Looking at my calendar off to the right on this page and seeing a whole week's worth of posts... I could just cry.  :-)

American Surfers Keep It Simple

"Top online activities for men that were conducted monthly or more frequently include news, free software downloads, sports sites, adult entertainment, and online audio, while the highest ranked online activities for women include e-greetings, contests/sweepstakes, and instant messaging.

While all age groups were avid e-mail users, generation gaps were evident among some of the other popular online activities. Among the biggest disparities:

• Instant messaging: 59 percent of those aged 19 to 34, compared to 49 percent of those aged 35 to 54, and 45 percent of those 55 and over.
• Health sites: 54 percent of those aged 55 and over; 50 percent of those aged 35 to 54; 39 percent of those 19 to 34.
• Chat: 47 percent of those aged 19 to 34; 37 percent of those aged 35 to 54; 31 percent of those 55 and over.
• Movie sites: 37 percent of those aged 19 to 34; 26 percent of those aged 35 to 54; 18 percent of those 55 and over." [Via Lockergnome's Bits and Bytes]

I'm officially addicted to SSX Tricky for Playstation 2, and I've only played it three times. We just got it this weekend. The kids have been doing so well in school, that we decided to buy them each a game and a book. So we went to Gamestop and Brent picked SSXT. Kailee, on the other hand, searched and searched but couldn't find something she really wanted. She briefly considered getting Monopoly, but it's just sad how few video games there are for 8-year old girls.

In the end, Kailee decided she wanted to go to Best Buy and get Zoo Tycoon, which is a really great game. It's difficult for me to watch her play it because I'm Type A and I get frustrated when she names an exhibit the "monkey zoo," puts elephants in it, and then puts so many trees in that you can't even see the elephants anymore. But she loves it, and whenever an animal becomes unhappy, she says, "Oh, my poor babies." She has yet to try SSX Tricky.

Six-year old Brent (soon to be known as "seven-year old Brent), on the other hand, has already mastered SSXT because one of his friends has it. He played it several times this weekend, but he also got into Zoo Tycoon, too. Except that he went for the chaos. He let the tigers out so that they could chase the people, he put the leopards in an exhibit with the chickens, and he put the saltwater crocodiles in with the water buffaloes (which upset Kailee to no end because one of the buffaloes had just given birth to a baby). He also deliberately put the bathrooms off the paths so that the "zoo patrons" couldn't get to them and would be unhappy. Kailee's bedtime request tonight was that Brent not be allowed to play ZT anymore. She also deliberately didn't save his game, even though she told him it was an "accident."

Now I can't wait until we go back to the Brookfield Zoo! Snowboarding, on the other hand, can wait a little longer, given how well I did on my three practice runs.

The Reese's Peanut Butter pumpkins are out for Halloween. Get 'em while they're fresh!

Smart Mobs is live!

"Howard Rheingold's new book, "Smart Mobs," is coming out next November. It's a hell of a book, about the ways that technology enable groups of people to spontaneously form and coordinate in response to current events -- from SMS-enabled Filipiino demonstrations over official censorship to ubiquitous Japanese kids who photograph everything with their DoCoMo phones and post them online all the time.

Howard's site, SmartMobs.com, is a blog that talks about technology and events that show smart mobs in action." [Boing Boing Blog]

There's so much about information shifting on the front page alone of Rheingold's blog that I'm automatically adding his book to the Shifted Reading List sight unseen. I really hope Audible can get the audio rights to it. Here's an illustrative excerpt from the book summary:

"The people who make up smart mobs cooperate in ways never before possible because they carry devices that possess both communication and computing capabilities. Their mobile devices connect them with other information devices in the environment as well as with other people's telephones. Dirt-cheap microprocessors embedded in everything from box tops to shoes are beginning to permeate furniture, buildings, neighborhoods, products with invisible intercommunicating smartifacts. When they connect the tangible objects and places of our daily lives with the Internet, handheld communication media mutate into wearable remote control devices for the physical world."

And that, my friends, is the place from which libraries need to be available - everywhere. The book's introduction is titled How to Recognize the Future When It Lands on You, and the future is certainly hovering inches away from us.

I'll be interested to read the book and see if Rheingold discusses libraries at all, considering how we could play a huge role in the information exchanged between smart mobs. Think of librarians as a force letting authentic and accurate information loose into the wild (one form of reputation).

And in the spirit of smart communication, the book's blog has a RSS feed!