Vollee is working to bring Second Life to your handheld. Amazing. Second Life will not work on most computers because of it higher requirements. To get it to work in a mobile environment seems questionable. However, this company has demonstrated their version and it seems to be true to the Second [...]
MeeboMe is an instant messaging program that does not require the user to have an IM account. Many libraries are using it on their websites to create a convenient way to contact the library staff.
A librarian from Calgary University has figured out a way to embed it on public computers. That way, when patrons are [...]
Jenny Levine at The Shifted Librarian posted about libraries that are starting to use instant messaging within their catalogs. When the patron is struck, it can provide an option to work with a real person. The Meebo Me widget seems to be quite popular for use at the end of a “no hits” search. Check [...]
LG hosted the National Testing Championship in Roseland, New York in April 2007. Each texter had to use a QWERTY keyboard phone and could not use T9 (a shortcut texting service). A phone was placed on a table in front of each participant. As soon as a phrase was flashed onto [...]
GAIM, the open source instant messaging aggregator, is now known as Pidgin. The second version of Pidgin is now out. Pidgin includes connections to many more IM programs than other aggregators I’ve seen:
AIM
Gadu-Gadu
GroupWise
ICQ
IRC
MSN
QQ
SIMPLE
XMPP
Yahoo
Zephyr
The name change from GAIM to Pidgin was necessitated by legal threats from AOL. The new name, Pidgin, is a corrupted [...]
At the 2006 Internet Librarian Conference, Amanda Etches-Johnson gave a presentation on “Tips & Strategies for Launching an IM Reference Service.” Although I didn’t go to the conference, her handouts are available and are very practical:
IM Reference Roadmap - how to set up an IM reference service
Setting Up IM Accounts — includes MSN, AIM, Yahoo!
Staff [...]
The current issue of Library Technology Reports provides an overview of best practices for implementing social software in libraries. Michael Stephens has authored the July/August 2006 issue “Web 2.0 & Libraries: Best Practices for Social Software.” The table of contents and a few key pages are available on the web. The cost is $63.00.
[Tame the [...]
As promised by the two companies last year, Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo’s Messenger with Voice (both instant messaging clients) can now interoperate on a basic level. If you use one of these two services, you can add contacts from the other service and chat with them without using a second IM service.
At [...]
Want to know which libraries are instant messaging? Check out IMalibrarian. You can find libraries by state. If you are IMing and you aren’t listed, you can email/IM Cynthia Wilson, who will add you.
If you’ve been following Meebo (a web-based instant messenger program that can work with multiple IM services), they’ve now added a single sign-on. Before, you would go to the Meebo site and log into each IM service separately. Now, you can create a sign-on for Meebo, which will automatically connect to all the [...]
