And All Work Stops

I’m sitting here late at night in the hotel working away as I build a survey. Let me say again, it’s late at night. Now I like my sleep as much as the next person, but late can be good. Late at night there is very little e-mail coming in. E-mail. You know – that nagging little thing that sits in your inbox and quietly demands a response. Late at night there are no phone calls. There are no updates from social networking sites. Late at night you can really dig into a project and just cruise . . .

 

Until . . .

 

Somewhere for some reason some part of the network goes down.

 

And all work stops.

 

The survey questions themselves are essentially written. I’m busy adding the login questions to branch my respondents to varying sets of questions depending upon their answers. Or rather, I was. Before the network went down.

 

This reminds me of an article I read earlier today. The point of the article is to highlight the inherent dangers of relying too much on cloud data and applications. A lot can happen. Servers can go down. Network connections can go down. Something between you and your data or app can go down. Of course when everything is working fine, it’s all very convenient.

 

But when something does go down, all you can do it sit, fume, and wait for services to be restored. I find it both interesting and frustrating that the very tools that enable us to do much of our work are also the same tools that prevent us from being able to do our work. Yes, a fascinating irony.

 

So I’m tired of sitting and waiting. I guess I’ll post this tomorrow. Sometime. When my network connection comes back up.

 

Reference: Google Users Live By the Cloud, Die By the Cloud

Social Networking and Changing Terms of Service

Last month brought a lot of hoopla over Facebook’s change to the terms of service agreements with users. (See references below for more reading.) Now it seems that Eastman Kodak Co. also has a change that has generated some user ire. According to a recent AP story, Kodak’s free online photo hosting service is no longer free. It sounds like Kodak is asking users to make a modest minimum purchase in order to keep using the storage services. Users who fail to do that risk having their photos deleted.

These two cases sound like they are at extreme ends of the spectrum. Kodak’s change sounds reasonable to me. They don’t want to just provide free storage for people who never make a purchase, so they’re asking customers to buy a few photos. On the other end, Facebook has essentially told its users that even if they delete their accounts, Facebook has the right to do what it wants to with their content forever. Can you imagine Facebook taking one of your photos and using it in an advertising campaign? Sounds like they have given themselves the right to do just that.

Now as I said, Kodak sounds reasonable, and Facebook sounds unreasonable. The thing that really surprises me though, is what people are getting upset about. From a lot of the reading I’ve done, people are not as upset about the new TOS as they are that the terms have changed at all. They somehow seem to think that they are entitled to non-changing usage agreements. Why? Yeah we pretty much get that when we buy a piece of software, but TOS agreements change OFTEN with SERVICES. Anyone still paying the same cable, electricity, telephone, or water rates they were 10 years ago? I doubt it. Economic condition changes, management conditions change, company goals change, and terms of service agreements change. How does the Internet generate this sense of entitlement that makes people think they should have a free ride forever, and that companies should never be allowed to alter their terms of service? You know most providers include that clause that says they can change TOS at any time. Or did you miss that? Interesting to note that enough people complained, and Facebook reversed the decision.

 

References

Facebook’s New Terms Of Service: "We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever."
Facebook Responds to Concerns Over Terms of Service
Facebook Terms of Use
Consumers can be stuck when Web sites change terms
Facebook Reverts Back to Old Terms of Service

Bandwidth Caps: Stifling Creativity and New Web Apps

A recent article caught my eye, and it reminded me of the bandwidth cap discussions I’ve read about. This article describes the effect that bandwidth caps on users of new services such as the OnLive gaming service. OnLive estimates that data usage will be roughly 1 gigabyte per hour of high-definition gaming. According to the article, Frontier Corp., a regional communications company, is imposing a bandwidth cap of 5 gigabytes per month. This means that potential users can play games for approximately 5 hours per month before the company slaps them with extra charges.

TechRepublic also carried an article suggesting the impact that this could have on telecommuters. Many people are probably familiar with the Comcast decision to impose a 250 gb per month bandwidth cap on residential customers. Customers who go above the 250 gb limit will receive a pleasant little call from Comcast reps warning them about their “excessive usage.”

According to Comcast’s amendment to their acceptable use policy, they feel that their limit is ample for most customers. They provide these examples of customer data usage based on a 250 gb limit:

• Send 50 million emails (at 0.05 KB/email)
• Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song)
• Download 125 standard-definition movies (at 2 GB/movie)
• Upload 25,000 hi-resolution digital photos (at 10 MB/photo)

These numbers are interesting, but this is really the only beginning to helping customers understand their usage habits. What about customers who play MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft or Warhammer? What about people who play console games such as Xbox, PlayStation, or Wii over the network? What about those who stream movies from services such as Netflix?

I’m still trying to figure out the best billing model for home Internet users. The obvious way to look at is by comparing it to existing utility rates. Some utilities are charged based on consumption. Electricity may be charged based on kilowatt hours, and water may be charged on a per gallon or per cubic foot basis. (However, people in apartments sometimes have leases that included unlimited power and water.) In contrast, cable or satellite tv service is unlimited for a single monthly fee with extra charges for for premium or pay per view services. I think perhaps a telephone/cell phone model may be more appropriate. Depending on your expected usage, you can either choose a pay-per-minute plan or an unlimited plan.

I think one of the biggest potential problems of bandwidth caps lies in its effect on user adoption of new services, or perhaps users’ willingness to even try new services. Suppose you were considering any new Internet-enabled technology. If you didn’t know how it would impact your bandwidth consumption, you might be less willing to give it a try. Remember all those silly cell phone commercials where customers had to save their calls until the middle of the night when their rates were the lowest? Imagine an equally silly situation in which you can only try a new application at the very end of the month with your last half gigabyte of bandwidth.

The model established for high-speed residential Internet service is one of unlimited use for a flat fee. High-speed Internet service has undoubtedly spurred the development of many new services and programs, but if our Internet usage is going to be capped, maybe we won’t need those services after all.

References

Streaming games could be bane or boon for ISPs
ISP bandwidth limits may have unclear impact on telecommuters
It’s official: Comcast starts 250GB bandwidth caps October 1
Announcement Regarding An Amendment to Our Acceptable Use Policy

Your Social (After)Life

So what exactly happens when someone disappears from your social network and is never heard from again? Did they just move on to other activities? Or did they get mad at someone in the circle and write you all off? Or did they perhaps . . . die?

A recent AP story highlighted a few tales where the latter was actually the case. A person died, and relatives were left trying to make contacts with online friends to let them know what had happened. Seems like a few enterprising folks have found a new way to make money out of death. A couple of online services will take care of these after-death notifications for you so your friends won’t be left wondering.

For more information . . .

http://www.deathswitch.com
http://www.slightlymorbid.com

Deep Web Indexing

I came across an interesting New York Times article several days ago: Exploring a ‘Deep Web’ That Google Can’t Grasp. The article explores a shortcoming of current search technologies that librarians have known about and struggled with for quite some time. As good as current search engines may be, they rely primarily on crawlers or spiders that essentially trace a web of links to their ends. That works for a lot of content out on the Internet, but it doesn’t do so well for information contained in databases. So . . . library catalogs, digital library collections, a lot of the things that libraries do aren’t being picked up by the major search engines.

Of course at some level that makes perfect sense. When a web crawler comes to a page with a search box, how is it supposed to know what to do? It needs to input search terms to retrieve search results, but what search terms are appropriate? Is it searching an online shopping website? A tech support knowledgebase? A library catalog? This discussion surfaces again and again particularly as we talk about one of our digital collections. There is a wealth of information here for people researching the history of accounting, but it resides in a database. The database works perfectly well for humans doing a search. The only problem is that they have to find out about the database first. Now we’ve done a number of things to get the word out: papers, conference presentations, a Wikipedia article . . . If we’re lucky, these things will get users to the top level of the collection. Hopefully once they’re there, their research will draw them in. (In case anyone notices, I should get credit for positioning that set of homonyms like that!)

But getting them there in the first place – that’s the hard part. That’s why I have so much hope for deep web indexing. If researchers can build tools that will look into our databases intelligently, then extensive new levels of content will ben opened up to everyone. In particular I think about students who decide that the first few search engine hits are “good enough” for their school project. Usually they’re not good enough, but the students don’t always realize that. If new search engines can truly open up the deep web, the whole playing field changes!

Web 2.0 and Too Much Stuff

As I listen to people talk in various sessions, it’s clear that many librarians are feeling overwhelmed by the exploding number of Web 2.0 (and other) applications out there. Which ones will “stick”? Which ones will patrons actually use? How steep is the learning curve for staff? Which ones can the library’s budget support? Which ones can the library’s personnel support?

 

Many libraries are still struggling with these questions and just trying to figure out how to get started. While there are a few libraries fortunate enough to have an employee charged with investigating these new technologies, most are not. So where do we start?

 

It strikes me that a good approach is to look for people who already have those skills. Many employees, student employees, or even patrons may already have a good handle on using a certain tool. Find them. Harness their knowledge. Use it to give yourselves a jump start.

 

No one can jump onto and follow every new trend that comes along, but you can find out what your patrons are using. If no one on staff is using it, how about asking the patron for help? Most people really enjoy sharing knowledge, especially when they feel that they are the expert. If we try to tap into patrons’ knowledge, students’ skills, and staff interests, I think we’ll be surprised at the number of services where we already have a built-in knowledgebase.

Notebooks Overtake Desktops

Reuters reports that for the first time worldwide notebook shipments were higher than desktop shipments. This 2008 3rd quarter shift has been a long time coming, and it will be interesting to see whether this is a temporary blip on the radar or the beginning of a sustained transition.

I have a lot of questions about why this is happening. Are businesses providing more notebooks/laptops to their employees? Some companies want their employees to be able to work from home and on the road, so perhaps the trend is partially business-driven. Are home users adding a second computer or are they replacing an older desktop with a laptop? Are more students choosing notebooks as the device that will best meet their needs?

Whatever the reason, notebooks mean mobility and mobility demands network access. Whether it’s WiFi, tethering to a cell phone, or some other means, users want to connect to the Internet. Everyone from Starbucks to McDonald’s has jumped on board with free Internet access, and it seems that more and more hotspots are popping up all the time.

Of course libraries have been offering free wireless Internet access for years, and with the shift to more mobile devices, demand can only increase. In addition to notebooks and netbooks, users are also carrying gaming devices and cell phones with built-in WiFi connectivity.

Our campus networking department recently advised us that we need to add at least three more access points to help distribute our wireless traffic. We’re currently wrapping up a major network reorganization which significantly reduces the number of publicly available wired connections in the building. While we were hesitant to do this, current network use patterns clearly revealed that we were spending a lot of time and effort to maintain wired connections that simply weren’t being used.

It will be interesting to watch the continuing evolution of user devices. As patrons access our resources and services with smaller devices, there will probably be more display options targeted to the smaller screens of these devices. There will definitely be more demand for network bandwidth and more devices on the network. And as easy as some devices are to connect, others are still not as user-friendly as one might wish. The preference for wireless access continues to affect the ways in which libraries approach in-building access as well as online services, and I’m looking forward to a new generation of applications running on these new devices.

Barcodes and Smartphones

A couple of days ago, someone asked me what I considered at the time to be a very strange question. “Is there a some kind of barcode scanner that you can use with a cell phone to scan products in a store and shop online for better prices?”

I don’t know why I thought it was so strange. Perhaps it was just because I had never thought of using the technology that way. Well, how did we ever get along without the magic of the glorious Interweb? While Googling for “iphone scan barcode” I came across a number of interesting posts. In short, yes there is a way to do this, and it doesn’t require an add-on barcode scanner. (However, an iPhone demo uses a special case that incorporates a built-in close-up lens that slides over the iPhone’s built-in camera. Using Snappr.net for the iPhone or Shop Savvy for the G1, users can scan a product barcode in a store, then do some comparison shopping online. Links of interest are listed below.

How To Track Music, Scan Bar Codes On A Cell Phone – Story from NPR

Mobile shopping on the iPhone by scanning barcodes with Snappr.net – YouTube video

T-Mobile’s G1 Takes Shopping To 2.0 – includes YouTube video demo of Shop Savvy

Snappr.net – Snappr project home page

Snappr Mobi – online price lookups from Snappr’s service

Griffin Clarifi – iPhone case with built-in close-up lens

Pretty cool ideas. Now I’m wondering how this kind of technology can be used in the library. If the software can translate the camera’s image into a string of characters usable in a web search, it should also be able to write those characters to file. If it can write the characters to a file, then you can store the barcodes. If you can store the barcodes, then you should be able to use this file with the ILS’s inventory module. A bit of a jump perhaps, but it sounds feasible.

PhrazIt

Lots of people read online reviews. Whether it’s for a movie, a restaurant, or a new gadget, the opinions and experiences of others are often help. The problem with some reviews though, is that they’re simply too long. They go on and on and one, and it’s hard to get to the meat of the review. Sometimes we need the subtleties and the details, but sometimes we just want to know if it was good or bad.

Enter PhrazIt. PhrazIt is a interesting website that let users give reviews in 30 characters or less. That’s right – 30 CHARACTERS – not 30 words. User reviews are displayed as a tag cloud. In typical tag cloud, fashion those reviews getting more votes appear in a larger font. Users can add their own 30-character review or vote for an existing review simply by clicking on a phrase they like.

Many libraries are incorporating both patron reviews and tag clouds in their OPAC displays. I think PhrazIt is an interesting hybrid of these two concepts. I can imagine it being used in a library setting. My initial reaction is that it might work well for “browsing” new books online. It could very well have uses beyond that, but the inherently short nature of the reviews of PhrazIt make me instantly think of browsing. The interface is very intuitive, and once you realize exactly what the site does, it make perfect sense. Check it out for yourself and see what you think.

Road Warriors Rejoice

Travelers have won a small victory with Delta Airlines’ recent announcement that all domestic flights will now offer Wi-Fi access. For business travelers (or for those who just can’t bear to remain unplugged for the duration of the flight) this is undoubtedly a welcome announcement. However, like everything else on airlines today, there will be a fee. (Remember when buying a ticket meant that you could actually take luggage on your week-long trip?)

Delta’s initial announcement shows that the charges will run $9.95 for flights of three hours or less and $12.95 for flights over three hours. Of course one expects to pay a premium for services while a captive customer of the airline, but these charges rival the Internet service charges in many hotels. At least in a hotel you get the full 24 hours! I probably won’t bite. I can generally get by with an iPod and a DVD or two for long flights.

While Wi-Fi access will be a boon to some, they’ll still have to live without their cell phones in flight – at least for the foreseeable future. I’m actually pleased about this one. Anyone who has sat beside a loud cell phone talker will know exactly what I mean!

Well, at least they can enjoy their Wi-Fi.