CIL Notes: Moblie Practices & Search – What’s Hot!
[Mobile devices are] answer engines, not search engines.
–Megan Fox
Good morning session on the state of the mobile universe, as presented by mobile guru Megan Fox. As I continue to develop MPOW’s own mobile library services, it’s nice to see what’s out on the horizon. I’m a little concerned about the growing diffusion for application platforms – between iPhone, Android, and the newly launched BlackBerry store, it’s difficult to tell if we’re going to be able to create something that meets all our smartphone user needs. Definitely something to pay attention to.
Full notes after the jump.
Mobile Practices & Search: What’s Hot!
Megan Fox, Simmons College
144 million users use mobile data services – mobile or internet
Apple only holds 8% of mobile market share (due to data plan)
New mobiles available: 12mp camera phones
Facial detection, smile detection
touch-screen smart phone watch
Major players: iphone, android, blackberry, palm pre
iPhone: large screen, data plan, HQ audio and video
restriction: carrier, locked into AT&T
New iphone launches this summer, w/copy-paste, search of contacts, more
Blackberry: more universal – launched across multiple carriers
Android: as close to opensource as they can get
Palm pre getting ready to launch – rising phoenixlike from the ashes, synergy feature pulls all your contacts together and de-dupes your results. Allows you to keep multiple apps open (listen to pandora while texting, for example)
Modes of interaction: more than just keyboard-based
Visual access: camera as scanner – SnapTell – “extelligence” – knowledge derived from external services
where is SnapTell for libraries?
QR codes very popular elsewhere in the world
Audio interactions (Shazam for iPhone) – picking up sound and using it to give answers
iPhone Librarian app that monitors noise levels
Location-based interactions using GPS
Gesture-based interactions: using internal accelerometer
Surfing the mobile web- how people use mobile devices to access information
Internet capabilities – some with full internet, some not
Firefox mobile
Novar – browser can access Flash
Mobile web – m.*, mobile.*, now *.mobi
Most information not translated for small screen – transcoding – similar to machine translation
Guides for creating a mobile version: w3c
“Snacking the Web” – content for mobile needs to be short and easy to consumer quickly – “the casual web”
Quick answers, not deep research – flight status, not researching prices
What is most necessary for mobile users?
Best Buy – Find a store, search for a product
Optimizing for blackberry = catering to business users
OCLC’s mobile WorldCat
U of Houston checking out iPhones to give students an idea of what’s available
AirPAC redesign for iPhones
Suzanne Chapman’s Flickr
Mobile Apps – over 30k apps for iPhone
Games most popular, followed by entertainment, but then books
DCPL’s library app
Library app – finds closest public library
Traveling Classics – read-aloud public domain items
Kindle for iPhone – syncs with actual Kindle, too
Margins – organizes citations
International Children’s Digital Library – better than mobile website
Papers – fee-based federated search
NextBio – pubmed search
Charmin’s clean public restroom finder
App store for Android phones: small but growing
Scan app – will link to public libraries
Blackberry app store launched today
Mobile search – ready reference – “answer engine, not search engine” – get to information with as little typing as possible
Spoken/voice search
texting dwarfing calls by a huge ration by younger generation – up to 34 years old
Trash cans in boston will text
Libraries using texting – “Text this to me” feature
some built into ILS, some done from scratch – see mlibraries section of Library Success wiki
mlibraries conference in Vancouver this summer
Mosio – text a librarian feature
Leapfrog Blackberry-type device for 3 yearolds
SMS/Text search – google, yahoo, chacha, KGB
What’s next?
epaper, green
faster connections, longer battery life