Archive for the 'Trends' Category

Raine’s Stats on Internet Use

April 16, 2008

Lee Raine of the Pew Internet and American Life Project spoke at the Computers in Libraries conference.  Always interesting, he provides us with more information to consider as we look at libraries and their place in our communities:

2000: 56% of adults used the Internet, 5% had broadband at home, 50% owned a cell phone, and [...]

Heated Pools Thanks to Data Centers

April 16, 2008

In Switzerland, a data center sits next to a local swimming pool. Keeping the equipment in the data center cool requires pushing cold air in and pushing hot air out. Instead of losing the hot air by pushing it outdoors, this data center is using it to heat the next door pool.
One of [...]

Proposals Over Twitter

April 11, 2008

Twitter, a service that allows you to send very short messages to one another, now has at been part of at least two marriage proposals.
March 2
@stefsull - “ok. for the rest of the twitter-universe (and this is a first, folks) - WILL YOU MARRY ME?”
@garazi - OMG - Ummmmm… I guess in front of the [...]

Gaming May Not Release Violent Emotions

April 11, 2008

An interesting study published in the journal Emotion goes against most research dealing with gaming.  According to this paper, if you kill your opponents in a game, you are likely to feel badly — not exultant.  If you are killed yourself, you are likely to feel a sense of pleasure.
The scientist has a couple of [...]

TV on Your Computer

April 11, 2008

It’s coming! In other countries, television programs and videos are already streamed to cell phones. However, here in the United States, it’s a little different.
NBC Universal and News Corp. have banded together to provide Hulu, a free Internet service which provides television shows and movies over the web. Some of their partners [...]

“In Plain English” Videos

April 11, 2008

If you’ve seen one of the “In Plain English” videos created by Common Craft, you’ll remember it. Using basic tools like paper, scissors, drawings and a creative mind, they create videos that explain complex ideas.
If you’re wondering what these topics are and have a few minutes to spare, you will be rewarded:

Twitter
Online Photo Sharing
Blogs
Social [...]

Obsolete Technology Skills

April 5, 2008

Want a trip down memory lane? There’s now a wiki of Obsolete Skills. As you can imagine, many, if not most, are technology skills. Each skill links to an overview of how to accomplish the skill.

Some of the skills include:

Archie
Blowing dust out of a Nintendo cartridge
DOS
ISDN
Library hand
Multiplication using a slide rule
Recording Windows [...]

Bedford Public Wins Teen Tech Award

April 5, 2008

Jean Green and Maria Redburn of the Bedford Public Library in Texas are one of 20 winners of YALSA’s Teen Tech Week Mini-Grants. Each winner received ” . . . $450 in cash and $50 worth of Teen Tech Week products to offer incentives, resources, and services to celebrate Teen Tech Week, March 2-8.”
Bedford [...]

Social Aggregation Sites

April 5, 2008

Do you have stuff all over the Web? Maybe a blog, a Flickr account, a MySpace account, a FaceBook account, a YouTube account, Twitter, follow many RSS feeds? Would you like all of this in one place? That’s what social aggregation sites promise to provide.
Although relatively new, I’ve seen Iminta and FriendFeed. [...]

Clothes That Read Your Vital Signs

March 27, 2008

Smartex is currently marketing the result of one of their research projects. “Wealthy” (wearable health care system):

. . . is a wearable fully integrated system, able to acquire, simultaneously and in a natural environment, a set of physiological parameters like electrocardiogram, respiration, posture, temperature, movement index.
It’s a wearable unitard that has electrodes and [...]