Archive for the ‘Change & Innovation’ Category

Mike Laurie, Digital Planner at UK Integrated Agency JPMH, writes for Mashable about 7 Technologies Shaping the Future of Social Media. The article takes a look at some new and emerging technology which will make our social media lives even easier.

1. The Arduino
2. RFID Tags & Transponders
3. Geomagnetic Sensors in Mobile Devices
4. Optical Pattern Recognition & Augmented Reality
5. OpenID, OAuth, and the Identity Graph
6. Mind Reading
7. Natural Language Processing

A new search application from Google Labs, the Google News Timeline allows searchers to view news within a zoomable graphical timeline which can be adjusted by weeks, months, years, or decades. Data sources include “recent and historical news, scanned newspapers and magazines, blog posts and Twitter status messages, sports scores and various types of media like music albums and movies.”

Steven Johnson writes about the future of the book for the Wall Street Journal in How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write. In this insightful article, the author poses that new devices such as the Kindle and iPhone are changing the way people read, buy, and write books. According to Johnson, books will become increasingly social and accessible, however this increased access may lead to dimished attention, books being written with search engine rankings in mind, and new distribution models such as paying per chapter.

“Because they have been largely walled off from the world of hypertext, print books have remained a kind of game preserve for the endangered species of linear, deep-focus reading. Online, you can click happily from blog post to email thread to online New Yorker article — sampling, commenting and forwarding as you go. But when you sit down with an old-fashioned book in your hand, the medium works naturally against such distractions; it compels you to follow the thread, to stay engaged with a single narrative or argument…

As a result, I fear that one of the great joys of book reading — the total immersion in another world, or in the world of the author’s ideas — will be compromised. We all may read books the way we increasingly read magazines and newspapers: a little bit here, a little bit there.”

The Library of Congress has gone public with their YouTube channel, presenting over 70 videos in the following playlists:

• 2008 National Book Festival author presentations
• Books and Beyond author series
• Journeys and Crossings (a series of curator discussions)
• “Westinghouse” industrial films from 1904
• Scholar discussions from the John W. Kluge Center
• The earliest movies made by Thomas Edison, including the first moving image ever made

From their press release:

“But this is just the beginning. We have made a conscious decision that we’re not just going to upload a bunch of videos and then walk away. As with our popular Flickr pilot project, we intend to keep uploading additional content. We’re modifying some of our work-flows in modest ways to make our content more useful and delivered across platforms with built-in audiences of millions.”

Amazon introduced the Kindle 2 today which will hold over 1,500 books and retails for $359. The wireless device is just over 1/3 of an inch thick, has a hi-res 6-inch electronic paper display, and is lighter than a paperback at 10.2 ounces. There are currently over 230,000 books available for the device as well as newspapers, magazines, and blogs. Readers can choose from six text sizes, add bookmarks, read personal (Word, pdf, etc.) documents, and search the Web. Read the press release here.

A new article in KMWorld by Art Murray and Ken Wheaton discusses the Future of the Future: Rise of the Knowledge Librarian. The authors discuss the transformation that the traditional corporate librarian must undertake in order to remain relevant and make the transition to the knowledge librarian. According to Murray and Wheaton three role shifts must occur in order for this to happen:

Role shift #1: A knowledge librarian should be the “content czar” of the enterprise.
Role shift #2: A knowledge librarian understands the strategic information needs of the enterprise.
Role shift #3: A knowledge librarian is a lead agent of change.

“The librarian of the future is uniquely positioned to be at the center of the creation and alignment of intellectual assets across the enterprise. That leads to improved innovation and business performance on a sustained basis. Maybe the time will soon come when we will see librarians as CKOs.”

His Holiness The Dalai Lama joined the popular microblogging website Twitter yesterday and already has over 13,000 followers. In other social media news, the Vatican has created a YouTube channel, as has UK Parliament, (which is also blogging, on Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter), The US House of Representatives and Senate. Know of any other interesting personalities or organizations which have recently joined an online community? Please link to them in the comments!

Update: It has been reported that the Dalai Lama Twitter account was actually started by an impersonator - news which hit Twitter almost immediately after the account was suspended. Although the account has been restored, it no longer claims affiliation with The Office of the Dalai Lama.

Ravit Lichtenberg at ReadWriteWeb discusses the evolution of social media in 10 Ways Social Media Will Change in 2009. This thought-provoking post suggests ten areas to consider in the coming year, here are his top five:

1. It’s About People
2. Creating Meaning and Value
3. Enabling Convergence
4. Building a Truly Cross-Platform Experience
5. Creating Relevant Social Networks

Encyclopaedia Britannica now allows readers to suggest edits to encyclopedia entries which are then inspected by the resource’s editors for approval. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Britannica aims to turn around edits within 20 minutes. Many of these changes/additions will appear in the print edition of the encyclopedia.

The New Media Consortium (NMC) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) has published the 2009 Horizon Report. This annual report identifies six emerging technologies which will have a significant impact on teaching and learning and will be adopted over the next 1-5 years. This year’s key technologies include:

• Mobiles (i.e., mobile devices)
• Cloud computing
• Geo-everything (i.e., geo-tagging)
• The personal web
• Semantic-aware applications
• Smart objects

Aaron Schmidt at the District of Columbia Public Library reports that they have just gone live with their iPhone application. Library patrons can download this app from iTunes to search the OPAC, read summaries and see book covers, place holds, and find info such as library hours. This looks fantastic!

via Tame the Web

Library Journal’s Andrew Albanese compiles a list of the Top 10 Academic Library Stories of 2008. Published in two parts, the top 3 can be found here and stories 4-10 here. It’s interesting to note that the majority of last year’s biggest stories had to do with Open Access issues. Here’s a brief rundown of his list, be sure to check out the articles for more.

1. Georgia State University Sued by Publishers over E-Reserves
2. Harvard’s OA Mandate
3. The Google Book Search Settlement
4. The Launch of the HathiTrust
5. NIH Public Access Policy Enacted, Challenged
6. The Move Toward Open Source
7. The Section 108 Report
8. The EPA Libraries Reopen
9. South Caroline Slashes PASCAL
10. The Sad Story of Orphan Works

via Open Access News

A recent article in the New York Times reports that e-books are steadily gaining popularity and according to publishers such as HarperCollins, Random House and Simon & Schuster, sales of these digital publications have tripled or quadrupled in the last year. In Turning Page, E-Books Start to Take Hold, Brad Stone and Motoko Rich discuss the rise of the Amazon Kindle and other electronic book readers.

“Amazon’s Kindle version of “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” by David Wroblewski, a best seller recommended by Ms. Winfrey’s book club, now represents 20 percent of total Amazon sales of the book, according to Brian Murray, chief executive of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide.”

via Micro Persuasion

Educause has published another of its 7 Things guides, this time focusing on the tech which enables instructors to record their lessons for students to access digitally. In 7 Things You Should Know About Lecture Capture, the folks at Educause answer the following questions:

• What is it?
• Who’s doing it?
• How does it work?
• Why is it significant?
• What are the downsides?
• Where is it going?
• What are the implications for teaching and learning?

Andy Guess at Inside Higher Ed writes about using widgets for education with A Widget Onto the Future.

“Already, some instructors are using them in their own courses, and the idea is catching on as others consider the possibilities. While widgets aren’t nearly as ubiquitous in learning circles as are PowerPoint presentations or online quizzes, some educators hope the time is ripe for them to catch on. A meeting of the Northeast Regional Computing Program is already being planned on the topic for next year and professors are busy discussing and embedding widgets on their blogs.”

via Educause