Why Phones Are Replacing Cars

"Phones are now the dominant technology with which young people, and urban youth in particular, now define themselves. What sort of phone you carry and how you customise it says a great deal about you, just as the choice of car did for a previous generation. In today's congested cities, you can no longer make a statement by pulling up outside a bar in a particular kind of car. Instead, you make a similar statement by displaying your mobile phone, with its carefully chosen ringtone, screen logo and slip cover. Mobile phones, like cars, are fashion items: in both cases, people buy new ones far more often than is actually necessary. Both are social technologies that bring people together; for teenagers, both act as symbols of independence. And cars and phones alike promote freedom and mobility, with unexpected social consequences." [The Economist, via textually.org]

Visa Toys With Credit Card Displays

"Visa International is experimenting with credit cards that include a small display screen where customers could view recent transactions, bank balances, or local currency exchange rates, says Deborah Arnold, Visa's vice president of global consumer strategies....

Visa expects to have produced working prototypes of the devices in about a year's time, Arnold says, although with security and other technology issues still to be ironed out, it's likely to be a few years before such cards become widely available. In addition, the LCD-like screens being used in early designs are too fragile for everyday use, Arnold says....

Another issue with the use of display screens on credit cards is cost-effectiveness, she says. 'It's all expensive--the cost of the battery, the display, hooking [the display] up to the chip. The initial cards with these displays are going to be very expensive,' she says....

Clearly, displaying personal account information on a card presents potential security concerns, and Visa is looking at technologies such as biometrics and passwords to secure access. Banks and end users will help to determine how much security is necessary, and certain information, such as points accrued through loyalty programs, might not need much protection, she says." [PCWorld.com]

An interesting idea, and you have to wonder if these catch on someday, will patrons expect to be able to read their library cards, too? Could be kind of handy to be able to whip out your library card and see which items you have checked out and when they're due.

Instant Messaging — a Corporate Tool?

"So what does this IM stuff, which is clearly the province of young people, have to do with corporate culture? Right now, not much. But eventually it will be a mainstream tool. In fact, if you read the PDF download of a recent speech by West Publishing's President Mike Wilens you'll see an interesting discussion of IM starting on page 11. West's support personnel (who are called 'reference attorneys') use IM to provide support to law students who use the computerized legal research service Westlaw, and according to Wilens West has gone from providing 100% of their law student support through phone service to only 20%. They now provide 80% of their support to law students by way of instant messaging.

Lest the point be lost, there is apparently a huge benefit to West by providing service in this way. According to Wilens, the West representatives can do 4 to 6 IM sessions simultaneously (of course, we all know that phone sessions are a strictly one-to-one interaction). So if a legal publishing company like West has found efficiencies in using IM to provide support, how long do you think it will be before this becomes a more widespread phenomenon? It's true it won't happen on a massive scale anytime soon, but it's going to happen on a massive scale eventually. My oldest daughter is going into the 9th grade next year. I'll bet by the time she graduates from college most companies are going to have started using IM to provide tech/customer support. And one can easily envision it happening even faster than that." [Ernie The Attorney]

Phone Makers Team with Printers

"Nokia, Samsung, and Siemens have teamed up with big names in printers to ensure that printing from mobile phones becomes as easy as desktop printing.

The Mobile Imaging and Printing Consortium (MIPC) today announced that mobile handset makers Nokia, Samsung, and Siemens have become strategic members of the consortium. MIPC is an industry group founded by Canon, Epson, and HP to drive solutions and implementation guidelines for providing users with easy to use mobile printing of pictures taken with camera phones.

MIPC expects to have their first set of printing guidelines available during the second half of 2004. Existing connectivity technology standards and solutions such as Bluetooth wireless technology, printing from memory cards and PictBridge will be the underlying connectivity platforms for the consortium's work. What if any licensing conditions there will be for the consortium's guidelines is unclear.

According to research firm InfoTrends, camera phone users will print over five billion images in 2004. That number is expected to grow to 37.2 billion printed pictures in 2008, when, InfoTrend predicts, 85% of all mobile phones sold will include an embedded camera." [infoSync World]

"Yeah, getting a CD of the show you just saw is fine and all, but putting that to shame (at least from a gadget nerd’s perspective), New Jersey indie rock club Maxwell’s is installing new digital kiosks that will let you download shows directly to one of those USB keychain drives. Shows cost $10 each, with an extra $20 for the 128MB drive, and we’re assuming that you can use your own drive if you have one. And what’s even better is that they’re using unrestricted MP3 files, so you can just take the drive home with you, pop it into your computer, and copy the show onto your iPod — or share it with your friends. [Via TechDirt]" [Engadget]

I love this idea! I went to a show at the Park West earlier this month, and after the show I asked the sound guy if they were selling a recording of it. He looked pretty confused by the question, so I'm guessing this concept is still a ways out of the Chicagoland area. One can hope for the future, though....

PC Mag Says Death to 802.11b (Almost)
"PC Magazine rounds up several 802.11g routers, and says they're cheap enough, they're good enough: 802.11b no longer enjoys a large enough (or any) price differential for quality Wi-Fi gateways that include WPA encryption support, PC Mag says. So while you can still find 802.11b devices on the market, they recommend new gear have 802.11g built in...." [Wi-Fi Networking News]
Lesson: Make sure you buy 802.11g for your library.

Making CD-R's Last
"From Doug Kaye I learned of an interesting article on how long CD-R's will last and things you can do to increase or decrease that time. I've always just popped down to Staples and bought the cheapest disks I could find. For some of my uses (the latest Suse distro, for example) that's fine. But this article makes the point that if you're using the disk to archive important material, you need to be more careful. The article contains information on how to select good media and media that's appropriate for the drive that you'll be recording on. This may be especially important for organizations building large collections of CD-R's that they need to keep to meet regulatory or other business requirements." [Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog]
Lesson: If your library is using CD-Rs for backups, archiving, or preservation, pick the right ones!