Textbook Alternatives Fwd: Message from the Interim Provost

I've posted this message from UIC administration recommending alternatives to hellaciously overpriced textbooks (my adjective :) ). No surprise here, but the new textbook and annually renewed edition textbooks are a publishing racket that I believe contributes to college student dropout rates.

Dear Colleagues,
Financial issues are the #1 contributing factor to students dropping out of college. UIC has invested heavily in financial aid in an effort to retain students through graduation. Last year 78% of our undergraduate students received some form of financial aid and 37% of full-time undergraduates had all tuition and fee costs covered by financial aid. Thanks in part to that investment the demographic profile of our student body has remained stable and diverse for the last decade while our six-year graduation rate continues to rise. It is in this context that I am asking all faculty to be sensitive to the cost of text books and other materials they assign to their students for the fall semester. As you plan for future semesters, I ask that you please consider carefully your textbook/course material options.

• Indicate if the text is necessary or for reference purposes
• Select the least expensive text among the appropriate options. Work with a textbook company to customize a version of your text excluding portions you never use or to receive a special bulk rate
• Make supplemental materials available through the UIC Library's E-Res service http://www.uic.edu/depts/lib/reserves/eres/help.shtml 
• Use an open Source textbook option http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2008/09/open-source-tex/ 
• Use an e-book alternative
• Minimize the use of new titles or new editions. Doing so allows students to purchase used books and the bookstore to stock used books for a longer period of time. More students will be able to sell back the book at the end of one semester so that other students can save on the used books the following semester.
• Minimize the adoption of "bundled" textbooks with extra instructional materials such as CD-ROMs and workbooks. These bundles are often priced higher and include materials that are not incorporated into the class

I also ask that you make every effort to provide information about required texts and educational materials for the Fall semester to the UIC Bookstore or an alternative book store as soon as possible.Thank you for all of your efforts to support UIC's commitment to undergraduate education.

video and video tutorials

If you haven't already seen a library produced video on You Tube or seen one embedded in your library Web site, you probably will soon. One of the qualities of a good librarians is the desire to connect and share with their patron community and in the age of social media, video is one of the most accessible ways to do this. The question that comes up for me when I think about library produced video is, "What are you going to say, and why should I watch it?" There is still a novelty associated with short librarian generated video that will certainly create a little buzz in your user community and perhaps raise a general awareness of the librarians and services available. Videos that present a hearty welcome and an orientation to the library may have their place, but when this novelty wears off, users are going to have little tolerance for information in video form that is not clear and concise and above all, useful. Library users are not visiting the library Web site in order to "surf" it. They are there for a specific reason and are not interested in anything but fulfilling that particular need. We can use the video format best when we use it for tips, tricks and solutions to specific problems we know our users experience while obtaining the information they need.  For example, if there is a known problem with the Web site surrounding access to article databases, a 20 second narrated screencast about selecting an appropriate database could be inserted (embedded) at logical point where users are forced to make a selection between two paths. There are any number of examples that can be thought of where a context sensitive help video could be unobtrusively linked.

The great bifurcation

I have felt pulled in a couple of different directions since I started this blog nearly five (!) years ago. I started it to post about professional interests as a librarian, and the occasional personal or amusing post about anything else. But lately it has been harder and harder to decide which way to go, but I've finally made a decision (with the help of a parent-in-the-trenches). My Library-centric worldview will now be here at "Internet Librarian Ship." "Lost in the Stupormarket" will be about life as a 40-something dad of small children.Wow, such range.

Augmented reality by "Common Craft"

Re-posting a LITA-L email from Gerry McKiernan:

This video is an introduction to augmented reality - a new and growing way to use smartphones to learn about the world around you. This video introduces the technology and covers the basic applications. It includes:

•A high level introduction to the big idea
•Using it to find a restaurant
•Using it to compare products, be entertained
•A look at future possibilities of augmented reality

http://www.commoncraft.com/augmented-reality-video

can memes become extinct?

So this wikipedia article says "Memes that propagate less prolifically may become extinct." So, if a meme is recorded in some fashion, either textually, in pictures, video, et cetera, but is no longer in general use, can it be considered extinct? Unlike extinct biological life, a meme could be revived at any time be simply by a culturally influential person (or entity like a tv show or advertisement) reintroducing it. For example, what if Lady GaGa started saying "where's the beef?"

"zones of intervention"

I've been reading Carol Kuhlthau's writings about the "Information Search Process" (ISP) lately as research into an article I'm revising on the single search box. In them she reminds me that the early stages of the ISP include a level of anxiety and uncertainty. It is natural for the user of an information system to have an affective response to an information need as well as a cognitive one. The anxiety felt at the beginning of the research process comes from the user's lack of knowledge about the topic of interest, but also from a lack of focus on the topic of interest itself. This is usually where an information professional like a librarian might provide guidance to the user in the form of an interpreter of the information system, or as an interviewer helping to elicit a more focused information query. Kuhlthau writing in 1996 also refers to a "zone of intervention" in the ISP. "The zone of intervention is that area in which an information user can do with advice and assistance what he or she could not do alone. Intervention within this zone enables the user to move along in the information search process. Intervention outside this zone is inefficient and unnecessary; experienced by users as intrusive, on the one side and overwhelming, on the other." (Kuhlthau 1996) Interestingly, Kuhlthau was writing about this zone to address the question, "What is the role of the information professional as intermediary in an environment where information systems provide direct access to the end user?" (Kuhlthau 1996) Fourteen years later the question is still just as incisive, if not moreso since Google Scholar, Federated search, Article databases and link resolvers bring full text library content into the users lap. For remote users searching via the library Web site (the vast majority), that intervention must occur asynchronously through context sensitive help, or not at all. One philosophy of librarianship, — which is admittedly more nuanced than I am giving it credit for here — eschews a simplified search interface and feels that the user requires education and instruction on how to use library resources. I do not necessarily disagree that the user often needs guidance or instruction, but I am of the mind that we ought to be providing the best content possible with the simplest and least mediated interface that we can. Currently, the best technological solution to this issue is the single search box across multiple databases, including commercial search engines. The "zone of intervention" exists post-search when the user is reviewing and interpreting results. The presentation of search results is the most important point at which the librarian has the opportunity to exert their expertise by providing "contextual buttressing" (to borrow a delightful phrase, thanks Kathryn S.) to help searchers understand the types of information they are retrieving.

Joi Ito photo: Generation Gap

The thread that brought me to this picture started out as a You Tube search for my last name. That in turn lead me to a 2008 talk at UC Berkeley by the (then) President of the Digital Library Federation Peter Brantley. He spoke about his interactions with the newspaper industry as the president of Dig. Lib. Federation.

Generation Gap
Originally uploaded by Joi

Death of Publishing video

The fictional "millennial" narrating this video tells us that we must listen to her values. But this video doesn't state what the producers think those values are. It just shows us that we can see the glass as half full or half empty. View it as half full and the publishing industry has a future in its current form. View it as half empty and book publishers are fighting a losing battle. Neither are true are they? Publishers of all content -- textual, musical, visual, and other, have major challenges in front of them due in part to the plethora of formats in which that content is accessible. What publishers of all media are scrambling to do is to monetize every form of access. Publishers would have you (or your library) pay twice or thrice or per use for the content of a book or CD or DVD depending on whether you buy the paper, stream the digital video or download it as a proprietary audio format. Publishing is dying? Hardly. The question is really about how many times the consumer can be charged for something they presumably already paid for.

UIC Library budget cuts: books, journals, electronics, EVERYTHING

Everyone on campus received this email today from the Library Dean Mary M. Case.
It contains a short description of current issues in journal costs.

Dear Colleagues,

I write to advise you that the budget reductions for which UIC is
preparing for FY2011 will diminish the Library’s collections budget
and consequently impact the resources the Library provides for your
teaching and research.  Because we do not know the extent of the
reductions, the Library is preparing for a range between minimal to
quite serious cuts to the collections.

In general, we expect to purchase fewer books and cancel selected
subscriptions for journals and databases.  As we proceed, we will be
in contact with your departments to talk about how library resources
in your disciplines will be affected by the cuts.  You will be
hearing by mid-March from XXXX XXXXXXXX, Principal Bibliographer,
about a process that the subject bibliographers will use to identify
potential candidates for cancellation and to confer with you about
your priorities.  The Library would like to make its cancellation
decisions in consultation with the faculty.  In the meantime, if you
have questions, please contact her at XXXX .

UIC is not alone in addressing budget issues, nor is the Library
alone in struggling to sustain research collections in this economic
environment.  While limited funding is a part of the problem, there
are other systemic factors, and I would like to take this
opportunity to explain them and how they affect our current
situation.

The Journals Market
Many of the research journals we subscribe to, especially those in
science, technology, and medicine, are very expensive and are
bundled in large electronic packages that are licensed for several
years at a time.  The journals are owned to a large extent by a
small number of firms that have continued to merge over the past
decade to create a highly concentrated industry.  Many scholarly
societies have sold their journals to these companies or have
entered into distribution agreements that keep prices high.  The
benefit of gaining access to rich collections across disciplines
with predictable annual increases that the bundled packages offer is
offset by the restriction on our ability to cancel even the least
used titles for any but a minimal net gain.  This means, in the
current environment, that a number of strategies for how we build
and manage our collections in the future will need to be considered.

Changes in the Scholarly Publishing Model
While we are currently forced to cut subscriptions, publishing is in
transition and we are optimistic about the future.  Many in the
academy, including here at UIC, are making efforts to change this
system and improve accessibility to up-to-date research created
around the globe.  Efforts, such as the CIC Author’s Addendum,
approved by the UIC Faculty Senate in 2006, provides authors with a
tool to retain rights to their work.  This addendum allows authors
to post their work on a publicly accessible website increasing
access to quality content on the web and helping to break the
monopoly control over articles that most publishers have had.

For reasons of both enhancing access and facilitating research, the
NIH’s Public Access Policy requires grant recipients to submit the
results of their research to the ever-growing PubMed Central (PMC)
repository within 12 months of publication.  The NIH policy is
driven by the belief that results from research funded by taxpayer
dollars should be available to the public and not only to those
institutions that can afford the high subscription costs.  More
importantly, the content in PMC can be computationally manipulated
to find potentially productive relationships that may lead more
quickly to new discoveries, a benefit not possible in the print
world or with the proprietary silos of electronic journals.
Legislation has been introduced in Congress to require similar
public access policies in all other federal agencies.

There are many other initiatives within both the publishing
community and universities to build infrastructure and find models
to sustain a more economically viable scholarly publishing system.
To see more about these and what UIC is doing, I invite you to start
at
http://library.uic.edu/home/services/publishing-and-scholarly-communication
Regarding our current situation, you will be hearing more soon
about how we will work collaboratively with faculty to manage
necessary collections reductions.

Sincerely,

Mary M. Case
University Librarian

The website IS the library

In many ways, the library website is a destination much as the library building is a destination. You go there purposefully to acquire information or communications that are wholly contained as part of the site itself. But library websites are also seen as gateways to other "places" such as subscription databases. Librarians need to shift their thinking about the website as a gateway to the library, and start thinking about the website as the library itself, the physical space being inseparable from the Web space. The website should be considered a destination in and of itself; an actual place in addition to and instead of a virtual place. I think that for libraries to remain a desirable destination in users' minds and not just an authentication gateway, they will need to pull subscription content out of the provider's Web environments and bring it into the library's Web environment. Additionally, libraries might try to have a much more responsive presence on the website, anticipating the questions and navigational choices our user might make. By making this shift in thinking, the physical place/space becomes just one of many resources and services available from the “place” of the library website.

This is a radical de-centering of what we understand as The Library. In this "destination paradigm" The Library, (and its electronic parallel the online library catalog,) is replaced by the website as the nexus of collections, services, expertise, communities and (lest we forget) buildings that have heretofore formed our concept of library. As the librarian at the reference desk is to the in-person user, so the library website is to the online user. The library website serves as librarian by proxy for users who never engage directly with a librarian as a result of their location or disposition.

Libraries need websites that respond to users as they navigate. We take pride in the availability and responsiveness of librarians and staff in our buildings. Why should the website be any different? Let us shift the website experience from a static one, in which the library serves as the login gateway to subscription resources, to an active experience in which the user has the convenience of a single search box for resources, or they can choose to immerse themselves a media-rich interactive user experience that allows for independent or guided learning.

web-scale discovery and hiding complexity

The exchange below was between me and a colleague who had recently been to a collections conference in Charleston, S.C.

DB wrote:

Hi all, Just got back from the Charleston conference and wanted to share a few thoughts and also questions.  The conference is focused on Collections Development and Acquisitions, but the content went far beyond that. Web-scale Discovery and ease of use for patrons was key topic, and several libraries were using Summon from Serials Solutions.  My understanding of these tools is the they pre-harvest and pre-coordinate a collection for fast, accurate results, but I was a bit lost at times.

Thanks for the run-down from the conference. Sounds incredibly
interesting. I'd love to discuss this at greater length, but I've
interspersed a few comments in your original post.
Steve

"Web scale discovery" is really exciting to me. Simply put it is the
next level of federated-search/single-search, although "federated" might
be a bit of a misnomer here. As you quoted the summon press in your
second post, "No need to broadcast searches to other databases" Webfeat is using "translators" to search each database separately, hence the slow and individually grouped results.



Seems like competitors are Worldcat Beta, Ebsco Discovery Service, Primo Central, and Google Scholar Beta, but I may have missed some.  Excuse my lack of knowledge, but are we already in one of these products on our webpage, or will we be moving to Summon or another product?


We are not using a Web scale discovery tool on our Web pages, we're using WebFeat, a federated search tool as a simple one box article search from the "articles" tab.


A keynote on the mission of the library got a writeup in LJ:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6705641.html?nid=2673&source=link&rid= I had mentioned it in a meeting yesterday and wanted to send out the link which appears to contain a link to the full presentation, which was very thought provoking. Other topics were Is use "King" in driving collections?  If so, is the use data we get accurate?

My opinion? NO! But use is definitely first among equals in terms of collection decision making. Making use the primary decision factor...
1. Assumes a lot about the equality and accessibility of our print and electronic resources. If use were to dictate decision making, then eventually only the most successfully branded and added-feature laden products would be collected. All other things being equal, (visibility,accessibility, discoverability) use might be the most significant factor. As things stand right now, the playing field is far from level.
2. A research library has to support the research mission of the university. In my mind that means we also have to anticipate and provide for scholarship in areas of research that may not be highly used.


Does one budget by use?

Maybe, if use could be quantifiably weighted into the decision.

Other topics at the conference were Branding, and new types of Branding.  I talked with the R2 people and besides regular branding, we have the option of configuring the collection so that when people logout, they are automatically sent to a library webpage, to reinforce the idea that it its the library that supplies the product. Do we want to configure our resources to do this type of thing?  Or will we annoy our patrons?

Yes! We should send or patrons back to our site. We should brand (in the unfortunately business-y parlance) our resources to the greatest extent we can and put concentrated effort into the development of our "brand" Our site is their gateway to the electronic resources, it goes beyond a "reminder" as to who is paying for it. If I had my druthers, we'd be pulling content into our library Web environment as opposed to linking out to licensed resource interfaces. Users need the content. The only people who NEED to know what Ebsco, CSA, Springer, etc. are, are the librarians.

I helped an undergraduate find an article via the our link resolver yesterday. We followed links through four different branded interfaces to get the pdf file. That is four different opportunities for the user to get confused about where the article is published and where it is coming from.

One speaker said "Brand It, Market It, Name It, Promote It, and give up BI." I don't know anything about the BI part and I'm not advocating that but just reporting, but the speakers point was that...

Ok, yes, brand it market it, promote it, but abandoning Library
Instruction (BI is sooo 20th century) is a thoroughly ridiculous idea.

...we should be able to make the library easy enough to use (like Google, with Summon or some other tools) that people should not need BI in the future, we should just have to tell them how to find our wonderful, self-explanatory web site.  KISS was her theme (Keep It Simple ...)- we need to resist the urge to display complexities to our users but rather hide them.

This I agree with. Prioritize the content not the container.



Patron driven book aquisitions, and consortial based aquisitions were hot topics.  One library loads all relevant records from its vendor into its catalog with a purchase button, so that the catalog was a bit like Amazon. Journal pricing was a topic of a plenary with both publishers and librarians speaking. IOP has seen their submissions go from 11,000 in 2000 to 40,000 plus in 2009 already, the growth of science research is staggering at the moment, and researchers expectations are changing as well, they want faster publication, instant access, etc... They used the journal Nanotechnology as an example, it published 126 papers in 2001 and 1,411 in 2008.  I knew things were expanding but found these numbers to be an eye opener. How to cope with with above realities and the realities of our budgets and space were the constant topic of the conference, which had the title "Necessity is the Mother of Invention".

It was a bit of a pep talk: these are exciting times and we have the chance to really change the way we relate to out patrons, but only if we act to take control of our future. To be user focused and part of the user community was a constant theme, and to guard against having an inward focus on processes and artifacts.

But user-focus requires complex thought about the ways we are dealing
with processes and artifacts, in addition to having a finger on the
pulse of patrons needs.


One session was on never wasting a good serials crisis, another entitled "Its the Economy Stupid" talked about stepping back and using this chance to really look at what we do.  One vendor scolded us librarians for not being good business people, well that may be true, I never took a negotiations class or business class in library school but I think I'm prepared to be a lot tougher in the future in negotiations.

Perhaps Library schools ought to develop courses on negotiating and licensing with the business college? Perhaps they already do?

waiting on a wave

In my last post I said I'd asked google for an invitation. So far, I am not worthy. harumph!

I requested a Google Wave invitation

I requested a Google Wave invitation just now. Here is the message I sent the Google team:
Dear Google Wave gatekeepers,
I'm a reference librarian and as such I am ALWAYS looking for ways to help college students understand the Web-based research process for credible materials on the free Web and in the library subscription databases.
Google wave will let me work with them in a way that they are already familiar with by incorporating multimedia in a collaborative environment. I anticipate that Google Wave will also go a long way toward the development of a for-credit college course in Information literacy, scholarly communication and information architecture both as a development tool for the library faculty involved in the project and as an educational tool. I can't wait to try it out and start our conversation!

Steve Brantley
Reference Librarian
Assistant Professor
Daley Library
University of Illinois at Chicago
-Go UIC Flames!

If you aren't sure what I'm talking about, there are lots of informative posts and videos about the new project. Here is the official one: wave.google.com

Web services development and academic library faculty infrastructure

The following exchange was sent via email to several library faculty
members at a university library. I am posting it because I think it is
representative of some of the problems we as academic librarian
practitioners face when negotiating technological opportunities with the
time demands of scholarly activity.

Dear __,
First all, I think the Duke project is cool and it would be very
useful for us to have a mobile app, and/or an alternative Website
interface designed for smaller mobile screens.

As far as pursuing these projects goes, we are faced once again with the
dilemma of opting to explore the creation of new technology projects which
could be of benefit to our users, or focusing on research and publication for promotion and tenure. To be fair,
research benefits our users in a much more abstracted way, by advancing the profession and
increasing our own knowledge.

Secondly, our talent pool of programming/scripting, API, app development
skills is ad hoc and, with no disrespect intended, shallow.

An alternative approach from building this kind of tool from the ground up
might be to monitor librarian/developer sites and lists (web4lib, open
source for libraries) to find a customizable tool for our needs. We might
also find a commercial service or developer who could provide the
necessary tools, as we have done in the past with questionpoint and, currently,
springshare.

thoughts?
Steve

A colleague's reply,

While I think that developing apps is undoubtedly cool in many ways, and
it does give us something pretty and shiny to show outsiders, it's not yet
something we can do. We don't have the policies, infrastructure,
staffing, and pool of expertise in place - not so far as we are all aware,
that is. The idea of finding a customizable tool is more achievable, but
again, we very much need essential pieces of a foundation in place to
support such possibilities.

It is illustrative to me of the difficulty of establishing the proper
foundation for potential innovation in the Library that this discussion
did not include anyone with a technological perspective to contribute.

The notion that research and publication prevents us from exploring
options is a red herring, and I'm disappointed to see the failure of _blank_
Library to do cool mobile apps attributed to a system that many of us
committed to when we accepted our positions. After all, our library is
hardly unique in having tenure for librarians, and I cannot believe that
there are no interesting explorations of technology and avenues of service
being undertaken at places like CU-Boulder, Penn State, UNM, and
elsewhere.

I then replied,

If I gave the impression that I blame the tenure system, I didn't make
myself clear because I do not blame the system for the above mentioned
difficulties we face. I do feel however, that an identifiable tension
exists between the need to research and publish while on the tenure
track, and the ability to: 1. establish policies, infrastructure,
staffing, and a pool of expertise; and 2. explore new skills and modes
of practice that would allow us to create productivity tools that can
benefit our users.

I wholeheartedly agree that such projects create research and
publication opportunities both in advancement of one's career and, to
share with our colleagues. However, since the projects we are talking
about require the acquisition of a new skill and then the
application of that skill (in an environment already possessing the
necessary policies, infrastructure, staffing, and pool of expertise), and
only then designing a study, publishing scholarship based on research that
has a lower time intensity seems to be a more prudent choice.

Perhaps I misspoke when I said "we are faced once again with the
dilemma of opting to explore the creation of new technology projects which
could be of benefit to our users, or focusing on research and publication
to ensure our career on the tenure track." The word "dilemma" is not
the best term to use. Maybe I should have said we are faced with "a
frustrating choice" Independent of our commitment to the tenure system,
The system is not without its shortcomings, and in libraries as in many
other areas of scholarship, the tenure system undergoing examination if
not outright change in terms of the acceptable forms that scholarship
takes.

Steve

nano-vlog? video-im v-tweets?

Lately I've come across two new Web services that have a lot of educational potential. 12seconds.tv currently in beta and Seesmic.com, which advertises itself as video instant messaging.

My first thought besides that it is totally fun, is that it could make class discussion boards way more interesting.

Everything Bad is Good for you

I just requested this book from the library. Here is the text from the book jacket:
"Drawing from fields as diverse as neuroscience, economics, and media theory, Steven Johnson shows that the junk culture we're so eager to dismiss is actually making us more intelligent. A video game will never be a book, Johnson acknowledges, nor should it aspire to be - and, in fact, video games, from Tetris to The Sims to Grand Theft Auto, have been shown to raise IQ scores and develop cognitive abilities that can't be learned from books. Likewise, when examined closely and taken seriously, successful television - the hit shows of every genre: The Simpsons, 24, The Apprentice - reveals surprising narrative sophistication and intellectual demands." "Johnson calls this upward trend the Sleeper Curve, after the classic sequence from Woody Allen's mock sci-fi film, where a team of scientists from 2173 are astounded that twentieth-century society failed to grasp the nutritional merits of cream pies and hot fudge. In Everything Bad Is Good for You, Johnson argues that the Sleeper Curve is the single most important new force altering the mental development of young people today, and that it is largely a force for good: enhancing our cognitive faculties, not dumbing them down." -attribution

New Ian McDonald Story Collection

OK, this is a just a re-post of Cory Doctorow's February 27th Boing Boing front page with some of that good 'ole librarian added value.
(C.) Doctorow writes,

"Ian McDonald is one of science fiction's finest working writers, and his latest short story collection Cyberabad Days, is the kind of book that showcases exactly what science fiction is for.Cyberabad Days returns to McDonald's India of 2047, a balkanized state that we toured in his 2006 novel River of Gods, which was nominated for the best novel Hugo Award. The India of River of Gods has fractured into a handful of warring nations, wracked by water-shortage and poverty, rising on rogue technology, compassion, and the synthesis of the modern and the ancient. " (more)


Ian McDonald in...

Contemporary Authors. Go! (restricted access)
Half.com Go!


Ian McDonald Titles:

Futures : four novellas, Peter Crowther, Peter F. Hamilton, Watching trees grow, et al. 2001 Warner Books. pp. 365

Watching trees grow, Peter F. Hamilton, Ian McDonald and Tendeléo's story. 2002 Gollancz. pp. 103

Cyberabad days, Ian McDonald. 2009 Pyr, Projected Date: 0902.

Brasyl, Ian McDonald. 2007 Pyr.

River of gods, Ian McDonald. 2006 Pyr.

Ares express, Ian McDonald. 2001 Earthlight.

Kirinya, Ian McDonald. 1998 Victor Gollancz.

Sacrifice of fools, Ian McDonald. 1997 Vista.

Evolution's shore, Ian McDonald. 1995 Bantam Books.

Chaga, Ian McDonald. 1995 Gollancz.

Terminal café, Ian McDonald. 1994 Bantam Books.

Scissors cut paper wrap stone, Ian McDonald. 1994 Bantam.

Necroville, Ian McDonald. 1994 V. Gollancz.

The broken land, Ian McDonald. 1992 Bantam Books.

King of morning, queen of day, Ian McDonald. 1991 Bantam.

Out on blue six, Ian McDonald. 1989 Bantam.

Desolation road, Ian McDonald. 1988 Bantam.

Empire dreams, Ian McDonald. 1988 Bantam.

new social media aggregators

I only recently checked in on my Twitter account after six months. I didn't see the point. But after reviewing a really old message from Erik Swedlund, I started surfing the social media sites again. Swedlund had posted a few tweets from an app called twhirl, which led me to seesmic, and along the way Hulu, and return to Friendfeed. I doubt I have all that much content to generate on these user generated content sites, but they are fun to play with and they could benefit my Internet life and work in one way or another. OK well, cheers hipsmart and all, I've gotta go to Second Life right now and make my avatar walk, fly and sit down.

iPhone Document Scanner - buy custom personalized products from Ponoko

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e-paper, haptics, and visor displays

Nature News has a special issue out on "Big Data," Nature 455, 8-9 (2008) | doi:10.1038/455008a .

The following quote comes from the article "Big data: The next Google." "When you start to combine visor graphics with more accurate global-positioning data, as will be provided by the European Galileo satellites, you can overlay online information onto the world around you. So as you're walking down a busy city street you will be able to see reviews of shops and restaurants, adverts for services, other people who have similar interests to you, or whatever.

When you are wearing a visor your surroundings can have a completely different appearance: a burger restaurant can look like a giant burger without flouting planning laws. You could be seen as your Second Life virtual avatar. Or Johnny Depp, or Claudia Schiffer. You get the best of both worlds."

--Ian Pearson Futurizon consultancy, Ipswich, UK