 Wednesday, October 01, 2003
"PaperClick has been announced: 'Now, shoppers can take out their Nokia(R) 3650 camera phone at Barnes & Noble, Border's, or just about any other book store, and just take a picture of the ISBN on the book to comparison shop at Amazon.com right on the screen of their wireless Web browser....'
What I want to know is: does is actually work? It seems like an awfully specific announcement (3650 version available Q4 this year - err that's now then), but knowledgeable folks have indicated there are problems with this sort of thing..." [tom hume, via MMS Memo]
If it does indeed work, how about a hook into library catalogs!
Eurokids Fastest-growing Online Population Segment
"Kids in Europe who surf the 'Net for everything from tunes to term paper templates have become the fastest-growing portion of the Internet population, according to a new Nielsen/Netratings study released yesterday.
'Some 13 million children under the age of 18 in eight countries surveyed surf the web for school work, games and music, a rise of some 27 percent over last year. Four million were under age 12... the findings from the survey covering Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain and the Netherlands suggest that a plea from educators and politicians to add the Internet to school curricula and make high-speed Internet services cheaper as well as more accessible is paying off.' Link (via pho)" [Boing Boing Blog]
Remember, there are more NetGens worldwide than there are Baby Boomers, and you know what kind of an impact the Baby Boomers had on our culture....
Lawsuits Damp Down P2P Audience
"Since the week ending June 29, traffic to Kazaa has fallen 41 percent to about 3.9 million unique visitors from 6.5 million in the week ending September 21." [Wired News]
Global Music Sales Tumble... Again
"The battle-weary music industry surveyed the wreckage of another dismal six months on Wednesday as global data showed music sales tumbled 10.9 percent, piling more pressure on music companies to do deals to survive." [MSNBC]
Maybe both drops are at least somewhat attributable to the lack of interesting new artists and music being released by the record labels. On the other hand, the schizophrenia continues and they can't make up their mind if there is a problem or not:
"Sales in Austria, Finland and Russia rose while UK album sales posted gains and Hong Kong and Australia made a recovery.
DVD music took off, accounting for more than five percent of sales, and legitimate online music broadened its reach."
I doubt these sale figures cover the period of time since the RIAA began suing individual file swappers, and these are numbers from outside the U.S. anyway. So if file sharing is such a rampant problem that is bringing the industry to its knees, why are there "bright spots" elsewhere in the world during a time of such dire hand-wringing and theatrics by the RIAA?
The latest HAPLR Index is out, so commence poring over the data! (Emphasis below is mine.)
"This site rates public libraries in the United States based on the latest data from almost 9,000 U.S. libraries as reported to the Federal State Cooperative System; This is the fifth edition of the ratings. Libraries are rated, scored and ranked on 15 input and output measures. The latest (2001) public library statistics were published by the National Center for Educational Statistics in July of 2003....
'Statistics alone cannot define library excellence, of course, but the ratings numbers are important,' according to Hennen. 'The effects of the recession that began in 2001 have still not shown up in this year's ratings data,' notes Hennen.
'Circulation in most libraries in the U.S. is at an all time high since the recession began. But there is a lag in the reporting of the usage numbers and an even greater lag in the funding levels for libraries,' observes Hennen.
'Local and state governments tend to cut funding to libraries when their own revenues are pinched by economic conditions. This usually happens well after the recession has begun. News reports throughout the past year have indicated that state and local funding for libraries will be reduced for 2004. But those reductions will not show up in the reported data and the HAPLR Ratings for some time to come,' notes Hennen. "
Congrats to SLS' own Elmhurst Public Library for scoring second in the "libraries in 25,000 to 49,999 population category!"
"According to a recent America Online (AOL) Teen-Wired survey, 70 percent of teens use the Internet for instant messaging, real-time message exchange, or chat. The number jumps to 83 percent for older teens, ages eighteen to nineteen - 56 percent of them prefer the Internet to the telephone. According to Sheila Tran, a spokesperson for AOL, 'Analysts predict that by 2005, instant messaging will surpass e-mail as the primary way of communicating online.'
Teens have led the way. Tran notes that 'from the start, teens had more conversations going at once, used their Buddy Lists more, and were creating a whole new language.' AOL's IM service 'virtually lights up after school. Teens love IM because it allows them to talk to all their friends at once; they even call their friends to say 'go online....'
My high school students, my college son and daughter, and their friends eagerly shared with me the significance of IMing in their lives. Despite privacy and time management issues, it is a critical lifeline, the form of communication they can't live without....
Unlike high school students, my daughter's college friends leave their computers logged on at all times....
[Deborah] Tannen notes that unlike other formats, IMs 'maintain an open state of communication, assuming you are always there. If you're not, you'll have an away message posted. Kids are in a state of communication even when they are not talking.' " [VOYA, October 2003, p.291]
Does your library understand the growing significance of instant messaging and real-time chat? Are you prepared to provide services to these kids?
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