Tech Trends

August is traditionally a slow month for technology news. It’s too early to begin the announcements for the 4th quarter holiday season, but too late for the back-to-school announcements. Generally speaking, there’s just not a lot to talk about in technology in August.

Well, this year shot that theory out of the sky. This has been one of the strangest months for technology news in recent memory, and in case you don’t keep up with it like I do, here’s the three things you should know that happened in the last 3 weeks. Read More »

Hello dear readers! I’m trying a bit of an experiment this month, brought about by the reflections in my recent post over on my blog about writing and ownership. I started writing a post about Apple and the way they seem to be trying to change the basic metaphors of computing that we’ve become accustomed to over the last 30 years. That start turned into something over 1500 words, which is a bit more than I thought would fit comfortably into a single blog post. So I decided to split the post between my blog and Techsource. You can head over to my personal blog, Pattern Recognition, to read the first half, which is more technical and theoretical, and then below is the second half, which is more directly about libraries.

I’m aware of the somewhat arbitrary nature of the split, but thought this was worth experimenting with as a model: very technical or theoretical discussion on my blog, more direct library-talk here on Techsource. I hope you excuse this bit of meta-commentary here, and enjoy the article. Thanks.

What do the changes in Apple’s new OS (OSX Lion), iCloud, and iOS5 mean for libraries, and why did I say earlier that I think this might “introduce a ton of problems for IT administrators”? Because like its iOS devices, Apple means for iCloud and Lion to be tied to an individual, and assumes that a computer is used by a single person. In looking at the way they’ve set up Lion, iCloud, and iOS5, I’m not at all clear how shared systems (aka, public use computers) might be able to benefit from the advances that Apple is putting in front of users. Read More »

Today was the start of the Google I/O conference, the developer conference that Google holds every year where they make major announcements, primarily about their Android operating system. During the keynote today, they offered several updates and new products that could potentially be interesting for libraries. Here's the ones that I think are the most interesting:

The Android Market was updated to include movie rentals. This allows for one-click rentals via either the web or an Android device, streaming from the web or available to be "pinned" to a portable device and watched offline. The selection isn't huge, but one can only imagine that it's going to grow rapidly if the service becomes more popular. The model is similar to the iTunes rental model, where you can purchase the rental and then you have 30 days to start watching, and 24 hours to finish watching once you do. Read More »

On March 29th, Amazon launched two major new services, both of which seem to speak directly to my post guessing at an Amazon Tablet...as well as being shots across the bow of both Apple and the music industry. The two services are connected, but distinct in capabilities and effects, so let's look at them separately:

Read More »

With the Holiday season quickly approaching, I decided that I should try and condense the last few months of gadget craziness into something like a recommended list for that special someone in your life. Or just for you...

eReader Read More »

I’m not able to participate synchronously with the rescheduled TechSource Trends webinar about ALA Annual, but I wanted to chime in and explain a bit about my somewhat vague set of slides that I put up just after the technical issues from the originally scheduled one. So here are my thoughts, and the talking points that I had for the slides if I were able to participate. So sorry that I won’t be there, but I’m sure it’s going to be awesome. Read More »

With the launch of the iPad and the development of desktops like the Lenovo c200, I'm starting to think that we need to stop thinking in terms of the size/resolution of the screen and positioning when doing web design. Instead, we need to really start thinking about digital objects, and how we physically interact with them. Read More »

I spoke this past week in San Diego, at the San Diego Law Library Association's Fall Conference, and one of the members asked me the following question (paraphrased for brevity):

How do you make decisions about what technologies to offer or support at your library? With the explosion of Web 2.0 over the last 5 years, how do you decide what to offer your patrons?

I decided to share my suggestions on how to make those decisions in your library. Read More »

The elves over at Google Labs have emerged once again with yet another interesting information experience--Google Fast Flip, which they announced on Monday on the Official Google Blog. Fast Flip was designed to address one of the nagging problems of using the Web as a news source: when trying to browse quickly through several news sites to get up to date on what’s happening, many users, including those with “fast” Internet connections, find that it takes too long to load all of the content and pop-up laden webpages of the major newspapers and magazines. Thus, users in search of an informative web experience get a frustrating one instead. Read More »

It was the best of Twitter, it was the worst of Twitter, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity.

Okay, that’s 140 characters.  While I used to be ambivalent about the value of Twitter, now, based on a whole bunch of tweeting that I observed during a recent online conference, I have become strongly ambivalent about Twitter.  Twitter is a good tool for some things, but in some ways, I find it deeply troubling. Read More »