I had a conversation with my supervisor (Rob Banks, Deputy Director of Operations at the library) a couple days ago, and thought it was worth sharing with y’all.
We were talking about our impending website redesign (yes, we’re at it again). I had sent him a rough draft of my redesign plan, and we were talking through it. He had been reading my book on digital experiences, and that had fired off some really cool thoughts about the concept of 3rd place for him… here’s what he said that made us start thinking:
“It’s not 3rd place – it’s The Place:”
Typically, Rob has maybe 6 windows open on his computer while at work – email, a couple of work documents he’s working on, TweetDeck (ok – does YOUR deputy director have TweetDeck open constantly? Just sayin), and a couple of websites – usually including Facebook.
He’s doing several things at the same time … but Facebook is always on, and he’s always connected to his Facebook friends.
When he’s not at work, Rob has a Blackberry with a Facebook app – so Facebook is always on there, too. He can connect to Facebook whenever he wants to, no matter where he is.
Rob can still be in his physical “3rd place” and (important point) STILL BE CONNECTED to Facebook and his friends.
And that’s the idea that needs to be translated over to our library’s digital branch.
Our library websites/digital branches will probably never be a real 3rd place to people – and that’s ok. Instead of working towards that, let’s work harder to make this now-old phrase, “be where the patrons are,” a bit more seamless.
Rob can be in his 3rd place – but he is also constantly connected to friends/colleagues/family in Facebook at the same time. Facebook, in a way, has transcended the 3rd place to be “The Place.” It’s always on, always available to him, when he wants to be there.
Our library websites/digital branches can be like this, too! So… still developing, but this is definitely going in the redesign plan.
Thoughts? How are you “always there, always on” when patrons want to reach you?
Yes, I had a new iPhone waiting for me when I got home from Florida (among other things). I upgraded to the new iPhone 3GS … which takes video! Here’s what I’m finding out so far about the video quality:
The video quality is about the same as you’d find on a Flip camera, so not too shabby! It films in QuickTime .mov format, using AAC for audio and H.264 for the video codec. It makes a standard-sized video of 640X480 when held in landscape mode.
So – I like having a video camera ALWAYS with me, in my pocket. What I’m not quite used to yet is how the iPhone decides when it’s going to be in landscape or vertical modes. For example, this video …
… was filmed and sent to YouTube in landscape mode … but it came out vertical (fyi – this shows off the iPhone’s macro video mode, too). This isn’t the first time that’s happened to me. Out of the four videos I’ve posted to YouTube so far, two are in landscape mode and two are vertical.
And that’s not the only place I’ve discovered quirks. Look what happened in iPhoto!
Even weirder in iMovie – check out the thumbnails iMovie generated – the thumbnails are sideways are squished for some strange reason, but the actual video is in landscape mode!
It’s quite possible I just haven’t figured out something yet, but this is a bit irksome. Otherwise, uploading to a variety of places seems to work fine. So far, I have been able to upload my videos to:
my computer, to iPhoto and iMovie for editing (haven’t tried importing to Final Cut Express, but I’m sure that will work fine, too)
blip.tv via blip’s uploading tool (the first video in this post). I have also tried blip’s mobile email uploader, but haven’t seen any video show up in my blip account yet. We’ll see what happens with that!
And one more thing – editing. Yes, you can do some extremely basic editing of your iPhone video – right on the iPhone. Here’s how it looks:
See the timeline at the top of the video? You can click the beginning and ending points and trim the video’s beginning and ending. And that’s all. But that’s ok – I’ll probably end up dumping video to my Mac anyway for editing later. For some people, this will be pretty useful stuff.
So – my iPhone video report so far… will david figure out how to succeed in landscape mode? Will Apple usher in a new era of vertical video? Don’t hold your breath to find out!
Ben Smith, Sheryl Bai, someone else…, Aaron Schmidt
First up – Handhelds at UCHC School of Medicine
PDA Program:
PDAs supported by the library since 2001
Library purchased PDAs for staff
Did an in-service class for staff
did some student and faculty training, too
Ben:
Current PDA Initiative:
meet with faculty, then test handhelds, create instructions.
Train students so they can be a resource to ther students. Cool.
They hold PDA clinics, help them install apps, etc.
Considerations:
which handheld platform?
Windows Mobile 2003 or Mobile 5?
Smartphones?
They’re limited because they’ve developed stuff on Windows Mobile platform, so they have to use those…
Smartphones:
two devices in one
cheaper
you have a phone contract too – have to make sure students understand this
screen resolution can be worse on a smartphone (aside – I love my iPhone)
not all have touch screen functionality
Handy software utilities:
dotPocket
DeepFreeze
ActiveSync
Microsoft Remote Display Control (displays the PDA on a computer screen, hence a live demo during a presentation)
My Mobiler
Windows Mobile Device Center
Chris Tonjes, Aaron Schmidt
Chris (CIO, DC Public Library)
their iphone app:
three layers – transaction layer, data layer, presentation layer (I think)
Goals:
continue horizontal integration of our ILS
presents an alternative delivery of online catalog – like most, not happy with their ILS. So this gave them a great excuse to start experimenting
first foray into mobile world
leverages the power of the iTunes app store – the delivery method of the future
model for other projects
provides tangible near term ROI and extended library use and awareness
leverage! Code and analysis used for …
They have a blackberry version too
more online catalogs! playing with VuFInd
Integration/direct download target for content from our electronic resource providers 9Gale and Overdrive)
iPhone 3.0! Ecommerce – fine and other payments from within app!
model for near future projects (kindle or other readers)
Showing their release roadmap – they are planning for the future
DCPL iPhone App – fast facts:
2199 downloads so far
85 in the last week placed holds with it
works with SirsiDynix enterprise portal search discovery tool
plug in web service
took about 100 total hours of programming time
we can forecast LOE to modify for use with ibistro and elibrary
code available for download
DCPL SMS Text Msg – Bill
Reach out to the younger people is a goal
they send notices, announcements
patrons opt-in on website registration page
increase library event participation via same day notifications – great reminder of events.
messages and notices tailored to SMS limitations/requirements (ie., message size & delivery)
Normal txt stuff: small messages, if you have more than one to send, you have to do each as separate messages
Cost to the library = 0
They schedule the txt msgs in the middle of the day – important point. You don’t want them sent at 2am! And you WANT them sent when people can see them, for reminders…
Aaron:
in charge of how this should look and feel.
started making paper prototypes
Even did user testing with paper mock-ups to see if the idea worked
It IS possible to design a BAD iphone app… they wanted to avoid that
There’s a PSD element library for iphones so you can quickly create a photoshop mockup
I thought this session was supposed to be about this (from the SXSW summary of the panel):
“The iPhone may be the most disruptive technology of this decade. The countless ubiquitous computing tools available to User Experience professionals mean convenience and usability headaches. With boundaries blurring between web and mobile, how will the UX discipline change? This panel explores challenges for designing Rich Internet Applications for multiple devices.”
That sounded interesting. Unfortunately, the actual panel was nothing like the above description. This presentation had: no info and no real thinking about the future.
More than one panelist said they like other phones better (so what in the world are they doing on this panel – according to the description given, they were supposed to do a bit more thinking about the iPhone, how disruptive it is, and the future).
One panelist said the iPhone was hard to use, another complained about the SMS capabilities and how hard they are to use.
Hmm… I’ve seen like 5000 iPhones this week, all being used successfully.
But enough about that! Fortunately, I’ve only attended two really bad presentations.
I’ve been looking into mobile podcasting tools, specifically services that allow you to post podcasts to a blog from your cell phone. Here’s a list of tools I’ve found that do this:
Gcast – run by the people behind GarageBand (I actually have some scary bad songs somewhere on GarageBand)
Gabcast – 200 MB per user for the free account, and 1 hour per recording
Jott – Not sure if Jott does quite the same thing, but I’m including them anyway. Jott allows you to record a message to voicemail, then it can email it out to whoever (and most bloggers can set up an “email to post” email account, which would work)
Anyone use any of these tools? Is there another one I should add to the list? Thanks!
I saw this article a few days ago, and thought I’d share… Basically, the article discusses a Kansas City-area middle school that is experimenting with PDAs – as in, 600 PDAs (the school district spent about $180,000).
Their goal? To prepare their students for the 21st century! The article actually says this: “Many educators think that preparing students for the 21st century goes beyond reading, writing, and arithmetic – students must be technologically literate.”
How cool is that? A public school actually teaching kids skills that they’ll need TOMORROW – rather than skills they’d need today, or yesterday. I applaud them!
Just testing out the Treo. Did you know you can actually reach blogger’s web-based admin area using the Treo Blazer web browser? Of course that also means that I’m hunched over and typing on a thumb keyboard… very slowly. But a successful test, nonetheless.
I’m playing with my new Treo 650 – and discovered that it takes video. So of course, what do I do when I discover that? Immediately play with it… here’s the result of my experiment.
Ok – very silly test video, I know. Nonetheless:
I can capture video on the go
It’s poor quality video, so probably not useful for “professional” consumption
Great if I want to share an idea, capture a quick interview, or capture an event
Hmm… show management a particularly successful library event?
Reading all these, I can see a way to sum it up – cheap video is capable of capturing the moment – it will capture the relevant info, so you can use it later as supplementary material (for whatever you’re doing).
Update: Gee, Dave… it helps to actually include the link to the video…
Update: In the comments area, Paul provides the actual URL – thanks, Paul! And Paul – for the . hit the 1 key.
Just poking around more on the Opera Mini site – and found an Opera Mini simulator! Pretty cool – I was able to test what Kansas City Public Library’s website looks like using the Opera Mini browser.
What did I discover? Our way cool horizontal menu bar? Doesn’t work. Normal links DO work, though. I was able to click through to an image and an article in one of our subject guides.
Thankfully, we’re working on a redesign – we’ll have to focus on STANDARDS… CSS, XHTML, etc. so the world can browse us. Even those using cell phones!
I had a conversation with my supervisor (Rob Banks, Deputy Director of Operations at the library) a couple days ago, and thought it was worth sharing with y’all.
Rob can be in his 3rd place – but he is also constantly connected to friends/colleagues/family in Facebook at the same time. Facebook, in a way, has transcended the 3rd place to be “The Place.” It’s always on, always available to him, when he wants to be there.
