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Wednesday, January 30, 2002 |
Home of the Future Becomes a Reality "Japanese government completes work on house that never runs out of beer or rice, and can monitor residents' health.... 'Every device in the home, even a small light, has a private IP (Internet Protocol) address,' says Yoshinori Sugihara, general manager of the Special Project Promotion Office of JEITA." [in PC World]
Note how the cell phone is used as a remote control for a lot of these features. Now if I just had an extra $37,450 laying around....
10:42:15 PM Permanent link here
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Theory: you start doing crazy things when you buy a car that handles snow well. Proof, Exhibit A: Me. Tonight the whole family went out in the snowstorm to go grocery shopping. Yeah, I know what you're thinking and you're right. We're nuts. But here's the part I want to share with you.
The kids, ages seven and six, predictably got bored after five minutes, and what did they want to do? Guess. Go on, guess. Okay stop because you'll never guess. In the supermarket, they both wanted to play with my Sony Clie PDA (I actually have the 710, but they don't make it anymore). They both like to draw in Diddlebug, and we've used it as a way to do flashcards for letters and numbers in the past while waiting in the doctor's office. Tonight, Kailee instinctively figured out that she could practice her cursive writing in the program, and then she discovered the calculator that let her do math. After a while, I had to get it away from her so that Brent could play "the blocks game" on it (Tetris). Did I mention they're seven and six? And they've never once had to ask how to hold the stylus; they just know.
9:07:29 PM Permanent link here
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Through the Looking Glass "A couple of interesting things came out of my student's focus groups last night.... I'm still trying to sort out some of the things I overheard, but here were some of my big takeaways: IM [Instant Messaging] is bigger than we can possibly imagine - I've heard that IM is huge among teens, but it's bigger than anyone can imagine. I'm still trying to connect the dots on this one.... I can think of a lot of companies who would have sold their soul to be a fly on the wall during these focus groups. Everything from PDAs, to cartoons, to TV, to music, to theatre, to web usability, to wrestling came up." [in Saltire]
I'll bet libraries weren't mentioned once.
7:57:29 PM Permanent link here
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IA in LIS Schools. "Though defining IA as "the design of user experience for Web-based environments" (broad enough? ;) this article is a good example of traditional organizations trying to adapt to the changing market. Interesting ideas on mapping existing LIS classes to IA skills, and a list of links to some IA course offerings." [ia/]
I wish I could have taken a class like this in library school. Has anyone taken a class like this?
2:42:25 PM Permanent link here
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Meryl tells a great joke today about engineers and managers. I hadn't heard it before, but it's all over the Web so you can read it here and at 160 other places. I chose the link I did because it includes the part about rising on hot air.
2:38:51 PM Permanent link here
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SF Chronicle: Search Me. Put simply, the search and directory firms have put their futures in question by flouting time-tested business practices that require an absolutely clear separation between editorial content and advertising. Most search and directory firms are now paying mere lip service to those rules. [Tomalak's Realm]
Even with the disclaimer at the bottom it's still applicable.
12:44:36 PM Permanent link here
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Ack! I just realized my search engine is gone! Sorry about that - I'll put it back tonight. It must have been gobbled up when I did one of my re-installs for Radio.
9:23:27 AM Permanent link here
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Next: Listen to Books on Phone. AT&T Wireless, Audible in delivery tests [via allNetDevices Wireless News]
I'm already an Audible premium subscriber, so I really like this idea. I want this company to succeed because I think they "get it" AND they work with libraries. This is actual content I would switch cellular carriers for, too. I hope they're going to figure out how to let libraries lend audio content over the phone, too, not just bigco publishers.
9:17:19 AM Permanent link here
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K-Logs in action. Looks like Paolo is building feed directories and key word aggregators for his employees at eVectors who are using Radio. Nice. Notice the use of category-based publishing with Radio that enables users to create project or customer specific knowledge streams. Also note the "lighter side feed" for employees to have a little fun. As a new employee it would take all of a couple of hours to find, read, and subscribe to the category specific K-Logs that related to the projects I would be working on. No time spent casting about looking for information, points of view, documents, e-mails, etc on those projects. Wow! Real ROI out of the box. I should probably do some calculations on this. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
This is exactly what I want to do at SLS and then broaden to the other 11 Illinois Library Systems and the Illinois State Library. Dave, how much is a Radio site license for the State of Illinois? :-)
9:13:15 AM Permanent link here
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Lori is looking for contributors for The Handheld Librarian. My problem is that I don't have time to post to multiple places, so I'm afraid I haven't been very helpful in this respect. I'm categorizing my posts though, and one term I use is "PDAs," so how can I automatically send those posts to the HL blog? I know it can be done, but I'll have to take some time to figure it out. I'll have to learn it for SLS anyway, but if you've done this before or have suggestions, I'm an open book. Also, please contact Lori if you're interested in contributing!
9:02:24 AM Permanent link here
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Snowdeal.org is exploring John Robb's ideas about k-logging (knowledge management blogging) and personal brands. In my organization, most people don't care about branding themselves or being leaders, but I think blogging librarians are good evidence of this trend in our field. We know how to niche and despite the refusal of others to recognize it, we use humor and some good names to shape the thoughts we express and the information we share. Examples: The Rogue Librarian, The Laughing Librarian, Librarian.net, New Breed Librarian. All have been successful at infusing their blogs with their personalities, thus becoming a brand online, even if that wasn't their intent. [original link via John Robb]
8:56:55 AM Permanent link here
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BBC bans use of non-MS PDAs "...now an internal memo leaked to Silicon.com reveals that it has banned staff from using any non-Microsoft PDA with company machines. So BBC staffers using Palms and Psions (Psion, incidentally, is based not a molotov cocktail's throw from Beeb HQ) can deem themselves security threats, and have until summer of next year to switch or stop using them with the company kit."
This is especially depressing because Europeans have a broader range of choices for PDAs. I can't wait to see what the BBC says when someone issues the first report of problems with PocketPC 2002 security.
8:34:02 AM Permanent link here
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Good morning from Chicago, where we're expecting a big snowstorm today. I guess it's time to pay the piper. Still no word from the Radio folks, so unless the storm somehow fixes my publishing problem, you probably won't see any new updates until tonight. Happy sledding!
6:41:12 AM Permanent link here
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© Copyright 2004 Jenny Levine.
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