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Wednesday, February 13, 2002 |
One final post for the night. I've been talking to the folks at Macromedia because I'm trying to determine the potential for ColdFusion at SLS, and today they pointed me to iHotelier as a sample of what can be done with Flash. You can read about the case study at the Macromedia Showcase, or you can go directly to the Broadmoor's online reservation form. I have some concerns about this type of implementation, but Kristy and Colin have been great about answering my questions.
I'm mainly posting this for my Flash buddies from last week, because I'm hoping that they'll pass along to me any cool tips and tricks they learn at the second training session next month since I can't be there myself. I'm at least hoping to get a copy of the manual. Please-oh-please-oh-please? I'll be your best friend. :-)
10:54:37 PM Permanent link here
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Information Design using Card Sorting "The difficulty in organising the content stems from a lack of knowledge about how real users make use of this information. Without this, any exercise in information design is a purely theoretical one. A card sorting session can go a long way towards resolving this problem." [at Intranet Journal, via ia/]
Filing away for future reference because I want to try this technique when we start re-designing the SLS Web site to turn it into a portal.
10:35:09 PM Permanent link here
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Personalized Results: Exploring The Future Of Google
"Google is now in the position to take their search engine to another level that can make them soar even higher than their competitors. A lot of speculation has arisen in regards to what lies ahead in Google's future. A few of the speculations are how and when Google will display personalized results."
"The basis of this paper is to examine a few of the methods that Google might employ in their system of providing personalized results. The reason why these methods are examined in great detail is because last year Google acquired a company, Outride,Inc., who researched heavily into personalizing data."
Some fascinating ideas, including the idea of personalized recommendations displayed while a user is surfing. How about the ability to choose between recommendations from everyone or authoritative recommendations from librarians? Or how about librarian recommendations integrated into our online catalogs?
9:06:35 PM Permanent link here
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U.S. Considers Military Action to Remove Skating Judges "Reacting to the outrageous awarding of the Olympic gold medal to a pair of Russian figure skaters over a more deserving Canadian pair Monday night, President Bush said today that the U.S. would not rule out military action to remove the figure skating judges involved. 'The judges from Russia, China, Poland, and Ukraine represent an axis of cheaters,' Mr. Bush said to a standing ovation in a special joint session of Congress." [via MeFi]
8:27:23 PM Permanent link here
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Is J.K. Rowling propping up the book biz? Suppose her latest were offered online "For the movable-type book, the killer app was the Bible. For television, the killer app was Milton Berle's "Texaco Star Theater," without which TV might still be duking it out with ham radio for market penetration. For e- books, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" would be the Killer App of All Time. Of course, this whole disaster scenario for the book biz could never really happen." [at SF Gate, via Slashdot]
An interesting scenario that would indeed put eBooks on the map. Of course, then you have the problem of which format to put it in - Adobe Acrobat, Gemstar, Palm Press, Microsoft Reader? Without one unified standard, this just isn't going to happen. Hey, Audible - get the audio rights and secure your future!
8:02:03 PM Permanent link here
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Washington Plans Unprecedented Camera Network "Washington police are building what will be the nation's biggest network of surveillance cameras to monitor shopping areas, streets, monuments and other public places in the U.S. capital, a move that worries civil liberties groups, The Wall Street Journal said Wednesday. The system would eventually include hundreds of cameras, linking existing devices in Metro mass transit stations, public schools and traffic intersections to new digital cameras mounted to watch over neighborhoods and shopping districts, the Journal said." [at The Washington Post]
This is pretty scary. How long do you suppose it will be before they want to put the cameras in library branches? And then subpoena circulation records?
6:19:03 PM Permanent link here
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And speaking of usability, I want to change the way my posts look and read. I want to put a small icon next to each new post so that it's easier to distinguish between them. Then I want to do something besides italicize quoted material, because I think it makes it more difficult to read. I don't want to put it in a different color because I'll eventually be designing my own templates. Do you have any ideas? Maybe just indent and quote the material? Thoughts welcome.
I also want to add titles at the top of each post, even though Radio won't pick them up as honest-to-god titles. I'd like to make the background color on these different, again to better delineate them. Suggestion for Dave and the Radio crew: add an option in the WYSIWYG editor for background color of a span done in CSS. I could do it manually, but that would defeat the point of using the editor.
6:11:54 PM Permanent link here
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Information Specialists at the Intersection of IA and Usability [via ia/]
This is an interesting article in its own right, but I just had to share this section:
"In a speech last year, GraceAnne DeCandido described the lure of librarianship by saying:
For most of us, what brought us to librarianship was the power of the word, the power of stories. Whether we called it reading, or scholarship, or research or study, what brought us to libriarianship was the power inherent in bringing together people and ideas.
She went on to say:
If librarianship is the connecting of people to ideas, it doesn’t matter where the ideas reside. That means, if the ideas are on video, or on audiotape, or on CD- ROM, we adapted our collection policies to handle these materials. Format is no longer the controversial issue it once was. Or is it?"
6:07:31 PM Permanent link here
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Mobile Messaging Spec Released "An initiative by industry leaders to standardize mobile instant messaging and presence services came to fruition Wednesday with the release of the Wireless Village 1.0 specification.... The goal of the specification is to promote interoperability between mobile and fixed-network instant messaging systems so that, for instance, PC users can exchange messages with mobile phone users.... The specification also is forward-looking and will embrace Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS) when it becomes available, according to the group. MMS will add various multimedia elements, such as music and video, to messaging." [allNetDevices Wireless News]
Great! Now I will be able to send people pictures of Rosie, the cutest puppy in the whole wide world, on their phones! And Bruce will be able to send me pictures of Beans no matter where I am. :-)
Back in the real world, this means you might be able to answer more complex reference questions over IM.
6:02:42 PM Permanent link here
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Entertainment Industry's Copyright Right Puts Consumers in Cross Hairs "The studios and TV networks are also whining about the feature that lets users fast-forward through commercials or skip them entirely. The entertainment companies are understandably worried about this trend, but so what? My employer would like you to read the paper all the way through and at least glance at every advertisement, but the fact that you don't have to is one of the reader-friendly pieces of the transaction." [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]
Hear, hear! More from Dan about the latest lawsuits against Tivo and SonicBlue (the folks that make ReplayTVs). It's a great summation of how ludicrous these lawsuits are, so it's a good printout for the uninitiated. Here's why it will matter to them (and you and me):
"Why should you care if you can't make a copy of a CD to play in your car? Because the industry's attack is much wider. Your rights are intertwined with scholarship, with the public commons of knowledge that the owners of information want to close off. The damage will be far-reaching if they succeed."
Besides the fair use, First Amendment, and criminal prosecution issues surrounding all of this, there is one other thing libraries can take away from this whole debacle, and that is the lesson of not placing barriers in the way of what your users want. Work with them, not against them. It will only alienate your users, and they won't come back.
1:35:07 PM Permanent link here
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Another Salon pointer today: Big Brother Is Watching You Read. "Increasingly, the government is demanding that bookstores reveal what books their customers have purchased. Bookstore owners and privacy advocates say that's scarier than a Stephen King novel."
While it focuses on recent cases of law enforcement officials getting subpoenas for bookstore records, it does have a quote from Judith Krug at ALA. Unfortunately, they don't run with it and explore the impact on libraries, which is huge given the recent "USA Patriot Act" (a horrible misnomer at best). If you haven't started preparing for a knock on the door from the police, you should. Even though you won't be able to tell anybody about it.
9:39:28 AM Permanent link here
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I don't watch the "Stargate" TV series, so I was completely oblivious to the current controversy over it. Salon has an excellent article about the whoop-di-doo called Will Women Destroy Stargate? Ignore the incendiary title of the article and read it for what it tells you about bigcos and how they view their audiences (also called "customers"). This ties in nicely with Adam's trust issues that I discussed yesterday. It also shows the new reality for how customers react, a la the Cluetrain Manifesto. Next up, watching the demise of clue-less record companies.
9:21:16 AM Permanent link here
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Qualcomm's Vision of the Wireless Future "When he finished, there were 20 brand-new, CDMA-based mobile handsets and devices arrayed on the table, the high-tech souvenirs of Belk's most recent trip to Hong Kong and Japan.... 'These are not PowerPoint slides,' Belk said. 'These are real devices that are already shipping in volume in Asia.' " [at Business 2.0]
And there's the rub. When I do my presentations, that's all I have - pictures of prototypes or of devices not available in the U.S. Europe and Asia really are 18 months ahead of us in this area.
"Beale also discussed Qualcomm's gpsOne location technology.... It also opens the door for many new location-based services, such as traffic information and local weather forecasts. On Japan KDDI's network, there are already more than 20 location-based services available -- all of which are relatively inexpensive, costing less than $5 per month."
I'm looking forward to being able to travel and have information come to me automatically based on my location. For example, if I'm at a conference and I'm looking for a restaurant, I'd like my phone/PDA/whatever to know where I am and offer a list of nearby choices. Maybe it should tell me what movies or plays are on tonight and if there are still tickets available. You get the idea....
"Predictably, both Belk and Beale anticipate strong growth for the wireless industry as ever-more-compelling products and services become available and the industry settles on a single communication standard. How long will that take? Belk, whose career began in the personal computing business in 1983, likened the wireless industry today to the PC business of the 1980s. 'I wouldn't worry about the wireless industry yet, it's still relatively young,' he said. 'Just look how long it took the PC industry just to get to the point of standardized parallel cables.' "
Not to beat a dead horse, but the ebook industry is even younger than PCs, and PDAs have really only come into their own during the last few years. So don't count any of these technologies out just yet.
8:52:36 AM Permanent link here
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Quova upgrade pins down AOL users. "The Redwood City, Calif.-based company is releasing GeoPoint 4.0, software that identifies the geographic location of Web site visitors down to the country, state and city level. The technology maps IP (Internet protocol) addresses--which are used to route signals over the Web to an individual's computer--with new depth, according to the company. 'Clearly, in terms of digital content distribution, the technology becomes very important to assigning and getting the right kinds of information to the proper and authenticated users. For example, music distribution,' Mike McGuire, research director at GartnerG2." [at News.com]
Interesting. I don't think they'll ever fully get the mapping down, but I wonder if this type of technology can be integrated into library vendors' software for automatic authentication to our databases and online catalogs.
8:23:41 AM Permanent link here
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Background: last summer I moved my computer into the basement and made it an office/recreation area for myself. Of course, the cable Internet connection doesn't go into the basement, and I didn't want to wire the house, so I installed a wireless network in order to get Internet on my computer. I also bought a new PC, which has made me 100 times more productive due to speed alone. That freed up a PC, which went upstairs in what would normally be called "the dining room" (except that we don't dine there). So I added the PC and the laptop to the network, and suddenly everyone in the house was on the Net.
Reason for background: in the morning, I usually shower, get dressed, and go downstairs to read my email. Today I came upstairs from the basement and found 6-year old Brent on the PC in the dining room. He was on the Zoog Disney Web site because he has become obssessed with the "Cadet Kelly" game. Atari games were more sophisticated than this thing, but he loves it. Then I looked into the living room and saw 7-year old Kailee (soon to be 8-year old Kailee) on the laptop, also playing Web games and checking her email.
I just laughed and shook my head in amazement.
8:17:30 AM Permanent link here
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More market share numbers, PalmOS down, Pocket PC up "According to the report expected to be released Wednesday, Palm saw their market share drop more than 10 percentage points in 2001 to 38.9% (5.1 million units) while the PalmOS platform still accounted for more than half of PDA sales worldwide.... The PalmOS platform's decline was the Pocket PC platform's gain with Microsoft's mobile operating system almost doubling its share of the market from 11% in 2000 to 21% in 2001.... It should also be noted that according to this report, over 20% of all PDA's shipped worldwide last year were neither Pocket PC or PalmOS based, an interesting statistic indeed. And while the numbers are slightly different from a similar report filed by NPD last month, the message is clear and that is that PalmOS share is dropping while Pocket PC share is rising." [PDABuzz.com]
Not at all surprising. I'm curious how they'll start counting the combo PDA-phones in next year's reports.
7:23:07 AM Permanent link here
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© Copyright 2004 Jenny Levine.
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