 Tuesday, January 13, 2004
New Wireless Banking Service in U.S.. Despite low adoption in U.S., local bank Premier America Credit Union recently launched a new text-messaging service the firm said is enjoying some success, according to this story. The SMS alert enables users to check their balances, past transactions and... [ textually.org]
The Human Element: Lovers' Lane Now Paved With Online Rejection Slips
"In a study of U.S. teenagers' online habits conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 17 percent of teens who use IM said they had used it to ask for a date--and 13 percent had used it to break off a relationship. With over 12.5 million teenagers estimated to be using IM, that's more than 1.6 million young hearts broken while staring at an emoticon.
It shouldn't surprise us, really. Of the almost 75 percent of U.S. teens who go online, about the same percentage routinely use IM to correspond with friends. They also use it to initiate friendships. So, naturally, they use IM to end relationships...." [PCWorld.com]
You don't suppose that any of those kids would want to ask a reference question via IM, do you?
Penn State Launches Online Music Service
"The launch of Napster's online music service for Penn State students generated about 100,000 downloads or streaming-audio requests Monday, three days after its debut, school officials said.
A first in higher education, the service is designed to curb students' use of illegal music sharing and piracy. Peer-to-peer file sharing sites have generated lawsuits against users filed on behalf of recording artists.
As spring semester classes got under way Monday at Penn State, more than 2,600 students had registered for the Napster 2.0 service, which comes free with their tuition. All 17,000 on-campus resident students are eligible to use it.
School officials said the new system, which offers about 500,000 songs to choose from, appeared to work flawlessly for the vast majority of users.
....For a fee, students also can burn music onto compact discs.
The school plans to offer the service to all of its 83,000 students this fall. Faculty, staff and alumni will qualify for reduced-price Napster memberships.
Penn State's Napster site: www.napster.psu.edu" [SunHerald.com, via JD's New Media Musings]
Don't you wonder what kind of obligations this places on Penn State's libraries? Do they need to be cataloging the music that is in Napster so that the students can find it from within library resources? Or do they just outsource music to this private company that could go bankrupt at any moment (because they sure don't own anything since it's only licensed)? I know they probably don't circulate popular music anyway, but are they now completely out of the music loop? Do they get a discount if they make physical copies of works for a PSU class or for archiving, and can they then circulate that media? My guess is no on all counts.
I guess my next call will be to Napster to find out how much a license for a public library costs. Will Napster be the first company to work with libraries in this arena?
Gadget Jacket Charged by the Sun
"Seemingly aimed at the technophile environmentalist on the go, the jacket has integrated solar panels that charge cell phones, PDAs, Game Boys, MP3 players and most any other mobile device its wearer slides into its multitude of interior pockets.
And despite its gadget-oriented accommodations, the jacket's style resembles those worn at the slopes or on the hiking trails. Fashionista outdoorsy types are assured of cloaking their geek status as they lug Palms, iPods and cell phones into the wilderness without losing power.
'As we move to an always-on environment, how can people depend on their device if in three to four hours they are going to lose their charge?' said Scott Jordan, CEO of ScotteVest, which designed the jacket and its wiring technology.
The jacket has two small snap-on photovoltaic panels that fit onto its shoulders. These charcoal-gray solar panels convert the sun's rays into energy, which then feed a hidden battery pack about the size of a deck of cards. The batteries are wired to all the pockets, which can have almost any mobile devices plugged into them.
The PAN, or Personal Area Network, used by ScotteVest's Technology Enabled Clothing division provides jacket-pocket holes and fabric conduits that connect all the gadgets to each other without exposing any wires. So what appears to be an unassuming anorak jacket is really a web of wires and technology in disguise....
When the solar jacket launches this spring, Jordan said it will retail for about $300, a $100 increase over the nonsolar Version Three.0.
Since power cannot be transferred wirelessly, ICP and TEC designers were faced with different power-connector protocols for mobile devices. Consequently, the jacket will be sold with a small assortment of adapters to accommodate all major lines of phones, PDAs, cameras and other mobile devices....
'We are also working with (major outerwear manufacturers) to license the technology into a lot more products,' said Jordan. He said he expects 30 percent of outerwear to incorporate the solar and PAN technology combo within the next five years. That's a long shot, but as long as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, there will be travelers with a jones for staying connected." [Wired News]
I've bolded some of the phrases I've been trying to introduce to librarians because the concepts behind them will definitely impact our services, or rather, our users' expectations for our services. On a personal level, I'll have to start saving up for one of these to power my Treo!
Addendum: how long will it be before they figure out they should be making purses and backpacks, too? After all, you can't be a PAN if you can't power a PAN.
Hard Drive Growth
"Hard drive growth: Sounds boring, I know, but the dynamics here have implications for future work. The number of drives in consumer devices is expected to triple over the next three years, while over the preceding three years the storage capabilities have quadrupled, with cost-per-byte falling by a factor of five. More things that you see during everyday walking-around will have drives, processors, and communication abilities. Putting an interface into each device will likely be more expensive, and clunkier to use, than in connecting each device to the preferred, persistent interface you carry around in your pocket." [JD on MX]
Yes-sir-ree-bob, people will indeed be shifting their information with them. Emphasis above is mine, because in the type of world described above, information literacy will become even more important than it is now.
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