Best of the Blogs - July 2012 - Summary

IMPORTANT IDEAS

How Should You Watch And Read And Listen? However You Want.  - a TV show that's on every week that has to be watched live or missed entirely will be seen approximately the same way by everyone.  We don't live in that world anymore. 

Mobile 3.0 arrives: How Qualcomm just showed us the future of the cell phone - This SDK talks to every sensor in your phone. Your smart phone will start to make sense of the data. None of this data leaves your own cell phone unless you give it permission to.

TECHNOLOGY NEWS

I Want It Today - How Amazon’s ambitious new push for same-day delivery will destroy local retail - Amazon’s new goal is to get stuff to you immediately; to make next-day delivery standard, and same-day delivery an option for lots of customers. If it can pull that off, the company will permanently alter how we shop.

HARDWARE & GADGETS

CDs Are Not Forever: The Truth About CD/DVD Longevity, “Mold” & “Rot” - I just upgraded our cable Internet service from about 10 Mbps to 50 Mbps. I am still stunned at how much the change is affecting how we all use the Internet.

What’s Stopping You Changing NBN Providers? - while 85 per cent wanted broadband connection speeds of 50Mbps or more, only 5 per cent would “definitely change ISPs” to get that speed.

Sometimes a phone isn’t a phone. So what is it? - iPhones and its peers are being used in ways that are remarkably different from the way we used phones five years ago.

Smartphone Specs For Dummies: What Should You Look For? 

10 Google Chromebook tips, tricks and tweaks

2 out of 3 U.S. consumers agree: We’re buying smartphones!

Getting The Best Aussie Price For Google’s Nexus 7 Tablet - EB Games will be the best place to grab the 16GB version of the tablet at $298.

GOOGLE

The Best Google Features You’re Not Using

1. Send And Receive Faxes For Free With Hellofax
2. Sign Any Document Easily With DocuSign
3. Edit Photos In Your Browser With Pixlr Editor And Aviary
4. Get Details About Your Google Docs Usage With Spanning Stats
5. Organise Your Parties With Events
6. Store Your Photos In The Google+ Cloud Automatically
7. free photo management tool, Picasa.
8. Run Any Meeting Online With Google Hangouts
9. Cacoo: create mind maps
10. SlideShare: create slideshow presentations and share them with others in a hangout.
11. ConceptBoard: collaborate on a big project
12. Screen-sharing: click “Screenshare”
13. Google Schemer As A Planning Tool And Project Idea Generator
14. Custom Google Maps For Personalised Navigation
15. Activity Reports To Track Your Google Use
16. Google Bookmarks As An Integrated Read-It-Later Service And Browsing History
17. Gmail Meter: Each month you get an email with a full list of all your Gmail-related activity.
18. Gmail Attachments to Google Drive
19. Gmail Snooze: gives your Gmail Account a snooze button
20. Gmail Filter to SMS: get a text message when an email is labelled a certain way.

SOFTWARE AND WEB SERVICES

Kippt Reinvents the Internet's Favorite Hobby: Sharing Links - helps you keep track of links you like, as well as find and follow people who share interesting things.

7 Awesome Alternatives To Windows Search: UltraSearch; Snowbird; FileSearchEX ; Super Finder XT; Locate32; Search Everything; Launchy.

Chromebook Google Drive integration: Handy and slick - Drive appears as if it were a local drive.

Great Personalized Start Pages: 6 Alternatives To iGoogle: Netvibes; uStart; Protopage; Spaaze; My Yahoo!; Symbaloo; Chrome.

SOCIAL NETWORKS 

Has Nick Denton really reinvented comments? The only thing that seems to work in the interim is for writers to own the comments on their stories and blog posts, instead of seeing them as an afterthought.

MANAGEMENT IDEAS

Making Decisions: There Are Always More Than Two Options - Great insight only comes from opening your mind to many options. Brainstorm them all, from the hybrids to the ridiculous..

BOOKS, NEWS & PUBLISHING

Next Issue Media, The Netflix For Magazines, Comes To The iPad -  For a monthly subscription fee of $14.99, readers get unlimited access to all of the magazines in the app’s catalog.

Book Places in the Digital Age - Maybe publishers should treat indies like showrooms.

Google says book scanning didn’t cost authors a single sale - Judge Chin has to decide whether Google must pay for scanning each book without permission or whether the scanning amounted to “fair use.”

EDUCATION

Top 5 Reasons Digital Learning Could be the Key to Success for this Generation and the Next.

1. STUDENT-CENTERED
2. 21st CENTURY-FOCUSED
3. COMPETITIVE
4. ACCOUNTABLE
5. UNIVERSAL ACCESS

Online Learning is where Online Music was Five Years Ago - There is a global hunger for learning, and some very talented individuals are beginning to satisfy this hunger using an increasing array of online tools.

LIBRARIANSHIP

Ebook Strategy and Public Libraries: Slow Just Won’t Work Anymore - several major publishers have refused to sell commercial digital content to public libraries. We need to assure publishers that “one digital copy/one digital user” is a working model. And that public libraries pay for content.

MOBILE APPS

Vyclone turns smartphone videos into multi-camera movies - Users can create a movie automatically from various cameras in one place. Vyclone automatically senses who is shooting at the same time and location.

Publishers refuse to sell popular ebooks to public libraries

Ebook Strategy and Public Libraries: Slow Just Won’t Work Anymore. [Pat Losinski] Our ebook strategy needs a serious overhaul, and it needs to happen right now. First, Overdrive should be applauded for having the vision – long before anyone else – that ebooks would one day penetrate and gain a strong foothold in the public library marketplace. Without the network and conduit to publishers Overdrive has created over the last 25 years, public libraries would have been even farther removed from the dynamic world of ebook lending. That said, we are now subject to a virtual monopoly with one vendor/aggregator dictating the rules of engagement for the dissemination of commercial digital content to the public we serve.Second, we are all aware that several major publishers have refused to sell commercial digital content to public libraries via ebook aggregators.
After more than 100 years of public libraries circulating materials to users, we are no longer able to provide access to critical content that now exists in digital form. With many public libraries willing to offer a “buy it now” option on their online catalog for waitlisted ebooks, you would think that publishers would welcome this new commercial tack. I’ve yet to convince the publishers reluctant to sell us ebooks that this is indeed a win/win. Even though we have all done a great job of redefining public library roles through the addition of homework help and job help centers, technology training, community programming, etc., these activities are the 20 percent of our 80/20 rule. Our bread and butter for as long as anyone can remember has been that our users visit us, gather and check out content, leave our facilities to consume this content at another time and place, and return the content when consumed or prompted for its return. Ebooks change this dynamic and their growth will have a dramatic impact upon our service delivery for the future. Do we own or lease this commercial digital content?
Despite the efforts of the Kansas State Library, most of us are leasing access to ebooks through Overdrive as opposed to buying the content. While we haven’t quite determined how to reach the win/win formula for ebook aggregators and public libraries, Harper Collins 26 circulations model may end up being the best option for preserving the economics that will incentivize publishers to work with public libraries.Some of the most innovative ebook pilots to challenge the current state of ebook aggregator dominance (such as the Douglas County model) tout ownership of ebooks as paramount. But how do we provide access when a publisher just says “no” and refuses to sell to public libraries?
The National Digital Public Library (NDPL) forum held in Los Angeles last year was a good first step in moving the discussion to the public library sector (NDPL summary: America’s Digital Future: Advancing a shared strategy for digital public libraries). On June 8, 2012, a group of public library leaders met at CML to discuss options for determining a strategy that will ensure public access to all commercial digital content (ebooks, audiobooks, etc.). Embedded in this strategy was the decision to NOT focus on ebook business models, new pilots, or improved technology.

• How might we ramp up a standardized national education program to explain the inequities of digital access to the general public?
• Should we actively engage in discussions with members of congress to educate them on the rapidly forming chasm between digital haves and digital have nots?
• Could a clearinghouse or repository of ebook innovations be created to assist with activities 1 and 2?
• How do we bridge and disseminate the ebook development efforts of national associations and other initiatives by state library associations and entrepreneurial libraries?
• How do we expand upon the conversations between many public library leaders in our largest institutions (and/or those working in concert with library associations) and reluctant publishers?

We need to assure publishers that “one digital copy/one digital user” is a working model. And that public libraries pay for content (too many publishers still think we get content for free), support copyright compliance, and serve as a network of national ebook discovery portals that supports the commercial interests of authors and publishers. I’ve spoken to numerous groups and countless library customers about the lack of access resulting from publishers’ refusal to sell popular ebooks to public libraries. Almost universally, the response is “That’s not right,” or “What can we do about this?” When told about this scenario, a recently-retired, long-time member of Congress, said, “That’s a restriction of free trade.” I’m not sure if he’s right, but it illustrates yet another example of possible interpretations surrounding the ebook marketplace.
We can’t afford to continue to passively accept one-sided propositions from the publishing industry. The legislative or judicial path we must pursue will not be easy. As public librarians, we must rededicate ourselves to advocate for the public that has counted on us to do so throughout our history. Without such action, we just might be the next Borders or Blockbuster.

Best of the Blogs - June 2012 - Summary

Best of the Blogs - June 2012 - Summary

Inside Google's Plan to Build a Catalog of Every Single Thing, Ever - database has grown rapidly to over 500m items objects.

The new internet names: a plain English explanation - Critics say it will lead to a new flood of cyber-squatting.

The Top Free Ways To Stream Video From Your Computer To Your Mobile Or Tablet - 1. Connect To A Desktop Client Application; 2. Connect To a UPnP/DLNA Server; 3. Connect To An FTP Or SMB Server.

Meet your clients’ new couch companion: the tablet - a sharp increase towards the end of the night.

Pew: 17% Of U.S. Cell Phone Users Now Mostly Use Their Phones To Go Online - users said that they are more easily available, fit their usage habits better and good enough to perform basic online activities.

Australians Are Still Second-Class Citizens In Android Jelly Bean - many new features aren’t going to work in Australia.

5 reasons everyone will be using Chrome OS in 3 years - It’s cheap; flexible; Chrome OS and Android will merge; It’s Google; webification.

Google makes a big push for offline Chrome apps - run in Google’s browser without requiring full-time connectivity.

Google Maps Available Offline For Android Phones - You can store up to six large metro areas.

Google Play Web Store Now Lets You Update And Uninstall Apps Remotely - from your web browser.

How To Track Your Emails In Gmail & Find Out If The Recipient Has Read It - SpyPig; WhoReadMe; and Link Shortening Applications.

Social curation is much more than just a market - complete democratization of a Web.

Disqus Revamps Its Commenting Tools: Faster, More Social, And Now With Article Discovery

The 5 biggest mistakes users make in Amazon’s cloud - screwups users make.

Australian Subscription Music Services Compared - Spotify and Grooveshark  - totally free; JB Hi-Fi, Zune Music Pass and Samsung Music Pass all offer discounts.

The 6 Best PDF Readers For Windows - Google Chrome; Firefox; Windows 8; Foxit Reader; Sumatra PDF; Nitro PDF Reader; PDF-XChange Viewer; Adobe Reader.

The Easiest Ways To Make A Personal Website Without Any Coding Skills - Flavors.me; Adobe Muse; Wix.com; Spinto ; Sidengo; Breezi.

Turn Your Email Into The Best Social Network - Folders, Labels and Contact Groups; Filters and Mute; App Choices; Plenty of Storage and Data You Own. Create Contact Groups; Organise and Sort Your Groups; Use Priority Inbox; Turn On Threaded Conversations; Mute Conversations; Phone Calls and Video Chats; Turn On Maps, Flickr, Picasa and Docs Previews; Use Third-Party Apps.

Music Piracy Is NOT a Problem, It’s an Excuse - you need to sell them something they actually want.

Pay attention to what Nick Denton is doing with comments - a user who replies to an existing comment is likelier to get her contribution seen.

EXTRA ETHER: eBooks Gone in 5 Years? - The distinction between “the Internet” and “books” is arbitrary, making them look a lot more like print books and a lot less like the Internet.

17 FREE YOUTUBE TOOLS EVERY TEACHER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT - YouTube Preview; Skip Youtube Ads; YouTube Leanback; YouTube Trends; YouTube Instant; YouTube for Schools; Grockit Answers; Watch2gether; iDesktop ; OrbitDownloader; Mobile Media Converter Online; Listen to YouTube; A Cleaner Youtube; Quietube; ViewPure; Tube Chop’ EmbedPlus.

Yeah, e-books are great — but libraries are in a tough spot - Over 75 percent of libraries now offer e-books; 62% of users weren’t sure if they could borrow e-books from their library. Libraries introduce patrons to new technologies and help them become paying customers.

Can libraries deliver and market eBook services?

Yeah, e-books are great — but libraries are in a tough spot. [Laura Hazard Owen Jun] New reports from the American Libraries Association and Pew Internet and American Life Project reveal that despite the increasing number of e-books available to library patrons, libraries themselves face big challenges in weathering the transition.

Some findings from the reports:

1. More digital demand, less funding -- Over 75 percent of libraries now offer e-books. 39% lend out e-readers. Libraries are also creating mobile versions of their websites (14 percent) and releasing smartphone apps (7 percent).
2. Pew reports that 12 percent of Americans ages 16 and older who read e-books have borrowed an e-book from a library in the past year.
3. More than 40 percent of states have reported decreased public library funding for three years in a row.
4. Sixty-two percent weren’t sure if they could borrow e-books from their library. In addition, 48 percent of e-reader owners (Kindles and Nooks) didn’t know if their library lends e-books, and 47 percent of people who read an e-book in the past year didn’t know.
5. Libraries are already struggling to keep up with the demand from patrons who do know about their e-books.
6. Librarians spend more time providing tech support

Pew says librarians are “anxious about the new set of demands on them." A “notable portion” say they are “self-taught techies” in the absence of serious staff training. This group of library users asks for lots of help with their devices, from plugging them in to turning them on to trying to make them interface with the e-book portion of the library website.” Browsing libraries’ e-book offerings is difficult. “I will sometimes go to Amazon to find titles I might like, then search them in OverDrive, since Amazon’s interface is so much more reader friendly.” One librarian called the process of checking out an e-book from a library and then downloading it onto a device “a cumbersome, nonsensical, multi-part process in which we lose too many people along the way.”

Publishers don’t make enough e-books available -- most limit e-book borrowing in some way. "the major obstacle is the lack of publishers and titles in OverDrive. “Libraries cannot lend what they cannot obtain.” Companies like Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Apple should support local libraries not just because they’re good for communities but because they introduce patrons to new technologies and help them become paying customers. In fact, Pew finds that library card holders read more books in general, own more technology and are more likely to say they plan to purchase an e-reader or a tablet. In addition, most e-book readers prefer to buy their e-books rather than borrowing them (61 percent) and they use libraries as a place to discover new books.

So as libraries face the challenge of providing tech support and helping patrons use their new e-readers, retailers could also play a bigger role by providing more instructions, information and tech support to library patrons. Perhaps they could even take the lead in running library workshops on how to use the new technologies.

Vince Writes: Libraries face several challenges, from Publisher intransigence and a lack of a clear marketing strategy, to the technical issues which inhibit a straightforward service delivery.

Are eBooks too hard for libraries?

Should Libraries Get Out of the eBook Business? Or get out at least until there is a better system? The truth is our patrons want a lot of things we can't give them. When it comes to ebooks, we cannot give them what they want. What we can do, what maybe we should do, is spend their tax money wisely, and I am no longer convinced that spending it on the current ebook system is a wise move. General consensus agrees that after the holiday season this year it is only about 19 percent of the population that owns an ereader, if you factor in tablets that number rises to 29%. One only has to look at Library Journal's A Guide to Publishers in the Library Ebook Market to realize it's pretty slim pickings. So we're providing a mediocre access at best.

The process is a nightmare. In order to borrow library ebooks a patrons must have a compatible device, a home computer capable of running Adobe Digital Editions, a high-speed internet connection, and enough tech savvy to set everything up and get it to work correctly. We are in the midst of the ebook wars, just look at the number of proprietary systems and file formats. I can't help but wonder if Guy LeCharles Gonzales is right when he writes:

Stop buying ebooks across the board, at any price, under any terms. Let publishers fight it out with Amazon, and when the dust finally settles (it will) and a viable business model appears (maybe), begin negotiating anew, on solid ground, with whomever's left standing.

In the meantime, libraries can redirect those precious resources and finances being flagged for ebooks towards more tangible initiatives in their respective communities. After all we (as a society not libraries) did not get the first sale doctrine out of the goodness of someone's heart, it came from a court case. Maybe we need to stop asking. It wouldn't be the first time.

Vince Writes: The eBook market will undergo a series of upheavals until a stable market is established. There is a question about the viability of DRM formats in the long term.

Does branding work?

Stop Branding Your Library!! [PC Sweeney] I got my MLIS at San Jose State when all they could talk about is branding. But then, I had my interview at the library system I currently work at and I spent exactly 5 minutes in a room with Martin Gomez and realized everything I thought about branding libraries was absolute crap.

1. What is the goal with branding? -- branding allows marketing the available services, programs, and materials, at your libraries to be easier and centralized and that's really about it. If that's a library's goal then that's fine.
2. How many people go to multiple libraries in the system? -- if a library system finds that a very low number of patrons go to multiple branches throughout the system, then maybe this isn't that big of a concern after all?
3. Part of a consortium? -- do people really care that they are in this library system or the next or do they care that they can use their library card?
4. Critical mass of libraries with the same brand or at least using the same card? Brands like Starbucks work because they are so wide spread that wherever you go in the country. Are enough libraries offering enough of the same services that what is available is easily recognizable? Probably not.
5. Same services available? -- offering the same services from system to system (or even branch to branch) would not be a great idea since so many communities need such different services and programs. Sometimes, it's better and more profitable to be different and give out what people want instead of what we want to provide.
6. Looking the same -- Well, Kentucky Fried Chicken has a critical mass of outlets offering the same or similar goods and services.

But here is where I think Branding is right. If a library system serves a small enough or similar enough community of users that they typically want or need the same services and programs etc… that there is a large enough crossover of patrons between the library system's branches who are not also using a number of other libraries in the area or that the use of those libraries would not dilute the brand they are trying to create. And of course, that the cost of trying to rebrand every library is far lower than the benefits. I've only seen two public library systems where I would argue that this occurs.

One the other hand, sometimes I wonder if many libraries are already branded? I've been to many libraries around the country that are branded as community libraries. They are branded separate and distinct to the community they serve even though they are part of the same library system. Maybe building community libraries and branding them as the library that serves their community is the way to go. In which case, it is simply the library's role to serve their community and provide what their community wants and needs. Or, maybe to REALLY stand out from the crowd you shouldn't brand your library like every other company?

Vince Writes: If the purpose of marketing is to get noticed and to cut through the predictability of most adverts and posters, then adhering to a formulaic brand may be a waste of resources.

Facebook as a marketing medium for libraries

After Facebook fails. [Doc Searls] Michael Wolff writes: "The daily and stubborn reality for everybody building businesses on the strength of Web advertising is that the value of digital ads decreases every quarter, a consequence of their simultaneous ineffectiveness and efficiency." This is in full agreement with The Advertising Bubble chapter in The Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge. "The results of personalized advertising, so far, have been lousy for actual persons … Tracking, filtering and personalizing advertising all compromise our anonymity." Here’s what Michael says about the utopian exhaust Facebook and its “ecosystem” are smoking: "So far, the sweeping, basic, transformative, and simple way to connect buyer to seller and then get out of the way eludes Facebook."

The buyer is a person. That person does not require either a social network or absolutely-informed guesswork to know who he or she is or what they want to buy. In a subchapter of The Filter Bubble titled “A Bad Theory of You,” Eli Pariser calls both Facebook’s and Google’s data-based assumptions about us “pretty poor representations of who we are, in part because there is no one set of data that describes who we are.” Three problems here:

1. By its nature advertising is not personal.
2. Making advertising personal changes it into something else that is often less welcome.
3. There are better ways to get to achieve Michael’s objective — ways that start on the buyer’s side, rather than the seller’s.

Facebook makes 82% of its money by selling targeted display advertising. Because Facebook knows so much about each person on its service, it can target in ways Google and others can only dream about. But as many have pointed out, Facebook’s approach to advertising has a problem: People don’t (yet) come to Facebook with the intention of consuming quality content (as they do with media sites), or finding an answer to a question (as they do at Google search). Do those Facebook ads work as well or better than other approaches?

Vince Writes: Is Facebook a useful medium to market the library? Do users want or expect public institutions to be 'intruding' into their social stream? Is this the best way to develop a relationshp with our customers?

Big Ideas - Doc Searls' Intention Economy

Doc Searls Would Like You To Join Him In The Intention Economy. [Scott Merrill] Advertisers are collecting heaps of information about you in the hopes of presenting you with more targeted advertisements. Yet despite all of this information, advertising still pretty much sucks. Doc Searls puts forward a better idea in his new book, The Intention Economy. Rather than continue to allow vendors to blindly guess as to what we want, we should all be moving toward a new market equilibrium in which we consciously and directly signal our intentions to the market. Companies that respond to our intentions will reap larger profit, waste less money on dubious advertising initiatives, and enjoy real customer loyalty.

Searls also advocates strongly for Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) solutions to give to consumers the same kind of tracking and information collection about vendors that the vendors use against us. It seeks to actively reward those companies that pay attention to individual intentions. Fourth parties would be trusted repositories that act as brokers on our behalf for our personal data. There are examples of fourth parties today — banks, buyer’s agent realtors, travel agents. We would tell our fourth party which of our data is available for public consumption, and what terms and conditions might apply to non-public data.

Vince Writes: The library analaogy is that we should investigate the best way for our customers to ‘directly’ express their signals for books, information and community services both in-library and online. We don’t need to market and advertise if we make it easy for our customers to have a more personal relationship with us.

Libraries as ebook publishers?

The Greatest Threat to Amazon May Just Be Libraries. Instead of turning the members of its community away for an eBook that is already borrowed, the library is ideally situated to sell them the eBook they wished to read, right when they wished to read it. There is nothing stopping a library from becoming an eBookseller. Now, take this one (small) step further. Let’s enable the “owner” of the eBook to donate it back to the library when they have finished. The library knows they sold it, right? The library can “re-acquire” the right to the title pretty easily given the fact that the library is the issuer of the DRM for the eBook. This simple program would:

1. Increase the number of eBook copies available for the library to lend;
2. Keep publisher’s happy as the eBook licenses have been paid for;
3. Provide the “donor” of the eBook with a tax write-off;
4. Contribute in a very meaningful way to the local community via eBook sales.
5. If you want to get super aggressive, let’s add periodical subscriptions to the mix and execute the same model.

Publishers openly lament the power Amazon holds in the market. Libraries (with help from the publishers) may just be the next (and most credible) threat to Amazon. Whether libraries and publishers realize it or not, well, that’s an entirely different question.

Vince Writes: Libraries as content publishers and part of the marketplace? While we have certain local advantages, I don't think we are any 'threat' to the juggernaut that is Amazon.

A user's critique

Does the Free Library even know what century it’s in? [Jason Kaye]

1. In 2012, citizens want answers to their basic technology questions, not to be walked over to a book shelf to thumb through a 400-page book that is not even relevant because it was published in 2002.
2. The Free Library offers Wi-Fi services but still does not offer Internet cafe environments at the branch level, and good luck hunting down a spare outlet for your laptop when your computer batteries need to be recharged.
3. In the community, if an unemployed 50-year-old doesn’t know how to attach a resume in a word document to an email, he or she just wants an answer to that basic question, to send out that resume to a prospective employer.
4. If a senior citizen seeks help creating a Facebook account, to keep in touch with grandchildren away at college, it should not be such an ordeal to receive hands-on assistance from a librarian.
5. How many more years are library patrons going to have to wait to be provided with the option to pay library fines or make purchases on the library website using a credit card or PayPal account?
6. Libraries should be thought of as technology centers that promote literacy and embrace the city’s rich history, not inefficient, time capsules, stuck in the past.

Vince Writes: These are reasonable questions to be asked of our libraries. How well do we stack up?

About

This blog is about new developments in public libraries.