 Wednesday, April 10, 2002Home Nets: Keeping Up With the Joneses
Now imagine a generation of kids growing up not just with the internet, but with pervasive, wireless internet access throughout their own homes. We're just at the beginning of this phenomenon, but that's how my kids are growing up. To them, it's not at all strange that you can sit anywhere with the laptop and surf the net at high speed. In fact, they can't understand why the one old Windows 95 133Mhz that used to be their gaming computer doesn't have high speed internet access, and they almost never use it anymore. What do you think they will expect from the world around them? Inventing the Future by Tim O'Reilly
I found his discussion of web services interesting, especially in regards to web spiders. My brain is still gel-ling around all of that. This is cool - I've done Tech Summits at SLS about four of the seven topics Tim lists, and our Reference Service covers search engines. Have you ever played that game where you read out loud your fortune from a fortune cookie and add "in bed" to the end of it? If you're a librarian, read tech/visioning articles and add "in libraries" to the end of everything. See if you can apply what you're reading to your current environment. BTW, the fun version of the fortune cookie game is to add "@ your library" to the end of your fortune. Ernest points up the absurdity of the continuing attempts to extend copyright even further in his satire (or is it?) ABA IP Section Intends to Defend Incentives for Dead People, Lawyers.
Speaking of fun devices, I had to run over to Best Buy tonight, and I had a few minutes so I played with the Handspring Treo 180 and the Sharp Zaurus 5500 . Both were lighter than I thought they would be, but for some reason the Zaurus keyboard seemed easier for my thumbs. And now that I've got a Sony Clie 710c PDA, I've decided I couldn't go back to a black and white screen. Points for innovation to the Treo, though.
But for $500, my next device will have to combine cell phone and PDA with a color screen and have wireless, always-on access to the internet. So my Clie can rest easy for now. As I say in my presentations, there's no certification you can get for "gadgets." If you're curious about something, go to Best Buy, Circuit City, wherever, and play with it. Even if you can't afford to buy these things (and really, who can?), at least you'll get a feel for them. Give yourself a gold star afterwards. Dorothea pushes back on my comments about the GoReader.
My bad. I should have noted that I've never actually seen or played with one of these in person. Well, that's not totally true - I saw Tom holding one last year, but that was about it. My enthusiasm is for the concept and the fact that someone had actually gotten as far as a prototype, because like Ernie, I can see a lot of potential for a device like this. However, I think we're a good 2-3 years away from a usable device (I don't really count PDAs for this since they are multi-purpose), and I think electronic ink may end up overtaking dedicated ebook devices for the very reasons Dorothea cites. The ebook industry deserves its dismal state because they can't agree on a standard and won't play together nicely. I can't speak to the company itself or its employees, so I'm more than prepared to defer to Dorothea's word on that one. I've never even met Dorothea, but I trust her on this one already. (How's that for a trust circle, Will?) <sheepish grin> I'll try to note when I've actually played with the devices I'm discussing. </sheepish grin> Thanks to Colleen, I now know which children's storybook character I am. I am thrilled to be The Little Prince! If you want to learn how to do these kinds of quizzes yourself, check out her tutorial on the subject (note that it uses Javascript). [via Daypop Top 40]
Who knew that Ananova had such a sense of humor? Check out the Wall Street Journal redesigns that didn't make the cut! [via SIGIA-L] You can find out how others are reacting to the WSJ redesign from Bryce. From a klog apart:
Phil also notes the Google MentalPlex interface that I had missed as the April Fool's Day joke back in 2000. Authors Guild To Members: De-link Amazon.com "theodp writes: "Angered by Amazon.com's practice of offering [prominently placed] used editions of relatively new titles, the Authors Guild is urging authors to replace Amazon.com links on their web sites with links to Barnesandnoble.com and BookSense.com. Amazon spokesperson Patty Smith insisted the policy really "ends up helping authors and publishers" although neither the author nor the publisher receives royalties from Amazon's used book sales, and Smith could not cite an author or genre helped by the availability of used editions. "CD: I'd imagine they don't want us to go to our local used book stores either? This is the second time they've tried to call Amazon to task for this." [Slashdot]
Ack. The script showing the RSS feeds I'm subscribed to should be appearing on the right-hand side, but it's not. Something keeps getting hosed and I can't figure out what it is. I'll keep trying....
I wonder if they'll be working closely with libraries or ignoring us.
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The Zaurus really captured my attention, though. It's not a PDA/phone combo, so I won't buy one, but the interface seemed better than the one on my Clie and the resolution was snappier. However, the processor was slower, with a visible delay when you press an icon to go to a program. The addition of a home and cancel button on the front, as well as the navigation dial, is a big improvement in usability. I played a good game of Asteroids on it. It even handles CompactFlash and SD memory cards - big bonus! Sliding down the bottom to reveal the keyboard is a pretty nifty trick. Compared to Europe and Asia, the U.S. is "the sticks" in regards to devices, so seeing a device that acts differently than all of the others was a nice change. Your average person wouldn't even know it was running Linux.
