 Thursday, April 10, 2003
Every so often, I realize that a feed I'm subscribed to in my aggregator isn't updating, so I go check the site and see that yes indeedy I've been missing posts. If I re-subscribe it's usually fine, but today I realized Jon Udell's brain hasn't been showing up in my aggregator for more than a week. Pure chance then that double-checking the URL for his RSS feed led me to this missed post:
"I've added two new OPAC systems to the LibraryLookup bookmarklet generator. Thanks to Chris Tovell, at the Beaverton City Library in Beaverton, OR, for the key that unlocks a number of Polaris libraries. And thanks to Jonathan Rentzsch for the key to Sirsi's WebCat systems."
Sirsi? Did you say Sirsi? Whoo-hoo! Hey, Brian and Paul - he said Sirsi!
barenaked ladies: journal
"Mace tells me: 'I wanted to point out that The Barenaked Ladies now have a blog online - though Ed Robertson is (so far) the only one to actually post. If Steven and Ty ever get around to it, they'll certainly have plenty to go on about.' Yeah, but they don't allow fans like us to post comments. I wanted to beg 'em to come to Gnomedex." [C:PIRILLO.EXE]
Okay, so maybe blogging isn't for everybody....
Japan's Generation of Computer Refuseniks
"Peer pressure is a critical factor pushing students to own cell phones rather than computers. Almost every teenager in Japan has a mobile telephone with an e-mail address, and the fastest, easiest, and least expensive way to join the crowd is to subscribe to a mobile phone service....
Mobile phones have replaced computers as the de facto e-mail terminal of choice for the majority of Japanese who are not in technology, finance, engineering or other computer-intensive occupations.
E-mail exchanges between high school and college students in Japan today take place almost exclusively via cell phones. High school clubs announce activities and meeting schedules via cell phone e-mail, and university class cancellation alerts are delivered primarily to handsets rather than computers. The reason is simple.
'Students have their handsets with them 24 hours a day, so they view messages immediately,' says Hanamoto. 'When they go to bed, it's on the nightstand next to them. Even if they have a computer at home, they may not bother checking mail on it.' " [Japan Media Review, via Smart Mobs]
Things won't get this extreme in the U.S. because kids younger than high school start out with computers here, but the portability and connectedness of cell phones will definitely have a big impact on American kids.
I know I've said this before, but there is no finer comedy program on the air right now than The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Try to catch the rerun tonight, because he's taking on Fox News tonight. Again. Dennis Miller is on tonight, too.
And in case you haven't seen it, check out their Iraqi War Finals!
View: The Future of Mobile Phones?
"The second announcement drove me into a veritable apoplexy of gadget-lust. Coincidently, it was Samsung’s own watch phone, which in its own way was much more exciting than NTT DoCoMo’s. Firstly, it is GSM, so it will work outside of Japan, and indeed will be coming to us lucky Europeans this year. Secondly, it has a colour screen, and an OLED one at that, making it one of the most cutting-edge devices out there. Thirdly, it has voice dialling and a speakerphone, making it a pretty usable handset in its own right. Finally, and most importantly, it sports Bluetooth and GPRS for connectivity, which is what really got me going.
In rampant visionary mode I pictured a radical, modular, modus operandi - I could change PDA as I wished, from none at all when I go out in the evenings, through to the latest Pocket PC for day to day duties and even a laptop on the road if I so wished. Each of these could synchronize with my watch and use it as a gateway to the outside world, all without having to swap SIM cards or worry about all the hassle introduced by managing multiple phones. Furthermore, the modular approach makes upgrading to new devices easier and cheaper. I pictured using a tiny handheld, browsing the web unobtrusively using my wrist-watch’s GPRS connection, and all done at a moment’s notice over Bluetooth. Now that’s connectivity. And with a tiny Bluetooth headset I could communicate totally handsfree, and look even more mad when I walk down the street appearing to talk to myself.
Of course, the other major appeal of these watch phones is the lure of being permanently in-touch and available, even more so than with our current batch of tiny handsets. With your phone strapped to your wrist, you never have to worry about leaving it behind. The downside is that which is currently faced by camera-phones: secure environments (hospitals, government installations, examinations) may ban your converged device, leaving you not only without a phone, but without a watch, too. For most of us that won’t be a big issue, but having your watch ring in the cinema might be." [infoSync]
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