• eBook checkouts already up 200% versus all of 2010 to more than 12 million and on pace to exceed 16 million
• Nearly 2 million new users signed up with libraries in the OverDrive network (on pace to nearly double in 2011 vs. 2010)
• Readers browsing on their smartphones and tablets grew significantly, as mobile checkouts increased to 21 percent of overall checkouts
• Installs of the free OverDrive Media Console application for eBook and audiobook reading and listening have passed 9 million, including more than 2 million on smartphones and tablets such as iPhone®, iPad® and Android™

Boopsie apps are available in all languages using the Latin alphabet. Customers are responsible for content translation. REFORMA chapters are available to assist libraries with Spanish language services. See the REFORMA website for a list of chapters. http://www.reforma.org

According to a recent Pew study, Smartphone adoption among Hispanics is among the highest in the country at 45 percent.

Full press release on PRWeb.
Visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prweb2011/9/prweb8792467.htm

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.

Google bought Motorola Mobility.

 In a move clearly designed to attempt to move Android forward, Google spends 12.5 billion dollars for Motorola Mobility, the company responsible for manufacturing the Droid line of Android phones and the Xoom tablet. This is the first time that Google has entered the hardware space, and put some doubt into what other hardware makers should expect from Google moving forward. In the past, the three big Android handset makers (HTC, Samsung, Motorola) were all competing to produce the best hardware that would run Android. Now HTC and Samsung have to believe that they will be second fiddle to Motorola in development and in how tightly Android can be tied to their hardware.

Why does this matter to libraries? As libraries increasingly begin experimenting with tablets and mobile devices, we need to be aware of what’s coming. This move can only improve the likelihood that the next Android device that you should be buying is a Motorola.

HP drops WebOS….and computers?

It came as a surprise that HP announced their decision to kill off their WebOS devision, although WebOS phones have been struggling, the Touchpad tablet wasn’t even 2 months old. Since the announcement, HP has softened the language somewhat to say that they are just getting out of the hardware game, and would be open to licensing WebOS to interested parties. This massive shift in focus has led to HP selling more Touchpads than ever, by dropping the price to (down from 9) and clearancing them like crazy.

Why should libraries care? Because at , I would expect to see a lot of patrons carrying these things around in the next few months. At least, a lot more than we saw before the price drop. The much larger story is that HP is selling off their computing group. HP is the largest personal computer company by sales in the world, larger than Dell, Lenovo, Asus, and everyone else. When the largest computer company in the world decides to stop selling computers, ostensibly because they can no longer make an appropriate profit in that realm, there is a major problem somewhere in the market. If your library primarily buys from HP when it comes to desktop systems, you’re going to be looking for another vendor very soon.

Steve Jobs resigns as CEO of Apple

In the typical Apple style, no one else can compete with the news out of Cupertino. This was the week that a lot of Apple faithful heard the news they’d been dreading for years….Steve Jobs has resigned as the CEO of Apple. Tim Cook, former COO of Apple, has been named as the new CEO, while Jobs will stay on as Chairman of the Board and Apple Employee. This is the second time in the history of Apple that Jobs hasn’t been CEO, and the first didn’t go well. For a decade between the mid-1980’s and 90’s, Jobs wasn’t at Apple, after being forced out by the Board of Directors. By 1997, with Apple’s stock at an all-time low, Apple decided to bring Steve back as interim CEO, and he turned the company into the behemoth that it is today.

I’ve been called an Apple fanboy, and in some ways I am. But even if you hate Apple, you can’t question how important Steve Jobs has been to the technology industry. He helped launch the first personal computer, the first computer with a mouse-based GUI interface, and when he was forced out of his own company he went and helped create the most award-winning and profitable movie studio in the world: Pixar. The iPod, the iMac, the iPhone, the iPad; all changed the world in a different way, and it would be difficult to find an individual who helped shape the technological world we live in more directly than Steve Jobs. Here’s hoping that his largest creation, Apple itself (depending on the day, the largest company in the world by market cap), maintains the course he’s set for it.

Jordan Blackshaw, 20, set up an "event" called Smash Down in Northwich Town for the night of 8 August on the social networking site but no one apart from the police, who were monitoring the page, turned up at the pre-arranged meeting point outside a McDonalds restaurant. Blackshaw was promptly arrested.

Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, of Latchford, Warrington, used his Facebook account in the early hours of 9 August to design a web page entitled The Warrington Riots. The court was told it caused a wave of panic in the town. When he woke up the following morning with a hangover, he removed the page and apologised, saying it had been a joke. His message was distributed to 400 Facebook contacts, but no rioting broke out as a result.

The Judge told the two at sentencing that their use of Facebook were “evil acts,” but many are questioning how disproportionate these sentences seem to be given all the bad players in the UK riots..

Vogel Internet, Information Technology and e-Discovery Blog

Vogel Internet, Information Technology and e-Discovery Blog

Matt Hawkins joined SirsiDynix in July 2007 as Chief Operating Officer, taking responsibility for customer support, consulting, and education services.  His portfolio expanded as other top-level positions were consolidated.  The April 2009 departure of Keith Sturges, President of SirsiDynix International and later Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, added the responsibility for worldwide sales and support to the COO position.  Hawkins now takes full responsibility for all aspects of the day-to-day operations of the company.

Gary Rautenstrauch, CEO since June 2007, steps into a newly formed Executive Chairman role.     In this new full-time position, Rautenstrauch will concentrate his efforts toward key strategic relationships, including library customers and business partners, and will represent the company in industry groups.  Unlike many exiting CEO’s that take ongoing interim responsibilities, Rautenstrauch characterizes his new role as full-time and ongoing.

Bill Davison returns to the company as Chief Operating Officer, filling the role vacated by Hawkins. Davison served as SirsiDynix Chief Sales and Marketing Officer from 2003 – March 2008.  In the interim Davison has served as Chief Operating Officer of Alpha Bay Corporation, founded by Jack Blount, former CEO of Dynix.  As Chief Operating Officer, Davison will take responsibility for worldwide sales, professional services, and customer support.

Other top-level positions remain unchanged.  Talin Bingham, Chief Technology Officer since April 2006, continues to head the software development efforts of the company.  John Gardiner appointed Chief Financial Officer in September 2009 will remains on board.

These changes in top-level positions at SirsiDynix do not necessarily signal a new direction for the company.  All the principles emphasized continuity of the company’s direction, with ever more focus on customer issues.  Hawkins mentioned that he is especially grateful to Rautenstrauch for his mentoring and for preparing him to take on this new level of responsibility.  

SirsiDynix remains under the ownership of Vista Equity Partners which acquired the company in January 2007.  One of the key strategies of the company under Vista has been to complete business and product integration, forming one seamless company.  Recent events have included consolidation of the company’s development and support operations in Provo, UT, winding down the satellite offices, remnants of its antecedent companies in St. Louis and Huntsville.  On the product front, the company indicates the upcoming SirsiDynix Symphony 3.4 expected to be released before the end of the year, represents a culmination of the integration of its flagship ILS products.  SirsiDynix reported that it has also seen strong momentum with Symphony, marked by its selection in 2010 by 107 libraries worldwide, including 27 new sites as well as 80 upgrading or migrating from other SirsiDynix ILS products such as Unicorn, Horizon, or Dynix.

Is an Internet Sales Tax coming?

Where a taxable transaction takes place on the Internet has always been a challenge. In 1992 the US Supreme Court ruled that retailers only had to collect sales tax in states where they have a physical presence. Congress is now considering Internet sales taxes as local government have lost significant tax revenues from Internet transactions. However, if I buy a book from Amazon which is in Washington state, the book may ship from Kansas, and the server on which I purchased the book could be in California. How can anyone figure out where the taxable event took place?

Vogel Internet, Information Technology and e-Discovery Blog

The paper is even thinner than when I subscribed. I wrote about canceling my subscription here in January of 2008. I have also noticed some of our library-related publications getting thinner and thinner with each month.

I had already seen the stories that interested me scanning my iPad news apps earlier in the morning or via our local NBC affiliate’s iPhone app.

I took a quick look at the online site for the paper and discovered some recent changes: the paper now has a mobile site for mobile devices, an iPhone application and a Twitter feed as well. I downloaded the app and added it to my news folder on the phone. The Twitter feed joined my local RSS feeds that sync across all of my devices.

Done with the newspaper, I went back to my iPhone to scan email and read some news. Great syncronicity – a fascinating article came into my aggregator from blogger Roy Greenslade at the Guardian. He reports on the coming demise of newspapers by “an Australian-based futurist, Ross Dawson:”

…newspapers will cease to exist in the US within seven years. They will die in Britain and Iceland in 2019, in Canada and Norway in 2020 and in Australia in 2022.

That’s going to be a bad period for ink-on-dead-trees because papers will also become extinct in Hong Kong, Finland, Singapore and Greenland the the following couple of years.

But France, due to governmental support for newspapers, will have papers until 2029 and Germany will last out until 2030.

Dawson has published a “newspaper extinction timeline” on his blog, along with his reasoning.

In 2008, I was called “the face of the newspaper industry’s business conundrum” by Rick Edmonds of the Poynter Institute  when a colleague found my post and sent it on to him for comment. I had “quit on print.” Now we have a futurist forecasting that print news in the US will be a faded memory by 2017 or so.

This , of course, makes me think of libraries. What will we put out on the tables every morning for folks who come in for coffee and news? Maybe some form of tablet, with an app that pulls in streams from local citizen journalists, local broadcast news, and bloggers.

What will become of the “clipping file” for those libraries still cutting and organizing. (I turned to my personal learning network on Twitter to guage if libraries still did such things for this post). I’m sure many libraries have digital version as well – as a few librarians reported. The print clippings are being thrown away as the clips are digitized.

Something else that’s even more exciting to contemplate is that the library could become a clearinghouse for local news via online communities of citizens. How would election coverage look then? How would scandal be reported?

Finally, I still haven’t “quit on print” – I am actually reading more than ever – the device and delivery just happens to be different. I’m getting more varied and interesting news stories, loads of commentary on subjects I follow, and the ability to share, remix and archive in my own way. Getting news stories via Twitter is a fave – now I can shoot the URL to my browser, Instatpaper, or to an archive for future use and sharing. So much wonderful stuff is available out there!

Well maybe I’ve quit print in the wrap up your fish and chips sort of way but I haven’t quit on content.

What about you, TechSource readers? What do you see for the future of news in your local libraries as print newspapers make that final march across the desert of extinction?

In the meantime I thought I would ask the woman behind the demo fests, an design researcher in my organization, to reflect on another piece of the TV+internet puzzle. Ashwini Asokan, who hails from Chennai via CMU, promised to talk about her personal experiences at home while surfing the internet. Her frustrations now have her serving up 5 design principles for a cool, desirable connected TV experience.

Every morning at 7 am, I open my web browser to read what’s going on in the world, check on stock prices and catch up with news and stories of new products in the consumer device market. There’s typically a coffee in the hand and most weekdays a plate of dosas (South Indian pancakes) while I call shotgun on my husband, for the bigger of the two chairs in the small den where our desktop sits. And you’d think I’d have perfected this routine given how I’ve done it every morning for the past few years. It’s quite a sight, I’m told! Between tearing my dosa pieces, eating them, sipping on my coffee, all with my right hand and scrolling / clicking with the mouse using my typically never-used left hand to read all that news … I invariably spill something, drop something, click on the wrong links and mess up the few minutes of ‘together time’ I’m trying to get with my husband while catching up with what’s going on in the world. I multi-task through the day like anyone else, but I wish this happy morning routine didn’t turn out this clumsy and awkward almost every day. And every one of those mornings, I see an article on yet another launch of a new connected TV, the ultimate ‘internet on your TV’ device or software, as they are typically referred to. And I of course wonder, does this mean I can now enjoy my internet news on TV? Are the days of this clumsy dance done?

The last 2 years have seen such a wide range of internet connected TV solutions come to market. These devices offer different kinds of internet on TV solutions and social media services which keep changing and growing with every new product introduced. Most of what you hear and see about them, is how they differentiate themselves based on the content services and feature set they provide consumers. While those are primary value propositions for any product, the missing ingredient often in the mix, is a desirable, ‘wow’-able 10’ user experience. What if I had an internet browser designed for my TV that allows me to cozy up to my plush couch with my hot dosas and coffee, instead of that chair in my tiny den?! What if I could interact with it using my voice and simple point and click remote control and have my news delivered to me in a visually compelling way so I don’t have to read miles and miles of text? What if I could actually have a decent conversation with my husband on the stuff we’re catching up on instead of cleaning the spills and seeing that “I told you so” look every morning?? Are we there yet?

Lounging in front of that with my dosas	vs.	my clumsy act in the tiny den

In my group, we strongly believe that compelling UI paradigms for browsing through content on TV can revolutionize the TV experience, make new usages like integrating broadband and broadcast content, relevant to consumers, and ultimately, render connected TV services as an appealing and exciting value proposition to the mainstream consumer. All of this, while holding on to what people have always loved about their TVs – its simplicity and sociality! And as a design researcher, while I never use myself as an example to sight what the end consumer or user desires, you can see why I can make an exception this time – I clearly need this as much as every other prospective consumer does. And it’s all the more of a reason I feel very passionate working on this along with my other design colleagues.

Ashwini’s 5 Design principles for internet + TV experience that makes for coffee, dosas, and a happy husband.
We’ve been working towards defining compelling paradigms for the 10’ browsing experience for the past few years, testing it with consumers and iterating them. Here’s a snapshot of the key design principles I believe are essential to a desirable 10’ open internet experience.
• Visual navigational elements: Visually compelling UI elements that can sit on top of the webpage providing a simple and Unintrusive mechanism for consumers to make choices on what to surf or search before landing on the webpage. Like the mobile industry, it will clearly take our TV industry a few years to begin seeing mainstream websites being published exclusively for TV. These visual navigational elements, whether in the form of widgets, apps or 3D menus help overcome that problem by focusing the user on other UI elements that can be overlaid on top of the webpage, keeping interaction with webpage itself, minimal.
• Access to an integrated and contextual content experience: Primary usages for surfing the web on TV include quick searches, online shopping, access to websites with heavy A/V content, access to internet content often not available on widgets or apps, amongst others. Consumers are not expecting to have an immersive, 2 hour reading of their favorite online news source on their TV. ‘Internet snacking’ as some of our research participants call it, is the primary use of the browser. It is important as a result, to ensure bringing together of both internet and broadcast content where relevant, whether its stats or highlights of simultaneous ongoing games related to the sport the user is watching, or juxtaposition of browser and TV in different view modes to ensure we don’t yank the user away from the TV experience completely. Someone recently mentioned to me that the killer experience on TV is TV, something we believe in strongly in our group as well. Creating a holistic experience integrating internet and broadcast content together in a compelling way, keeping at the heart of it what people love about their TVs, hence becomes a very essential design principle for the design of connected TV experience.
• Personalization: Getting lost and overwhelmed in the sea of the cyber world is not something people want while lounging on their couches in front of the TV. Developing personalized portals and redundant UI elements that serve up in different ways, just what you, the user wants to see from the internet will be key to opening up the browsing experience to mainstream consumers. TV is also a heavy social experience. People don’t expect to be indulging in private activities like updating on social networking websites or chatting with a friend when other family members are around. Providing single and group profile based content and features can often aid in establishing relevant experiences for the audience.
• Intelligent Search: Search, we believe, will be the primary usage of open browsing capability on TV. Providing viewers with predictive search results reduces the need to type full phrases which can be laborious while lying on your couch. Displaying search results visually, not textually, further enhances the searching function making it 10’ appropriate. Integrating search as part of the user’s ongoing activity and context can further enhance the search experience.
• Multiple input modalities: Last but not the least, providing simple features like voice search, point and click, and hard slide-out keyboard attached to the remote control will determine adoption of the connected TV products. In the absence of a compelling remote control, the experience of browsing on TV can fall apart for the consumer, and perhaps even slow its overall adoption.

We’re at the forefront of the industry, designing connected TV concepts and driving the smart TV industry towards next generation experiences. These principles help provide us with guidelines and tools as we continue to envision the future of connected TV. One look at our demos from IDF and CES, though, and I’m comfortable saying “I think we’re almost there”. I see myself very close to moving to my couch from my den, I see a happy husband, refreshing discussions on the news and gossip we catch up on the internet every morning and even more, like pulling in my brother and dad from across different parts of the globe to work up a steamy argument! I can’t think of a better way to start my morning. I hope you’re all as excited as I am about the possibilities, the change and the upcoming revolution on TV!

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