mobile
By - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - 11:45am
…and yet, I still don’t have an office with a window.
One of the things I wanted to play around with this year (and one of my predictions for 2010 Big Thing) are geolocation based applications. There was one slight problem: I live pretty much smack in the middle of nowhere…at least as far as developers are concerned. I could only watch while my coastal colleagues checked in on a variety of geosocial services.
(As an aside, one of my Big Issues is to keep reminding tech people that it’s not that people who live in the middle of the country don’t want to utilize some services, but that they are physically unable to. High speed internet and mobile telecommuication networks simply do not exist in large swaths of the United States yet. So keep that in mind when you are designing stuff…some of your users may still be using dial-up or non-3G. [/end rant])
However, that changed this week. Foursquare, one of the more popular geosocial networking sites, opened up its service to everyone – not just people who live in major metropolitan areas. As soon as I saw that, I created an account for myself and started exploring.
Foursquare is a social network with game-like features. Users create profiles (here’s mine) and then when they visit a place (usually a business, but can be anything – including your couch!), they “check in” using a mobile device. The more they check in, the more points they get and the more points they get, the more “badges” they are awarded. Visit more than anyone else and you become the “mayor” of that location. In addition to getting points and badges, visitors are able to leave tips about the location for other visitors. For a restaurant, it may be something like “order the spinach salad- it’s amazing!” or “there’s free parking two blocks away”.
Fun? Yes. Silly? Yes. Completely worthless to libraries? Absolutely not.
I went ahead and made a venue for my library. Unlike Facebook where you have to be an official representative of the business to make a page, anyone can create a venue on Foursquare, so I figured that I might as well do it before a student did. It took all of 2 minutes – I typed in the address, cut/paste some info from our website (and added a link to it) as a “tip”, and added the “library” and “law library” tags. Now if someone should try Foursquare while near the library, the UK Law Library will appear as an option to check in. (See illustration) I’ll be very interested to see if this takes off with the students. At present, I don’t really plan on doing too much with it, but I’m going to keep an eye on it.
I don’t really expect there to be any educational value to come out of this. And, as noted here, it may not appeal to all patrons. However, as an outreach tool, it has a lot of possibility. What would hyper-competitive law students like more than to out do each other with badges? Some businesses give special deals to mayors…maybe the library could have a special study carrel for the “mayor”? Or do a weekly/monthly giveaway drawing and every “check – in” is an entry? And of course, if students start using the “tips”, it can be used as another comment box.
So, we’ll see how it goes. Until then, I promise to not abuse my mayor-ly powers.
By - Saturday, October 10, 2009 - 12:13pm
Earlier this week, Google changed their logo into a barcode to celebrate the 57th anniversary of the first barcode patent. (As an aside, it’s amazing how many anniversaries, birthdays, other events from history, etc. I learn about from the Google Logo. ) That, combined with seeing this pic of Maurice that Michael P. posted in his blog, reminded me that I’ve been wanting to mention QR Codes.
QR Codes are a special kind of barcode. They have many industrial uses to track shipping and things, but they have also started to be used by the general consumer. To use them, people can scan them with their mobile phone, which will then open up a webpage, give them a phone number, or text message. For example, the one pictured here will open up http://sarahglassmeyer.com. I should note, that the mobile phone will need to (a) have a camera (pretty common today) and (b) have the QR Code reading software (not so common, but there are dozens of free software and app downloads for this for just about every mobile phone/smartphone out there.) Making QR Codes is pretty easy too. I made this one using this free generator and there are plenty more of those, to be found with a basic Internet search.
The technology is about 15 years old, and is widely used in Japan, but hasn’t quite taken off here in the U.S….yet. I suspect that with the rise of mobile phone ownership and use, that will slowly change. So, how might libraries use it? Well, off the top of my head, I think you could place one at the front door that will tell patrons hours/contact info/etc., especially if they arrive after business hours. You could have one at the Reference Desk that will connect to a SMS reference service. Or how about putting them on the end caps of shelves? So, for this example, put a link to your Tax Research Guide on the shelves that contain your tax books. Or another link to the reference desk info for research help. And, of course, these examples require that (a) you have online research guides that are (b) mobile friendly.
Just as an FYI, I am aware of the irony of writing a post like this – talking about a technology that hasn’t been used much yet and won’t have many practical applications for a while – immediately after writing a post criticizing technology futurists. Well, here’s the thing…I like to keep abreast of new technologies. I pay attention to this stuff so you don’t have to…some of it is going to turn out to be very useful, and some will just be a flash in the pan that won’t. *cough* SecondLife *cough* In a while, when you are ready to adopt some of these ideas in your library, you can scan through the archives here at at other tech blogs and figure out how to best adopt them for your users.
By - Sunday, October 4, 2009 - 1:13pm
Well, I did it. I made the leap and got a “big girl phone.”
In my case, I got an iPhone. It’s been a few weeks, and I’m torn between being surprised that I did it and amazed at how I’d ever been able to live without it.
Until the iPhone, I had been using a basic, pay as you go cell. (I got the idea from drug dealers on The Wire – classy!) This arrangement suited me for a long time. (1) I didn’t want to be connected to the Internet/email at all time (2) I’ve never been a “let’s chat on the phone for hours” type person – I rarely even texted. (3) As we’ve previously established, I’m a cheapskate and the idea of paying a lot of money for the initial hardware PLUS a not-insignificant monthly bill offended my sensibilities. (4) Despite my techie cred, I’m not really an early adopter. I generally like to let others work the bugs out of a system before I dive in, especially if there’s a monetary investment to be made on my part.
But, slowly the situation changed and it finally made sense for me to make the leap to a smart phone. There was the time I got stranded in DCA airport post-AALL2009 at 11pm and had to unpack my netbook and buy internet access so I could get a hotel room. Or when I added a mobile plugin to this website and couldn’t check to see if it worked, or really had an idea of the difference between the mobile Internet and regular. Or the multitudes of times that I was away from the Internet (i.e. away from home or work) and unable to connect with people that I usually talk to that way, either via email, Facebook, FriendFeed, Twitter, etc. And considering that’s pretty much how I interact with people 95% percent of the time….well, you see the problem. I’ve also seen them used more and more by people around campus, which made me think that it was something I needed to investigate.
Finally, whereas some women buy themselves jewelery when they need a pick-me-up and others shoes, I buy small electronics. I was torn between a smart phone, Kindle or GPS. I realized that if I got an iPhone, it had apps and hardware that mimicked the Kindle and GPS…so you see, I COULDN’T AFFORD NOT TO GET AN iPHONE.
Okay, that was pathetic.
I’m okay with that.
So now I have an iPhone and it’s opened up an entire new world to me. And, as is often the case with me, I began to wonder how it might be used with my library gig. (There’s a free app I like called “SnapTell” that lets you take a picture of a book, and then runs a search on Amazon, google, etc for purchasing information…but not a WorldCat search to find it in a library. Can we get in on this action?) The way I see it, there’s a couple different ways to utilize mobile technologies in libraries and/or things that libraries and librarians need to be thinking about. (1) Public services uses of text messaging – e.g. ready reference questions or tours (2) Tech services uses of text message – e.g. text message from OPAC (3) Websites that are mobile friendly (4) Mobile ready OPACs and other databases (5) App creation.
Fortunately, as with Web 2.0 technologies, there’s a lot of free and easy ways to get into the game. For example, libraries can use Google Voice or free Instant messaging clients to use text messaging without a dedicated library cell phone. Or there are plenty of free mobile website creators such as MobiSiteGalore that will create a mobile version of a website without any real technological knowledge needed. Mobile OPACs, databases and app creation take either a little more expertise or assitance from vendors or both, but are still viable options for most libraries. I hope to delve more into specifics in time, but until then, the Library Sucess wiki (a great resource if you haven’t used it before), has a complilation of examples of mobile tech uses by libraries.
