Current CITE-ings from the popular and trade computing press
Article Type: Current CITE-ings from the popular and trade computing press From: Library Hi Tech News, Volume 27, Issue 3.
One stop shopping is moving full-speed ahead in the market for devices, led by the introduction of Apple Computer's new iPad. Other mobile devices continue to provide enhanced functions and capabilities. Whether you call them tablets,smart phones, or netbooks, the trend is quite clear - users want one device that does it all - Internet searching, phone or Skype, video, ebook reader, and a slew of applications that can easily be added. With all these new devices, it is incumbent on libraries to make certain their websites, resources, and services can easily be accessed and used. Libraries at the forefront will also develop applications and services that reach users where they are via their device of choice. In addition this column continues to follow new developments and trends on the web, multimedia, hardware, and software.
iPad and new tablet devices
On 27 January 2010 Apple unveiled a tablet with a big touch screen, web surfing, video, and ebook reader. It is a major competitor to the Kindle in the same way that the IPhone challenged the cellphone market. An Apple bookstore is in the works that will become the third major contender in e-book publishing,possibly frustrating consumers who want to move books between devices. It what seems like a defensive move, Amazon recently said it will let outside companies develop programs for the Kindle, much like Apple has done for the iPhone. Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey believes most of the profits in electronic books will come from "converged devices" such as the iPad and other tablets that can do many things, rather than from Kindles and other single-purpose devices. On the other hand, consumers may want a single-purpose device that optimizes what it is made for (Mintz, 2010a).
The starting price for the WiFi and BlueTooth version is $499. It has a 9.7 in. touch screen, is 1/2 in. thick, and weighs 1.5 pounds. AT&T will offer two data plans: $14.99 a month for 250 megabytes and $29.99 a month for unlimited data usage. Apple's Safari is used as a web browser. Installed software includes a calendar, maps, video player, and iPod software for playing music. Applications designed for the iPhone can run on the iPad. Apple is also releasing software development tools so third parties can develop applications for the iPad (Mintz, 2010b).
Another article discusses the chip in the iPad. The A4 chip runs at 1 GHz,and is extremely power efficient. It is a system on a chip (soc) that integrates the main processor, graphics, and other functions such as memory controller on one piece of silicon. Intel is trying to achieve this with its future Moorestown Atom Processor. A similar soc chip architecture is already used in the iPhone and other smart phones, such as Google's Nexus One and Motorola's Droid. This is the first time Apple has announced an Apple branded chip (Crothers, 2010a). Intel, however, may have a leg-up on Apple. It is releasing later this year, the LGGW990 smart phone based on the Moorestown chip. The difference? The Moorestown chip allows for multitasking, whereas the iPad does not (Crothers, 2010b).
Traditionally, tablet computers have never been a favorite consumer gadget. Industry pundits think that it will be up to the Apple iPad on whether tablets will be widely accepted. Apple is betting on changing this perception by partnering with studios and publishers to format movies, books, and magazines for the iPad (Ante, 2010). But, stay tuned for a new product from Google. It is in the mock-up stage, and it will be a tablet featuring Google's new Chrome operating system (Cowens, 2010).
Carnoy provides a review of the Sony Reader PRS-900 ebook reader. It has a built-in 3 G wireless service to download books from the Sony Reader Store. It has a 7.1 elongated screen, note taking capabilities and uses digital e-ink technology. But, the selection of periodicals and book you can read lags behind the Kindle. Content wise, it can access free public domain titles from Google,offers best sellers for $9.99, and has over 1 million titles in its eBook store. It can display Word, PDF, EPUB, Image files, MP3, and AAL audio (Carnoy, 2010a,b).
Mobile devices and services
Apple's rejection of a Google voice application on its iPhone has triggered an FCC inquiry as to whether Apple and AT&T are stifling competition. Google has a workaround for the problem. It is trying to entice iPhone users to rely on a mobile web browser to access Voice. Google Voice with 1.4 million users,offers an alternative dialing pad, voice mail, and international calling discounts. (Lietke, 2010). Apple later announced that it was no longer blocking VOIP calls over 3 G data networks on the iPhone. The iCall application is called Fring, a voice and chat app that supports Skype, SIP, and video calls (Dolcourt,2010a).
Related to the Apple vs Google competition for the smart phone market,Burrows (2010) reviews Apple's purchase of Quattro Wireless. Quattro is an upstart advertising company that excels at targeting ads to mobile phone users based on their behavior. Apple also has the current lead in apps with seven times more than Google Android. (Burrows, 2010). The Apple iPhone has swamped AT&T's data network and with an exclusive contract, AT&T and Apple have been thought to limit net neutrality. With Verizon adding to the iPhone fray, AT&T is trying to limit the broadcast features of the iPhone such as webcasts, file sharing, and tethering (where a user hooks up an iPhone to a computer for net access) (Farzad, 2010).
Microsoft was planning to show off Windows Mobile 7 in Barcelona in March,and have the code finalized by summer so it can ship on mobile devices by the end of the year. Microsoft has also announced it will be entering the mobile phone business; the phone will be the next generation of the SideKick product that Microsoft inherited with its acquisition of Danger. It is expected that Microsoft's new phone will be able to connect to Zune and other consumer services that Microsoft has been developing (Fried, 2010). Mozilla is releasing Firefox 1.0 for the Nokia Maemo, signaling another smart phone browser on the market. The Maemo's OS is Firefox's open sourced, Linux-based operating system. Firefox hopes to attract add-ons, to help with market share (Dolcourt, 2010b).
Web resources and developments
Google is working on ways to make the web faster. It has developed SPDY, a new application layer protocol. SPDY allows concurrent HTTP requests across a single TCP session, and uses file compression to reduce the amount of data sent. Google has also released a free public DNS service that speeds the web by translating plain English web addresses to the numerical format used by computers (Miller, 2010). An article looks at Google's Chrome operating system that relies on web-only computing. Although most daily tasks can be optimized with online access, without a net connection, a web-only operating system can not do too much (Rapoza, 2010). Google has also announced it has a social search product available for testing. The software allows Google users to link their Google profile with the various profiles they have on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter (Krazit, 2010).
Borislav Agapiev is introducing another way to search the web called WOWD. WOWD is software stored on a users computer. As the user clicks on a web site,that information is then stored as a piece of data in WOWD's peer-to-peer distribution network. WOWD is seeking hundreds of thousands of volunteers and since October when it was launched, over 70,000 computers have joined the network. WOWD feels this approach would reveal more of the dark web that is not available through traditional search engines such as Google (Buley, 2010).
The Gartner Group has published some predictions for social networking in the business enterprise. According to them, by 2014, social networking services will replace email as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users. Within five years, 70 percent of collaboration and communication applications designed on PCs will be modeled after user experience lessons from smart phone collaboration applications (Rosenberg, 2010).
The New York Times has announced it will start charging for full text web access to its newspaper. It is still deliberating on how to charge for access on mobile devices. It will offer a few articles for free to casual readers, and charge for deeper access. Subscribers to the printed version would still have free access to the website. There are no plans stop search engines from cataloging their articles as this may generate some traffic (Vanacore,2010).
Critical to website success are analytics. Analytics measure visitors from arrival on the website, what they do during their visit and when they leave. Web analytics should be linked to an organization's performance indicators. Stickiness indicates how deeply a viewer delves into the website. Other analytics are described such as: TwitVid.com that provides an analytics tool to show tweeted videos, a YouTube analytics tool, social analytics which measure how a user engages with a website, and CRM analytics for customer relationship management (Prestipino, 2010). A concern for libraries is that analytics deal with user anonymity unlike businesses who may use information about website visitors in their personalized marketing efforts. The FTC has warned the online advertisers industry that unless it has stricter self-regulating principles, it would step in. So the Future of Privacy Forum came up with the symbol "i" to inform online consumers why they were targeted with an ad, and when it was based on demographics and behavioral data (Clifford, 2010).
Multimedia
Much is happening in the television world recently highlighted by developments with 3D. At the Consumer Electronics Show back in January, 3D TV was all the rage. But, 3D requires a special pair of glasses, a 3D-enabled television and content designed for the format. Gomez explains that rather focusing on 3D TV, the industry needs to come up with a solution to the myriad set top boxes that go with a single service such as 3D. He argues that one set top box should unite broadcast and cable TV, streaming video from the Internet,and video stored at home on a computer (Gomes, 2010).
Another article discusses computer streaming to your TV. Intel has developed its own wireless display technology that it is easy to use, with very little set-up. The software and netgear adapter box, called push2tv, comes currently bundled with three laptops on the market. The wireless display technology allows you to mirror or display whatever is on your computer screen to your TV. Intel calls this WiDi technology (Ackerman, 2010). Computer storage providers, such as Seagate and WesternDigital, are now selling living room products they call media players. They are designed to pair up with HDTV and customers to view movies stored on their PC (Forbes, 2010). HULU, a web service that allows for downloading TV shows on your computer has up to now been free. An article in the Los Angeles Times claims that within six months, HULU will start to charge for a larger library of back episodes. The past five episodes will still be free (Martin, 2010).
Miscellaneous hardware and software developments
A new group of devices coming on the scene are known as "smart dust" or accelerometers. These are speck like data input devices which act as sensors are now becoming more economical to be used for computers. How to provide power for these devices is also being studied in the lab. Intel is working on ambient power from TV, FM radio, and WiFi networks (Lohr, 2010).
Google has debuted its Google Focused Research Awards program, offering 5.7 million dollars to research professors in academia who are working on areas of interest to Google. The areas of interest are machine learning, using mobile phones to collect information on health and the environment, energy-efficient computing, and privacy (Whitney, 2010).
Further reading
Chadwick, M. (2010), "Hulu to start charging for online TV?", available at: www.MSN.com (accessed 21 January 2010).Hammond, J. (2010), "What developers think", Information Week, 18 January, p. 49.
Lois Trapasso
