“This is cer­tainly not a sil­ver bul­let for the over­all mon­e­tary issues that young or poor librar­i­ans face for ALA event costs, but I think it is a step in the right direc­tion. A struc­tured tier sys­tem for mem­ber­ship and sec­tion fees for the sec­ond year and beyond would also make inroads towards the reten­tion of new mem­bers. I’m sure there will be some grum­bling about this kind of solu­tion, but unless there is a rad­i­cal change of course, there will be very few peo­ple left to grum­ble to. Even now, as a non-member, the ben­e­fits of ALA pre­sented to me do not exceed what I am able to do with Face­book, Twit­ter, and a bit of social apti­tude. As such, for me these free tools are way ahead of an orga­ni­za­tion that I would have to pay $65 just to get through the prover­bial front door.”

“just how much Face­book and Twit­ter are grow­ing off-site. Face­book announced they reach 60 mil­lion through Face­book Con­nect. Mean­while nearly half of Twitters activ­ity takes place away from Twitter.com — they reported. Both plat­forms are qui­etly becom­ing a social oper­at­ing sys­tems for the web, not just their own sites.

Sec­ond, nowa­days no two peo­ple see the same Inter­net.… Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd brought this to life through rich, mov­ing sto­ries. Googles Marissa Mayer went a step fur­ther say­ing that the future of news is a “per­son­al­ized news stream.” This trend has major impli­ca­tions for mar­keters and PR pros who are accus­tomed to reach­ing every­one the same way — its sim­ply not pos­si­ble anymore.

Finally theres a ton of energy around the live web. It feels like every­one from Google to gov­ern­ments gets its import. Per­haps Queen Rania of Jor­dan summed it up best when she said: “real time is the new prime time.” ”

“Video game con­sole usage is hit­ting new heights, with 60 per­cent of U.S. house­holds now own­ing a video game con­sole.… About 47 per­cent of smart phone own­ers say the device is one of their three most valu­able media and enter­tain­ment prod­ucts, up from 20 per­cent last year. About 48 per­cent of peo­ple say they have data plans for their mobile phones and 42 per­cent use the phones to access the web. About 15 per­cent of con­sumers buy prod­ucts on their phones. The most pop­u­lar mobile activ­i­ties include text mes­sag­ing (72 per­cent), access­ing the Inter­net (42 per­cent), online search (30 per­cent), down­load­ing apps (27 per­cent), and using nav­i­ga­tion (26 per­cent).…. But the report also noted the rise of tribal mar­ket­ing, which uses social tools to engage con­sumers. About a quar­ter of con­sumers are social­iz­ing online almost every day and 60 per­cent have a social net­work­ing page, up from 48 per­cent last year.” via @steverubel

“The key divi­sion between cat­e­gories for general-purpose print­ers, then, is between office print­ers, home print­ers, and print­ers that can serve as home print­ers, SoHo (small office or home office) print­ers, or both. For each of those, we have sep­a­rate cat­e­gories for single-function and mul­ti­func­tion print­ers (MFPs or AIOs), and for office print­ers, we have sep­a­rate cat­e­gories for mono­chrome and color.”

“In a post I wrote called the A-Z of social media for brands I decided that P stands for Pol­icy. Im not one for too many rules and reg­u­la­tions, but it is a good idea to define some clear guide­lines to help staff (espe­cially novices) to do the right thing.

So let’s take a look at some real world social media poli­cies and guide­lines as used by com­pa­nies. Zap­pos does a great job of sum­ming it up in seven words, but the detail is also impor­tant and there are some fine sug­ges­tions here…”

“Get­ting peo­ple to inter­act with oth­ers and upload con­tent to a community-driven site enough may sound easy, but engage­ment doesn’t hap­pen auto­mat­i­cally. It takes time and work, and much of the right for­mula is deduced through trial and error.

Here are 10 tips for increas­ing user engage­ment that work for news com­mu­nity web sites, but can apply to all types of online user-engagement communities.”

“Hav­ing your books there like an old friend, fol­low­ing you from house to house for all the days and long nights of your life: this is the invalu­able asset that is in publishing’s hands today. But for some rea­son pub­lish­ing has set out to con­vince read­ers that they have no busi­ness read­ing their books as property—that they shouldn’t get attached to them. The worst part of this is that they may in fact suc­ceed.” — via @laurenpressley

“Library­Thing pro­gram­mer Mike has put together a Library­Thing “over­lay” for the mobile phone app Layar. It draws on Library­Thing Local to show you the clos­est book­stores and libraries.… We have our own “Local Books” appli­ca­tion com­ing out soon. We think its going to be a big hit. Until then—and for the added kick of aug­mented reality—this is some pretty cool stuff.”