Vodafone in Japan Introduces Sharp's Two Megapixel Camera Phone

"From picturephoning.com I learned about Japan Wireless Watch reporting that Vodafone in Japan has introduced a two megapixel camera phone from Sharp. The Sharp V601SH (see below) has some nice features....

The V601SH includes such features as a Secure Digital card slot, a 20x zoom (I'm not a fan of digital zooms), automatic flash, the ability to bracket exposures (a very nice feature), the ability to create a collage by automatically overlapping a maximum of five photos, rapid fire shooting of up to 25 photos and the ability to shoot MPEG videos at 320 x 240 at 15 frames per second....

But the most difficult problem is not increasing the resolution but, rather, offering cellular data upload speeds that are fast enough to accommodate large graphics files and pricing the airtime/service at a reasonable rate. Data rates and pricing are not minor problems. A one megapixel photo is three times the resolution of a 640 x 480 VGA photo.

United States cellular networks will have a tough enough time supporting one megapixel uploads." [Reiter's Camera Phone Report]

Dang, and I was jealous of the one megapixel cameraphones! So now I need more portable storage (which I will shortly begin measuring in terabytes), more electrical power (over wireless would be great, although I'm sure our brains would be fried by the radiation), and more bandwidth. All for a cheap price.  ;-)

The Library; with whining, the web, a would-be user, a wish, and some wandering

"More complainingfeedback, re website usability (or patron blindness): went to the site, which is crammed with links; the 'locations and hours' didn't show anything special, the "holiday hours" did exist but was off to the right and did not attract attention...and the page took 19 seconds to load with a dial-up line at 45k. This being a largely rural county, many (most?) users do have dial-up (i.e. slow) access.

Perhaps the library could get itself a simple, informal weblog? where the natural thing to post on, if you're closing early, is that you're closing early? It's a good way to make very clear what's new news and what information is more static." [ncfocus]

Hint, hint.

Thank heavens I can finally announce it! As many of you know, I've been trying to get a group purchase of Audible content for my libraries for more than two years, and I am thrilled to finally be able to say it has happened! It's been a difficult road to get it off the ground, but we leap-frogged many of the normal startup problems we would have faced thanks to the fine folks at the NOLA Regional Library System in Ohio.

NOLA has been running the original Audible group purchase since October, 2001, at ListenOhio, and I've been tracking their project for some time. Last year, NOLA offered to let Illinois libraries join their program, and I jumped at the chance before they even finished the first sentence. It's taken six months to get to a point where we could go live, but the day has finally arrived and you can visit the ListenIllinois web site to see what I mean.

We currently have 12 Illinois libraries in ListenIllinois, 11 publics and one high school. Right now Wheaton Public Library is the only library circulating titles/players to patrons, but we expect the others to go live this month. To give them full credit for their foresight, the 12 are:

• Chicago Ridge Public Library
• Coal City Public Library District
• Downers Grove Public Library
• Downers Grove South High School
• Homer Township Public Library District (my home library, yay!)
• Joliet Public Library
• Lemont Public Library District
• Northlake Public Library District
• Oswego Public Library
• St. Charles Public Library District
• Thomas Ford Memorial Library (Aaron's library!)
• Wheaton Public Library

Thanks to NOLA, we start with a catalog of 1800 titles, and we collectively purchase pretty much every title that Audible releases each month. Right now, each library is circulating Audible Otis players and patrons use the ListenIllinois web site to browse and choose titles. Of course, the overall goal is let patrons download files directly from online catalogs onto their own players, but for us this is the first step in that direction. In fact, I hope that one of Illinois' contribution to the project will be MARC records for everyone's catalogs.

I'm pretty sure that this collaborative group purchase across two states means we're the largest library buyer of Audible content, and personally I hope we can use that clout to push publishers to release more material in this digital format. Once the dust settles a little, I plan to pursue circulating titles to patron devices and I want to contact publishers directly to prove to them this can work. The time for being scared is over, and we need to move forward now.

I'll provide periodic updates for ListenIllinois, especially once we start getting some concrete numbers. The initial opportunity to join was open to only three Illinois Library Systems - Suburban (me!), DuPage, and Heritage Trail. My own kudos to DLS and HTLS for their willingness to take this to their members! However, in a few months, once we have all of the kinks worked out, we'll open it up statewide to any Illinois library that wants to join. I can't provide details here, but trust me... it's an incredible deal. If you're interested in joining when we get to that point, feel free to email or IM (cybrarygal on AIM) me.

Librarian in Black

"This site was born out of my displeasure at having to wade through dozens of websites, blogs, & RSS feeds related to librarianship, technology, webmastery, and current issues to find those few posts that applied to me as a Tech Librarian. I hope this site can serve as a one-stop-shop for all us Techie Librarians...web design, technology news, library world news, reference stuff, funky gadgets, and other useful (or simply amusing) sites and posts. It also has an RSS feed (a must for lazy people like me)."

And as befitting such a site, there is, of course, an RSS feed. Subscribed!