Infoblog

Tech Trends for 2007, a special report from BusinessWeek "previews this year's trends in technology, from the advent of the iPhone to widgets for kids."

• Look Ma, No Buttons
• Web War: Nothing Neutral About It
• The Mobile Internet's Future Is East
• Meeting All the World's Tech Needs
• Internet TV Is Finally a Reality Show
• Small Biz Ads: The Year of the Web
• The MySpace Ecosystem: A Survival Guide
• HD Radio Still Taking the Rap

Here are a few excerpts:

"The tone for any year in technology is set in the digital equivalent of stone by early January. That's when Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs takes the stage at the annual Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco, touting his company's latest wares just as the world's largest tech-gear trade show, Consumer Electronics Show International, is in full swing in the next state over."

"This year was no exception, what with the Jan. 9 introduction of the Apple (AAPL) iPhone, a combined cell phone and music player that's sending ripples across the tech landscape half a year before it hits shelves. One of its standout qualities is a screen that lets users dial numbers and call up features by touch, rather than with buttons or a dial pad. The device puts iPhone at the forefront of a new family of touch-sensitive, gesture-based devices that may revolutionize consumer electronics in 2007..."

"This also may be the year Western companies such as Qualcomm (QCOM), Motorola (MOT), Intel (INTC), and Siemens (SI) step up efforts to woo the millions of new prospective customers in developing countries. They'll go far beyond fancy phones and personal computers, tailoring devices to meet more mundane needs. Think light bulbs that consume less energy and systems that help congested cities manage traffic flows."

Posted by gail mcgovern at 4:22 AM in Technology Updates | Permalink

If you want to know what's hot in consumer electronics, check out Good Morning America's Consumer Electronics Show article online. Be sure to watch the video too.

Here are some examples of the featured items:

D-Box's $10,000 Motionsync Home Theater - "your chair will rock 'n roll as you watch action movies and TV shows at home"

WowWee's $350 animated Elvis - "singing-and-talking bust based on the King's 1968 comeback TV special"

Soundolier's $249 Duo Wireless Speaker Lamp - "a state-of-the-art, omnidirectional speaker hidden within a stylish floor lamp"

Electric Spin's $249 Golf Launchpad - "a unique golf simulator available on Windows, Mac and PlayStation2 platforms"

EPOS's $80 Digital USB Pen - "wirelessly records the pen's movements, and is then plugged into the computer's USB port to download the text and drawings"

Posted by gail mcgovern at 11:30 AM in Technology Updates | Permalink

Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki was created by Meredith Farkas, a Distance Learning Librarian at Norwich University (VT) "to be a one-stop-shop for great ideas and information for all types of librarians."

Be sure to check out the Library Website Hall of Fame

Of the 20 academic library websites listed in the Library Website Hall of Fame, those in California are: CSU San Marcos, UCLA and USC

Of the 23 public library websites listed in the Library Website Hall of Fame, those in California are: Contra Costa, Marin County and Stockton-San Joaquin County.

The only special library listed is NASA Headquarters.

I especially liked these website features:

Arlington Heights (IL) Memorial Library vlogs

Boston (MA) Public Library SchoolRooms Portal

Central Rappahannock (VA) Regional Library's AnswerPoint

Christchurch City (New Zealand) Libraries Best Reads

Posted by gail mcgovern at 5:06 AM in Technology Updates | Permalink

Most of us have been through sessions on developing vision statements hoping they will motivate us to achieve our dreams.

Australian Malcolm Cohan has developed a fascinating Web 2.0 approach. His YouTube videos show you his personal vision statement video and his Think It So video.

He challenges viewers to create their own video vision statements, watch them for personal inspiration and also post them on YouTube.

He offers VISION Statement seminars in Australia; a promo titled Rocket Ship, is really well done.

His YouTube approach seems perfect for engaging library users to post videos on library websites about a variety of topics e.g. their personal visions, books that inspired them, etc.

Posted by gail mcgovern at 9:33 AM in Technology Updates | Permalink

A new organization for technology evangelists has just been formed, GNoTE (Global Network of Technology Evangelists); it's first conference, GNoTECon is December 4th at the Network Meeting Center in Santa Clara.

Do you find the event description intriguing or off-putting?

Are you passionate about technology? Do you thrive on making a difference in people's lives with your passion for technology? Do you get confused sideways looks with raised eyebrows when telling people that you are a Technology Evangelist? If so, GNoTECon is the event for you. It is the industry's first conference to discuss technology evangelism!

GNoTE (Global Network of Technology Evangelists) was founded to foster technology evangelism and help establish best practices for technology outreach in the industry. The title "Technology Evangelist" was first coined by Guy Kawasaki while working for Apple Computer in the late 1980s. In recent years, many large companies including Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Yahoo! have employed evangelism to effectively promote their products in the global market. These companies have achieved phenomenal success in evangelizing and buildling global communities. Hear the pioneers of technology evangelism and passionate technology evangelists talk about their endeavors.

Posted by gail mcgovern at 11:25 AM in Technology Updates | Permalink

Christina Kerley of ckEpiphany describes her services as "a marketing consultancy providing strategy, planning and program management services." In August, she asked her blog readers to respond to the question, "What is the single greatest point of value you receive from blogging?" Last week she wrote about the results in her blog.

Check out her wonderful collage compilation pdf both for a good overview of why people love blogging as well as some great marketing ideas for library blogs.

Posted by gail mcgovern at 2:06 PM in Evaluating information | Technology Updates | Permalink

The California Library Association held its annual conference this past weekend in Sacramento. Infopeople, along with the California State Library's other LSTA-funded state projects were there, and we all shared a joint booth area that we called, "A Roaring Collaboration." It was a blast!

One of the new things we did this year was to put on a "Technology Petting Zoo," where we had a lot of devices from MP3 players to ergonomic keyboards on display for people to hold and actually use (you could pet them too, of course). Beth Gallaway, Information Goddess, came (thanks, Beth!) and was an enormous all-around help but most importantly was the resident expert and tour guide of our Second Life demo. Michael Stephens of Tame the Web gave a great, very well-attended talk and mentioned Second Life and Beth which needless to say kept her a very busy person!

This was the first time we've ever done anything like the zoo, and while everyone enjoyed it, we see a lot of room for improvement, and hope to do it again next year with new and different items.

Beth started a Flickr group for CLA 2006 photos, which you can view here. I've posted a bunch of photos (which are also part of the Flickr group) here.

We also managed to capture on film the inimitable Margaret Miles leading a room full of librarians in the "library cheer." Check it out on YouTube here!

Among the photos you will find several labeled "Carole's retirement party." It is with great regret (for us) and great pleasure (for her) that we are announcing Carole Leita's retirement from Infopeople. CLA 2006 marked her last foray as a Peep, and we'll miss her! But she's going to be having a lot of fun golfing, traveling, and just plain living so we can't feel too sorry for her. We love you, Carole! And you can keep editing my typos as long as you want! ;-)

Posted by eileen o'shea at 8:08 AM in Infopeople News | Odds & Ends | Technology Updates | Training | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you didn't get a chance to share our excitement over the latest tech stuff at Infopeople's Technology Petting Zoo during the California Library Association Conference, take a look at Unboxing.com from Gear Live, an online magazine that provides news, previews, reviews, and commentaries on gadgets, consumer electronics, games, music, and tech trends.

At the site, you can watch videos designed to give you “vicarious thrills from opening new gear.” Compare two of the newest mp3 players – Microsoft's Zune and Apple's Nano.

Posted by gail mcgovern at 9:57 AM in Technology Updates | Permalink

This post has nothing in particular to do with libraries, but as the problem I relate consumed a good part of my weekend and part of my Monday, I thought a share was in order, in case anybody else runs into a similar situation.

We use Hipcast for our podcasts here at Infopeople. We chose Hipcast (it was called Audioblog way back then - all of a year ago) because they offered great storage, and the ability to "phone in" your podcasts - a nice way around the problem of getting our podcasters remotely up to speed with microphones, software, etc. Sounds good. And it was - it all worked as advertised. They also offered very easy ways to publish your podcasts straight to iTunes and your blog. Slick! They even offered a nifty embedded player bar that would play the podcast right from the blog entry.

Then a strange thing started happening: our Infoblog feed would periodically disappear from My Yahoo. Hmm. It happened whenever we posted an entry about a podcast that had the embedded player in it (I didn't make that connection right away - it would have saved me a lot of time if I had). I tried validating our feed at Feed Validator and got errors - and all of the errors pointed to that nifty little embedded player that Hipcast published to the blog. Turns out that nifty code (iframe src) that makes the player bar appear in the blog is considered vulnerable-to-hackers by My Yahoo, so a feed containing those tags won't show up. Argh!! The solution I came up with was to take out the player bar code and just put in a regular link to the podcast's MP3 file. Not as slick as the embedded player, but it works. My Yahoo RSS (as far as I can tell) is the only service affected by this weirdness.

Posted by eileen o'shea at 9:02 AM in Technology Updates | Permalink | Comments (0)

For the longest time we Mac users have felt like the poor stepchildren of Google. They developed Google Earth - for the PC. They developed Google Desktop - for the PC. They developed Google Toolbar - for the PC. You get the gist.

Well, it looks like the fine folks at Google have finally seen the light! They have a new section of their website called Google Software Downloads for the Mac (wow! who thought that great name up?!?). And they also have started the Google Mac Blog so all of us hardcore blog trackers can keep up with their latest offerings. Yay!

And here's some more Google news that's been a long time coming: Picassa finally works with Macs (sort of - well, the Picassa Web Albums anyway, using iPhoto)! But now that we have Flickr do we really care?

Posted by eileen o'shea at 8:00 AM in Technology Updates | Web Resources | Permalink | Comments (0)

Be sure to compare BusinessWeek's special report, Eight Tech Trends for 2006 and Michael Stephens' Ten Techie Things for Librarians 2006 especially if you are planning to attend the California Library Association (CLA) conference in Sacramento.

Infopeople is sponsoring Michael as a master speaker at the CLA conference on Saturday, November 11 from 3:45 PM–5:00 PM.

Posted by gail mcgovern at 4:17 PM in Technology Updates | Permalink | Comments (0)

If the idea of a profile for your library on MySpace isn't your cup of tea, take a look at another social networking approach used by my local PBS station, KVIE, based in Sacramento. See my profile at MyKVIE.

Posted by gail mcgovern at 5:00 PM in Technology Updates | Permalink

A couple people have asked me about whether the children's games that were on the original Gates computers were still available somewhere...cheap. The answer is YES. They are available on your very own Gates computer. You can install the programs from your old Gates computers to your new replacement computer by following the instructors in this PDF file entitled How to Copy Children's Games from a Windows NT Gates Library Computer to a new Windows XP Computer .

This useful guide is available on the PAComputing section of WebJunction along with some other very handy stuff. For example how about these ready to roll QuickGuides for many popular applications (Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Microsoft Streets and Trips) plus How to Use Word, Copying and Moving Text as well as Spanish versions of everything too.

Another useful resource on this site is a Top Issues Archive that will help tech support folk find solutions to problems associated with the Gates computers or people using the Shared Computer Toolkit.

Posted by lori ayre at 7:22 PM in Technology Updates | Permalink

Libraries that have or are contemplating audio tours will be interested in an article appearing on the front page of the Calendar section of today's L.A.Times. The article, For an art tour, press the # key, by Diane Haithman, describes the latest trend in museum audio tours, which is making the tour available via the visitor's cell phone. Museums that are using the technology include the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Japanese American National Museum, both in Los Angeles, and the San Jose Museum of Art. Visitors dial a number on their phones to access the tour, and then enter various codes to hear about particular artworks. The only cost to the user is in cell phone minutes used. Companies providing this technology include Guide by Cell, Inc., in San Francisco; Museum 411, in Minneapolis; and Spatial Adventures Inc., in Ashburn, Va.

Posted by holly hinman at 9:00 AM in Technology Updates | Permalink

Does your head spin when people talk about Web 2.0? I often find it more helpful to see examples rather than read explanations. If that appeals to you, take a look at Dion Hinchcliffe's The Most Promising Web 2.0 Software of 2006 blog entry. I don't promise your head will stop spinning, but you'll at least get some ideas of what is on the horizon and what forces are driving these new approaches.

Posted by gail mcgovern at 3:26 PM in Keeping Up | Technology Updates | Permalink

Bookmarklets have been the topic of some coversation of late. Ever wondered what they are, and how you can use them? I have, and decided today to do some research on them. Here's a good basic explanation from Wikipedia. Even better, here's a handy dandy demontration in Flash on the implementation and use of the LibraryLookup Bookmarklet. Neat stuff!

Posted by eileen o'shea at 10:29 AM in Technology Updates | Permalink

Investigating the Biblioblogosphere from Cites & Insights 5, Number 10: September 2005, by Californian Walt Crawford.

What’s going on in the biblioblogosphere? I hate the term, but it’s convenient. Jon Garfunkel at Civilities (civilities.net) gave me the idea with his “Social Media Scorecard” and related posts—but this isn’t directly comparable to his evaluation of 25 “online political writers.” Instead, this is an informal study of a “top 50” library-people blogs, including some metrics.

AND if you fall into one of the following categories, please take the survey.

If you write a library-related blog (personal, professional, official, unofficial, part of a group, in any language) please take the Survey of the Biblioblogosphere.
From Information Wants to Be Free.

Posted by at 9:18 AM in Technology Updates | Permalink

Several years ago, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gave grants of computer equipment and software to public libraries throughout the United States. The Foundation has maintained an interest in the sustainability of public access computing in libraries, and currently offers grants to support that sustainability through a program called "Staying Connected." The Staying Connected grants are awarded at the state level and can be used, at the discretion of the state library agency, for a variety of purposes, including hardware replacement, training, and technical assistance. California received a grant in excess of $400,000. The State Library delegated responsibility for implementing the grant to Infopeople. A planning group consisting of State Library staff, Infopeople, and local library representatives, met in December 2004 and decided that the first step should be a survey of California public libraries to determine which libraries were most in need of assistance in sustaining public access computing, and what would be useful to the California public library community as a whole in terms of the Staying Connected program. The survey was conducted via the web between February and April 2005. The report of survey results is now available on the Infopeople website at http://infopeople.org/partners/gates/field_survey.pdf. Significantly, only 16 of the state's 179 public library jurisdictions were identified as being "at risk" in terms of public access computing sustainability. The Planning Group will meet at the State Library on June 21 to decide what the next steps should be.

We have turned on the comments feature of this blog post so that libraries have a mechanism for providing feedback about the report.

Posted by at 10:04 AM in Technology Updates | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you're a Win XP user and you have ever looked at web pages on your monitor and wondered, "Am I going blind or do those fonts look fuzzy?" this post from Lori Ayre on Mentat may be helpful:

Follow these steps to amazingly clearer fonts everywhere including websites and even on Word documents:
1. Go to Control Panel
2. Select Display
3. Choose the Appearance tab
4. Click on Effects
5. Where it says "Choose following method to smooth edges of screen fonts", change Standard to Clear Type.

Nice!

Posted by at 8:45 AM in Technology Updates | Permalink

What's that site running? is a cool tool. Enter the URL and Netcraft will report a website's operating system, web server software, and host/netblock owner.

Posted by at 4:10 PM in Technology Updates | Permalink

This brief and gentle introduction to some key concepts laid out in the IFLA-produced Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records paper should be read by any librarian wondering what all the "ferber" fuss is about. Scratch that. It should be read by any librarian period. It's time for us to admit our library catalogs are a mess from a user's perspective, and FRBR can provide at least a partial solution to the problems we face in fixing our systems. Therefore, knowledge of the basic concepts that are already beginning to transform our bibliographic systems should be considered basic, foundational, professional knowledge. So start here, if you must, but then feel free to follow up with the full report.

Posted by at 7:05 AM in Technology Updates | Permalink

Courtesy of Web Junction, you can now get the secret ingredients necessary to upgrade your Gates computer to Windows XP. When I say secret ingredients, I mostly mean the instructions, which until now, had been buried in the bowels of the pacomputing website and not made readily available for Californians.

The reason this info was not made available to California grant recipients is because California didn't participate in one of the Gates grant programs that involved upgrading from NT. But if you buy your own upgrade to XP and follow the instructions, you too can run all those applications your kids love on a current operating systems.

Here's the link: http://pacomputing.webjunction.org/do/DisplayContent?id=7393

Be advised that this process is not for the faint of heart. Have your tech support person do this and if you don't have a tech support person on staff, have one on call. And remember, you'll undoubtedly have to upgrade your RAM.

Good luck!

Posted by at 1:14 PM in Technology Updates | Permalink

Everybody's instant messaging these days. You can chat with friends, coworkers, or family. Libraries are using IM for reference. So what's next? Meet SmarterChild. Just add smarterchild to your AIM buddy list (also available for MSN Messenger and ICQ) and start chatting! It will remember everything you tell it about yourself (where you live, your pets, etc). For library folks, you can ask reference questions such as "Who was the 20th president of the United States?" and it will answer (James A. Garfield, 1881-1881). It pulls information from a variety of sources including dictionaries, thesauri, and encyclopedias. I did stump it by asking "Who was Marcia Brady?" (you know, "Marcia, Marcia' Marcia" from the 70s TV show), so it's not too up on cultural trivia, but it has a fairly large reserve of basic facts. I got into a very stupid exchange regarding my birthday with it. I was trying to get it to remember it, but it became rather obstreperous, asking "Why would I want to do that?" and "I will not." I detected a bit of attitude in that last repsonse, so I told it to shut up, to which it responded "You shut up." But I did have the last laugh when I came back with "blah, blah, blah" - it had nothing to say to that, I can tell you). It also isn't good with jokes. I tried "What is black and white, black and white, black and white?" (the answer is a nun rolling down a hill) and it came back with "I don't care to discuss black and white black and white black and white." Sheesh! Anyway, find out more here about the technology behind SmarterChild. Could this be the next generation of reference librarians?

Posted by at 10:55 AM in Technology Updates | Permalink

Infopeople and the Information Technology Section of the California Library Association conducted a survey of California libraries on their use of, or interest in Radio Frequency Identification (RFID).

Of the 345 libraries invited to particpate, 113 libraries completed the survey. Of the 113, seven of them had implemented RFID systems. Another five were not familiar with the term "RFID."

We've made the survey results available in the new Emerging Technologies section of our Resources page.

Posted by at 9:10 PM in Technology Updates | Permalink

CD-Recordable FAQ is a terrific and up-to-date site that will answer just about any question you or your library user may have about recording CDs on a computer.

This document attempts to answer Frequently Asked Questions about Compact Disc Recordable technology and related fields. It was originally developed as a Usenet newsgroup FAQ, and is updated and posted about once a month. The main foci are explaining CD-R technology, describing hardware and software solutions for creating audio CDs and CD-ROMs, and helping people find solutions to common problems.

Posted by at 5:40 PM in Technology Updates | Permalink

Listen to the All Things Considered interview with Carol Brey-Casiano (American Library Association President): The Future of Libraries in the Digital Age. She discusses, among other things, Google's library digitization project, the access issues with digitization, and services libraries offer beyond those Google is trying to duplicate.

Posted by at 1:33 PM in Technology Updates | Permalink

Aaron Schmidt, a presenter at Internet Librarian 2004, has compiled a list of the Top Ten Things to Stay Tech Current for libraries. Among the tips: use blogs & RSS, offer instant messaging, and have a wireless network available. Oh, and get training on anything you implement. Interesting reading!

Posted by at 8:42 AM in Technology Updates | Permalink

Adam Baratz has a great article on Ars Technica that discusses the testing of the top 5 anti-spyware tools. Most people find that using a combination of Ad-Aware and Spybot Search & Destroy works the best, but this test takes a look at what actually works. It turns out that these testers found Ad-Aware to be far and away the best program for spyware removal. If you're too busy to read the whole article, you can skip to the conclusion.

Posted by at 10:40 AM in Technology Updates | Permalink

Ever seen this great text editor that Genny Engel of Sonoma County Library turned me on to? It's AceText which is a great tool for anyone who uses word processing or email.

Using AceText, you can save text clips (up to 10,000) and then define the paste order for multiple clips. You can search all or some of your text clips. Clips can be reused easily in e-mails and documents using customizable shortcuts.

In email, you can remove all the quotes off each line of a message and then 'reflow' the lines so that it becomes a nice normal paragraph. There's also a 'trim white space' command. Unix shell commands come to Windows!

Anyone who uses cut and paste between documents or between different applications (Word, WP, Word for Mac, etc) will benefit from using Ace Text because you don't pollute documents with funky formatting from other documents when you cut and paste with AceText.

For more great, affordable software utilities like this one, visit JustGreatSoftware.com.

Posted by at 2:16 PM in Technology Updates | Permalink

Ask@SJCPL has excellent instructions on how to download the free software and get your own screen name for the chat services AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and Microsoft Messenger. From the public library that was first on the web in the U.S (second to Helsinki in the world) - St. Joseph County Public Library (South Bend, IN). They have pioneered several web-related services through the years. They are now pioneering live chat as a reference service.

Posted by at 9:30 AM in Interesting Libraries | Technology Updates | Permalink

If you're like most librarians, Google has become one of your essential tools of the trade. And now Google has expanded its search capabilities to our desktops! Google Desktop Search installs just about as quickly as the Google Toolbar does (another tool I've found essential). You download the application, it indexes what's on your hard drive, in your e-mail, searches you've run, webpage history, instant messages, etc. It will detect files from Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Internet Explorer, Outlook & Outlook Express, AOL Instant Messenger, and any text files. And then, each time you re-start your computer, GDS will detect new files and index them automatically. Best of all, it's free!

Posted by at 10:20 AM in Technology Updates | Permalink

Jessamyn West wrote a nice article, Those Darned Users, for WebJunction in which she cites the Five W's of public access computers:

Who staffs them
What needs to be done
When it should happen
Where
When things go wrong

The second half of the article addresses safety and privacy, two issues inextricably tied to public access computing. It's a worthy read.

Jessamyn West is a well-respected blogger (at least I respect her!). Visit her blog at http://www.librarian.net/.

Posted by at 8:35 AM in Technology Updates | Permalink

Infopeople's Lori Ayre reports in her blog that the Gates Foundation has made their "pac installer" available to all! Read more about it here. Check out the app here.

Posted by at 6:17 PM in Technology Updates | Permalink

I've recently completed some work on RFID, the result of which will be a chapter in Rosenberg and Garfinkel's Wireless Privacy: RFID, Bluetooth, 802.11 (title may change by publication date in early 2005 by Addison-Wesley/Prentice Hall.

My work will be a chapter on RFID and.....libraries (surprise!). Below is a summary of my conclusions (excerpted from the aforementioned chapter) about library implementations of RFID as of today:

RFID technology promises to change our world. It has the capability of making our personal lives and our work lives in the library more convenient. However, every new technology comes at a cost. In order to remediate those costs, efforts must be undertaken to guide its development and implementation.

Finally, libraries must be outspoken in their public education efforts related to RFID. Not only because libraries are one of many industries who can benefit from the safe implementation of RFID systems, but also because RFID represents the start of a slippery slope to ever greater loss of control over our personal information.

For a copy of my Position Paper on RFID and Libraries, visit this page.

Posted by at 4:24 PM in Technology Updates | Permalink

Infopeople and the IT section of CLA have cooperatively developed an online survey designed to collect information about RFID in California libraries. Survey results will be posted on the Infopeople and CLA websites and will be used in an upcoming Infopeople webcast on RFID. We would like to have a response from as many California libraries as possible, so we are asking libraries to take the survey whether or not they use or are planning to use RFID technology. The survey is located at http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB2NRVGJJKV and takes only a few minutes to complete. If you are in charge of making decisions regarding RFID in your library, please follow the link and take the survey. If someone else handles those decisions, please share the information about the survey with them. If you have any questions or encounter any difficulties completing the survey, please contact Lori Ayre, Infopeople Technology Manager, at ayre@infopeople.org.

Survey deadline: September 15, 2004

Posted by at 1:13 PM in Technology Updates | Permalink