College of Information and Computer Science, Long Island University
Published by July 21st, 2007
in demographics and internet.
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The number of active Internet home users increased 0.06 percent in May for the 10 countries tracked by Nielsen//NetRatings. Brazil (13.01 percent); France (7.67 percent); and Spain (7.26 percent) supported the highest percentage increase in active users over April users. Australia registered a drop in active users (1.95 percent) between April and May.
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Published by July 21st, 2007
in OCLC.
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OCLC and Zepheira, LLC will work together to rearchitect OCLC’s Persistent URL (PURL) service to more effectively support the management of a “Web of data.” The software developed will be released under an Open Source Software license allowing PURLs and the PURL infrastructure to be used in various applications for public or proprietary use. OCLC and Zepheira are collaborating to extend the open and inclusive community of PURL users.
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Published by July 21st, 2007
in libraries, library services, technology and OCLC.
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Technology has permeated 21st century libraries, impacting the environment for both users and staff. At all levels of library service, a host of new skills and knowledge are now required as an integral part of working in a library. The objective of this report is to support library staff in maintaining public access computing programs. The report is divided into three sections. “Technology Competencies for Patron Assistance” defines skills that frontline library staff need to provide direct assistance to users on public computers. The “System Administration” section defines skills necessary to set up, configure and maintain public computers and networks. The “Management Competencies” are the umbrella over all, covering the master-planning, coordination and integration aspects of running a public access computing program.
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Published by July 21st, 2007
in dictionaries.
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It was a ginormous year for the wordsmiths at Merriam-Webster. Along with embracing the adjective that combines “gigantic” and “enormous,” the dictionary publishers also got into “Bollywood,” “sudoku” and “speed dating.” But their interest in India’s motion-picture industry, number puzzles and trendy ways to meet people was all meant for a higher cause: updating the company’s collegiate dictionary, which goes on sale this fall with about 100 new words.
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Published by July 21st, 2007
in Second Life, virtual worlds and architecture.
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It is one of the web’s most extraordinary creations. At first glance, SL, as most residents call it, resembles a computer game - a 3D landscape you navigate with your own customised character or “avatar” - but there are no dragons to slay or points to score. In fact, it’s not clear what you’re supposed to do at all. One thing SL is well primed for, however, is building: anyone can make anything, from teapots to skyscrapers. The essential building blocks are “prims”, short for primitives. These are geometric solids - cubes, spheres, cones - that can be dragged off a template then stretched, positioned, sized, textured and combined to form anything imaginable. Unlike the real world, there’s no gravity, weather, site preparation, sloppy workmanship, or planning committees to worry about. It should be an architect’s paradise.
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Published by July 21st, 2007
in Google.
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Google is the 600-pound gorilla: the company that no one wants to see build a competing product. Google dominates many of the markets it enters, whether by building a superior product or acquiring one. But Google isn’t perfect: in some areas, they come out behind. Today, Mashable takes an in-depth look at 10 markets where Google wants to win.
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Published by July 21st, 2007
in demographics and social sites.
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Blogs. Podcasts. Video-sharing sites. Social networks. Here’s a word of advice for companies scrambling to become a part of these conversations. It’s not enough to build a hub in Second Life or create a profile on MySpace.com (NWS ). It’s time to shift your focus away from trying out every high-tech platform that comes across your in-box. Instead, home in on your customers. Almost every demographic group you can think of is engrossed in the Web these days, and users are getting smarter about their tools. It won’t take long to find the consumers who care about what you’re doing—and tune in to what they’re doing.”
A related chart chart of interest. The data came from Forrester Research. It shows, visually, the use of the social networking tools by generation and the penetration of these tools in the U.S.
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Published by July 21st, 2007
in demographics and research.
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A new survey indicates that over-55s use the internet more often than any other group in the UK. The study by Microsoft and Age Concern found that more than four million older people in Britain now own their own computers, with 600,000 more using them at colleges and libraries.
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Published by July 21st, 2007
in libraries and museums.
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Beginning July 3, Toronto Public Library users can borrow a Sun Life Financial Museum and Arts Pass, in the same way they can borrow a book or CD from the collection. The pass provides full admission to a family of up to two adults and five children to the Art Gallery of Ontario and at least four other Toronto cultural institutions.
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Published by July 2nd, 2007
in mobile/cell phones and research.
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US women are catching up with men in mobile phone usage, according to a poll commissioned by AT&T and conducted by International Communications Research in May 2007. After six years of AT&T surveys indicating men used significantly more minutes than women on average, this year men spoke an average of only five minutes more per month on their mobile phones than women.
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Rand McNally & Co. trusts consumers will follow its well-known brand as it expands its services to electronic devices, even though it got a late start with the technology. The company can take heart that in a recent independent survey it shared honors with digital upstart MapQuest Inc. as the nation’s most-recognized map brand. In fact, consumers would put more trust in a Rand McNally portable map gadget than one made by leading navigation devicemakers. Now the bad news: It’s not easy to even find digital navigation gadgets with Rand McNally maps inside.
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Published by July 2nd, 2007
in demographics and social sites.
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A whopping 96% of online tweens and teens connect to a social network at least once a week, according to a study and white paper recently released from Alloy Media & Marketing, a youth-oriented marketing firm. And nearly half engaged with a brand in the space in the past month.
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While it looks like it’s still a ways from setting up shop next to more traditional vending machines, those in New York City can now get their instant-book fix from the very first (non-beta) Espresso Book Machine, which has found a home in the New York Public Library’s Science, Industry and Business Library. For the time being, most of the books on offer appear to be ones in the public domain, including over 200,000 titles from the Open Content Alliance database.
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Understanding that citizen journalists are just as happy to be paid for their work as editors on a newspaper’s payroll, the Swedish version of Metro newspaper recently launched get-paid-per-view blogging. Anyone can set up a blog at Metrobloggen.se, which integrates blog creation tools with a system for micro-payments. As soon as an individual blog achieves 5,000 pageviews per month, Metro sets up a bank account and sends the author a MasterCard that’s credited with 150 Swedish kronor (USD 20 / EUR 16). Adhering to fiscal regulations, the media company deducts social security fees and withholds income tax.
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Published by July 2nd, 2007
in gadgets, demographics, social sites and research.
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North Americans lead the world in Web widget usage, according to comScore data. Widgets are used to display customized or personalized content on a Web site for things like photo sharing or music recommendations, and are commonly found on blogs, social networking sites and other personalized pages.
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Published by July 2nd, 2007
in communities, Pew Research and research.
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About one third (32%) of all teenagers who use the internet say they have been targets of a range of annoying and potentially menacing online activities — such as receiving threatening messages; having their private emails or text messages forwarded without consent; having an embarrassing picture posted without permission; or having rumors about them spread online. Of all the online harassment asked about, the greatest number of teens told us that they had had a private communication forwarded or publicly posted without their permission. One-in-six teens (15%) said that someone had forwarded or posted communication they assumed was private. About 13% of teens said that someone had spread a rumor about them online, and another 13% said that someone had sent them a threatening or aggressive email, IM or text message. Some 6% of online teens told us that someone had posted an embarrassing picture of them without their permission. These results come from a nationally-representative phone survey of 935 teenagers by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
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Published by July 2nd, 2007
in gadgets and mobile/cell phones.
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It took Apple Inc. more than six months to build the iPhone but curious gadget fanatics needed only minutes to tear one apart. Within hours of the first iPhones going on sale on Friday, enthusiasts scrambled to be the first to discover what makes the devices tick, posting photos and videos of disassembled phones on the Internet. The information is more than just academic. Apple keeps a tight grip on information about parts suppliers so “tear downs” of its products are closely watched by investors keen to figure out how to place their bets.
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Published by July 2nd, 2007
in communities and grants.
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WebJunction, the online community for library staff to meet to share ideas, solve problems and do online coursework, has been awarded a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to replace software, enhance site functionality and provide for long-term sustainability of services to benefit the library community.
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Published by July 2nd, 2007
in users and corporations.
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Corporate attitudes to consumer-led technologies extending into the enterprise must shift from “unavoidable nuisance” to “opportunity for additional innovation”, according to Gartner. The analyst firm predicts that employees will continue to push consumer technologies into the enterprise, particularly in areas such as personal productivity and communications.
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Two scathing reports on the Smithsonian Institution’s governance and spending practices and the recent resignation of the institution’s second highest-ranking official were among the issues discussed at a Senate oversight hearing on June 26.
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Published by July 2nd, 2007
in information and internet.
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The Internet is the most essential medium for consumers and newspapers are the least, according to an Edison Media Research study conducted by Arbitron in January and February 2007. Respondents were all from the US and ages 12 and older.
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Published by July 2nd, 2007
in demographics and social networking.
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Nearly two-thirds of US business professionals use personal and professional social networking Web sites, according to the “Social Network Practitioner Consensus Survey” from the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), conducted in conjunction with HR.com. Web site professionals said they used the social networking site LinkedIn most often, followed by Yahoo! 360 and MySpace.
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Published by July 2nd, 2007
in gadgets and users.
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In 1980, when the 3M company introduced the Post-it, no one could have foreseen the effect the 3-by-5-inch yellow rectangle would have on domestic life. Its beginnings were folkloric: 40 years ago, Spencer Silver, a scientist at 3M, discovered the imperfect adhesive that would adorn the Post-it; it took another six years for Art Fry, another 3M scientist, to find the application for this half-glue, which came in a flash of inspiration after the bookmarks for his church hymnal kept falling out. And for years Post-its were marketed primarily for this purpose — as tools for capturing a thought or for marking a spot on a document, among other typically office-bound tasks — even as they were steadily migrating out of the office and into people’s homes (and garages), onto vertical surfaces like cabinets, refrigerators, dashboards, mirrors, walls, toilet seat lids, bathroom scales and the edges of pet food bowls.
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