. Then again, Verizon isn't commenting on the report. Nor has it answered a critical question: How will it charge for these always-on data connections?" [in ZDNet Anchordesk]
David Coursey provides some sage advice for Verizon if they're really going to be the first carrier to offer high speed, always-on wireless access. I think he's got it dead on because I'm usually one of the first people jumping off the cliff into a new technology but for this, the pricing is going to have to be right. You have to bait us early adopters, especially if we'd have to switch carriers, which I would have to do. I'm with Sprint PCS right now, and they're nipping at Verizon's heels on this issue, so I hope V will think this through instead of just rushing to be first. Learn from Rocketbooks, Verizon!
9:41:45 AM Permanent link here
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Suggestion to Steven, Marylaine, Tara, and others that blog reference sites that patrons would be interested in hearing about. Categorize or somehow mark those posts and get them into a separate RSS feed that a busy librarian could aggregate and scan. Better yet, the library could subscribe to your feed and display it on their Web page! Kind of a communal sharing thing since you're already sending it out anyway. In Radio, that would be one-click publishing to the library's Web site, too. This is what I'm planning to do with SLS' What's Gnu service when we move to choose new portal software.
And while we're at it, let's get the weekly new items from the Librarians' Index to the Internet into an RSS feed, too!
8:29:59 AM Permanent link here
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© Copyright 2004 Jenny Levine.
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