Consumers Don't Want It All, and They Don't Want It Now

"Many consumers are not interested in handheld devices that offer multiple functions beyond making phone calls or holding data, according to a survey by Guideline Research, a custom market research firm. The survey of a representative group of online consumers also found that 25% of consumers think these multifunctional devices have limited functionality.

As the market for electronic handheld devices has become saturated, manufacturers of such electronics are driven to add features in an effort to maintain their growth. To this end, they are hoping to add to their general consumer base by offering products to those who are looking for devices that perform two or more functions. Yet, despite their efforts, 49% of consumers surveyed said they have no desire for such a device." [infoSync World]

I think it's a bit misleading to be asking consumers these types of questions just yet. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that the headline could have read, "Consumers Don't Know that They'll Be Able to Have It All Very Soon."

Whenever I show someone new my Treo 600, I get one of two reactions: 1) I want one and I want it now (followed by shock and disappointment when they hear how expensive it is), or 2) I'm not ready for that yet. The key there is the "yet." After all, I'm sure that 20 years ago, more than 25% of consumers would have said that computers have "limited functionality" and well more than 49% of consumers would have said they have "no desire for such a device."

With the introduction last year of converged devices like the Sony P800, Treo 600, and any number of devices in Japan (along with faster networks in the U.S.), we're finally getting to a point where such a beast is useful and actually works. It won't take anywhere near 20 years for them to become as mainstream as computers have become. Maybe 3-5, but that time is definitely coming, and libraries need to prepare for it.

Morning at RSS-Blog-Furl High School

"English teacher Tom McHale sets down his cup of coffee and boots up the computer at his classroom desk. It’s 6:50 in the morning. After logging in, he opens up his personal page on the school Intrablog. There, he does a quick scan of the New York Times front page headlines and clicks through one of the links to read a story about war reporting that he thinks his student journalists might be interested in. With a quick click, Tom uses the 'Furl it' button on his toolbar, adds a bit of annotation to the form that comes up, and saves it in his Furl journalism folder which archives the page and automatically sends the link and his note to display on his journalism class portal for students to read when they log in. Next, he scans a compiled list of summaries that link to work his students submitted to their Weblogs the night before. With one particularly well done response, he clicks through to the student’s personal site and adds a positive comment to the assignment post. He also 'Furls' that site, putting it in the Best Practices folder which will send it to the class homepage as well for students to read and discuss, and to a separate Weblog page he created to keep track of all of the best examples of student work. It’s 7:00...." [Weblogg-ed News]

Check out the full text of this amazing post by Will Richardson. In it, he pulls together the beginning threads of integrating blogs, RSS, and social bookmarking in an educational setting. It's a great vision, one that I fully believe will eventually happen in one integrated app.

However - and this is a big however - the only time the library shows up in Will's post is when the teacher unsubscribes from the library's feed! There's no mention of a topical feeds from the library, use of library databases to support research or assignments, no collaborative collection of web-based resources managed by the library, or any other daily interaction with the library and its resources. It's actually pretty sad when you think about it, but unfortunately, it will be accurate if librarians don't start understanding, using, and providing information to these types of tools.

Digital 'Ghosts' To Guide Students On Campus

"The students at Copenhagen's new IT University will soon be guided by invisible, but talkative digital agents, known as ghosts or Disembodied Location-specific Conversational Agents. The ghosts are to compete amongst themselves for privileges such as better vocabulary or the ability to clone themselves. Ignored ghosts can die out completely. This project is a lot more serious than it sounds at face value - several papers have been published already." [Slashdot]

Hopefully the librarian ghosts will guide them through information literacy, in which case they'll outlast all of the other ghosts....

"Huge RSS support from Amazon. It just keeps growing." [Scripting News]

Dear Innovative Interfaces,

I want a list like this for my online catalog. Now. Thanks.

Sincerely,
Jenny Levine

P.S. Please be prepared to respond to this request when I visit your booth at next week's Computers in Libraries conference.