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Wednesday, May 22, 2002 |
Digital Video Recorders Give Advertisers Pause
"One in five people who own a DVR like TiVo or ReplayTV say they never watch any commercials, according to a recent survey from Memphis-based NextResearch.
Numbers like that have provoked gloomy pronouncements from industry executives. Some even come close to accusing habitual ad skippers of theft....
Others are trying to turn the technology to their advantage. Coca-Cola has paid for advertising that appears on the screen of a ReplayTV user when a viewer pauses a program for more than a few minutes. Last week, Best Buy announced that it would embed electronic tags visible only to TiVo users in 30-second commercials featuring the singer Sheryl Crow it is running on MTV. Viewers can click on an icon to see 12 additional minutes of the Best Buy 'advertainment,' while TiVo records the continuing MTV programming so they can watch it later.
'We need to start to understand how we're going to have to reach our consumers with this new technology,' said Mollie Weston, a product manager for Best Buy's image advertising. 'It is going to force us to put advertisements out there that people are actually going to choose to watch.'
Indeed, advertisers take heart in data from TiVo that showed its viewers fast-forwarding through this year's Super Bowl and using the instant replay function for the Britney Spears Pepsi commercial more than any other segment besides the winning field goal.
Because DVR's are connected by a phone or high-speed Internet line from a viewer's home to a central server to get program schedules, some advertisers envision downloading commercials aimed at individual people based on information from databases compiled through other sources. Members of Purina pet clubs might get pet food commercials, for instance, while the owner of a BMW lease that is about to expire might get an advertisement on the automaker's new convertible.
'There's a lot of things that are going to start to change,' said Ira Sussman, director of research for Initiative Media North America, an advertising buyer whose clients include Maybelline and Home Depot. 'We're going to have to start thinking more about the importance of product placement within programs, placing more relevant, highly targeted messages. But we see it as a glass half full....'
'We've trained people that you can buy things at 3 in the morning in the nude on the Internet and make a call to anyone from anywhere on a cellphone, and the idea that CBS is going to determine when I watch `CSI' flies in the face of that trend,' said Josh Bernoff, an analyst with Forrester Research. 'TV networks are going to have to figure out how to make money from a TV viewer that is not nailed to the chair waiting for the commercial to end.' " [NY Times: Technology]
Taking exception to the fact that Kellner did equate skipping commercials with theft, it's good to see others accepting the new reality and taking advantage of it to beat Kellner to the profit line, as well as to consumer loyalty.
When you start thinking about digital entertainment hubs in the home, average users are more comfortable with televisions than computers. So when your whole house is networked, it's a very real possibility that your interface to the house's entertainment system could be through your TV. Imagine your news aggregator through your TV (because part of that wireless access includes a connection to the internet), and those commercials they want to download could even be RSS enclosures that automatically download with your newsfeeds. Lots of possibilities if they'd just open their eyes....
11:54:24 PM Permanent link here
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Tech Gadgets Aid in Rescue of Stranded Polar Trekker
"A man who became stranded during a solo trek to the North Pole was brought to safety Monday, after sending an electronic photo proving an air rescue in the treacherous Arctic was possible.
David Mill, a 34-year-old Scot, dug a 1,000-foot runway in the snow for an emergency plane and then sent a picture of the runway via his hand-held computer.
'In the Arctic you cannot land an aircraft by computer, and I had to prove that the pilot would have a clear line of sight,' Mill said....
Last week, he became marooned on an ice floe after a series of problems, failing to reach his destination. Though he had a mobile phone and a handheld computer, he felt he had to prove the feasibility of an air rescue.
He dug the runway then took pictures of the site and the sky before using the phone and computer to e-mail the images to rescuers in Resolute Bay, Canada.
On Monday, he was rewarded for his efforts. A plane landed on the homemade runway and rescued him." [The Nando Times, thanks to Tricia]
Tomorrow I'm going in to work and arguing that they should upgrade my Clie to the PEG-NR70V because the digital camera could make it a life-saving device!
11:06:44 PM Permanent link here
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A Computerized System May Replace Masking-Tape Messages on Mortarboards
"The days of masking-tape messages on mortarboards could be drawing to a close, at least at the Universities of Pennsylvania and New Mexico. This month, the institutions held commencement ceremonies that used a Web site and wireless technology to allow students to display personalized messages on video screens (below) as they collected their diplomas....
Students at both institutions visited MarchingOrder's Web site, on which they could type messages and -- at Pennsylvania -- upload photographs. As a student walked on stage during the commencement ceremony, assistants scanned a small card with a bar code linking to the student's information and message, which then appeared on a screen facing the audience.
According to Mr. Badler, the program ran flawlessly this year -- technically and in the substance of the individual messages. Administrators at both institutions vetted every student's personal message to ensure that no objectionable material made its way onto the commencement screens." [The Chronicle, via Lockergnome]
This is a great idea for those colleges that have boring ceremonies, but I hope they never implement this at my alma mater, KU. You see, KU has a wonderful graduation tradition in which students build boats, houses, canoes, and the like to carry with them, or adorn themselves in various ways, as they march into the stadium for the ceremony. The parade snakes its way down the hill, so you're on display for everyone to see.
My undergraduate degree from KU is in journalism, so a friend and I built a replica of the RKO Tower and affixed it to the top of my mortarboard. I received many a compliment, and I was one of the few journalism students to do something out of the ordinary. Usually it's the art and architecture students that go crazy.
10:52:52 PM Permanent link here
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O'Reilly Blog Book Is Online
" 'Essential Blogging,' the O'Reilly blog-book for which I wrote the first chapter, is online as a series of PDFs for public review -- g'head and download a copy and let me know how badly I screwed up. Seriously, I think this is going to be a swell book." [bOing bOing]
10:36:03 PM Permanent link here
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The Margi Presenter-to-Go for Palm devices is now available for pre-orders for $199, with delivery expected in mid-June. This SD version works on all of the m series Palms, but not the earlier ones or the Sony Clies.
I haven't actually used one so I can't endorse it, but I will say that it looked pretty darn cool when Lori used it for her demo a few weeks ago. The other great thing Lori mentioned is that you can do actual demos of software using this technique. At their upcoming PDA conference, she and her colleagues plan to set up two Handsprings, both using Margis. One will run the presentation, while the other will demonstrate the software in action.
It would be totally cool if I could walk into my presentations and use my Clie to display them! In fact, I guess you could use such a tool with the new Clie PEG-NR70V to display pictures and videos on the screen.
If anyone at Margi is reading this, I'm officially volunteering to beta test the Sony Clie version (assuming they're going to make one)!
10:33:27 PM Permanent link here
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Porsche Racing Team Utilizes Wearable Computers
"The Alex Job Racing team is using Xybernaut Corp.'s (NASDAQ:XYBR) Mobile Assistant V wearable computers for computing and communications for the Porsche team competing in the 2002 American Le Mans Series (ALMS). Alex Job Racing, which has a Porsche factory relationship and is co-sponsored by Xybernaut, runs in the GT class of the ALMS.
So far during this season, Alex Job Racing team has taken first-place in both ALMS races: the 12 Hours of Sebring held on March 16 and the Grand Prix of Sonoma held this past weekend on May 19.
'Xybernaut's MA V computers are primarily worn and used by team members to centralize vast quantities of data and make split second decisions during each race,' said Alex Job, owner of the racing team. 'The average margin of victory for the teams racing in our category often comes down to a tenth of a second. Access to critical data is the lifeblood of our success. Xybernaut's wearable computers allow our team members to gather and share data more efficiently to make the best decisions at the most appropriate times.' " [allNetDevices Wireless News]
10:12:32 PM Permanent link here
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'Spider-Man' Creeps Around Web, But Obi-Wan's MIA
"Redshift Research has been monitoring new, popularly released films that are available for trade on Kazaa – currently the leading Napster heir. According to the company, founded by former Webnoize analyst Matt Bailey, the first working copy of the wallcrawler's mega-hit found its way onto Kazaa on May 12, nine days after it was released to theaters....
However, despite press reports that the movie came available after special previews earlier this month, Redshift was unable to locate a working copy of 'Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones,' which was released Thursday. The movie's availability on the Kazaa system, at least, appears to be illusory, according to Bailey.
'We haven't been able to find any (copies), and we've downloaded probably six copies of files that claim to be 'Star Wars,' Bailey said. He said that among those downloads, researchers found either blank files or copies of two completely unrelated movies, 'Monsters Inc.' and 'Showtime.' " [Newsbytes]
I haven't tried this myself - has anyone been able to download a valid copy?
10:08:49 PM Permanent link here
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Door-to-Door DMCA Reform
"The encroachment of copyright legislation has begun to impede the common uses of information needed by the public to conduct its business. This was most clearly demonstrated when the American Association of Publishers began to attack public education and libraries in the name of copyright control. The high point came when Judith Platt of the American Association of Publishers accused librarians of being like terrorists. It was cemented when the Vital Books corporation gained an exclusive contract with NYU Dental School that forced students to purchase all of their text books on DVD. As if that wasn't enough, the DVD would turn itself off at the end of the school year, requiring students to purchase the books again.
In response to the growing threat of digital rights management systems and legal extortion that threatened our public libraries, and public school system, a few of us joined together last May for the first meeting of NY Fair Use at the Killarny Rose in downtown NYC. Through that summer and through the most difficult fall anyone could ever imagine, NY Fair Use has been a beacon for freedom, individual rights and political action, and it continues on. Every week we knock on doors in targeted congressional districts, fighting to save libraries from the AAP and collecting signatures. After the destruction of the World Trade Center, we continued to hit the streets every week, even knocking on the door of Senator Schumer, himself.
Our fliers and petitions focused on a list of points relating to digital media and libraries, quoting Pat Schoeder and Judith Platt. We addressed our petitions to Congressman Anthony Weiner, who is appointed to the Intellectual Property subcommittee in the House Judiciary Committee. We set a goal for the number of doors to knock on, how many people to speak to and precisely what actions we were asking people to take. We tried to support the door-knocking with 'Save the Libraries' buttons and by handing out fliers in the main business district of Park Slope, Brooklyn, the neighborhood we targeted. Every week we totaled our results so that we were armed with a summary for the Congressman when we made it down to Washington. We also brought groups of people to the community office and tracked down the Congressman at speaking engagements, putting a 'Save the Libraries' button in his hand. In the end, he had his office call us to make the trip to Washington and discuss the issue.
This winter, when everyone was afraid to go to Washington, eight of us visited Washington DC for six hours of meetings with the staff of Representative Anthony Weiner. We noticed a TiVo system in the office and pointed it out to Representative Weiner's Chief of Staff, Kevin A. Ryan, who said, "The Congressman loves the TiVo." We underscored that TiVo is exactly the kind of fair use device threatened by proposed copyright laws and the DMCA....
For more information on DMCA reform, see the Legislative Agenda section of the NY for Fair Use web site.
Remember that, as former House Speaker Tip O'Neill said, all politics is local." [Linux Journal, via Doc Searls Weblog]
If I can get me some of those buttons, I'll hand them out at my presentations!
I'm incredibly impressed that they're going door-to-door, as that's a difficult thing to do, especially to talk to people about a complicated topic like the DMCA. More power to 'em, I say!
It's true all politics is local, which is why I include in my Information Shifting presentation the message that we all have to stay informed on this issue and make our voices heard to our representatives. If you want to know more about this important topic, you can also visit the Anti-DMCA site. Check out their Anti-DMCA Index for some great (or not-so-great) statistics.
8:39:40 PM Permanent link here
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Aggregator? What's an Aggregator?
"Think of the Web as a world-wide pile of paper. Some of those pieces of paper have interesting writing on them, some have pictures, and some have unintelligible marks that look like words but make no sense. An aggregator is a clipping service.
A clipping service sorts through journals, newspapers, and other publications; extracts the items of interest; bundles them together and drops the lot of them on your desk. You skim through the clippings....
An aggregator takes a feed, generally published in the RSS format, collects it, collates it — optionally folds, spindles, and mutilates it — and presents it for your reading pleasure. Depending on the aggregator you use, some of these things will be more or less possible. But the general function is the same.
If there's something really interesting, you might save it. Often you'll run across an item that you know will interest someone else, so you pass it on to them, often with comments." [The Peanut Gallery]
Will summarizes nicely an IM coversation we had a few weeks ago. Actually, it was pretty much him explaining this concept and me just agreeing with him. I'm glad he posted this, because it's a good way to describe news aggregators to the uninitiated. (Note to self for future presentations.)
8:06:16 PM Permanent link here
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Through the Looking Glass of Heads-Up Displays
"MicroOptical's display eyewear features a patented combination of optics, electronics, and micro-displays and allows users to put text, graphics, and video images continuously in their field of view. In contrast to conventional heavy and bulky head-mounted displays, the virtual, 'floating' 12-inch image created by MicroOptical's display eyewear appears with no obstruction to vision on any side of the image. The non-immersive displays allow the performance of tasks without the need to stop work to glance at a distant monitor.
MicroOptical is developing three versions of displays that mount on and in eyewear for viewing output from a variety of portable electronic devices such as cell phones, DVD players, PDAs, PCs and cameras. The first version, a monocular viewer, attaches to the temple piece of a pair of eyeglasses and is designed for multi-tasking work. This version, which is currently available to OEMs and customers through MicroOptical and authorized resellers, has many commercial and industrial applications, including medical (viewing endoscopic images), test and measurement (viewing oscilloscope waveforms, electrical test measurements, boroscopic images), mobile communications (data and images relayed by cell phone), mobile data and web access (through wireless PDAs), and military applications (night vision, tactical and navigation data). The second version, a binocular viewer, looks like a pair of eyeglasses and will typically be used in consumer applications like portable DVD viewing. In the third version, MicroOptical has integrated the display directly into a conventional eyeglass frame and lens.
MicroOptical will showcase several applications of its display eyewear at SID, including:
- The monocular viewer plugged into a wearable computer will demonstrate how technicians and utility workers can access important schematics without having to stop to look at hard copy reference materials.
- The monocular viewer plugged into a video inspection system will show how law enforcement and military personnel can use this hands-free technology for remote inspection.
- The binocular version plugged into a DVD player will demonstrate how consumers can create a hands-free, personal and portable entertainment system.
- The integrated eyeglass display linked with a cellular phone will show how users can view Internet information delivered wirelessly in a hands-free environment without their vision being obstructed.
'MicroOptical's eyewear displays are revolutionary,' said Mark Spitzer, CEO of MicroOptical. 'As electronic devices get smaller, unfortunately so too do their displays, making it increasingly more difficult to read the screens. What is needed is a display that provides a large image in a small package. Eyewear displays solve this problem using optics to create an image like a heads-up display in your glasses. SID allows us to showcase our latest developments and demonstrate the benefits of our eyewear displays to OEMs, businesses and consumers.' " [allNetDevices Wireless News]
Another future technology I forgot to mention last night (along with voice recognition and voice input).
7:05:08 PM Permanent link here
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"Another idea for conference surfing. You can log into a session in realtime. An IRC channel for each session. And one for the whole conference. So you can say "Hey my session is boring, are any of the others interesting?" Could lead to a mass exodus. Clearly we've just begun to explore the possibilities." [Scripting News]
"An idea worth passing along. On Ecademy, pwainewright says: '[O'Reilly] could have encouraged these real-time bloggers to subscribe RSS feeds of their blogs to an aggregated 'event blog', effectively pooling all the commentary and attracting more participants into the feedback process.' Good idea. Perhaps we can try this at the Open Source Convention in July. A simple registry open to all attendees. Give us the URLs of your RSS feeds. An aggregator runs once an hour, reads all the feeds, and spits out a communal event-based blog, with pointers to the originals. Easy to implement with current technology." [Scripting News]
"Blogging conferences. The change merchants have been predicting the overturning of newspapers by weblogs. But weblogs are having a far more powerful impact on conferences, which is the real point of the article below from the Guardian. My recommendation to conference organizers: hire some webloggers to report on your conference, and link to other posts; put up a conference news blog on the web; make that the default page on the internet terminals; and inject weblog commentary into the discussion. For instance, the moderator ought to be browsing weblogs in real time for points and questions to put to the panelists.
Time to blog on [Guardian]" [nickdenton.org]
I think it'd be great if future library conferences incorporated WiFi access plus Dave's ideas. Not only could SLS folks get immediate access to the sessions I'm attending, but I could be part of the feedback loop within the sessions themselves. It's a great way to ask questions because people are often too shy to step up to a microphone.
And I wouldn't necessarily have to leave my current session in order to be part of a second, concurrent one. I could monitor the blog, chat session, or (big-wish-but-I-know-it-won't-happen) video stream. It would be a conference version of TV's picture-in-picture. "PIP sessions!"
5:37:48 PM Permanent link here
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"House Approves Bill for Child-Friendly Domain Names
The House of Representatives' approved legislation designed to cordon off a safe online 'playground' for young children. House members voted 406-2 to approve the 'Dot-Kids Implementation and Efficiency Act of 2002,' which would mandate the creation of a "dot-kids" extension within America's sovereign "dot-us" Internet domain. [GigaLaw]
I seem to remember that ICAAN was against this, or maybe it was just Esther Dyson. I must be missing something because it seems like a good idea to me. It will be much easier to configure my home computer to limit my kids' access (if I want to) if all the browser has to do it limit access by the domain extension." [Ernie the Attorney]
Ernie asks why this is a bad thing, so here's the answer. Like almost anything Congress tries to do these days involving the internet, this legislation tries tries to create something that is irrelevant as soon as it is created, not to mention impossible. They key is the final paragraph of that article:
"Under the pending House language, no Web site with a kids.us address would be permitted to post hyperlinks to locations outside of the kids.us domain. The legislation also now prohibits chat and instant messaging features, except in cases where a site operator can guarantee the features adhere to kid-friendly standards developed for the domain."
Problems:
- Name me one site you're willing to stake your legal liability on that will have absolutely no links that anyone anywhere could consider "non-kid-friendly." Go on, I dare you. Let's start with leading by example. If Congress thinks this is such a great idea, then they should register congress.kids.us and point it at either their main site or a kids version of it. What sites do you think that kids.us version could link to? Certainly not the White House or any other agency that might reference the Starr Report. So now we've pretty much established that kids.us sites can't link to 99.4% of the web. Which, like, kind of defeats the point of the web. If you're that concerned about your kids visiting non-kid-friendly sites, then you as a parent should install filtering software or use AOL. There just isn't going to be that much to find in this domain anyway.
- A corollary problem is the fact that in order to link to an outside site, you have to be willing to "guarantee" it adheres to each and everyone of those standards. I'm not sure what happens to you if take that chance and lose, but who's really willing to find out?
- You also can't link to any site that either includes a search box for or a link to an internet search engine such as Yahoo, Google, or Yahooligans, because that would be an open door into "bad" content. So now the site is pretty much completely isolated from any way to get to any other site.
- Next comes the question of who gets to define what a "kid-friendly" site is. I haven't followed up on this to see who is defining the standards for this domain, but I can't think of a single person (let alone committee or entity) that I would trust to do this for the entire country. It gets back to the whole filtering/censorship debate, and you already know which side of the fence I hang my hat on for that one. Please feel free to submit the names of someone you would trust in this role.
- You couldn't even link to a library catalog that includes any CDs in it for which the note field might possibly include a bad word (like the ones that sometimes appear in song titles) because they'll show up in the notes field for that item.
- And prohibiting chat and instant messaging? That means no library that provides IM reference is going to sign on to this idea and you couldn't link to one that does provide this service because if even one kid asks a question about abortion, homosexuality, evolution, sex, or anything else these folks deem as inappropriate, then guess who the government is coming after? Yeah, it's wrong, but that's how things are starting to shape up these days.
When is Congress going to wake up to the fact that you just can't legislate this stuff? This domain won't go anywhere or help anyone, but every legislator that signs on the dotted line can hold it up come election time as a valiant attempt to protect kids. If you disagree with any of this, I'd love to hear examples of sites you think qualify for kids.us status.
On a side note, while driving home last night, I heard on the wide-open radio airwaves "b!tch," "kiss my @ss," and a commercial for augmenting breast size. I'm far more concerned about letting my kids listen to the radio and watch TV than I am about them possibly coming across some porn on the internet. I'll take the responsibility for teaching them protective and responsible internet behavior. I don't want Congress coming after radio either, but the internet is no better and no worse than any other medium. Our culture is changing, and we have to get over the fact that there are things Congress can't just wave a magic wand at to make them go away.
4:03:50 PM Permanent link here
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Has anyone scraped Instapundit to create an RSS feed? I can't keep up with Glenn manually, so I'd love to shifted him into my aggregator.
9:55:47 AM Permanent link here
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Peterme has a recap of J.C. Herz's presentation about Networked Experience Design at last week's O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference.
"In it, J.C. argued that people designing any system that exploits a network would do well to study the 'social ecology' of online gaming, where the interactions between players are supported by the elements of the game environments, and spurring various cultural developments. (I put J.C.'s 'social ecology' in quotes, because a Google search suggests its standard use is quite different than hers. I believe "information ecology" is the more apt term.)
Lexicon aside, J.C.'s models of the gaming ecology offered insights that could be carried into other milieus. She began by breaking down the four types of gamers:
1. Achievers - they want to win, kick everyone's @ss, be seen as the best
2. Explorers - they're modeling the system, they tinker with it's boundaries, winning is secondary to being the most knowledgeable
3. Socializers - they're earning administrative privileges, they run the system, they help newbies get up to speed, etc.
4. Spoilers - they're the class clowns. They're here to, as we used to say in my college co-op, f*ck sh*t up.
J.C.'s point here is simple. An online game has to provide multiple ways to win, or, perhaps a more accurate term is 'succeed', because success means different things to these different roles. Not everyone has the same goal, motivations, etc. People want to take different roles....
The most obvious beneficiary of J.C.'s modeling would be corporate intranets. Those four user types, the use of experience/knowledge as status, the forming of meaningful groups--all of these are important within companies, and an intranet design that explicitly represented these elements could prove to be exceedingly powerful. Employees getting rewarded for sharing the most information (thus earning the most 'cubes'). Employees maintaining group identities, not just with their department, but with other meaningful groups (basketball players, people carpooling from a certain location, etc.) Even a system that allowed the jokester a place for carrying on. Intranets need to respond to its users not just as employees, cogs in a company's system, but as people, social creatures interacting."
Peter provides further links if you want to read more about J.C., but this is definitely food for thought for me. I think I'm probably the only full-time employee in my organization that plays video games, and yet I can still tell which co-workers fit into each of the above types.
The concept would work pretty well for our extranet, too, because our member libraries could assign value to specific information (which is way too scary a concept for most people), which would help generate "emblems of status." Unfortunately, I'm not enough of a programmer (or we don't have enough money to hire one) to build these types of elements into the stuff I'm currently working on.
One of the things I forgot to explicitly say last night was that as the Net Generation grows up "information shifted," managers, information architects, and techies building online systems are going to have to recognize the paradigm shift and deal with this when these kids enter the corporate work force. As they grow up with news aggregators, online gaming, online social interactions (communities), pervasive computing, and ubiquitous connectivity, your knowledge management system, content management system, and work flow had better take these factors into account. Further, they should take advantage of how these kids consume information and feed it back into the system.
9:31:26 AM Permanent link here
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E3: Attack of the Games
"It's an important time for these three companies. Video games have almost usurped movies and music as the primary source of entertainment, climbing to $9.5 billion in hardware and software sales with a projected growth of 25 percent over the next two years, according to DFC Intelligence research. This growth comes as music sales are on the decline and movie revenues have slowed slightly....
The highlight was a demonstration of Sony's online initiative. The demo got a little help from Minnesota Vikings quarterback Daunte Culpepper, who was in Los Angeles, and Tennessee Titan lineman Jevon Kearse, who was in Florida. The two squared off online, playing Madden 2003 while the great announcer John Madden called the game from Pleasanton, California, over a satellite remote." [Wired News]
I'm fascinated by the Sony demo noted in the paragraph above. Talk about new social interactions! My kids already expect to be able to communicate via email and cell phone. Wait until they discover IM and, eventually, text messaging/instant messaging on smartphones. I watch six-year old Brent play video games on the TV, and it boggles my mind to imagine how quickly he will adapt to wireless gaming (and how much he'll love it).
He has a friend, David, that he met three years ago during out annual summer vacation in Saugatuck, Michigan. They only see each other once a year, but this past year they forged a new bond over video games. In another year, they may stay in touch more because they'll probably be playing online against each other.
It's too early to tell which type of gamer Brent is because he's so young. He's still showing signs of each type at this point.
9:03:48 AM Permanent link here
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Jedi Archive
"While researching, Guy uncovered a little fact I thought might be interesting. It might give you a little insight as to where the inspiration for the Jedi Archive design came from, if true.
As it turns out, the Jedi Archive/Library is an almost exact replica of one of the finest libraries in the world - The Old Library of Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland." [Cinemascape, via LISNews.com]
Too bad the depiction of the librarian wasn't more accurate.
7:25:15 AM Permanent link here
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Side note to librarians about the presentation I gave last night to Jim's KM class:
This was the first time I've put on this show for a non-librarian audience. For a change, I was not the youngest person in the room, and I didn't have to go into detail about what MP3s are. More than half of the audience had PDAs, and they all had cell phones. Illinois librarians should be particularly concerned that not a single one of them knew they had free access to FirstSearch thanks to the Illinois State Library, and no one had heard of ALA's @ Your Library campaign. Granted, these were graduate students, but only a few of them have even visited the library.
We're doing a horrible job of marketing and reaching out to those users who don't come into the physical library. (I'd argue that we're doing a horrible job of marketing to those that are, too!)
Sigh.
7:21:18 AM Permanent link here
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"Two-thirds of the Earth's land surface will be 'destroyed, fragmented or disturbed' by human activity within 30 years, says UN report." [New Scientist]
Right now, there are 8 million people living in the Chicagoland area (I think I was stuck in traffic with two-thirds of them last night!), and we're supposed to be up to 10 million by 2030. So which is worse- density or sprawl? Where are we going to put all of ourselves?
7:12:57 AM Permanent link here
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A couple of quick posts and then I'm off to bed. Tonight I had the good fortune to finally meet Jim McGee, and I even got to speak to his knowledge management class about "Information Shifting." Agreeing to do the presentation on a specific date forced me to start updating it, so once I fix some bad links and throw in some current statistics, I'll post the new version for all to see.
But after a 1-1/2 hour drive through rush hour up to Evanston, monopolizing the class for three hours, and then an hour drive home, I'm tired and I'm going to bed. Thanks to everyone that wrote me today - I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
Side note: it was truly a pleasure to finally meet Jim! Let the Prairie Blogs connections continue forth and multiply!
12:05:17 AM Permanent link here
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© Copyright 2004 Jenny Levine.
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