Right now there's a poll on the Yahooligans site that asks what do you use more often? Results since August 26:

Now, which type of reference service do you think is going to continue gaining in popularity with students, email or chat-based? Hmmmm....

Update: sorry - the link to the poll seems to have gone bad. I'm trying to find it in their archives, but of course it's not there. At least, not yet. If you find the link before I do, please leave it in the comments because I'd like to see the final tally.

"You may have read that Sprint and Real Networks have teamed up to push on-demand audio via cellphone. You wouldn't know this unless A) you keep up on such news or B) you saw the word 'Real' appear in a list of options on your phone....

It cost $4.95 to download the RealOne mobile player for one month. They make the downloader very aware that the program is available for a finite period of time. Infact, everytime the RealOne mobile player is started, and before every piece of content starts, the message 'WARNING: This program will expire on September 13th, 2002.'

I don't watch news on the television. I won't wax polemical about the shallow, asinine nature of news programming, but I'll tell you I'm not fond of it. The images/audio presented to me through the RealOne mobile player is even more abbreviated.... However, there is an audio feed that satisfied me somewhat: The NPR Hourly Update. I was tickled to hear Cory Flintoff coming out of my phone, and I was impressed with the length of each story, and the lenth of the content as a whole. While the ABC and FOX clips were 1.5 minutes at most, the NPR feed lasted well over 5 minutes. The stories certainly weren't indepth, but they were a bit longer. The NPR Hourly Update isn't a true hourly update. I tried it again about 3 hours after my initial listen and the content hadn't changed....

The audio quality is acceptable - the RealOne content sounds just like a phone call. The online music provider Rhapsody, now owned by Real Networks, claims 'CD-quality sound on your mobile phone.' I wonder if the RealOne content would sound better through headphones or powered speakers.
On my Sanyo 8100, there are three audio input/output devices. When playing this content, all three act as outputs. The largest of the three, on the back of the phone, is quite loud. The audio is delivered in 30-35 second packets. These packets play *almost* seamlessly, but not quite. When listening, one certainly can notice small, split second, interruptions.

The real (ha!) question is if I will use this. Aside from exploring it to write this, I have used it once. During my 7 hour drive the other afternoon, I didn't feel like switching to FM to find a local NPR station, so with a total of perhaps 12 clicks, I was listening to the NPR hourly update. This may have been an exception. I'm well connected throughout my days; I'm not certain when the opportunity to use this will arrive. If the content interested me I might make time for it, but not as it stands. For now, I'll keep trying to get an RSS aggregator to work on my phone." [Lazyitis]

I'm intrigued by the Real service over SprintPCS because I subscribe to Rhapsody, so I would expect all 340,000 songs - and especially my "library" and playlists - to be available via my phone. While Aaron sees little use for this in its current incarnation, I can name countless times at the doctor's office, DMV, kids baseball games, conversations in bars ("how does that song go again?"), and the like when I would take full advantage of the service. Of course, that's assuming I don't have to pay an additional $4.95 per month for access on my phone. After all, access is access, and I shouldn't be penalized for trying to use my subscription on the go. I'll have to double-check this one.

And the key point to remember, of course, is that there is no place for a public (or other type of) library in this model. You pay up and get music or you go without. We have to insert ourselves into the model, because no one is going to do it for us.

Side note: I love that Aaron has started commenting on moblogging on Lazyitis, not just photoblogging pictures. Others tell me that they feel like they're "in my mind" when they read my blog, and I feel like I'm getting an insider's view of a twenty-something's shifted life from his comments. It's a doorway into how my kids will think as they grow up and even some of the issues they'll face. For example, Kate (Aaron's wife) also shares her own thoughts about Mophotoblogging thus Far on the site, her reflections on being a focus of Aaron's moblogging. I've wondered how Aaron's wife and friends feel about this, and now I get to read her first-hand accounts. It's all so meta, but I find it fascinating.

Bill Drew:

"I am pleased to announce the creation of a new blog for and about Libraries with WLANs, LISnews.Com: Wireless at http://wireless.lisnews.com. I am proud of the fact that Blake Carver believes this is important enough to set up this special section of LISNEWS. It is also available via RSS feed. The feed can be found on the above website.

Initially LISnews.Com: Wireless blog will be used for news and announcements on WLANs and libraries. This will include additions to the Wireless Librarian website. the LibWireless list will continue as a vehicle to provide discussion and support. There will be overlap between the two. Where it goes from there depends on how it is used and what kind of comments and stories are sent to me. I will be including stories from the computer press on general articles about WLANs and WiFi as well as articles targeted at libraries."

I also want to highlight Bill's Advanced Information Tools page that he put together for SUNY Morrisville College Library users. I'd like to see more libraries offer bookmarklets and actually promote them.

"I have created a page I am calling 'Advanced Information Tools.' It contains bookmarklets for various types of searches including our OPAC. Before I announce it to our students, faculty, and staff, I would like some input on its potential usefulness as well as the potential value of the bookmarklets on it. I am hoping to eventually have a IE toolbar for our library that on it that the user can add to his/her browser with pulldown menus, a search box for our OPAC, and other useful items. IE is the campus standard and is on the laptops used by our students."

Bill is in search of one of my holy grails, a library-based toolbar. We don't seem to have made any progress on this front, although Jon Udell, Art Rhyno, and others have done much with bookmarklets. So here's yet another request going out to any programmers who can help with creating such a beast. We could sure use it, and so could you.