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Tuesday, May 28, 2002 |
Riding the Tiger
"At the intersection of two disruptive technologies lies the Bermuda Triangle of the Digital Age. Wi-Fi (802.11 wireless communications) and Weblogs (the untethered journalism of the immediate) are comingling to produce an intoxicating blend of chaos and innovation.
The Wi-Fi/Weblog axis has been increasingly visible in recent months at conferences and trade shows....
Disruptive doesn't mean destructive; the emerging communications models are not so much replacing as evolving from the previous generations. That's why Robert Pepper, Chief of the office of plans and policy at the Federal Communications Commission uses the word "morph" a lot.
That's right, the FCC. The same guys who outlawed George Carlin's seven dirty words are now the protectors of our wireless freedoms. Pepper doesn't have a Weblog (yet), and the Vortex NDA precluded real-time coverage of his keynote speech, but his message on stage and later over lunch is that the FCC's goal is ubiquitous broadband availability and minimal regulation built on the Internet's open, end-to-end tradition.
With the X-Files moving from the home to big screen, conspiracy buffs will have to keep looking for new fodder. Pepper says everything you know is wrong. The common wisdom is that the 1996 Telecom Act failed, the United States is behind Europe and Japan, and there's not enough wireless Internet.
In fact, residential cable telephony more than doubled to 1.7 million customers in the last year, cable and DSL service availability should reach more than 90 percent by the end of 2002, and Wi-Fi usage is exploding. I ask Pepper how Wi-Fi adoption is challenging the wireless providers. 'There are a variety of players that, in the development of Wi-Fi, didn't understand what it could do, and they weren't watching it as it happened.' " [80211b News]
I just had to link to anything that had the phrase "the Bermuda Triangle of the Digital Age" in it. I'd love to see library conferences fall into this one!
11:38:34 PM Permanent link here
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Will caught the 802.11b/cellular story before I did, and he put it in the context of "ubiquity" by providing a link to a great site that explains Ubiquitous Computing and provides some history for the concept:
"Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning. First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives....
Ubiquitous computing is roughly the opposite of virtual reality. Where virtual reality puts people inside a computer-generated world, ubiquitous computing forces the computer to live out here in the world with people. Virtual reality is primarily a horse power problem; ubiquitous computing is a very difficult integration of human factors, computer science, engineering, and social sciences."
Reference librarians can't wait for the time when they can go back to helping people find information instead of unjamming the printer.
11:15:47 PM Permanent link here
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"My article, 'Working with Wireless', appears in the June issue of Teacher Librarian. The article looks briefly at how the devices are used in business, medicine, etc. and how they can be used to support the curriculum. The article was aimed at teacher librarians who haven't used handheld devices. It gave information on Avantgo and similar products, ebooks, where to get additional support,etc. Many of the readers of this blog will find it repetitive, but it would make a great introduction to give to administrators and others who are just beginning to think about these kinds of initatives." [Teri Ross Embrey at The Handheld Librarian]
Congratulations, Teri! The full text isn't available online, but I'll try to get a copy to read myself. Maybe it would be useful in the first phase of moving public libraries towards providing public Wi-Fi networks - education!
10:48:05 PM Permanent link here
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Online Games Evolve
"Majestic, a critically acclaimed but experimental game from Electronic Arts, is one of the early casualties. The company officially--and quietly--pulled the plug on the online game in April.
The experience isn't slowing Electronic Arts, which unveiled at E3 The Sims Online, a Web version of its popular Sims line. It was among a handful of online games shown here in the wake of Microsoft unveiling plans to wire its Xbox, and Sony describing its online gaming strategy.
The critically acclaimed Majestic was an unusual and potentially engaging game, playable online and off. Its fictional characters would contact players by e-mail, phone call, fax, page, and instant message to provide clues to progress in the game and solve the mystery of a complex storyline.
The company put Majestic on hiatus after September 11, out of concern about confusion over real and fictitious emergencies. Majestic went permanently out of service on April 30, according to an EA statement. Even its fresh approach to mystery sci-fi thrillers couldn't save it....
EA is still aiming at the Web, however. The Sims Online banks on the success of The Sims PC game and all its expansion packs--The Sims Vacation, The Sims House Party, The Sims Livin' Large, and The Sims Hot Date....
The Sims Online is a virtual world where players can create a Sim re-creation of themselves or whomever they want to be. Players have a lot of freedom, making the experience rewarding, says Will Wright, the game's metaphorical cartographer.
Players own a virtual a piece of land, which they develop as they choose, building a house, a bar, or coffeehouse, for example. They can also build a network of online and virtual friends and enemies, explore digital neighborhoods, and "meet" other Sims through live text chat or instant messages.
'Sharing time with others makes the game more realistic,' Barthelet says. The Sims Online will cost between $11 and $14 monthly, and requires The Sims CD-ROM (sold separately for under $50). The Sims Online is due for release in November in the United States and Canada." [PC World]
Note to self: remove references to Majestic from my presentation. That's okay, though, because I think The Sims Online is going to be big. Big big. This is exactly the kind of game that will help launch interactive, online gaming because it crosses boundaries - age, gender, non-techies, etc. It may also boost the cell phone industry (networks and hardware) if you can manage your sims that way.
Disclaimer: I haven't actually played The Sims because I lost A LOT of time to Sim City on Super Nintendo, and I know what will happen if I start messing around with the new versions!
My overall point, though, is that Net Gens already have multiple "personalities" online. They change them at a moment's notice, depending on what interactive activity they are engaged in at that time. The Sims will totally appeal to them, and it may even be the first mass, online shared experience for them. I think it will be a new level of community and we'll see new types of interactions come out of it. That's my hope, anyway.
10:27:25 PM Permanent link here
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Calif. not alone in Oracle criticism
"Some of the more controversial aspects of the database giant's contract fiasco are all too familiar to tech officials in other government agencies." [CNET News.com]
We don't have the same type of "contract fiasco" as California, but my government/education agency (SLS) is dumping Oracle Portal none the less. Here's what my summer is shaping up like as we move away from the horribly complex Portal software.
I had to make a recommendation for new software to move us forward faster ("we can rebuild it - we have the technology!"), so I narrowed down the choices to two - Macromedia's ColdFusion + UltraDev and Userland's Frontier/Manila + Radio. My list of wants and needs included:
- Providing an events calendar pretty much out of the box, plus event registration
- Multi-level authentication
- The ability to generate my own templates
- Generated HTML output that meets at least priority one of the WAI guidelines
- The ability to blog or simulate blogging
- Automatically generated RSS feeds for those blogs
- A robust search engine that can handle DOC, PDF, and PPT files
- A hundred other things
The key is that I'm not really a programmer, so I need something I can get up to speed on pretty quickly, especially since we don't really have any more money for consulting. For the little bit of money we do have available for changing to new software, my list was pretty much impossible for any vendor to meet. I was asking for the moon, all of the stars (visible to the naked eye and not), and a few galaxies thrown in for good measure, and I knew it.
When push came to shove and we finally had to make a decision, we went with Macromedia's tools, only because it would take more ramp up time for me to make the Userland products do things like event registration, search PDFs, etc. So now we're in the process of installing the MM software (although it's been frustrating trying to move forward with the new MX stuff since it's only a preview release at this point). I think the large developer community and the developer Exchange will be a big help in getting me started. Tomorrow I'm going to try working from the current products (not MX) on the server itself. I think this side of the equation will be fairly easy, if I can just get everything configured correctly, which has been a big obstacle the past week.
But I still wanted the blogging and news aggregation that I think could be so useful to my organization. So the good news is that I'm getting the best of both worlds - well, we're getting the best of both worlds. Not only do I have high hopes for ColdFusion, but I've convinced my boss to implement Radio Userland for a number of individuals on staff, and I plan to integrate the blogs into the new web site I'll be building this summer using the MM software.
If I'm right, I can have the Radio blogs FTP to directories in the ColdFusion site so that they'll be indexed by the Verity search engine. I can also add my own meta tags to those templates. The "categories" feature of Radio should make it incredibly easy for anyone to send posts to the correct sites (intranet, extranet, public site, etc.), and I can make the templates match the rest of the web site. If I learn enough UserTalk someday, I think I could add my own boxes for metadata so employees could further classify each post at it is entered.
In addition, the new multi-author tool in Radio should help with collaborative blogging, and I can't wait to get an RCS server up and running internally! Eventually, I want to provide the first RCS server for libraries & librarians, too!
So I'm really psyched about all of this, although I'm also rather daunted at the prospect of learning UltraDev, ColdFusion, Fireworks, hopefully X-HTML, more CSS, more about usability (especially testing), thesaurii, UserTalk, and more about Radio in order to implement everything according to my vision. I'm great at the vision part - it's getting reality to match up where I have problems!
I'll provide periodic updates as we go along, especially as my first big deadline looms on June 6th!
7:01:53 PM Permanent link here
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Wi-Fi, Cell Networks Begin to Meld
"Wireless Internet service providers that use the 802.11b, or Wi-Fi, standard have started to let customers roam onto cellular networks.
Palo Alto, Calif.-based WiFi Metro on Tuesday began letting people automatically switch to carriers that offer Internet capabilities, such as Verizon Wireless or Cingular Wireless, once they leave the range of the company's equipment. For customers to make the switch, they must be subscribers of both.
The three-month trial is among the first to couple a cellular telephone's Internet network, which covers a huge area with a weak signal, with the high-speed, but short-range, of Wi-Fi networks sprouting up in coffee shops and airport lounges....
WiFi Metro's trial is among the first in the nation to marry these two networks together for public use. Before Tuesday, the only place where these networks got together was on the dashboards of police cars in Oakland, Calif., and Baltimore.
Police departments in both cities have been using software from a company called Padcom. Most Baltimore police officers, for example, can park their patrol cars near a substation or near the department's headquarters and latch on to an 802.11 network inside. When they are not near a substation, officers latch on to a wireless Internet network provided by Verizon." [CNET News.com]
We need to position libraries so that we're included in that list of places where Wi-Fi networks are sprouting up! So maybe it won't be 3G vs. Wi-Fi, and they can co-exist peacefully, along with a niche for Bluetooth.
I won't make the obligatory joke about cops and WLANs in donut shops....
6:23:01 PM Permanent link here
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An Egyptian Stumper Confounds Google
"A 'simple' query that seems like a no-brainer for Google turns out to be an excellent illustration of why you can't find "everyting" on the Internet....
Now here's a key search tip. That page mentions the recipe but doesn't list it. We could keep searching, but let's instead try something different. Can we find this Karen Taylor and just ask her?...
The key point here is to remember that search engines may be more useful to take you part of the way to an answer, where 'old fashion' attempts like asking people the right question who know can take over." [Search Day, via Library Stuff]
Just as good a title for this article would have been "why librarians rule as searchers." The average person probably would have given up much faster than Danny did. It reminds me of the first really great article that inspired me as a reference librarian. It's written by Mary Goulding, who used to work at SLS before I was here, and it's called Real Librarians Don't Play Jeopardy. I wish the full text was available online, but it isn't. It's similar to what Marylaine Block preaches - go where the answer is. If you'd like a copy, contact your local library and request one. ;-)
Goulding, Mary. "Real librarians don't play Jeopardy." Illinois Libraries, v.73, no. 2, Feb. 1991, p. 140-46.
5:06:51 PM Permanent link here
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The Future Sneaks Up—in Tuscany
"First impressions count when it comes to new technology—and even technology aficionados are often too quick to write off promising innovations. Recently I recognized this prejudice in myself, while altogether lost on a narrow cobblestone street in Florence, Italy....
I figured the rented Nissan’s satellite system couldn’t get me any more lost than I would myself. So I programmed it for English, entered the address of the little hotel, and let it calculate the route. A Japanese car navigation system giving directions in the middle of Italy, I thought: this is going to be rich.
In moments, a cool, calm woman’s voice with a British accent started to speak, as she would for the next three hours....
In the heart of Florence I gave up second-guessing Linda entirely: I was too busy dodging pedestrians, Fiats and Vespas....
Then she calmly uttered, 'Your destination is in one hundred fifty meters.' But there was no hotel in sight. Finally the street narrowed even further and I pulled to the curb. We were hosed: Hertz would have to bring in a chopper to airlift this car out. At that moment Linda spoke up: 'You have reached your destination.' Scanning the buildings, I suddenly realized that we were parked directly in front of our extremely discrete and understated hotel.
So Linda became our new best friend for the rest of the trip. But the lesson I learned was much broader. When we see the first iterations of technology, it’s easy to write them off as flaky and not for us. That’s because we underestimate the power of persistent engineering to whittle away the problems, gradually eroding difficulties. And then 'suddenly' we notice that what had been awkward, expensive and unworkable has become a part of everyday life.
Consider the Internet today. In the wake of the dotcom crash, there’s lots of second-guessing about just how important the Web really will be. Readers complain that sites are too slow and reading onscreen is uncomfortable; merchants and customers worry that security seems like an unsolvable problem; marketers don’t think that Internet advertising works. But then we’re only about eight years into the Internet’s commercial existence. And literally millions of minds worldwide are working on everything from high-speed access to better reading devices. In another few years, the Web will be an essential element of daily life, in ways we can’t even imagine today. Just as it did for me that morning in Tuscany, the future will sneak up on us, before we even notice." [MSNBC]
Not a particularly new observation, but one that bears repeating. I'm already at the point where I will never again own a car that doesn't have a GPS system in it. The technology has proven itself to me, and it works well for me. Far better than the heated seats in my current vehicle. Now we wish we'd put a DVD player in the minivan, rather than a video cassette player. Live and learn, I guess.
These days, I hear librarians who hated the thought of implementing and learning CD-ROM databases bemoaning the loss of them in the brave new world of online databases. The same has been true with MP3s and will be true with DVRS (digital video recorders). If you look carefully, over your shoulder, you can see them sneaking up on you now. They're easy enough to spot in the wild, but soon they'll be on display in the zoo, where everyone can see and appreciate them.
2:44:36 PM Permanent link here
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Why Napster is the Good Guy (and the RIAA Is Not)
"David Coursey's recent piece on Napster was the last straw for me. I could barely sit still reading Coursey declare: "The simple fact of the matter is that if copyright owners don't give their permission, passing their content around is stealing, plain and simple...."
The record companies could have evolved with the rest of the world, but they have deliberately chosen to fight against change. Coursey may be a big fan of RIAA president Hilary Rosen, but she is messing up the music business, and that's why Napster was born.
Unfortunately for the RIAA, once the bell has been rung, you can't unring it. When one file-swapping site goes down, there will be two or three more to take its place. I started with Napster, then went to Aimster.com and Morpheus. Now I'm on WinMX, which, come to think of it, I downloaded from ZDNet Downloads.
How's that for irony?" [ZDNet]
Although there is nothing particularly new for my regular readers in this piece, some of the comments are more interesting. While most of the comments are purely reactionary with little factual basis, Gary Wilkinson interjects this reminder:
"There are many misconceptions on both sides of this argument, but let's clear up a factual error in this reply first: The RIAA doesn't sell ANYTHING other than memberships. It's a trade organization - a single entity that's hired by multiple companies to represent their common interests - just like the National Restaurant Association, the Business Software Alliance, etc. The RIAA's membership is made up of many record labels that, for the most part, set their own prices and make their own rules. If a member company, like say Bertelsman, decides to begin selling music in a different way (Mini-disc, download, DVD audio, etc.) that's their own decision completely separate from the RIAA. And any member company can discontinue membership when it no longer meets their needs."
Thomas Ingledew points to Steve Albini's about The Problem with Music, which describes a record producers view of how the record companies treat music artists. Then Dan Sherman points to an ebook titled How I Made $2.2 Million Selling MP3 Files Without Getting Caught. Does anyone know anything about this title? Lots of disclaimers on the page for it.
1:28:32 PM Permanent link here
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I have a reader who's looking for weblogs maintained by print publishers. I pointed him towards Avatar Press, but does anyone have other examples? (Again with the meta tags issue....) TIA.
8:08:44 AM Permanent link here
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"I purchased an iMode GPRS phone a few weeks ago, just to see if it could live up to the hype. It certainly did. To the WAP hype that is. The experience is no way near the flashy tv commercials that promise real-time video conferencing. Trust me, I wasn't too dissapointed :)
Now that I've been using the phone and services for a few weeks, I must admit I have been using the traffic and weather services, which all require registration and a 1.5 euro/month fee (about a buck and a quarter) but it's a completely different online world from where I normally dwell.
I want my scripting news, I want to read up on Ernie the Attorney's latest tidbits. And of course I want to post to my weblog remotely. The iMode 'technology' is nothing but a hindrance to entering my online world wirelessly. Certainly a big difference in experience when using my iBook and WiFi connection.
Still, the iBook is too big and WiFi not ubiquitous (love that word) enough to be really useful when my body is mobile. Enter the XDA from O2.
Looks like this puppy has a shot at being my digital dog. Yeah, its all microsoft pocket pc crap, but at least I can use an actual web browser and eehgad! I can also use my MSN messenger account....I'm off to the phone store, review coming soon!" [Adam Curry]
This may be generational, as kids that grow up accessing wireless services via a cell phone may not find it as much of a hindrance. On the other hand, the XDA sounds pretty nifty, too.
8:06:14 AM Permanent link here
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© Copyright 2004 Jenny Levine.
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