Monday, January 25, 2010

Still notetaking and linking

Most Popular Free iPhone Apps (and Posts) of 2009
via iLibrarian by Ellyssa on 12/23/09
based on lifehacker posts. library-related highlights here:
Stanza Turns Your iPhone into a Kindle, Kindle App Counters


CardStar Creates Scanner-Friendly Bonus Cards on iPhones
Lifehacker readers hate a bulging wallet, which is presumably why CardStar (iTunes link) resonated. The free app replaces keychain tags and wallet-cluttering bonus/discount/rewards/"shopper's club" cards with scanner-friendly barcodes that live on your iPhone. Users report mixed results in the App Store, but if it does the trick in place of your rewards card, it could be worth the download.

Dragon Dictation Does Voice-to-Text Transcription on Your iPhone


Gale databases iPhone application: another brick in the wall of the EBSCO vs. Gale debate
via Librarian in Black Blog – Sarah Houghton-Jan by Sarah on
Gale has announced a new iPhone application to help people use library resources. Building off of the AccessMyLibrary identity that Gale has promoted publicly,the application does two things:
detects physical library branches within a 10-mile radius of the user on demand
and uses a web product to connect people to the Gale online resources that their local libraries subscribe to.
The app is downloadable from accessmylibrary.com or from the iTunes store.

(beats EBSCO mobile all to heck, don't it?)


Statistics: Who Reads e-books in the U.S.?
via Stephen's Lighthouse by stephen on 12/23/09

Among the 2.1 million US adults who own electronic book readers, 56.3% are men and 43.7% are women. In addition, adults age 35-54 are the “sweet spot” for this product and are 20% more likely than average to own an electronic book reader.
E-book owners are 116% more likely than average to be heavy Internet users. Moreover, they are 199% more likely to have accessed the Internet using a Wi-Fi or wireless connection outside the home and 154% more likely to have accessed the Internet using a cell phone or other mobile device.


ReadWriteWeb's 2010 Predictions
via Stephen's Lighthouse by stephen on 12/23/09
There will be a breakthrough consumer application for Internet of Things - involving the iPhone, RFID tags and a major consumer product such as books or groceries.

A price war will erupt in the e-book market and Amazon.com will offer the lowest prices, leading to it gaining a dominant position in the market with its Kindle E-book Reader.

Google will partner with a large PC manufacturer from Asia, which will launch an inexpensive netbook powered by Chrome OS in the U.S. market. It will become a hot consumer item among school kids and university students.

2. Facebook will open aggregate-user-profile and social-graph data for outside analysis.
3. Some serious user interface innovations will blow our minds.
4. Data portability will become more real, standard, expected and viable.
5. A new social network will rise to join the big ones. It may offer the privacy that Facebook is moving away from; it may be mobile and location-centric; it may focus on personal content recommendations.

4. Cloud computing heats up. AWS, Google, Microsoft and others begin price wars to compete for customers.
5. The iPhone still rules and grabs more mobile market share than ever before.
6. Meanwhile, Android becomes the number two mobile platform by year-end.
7. iPhone app backlash begins. There are too many worthless apps and no decent way to find the good ones. Then Apple surprises us with a brand-new feature that improves greatly upon their "genius" offering to help us find new and useful apps via iTunes.

Facebook will become the Borg. Its number of users will continue to climb until the network is as ubiquitous as Google and lay people confuse Facebook with "the Internet." They'll make more money and control more data than ever before.
4. iPhone's exclusivity with AT&T will come to a breaking point and we'll see network-agnostic iPhones.
5. On the bright side, 2010 will signal the death of the login. Third-party authentications will become the norm, and user data will be entrusted to a discrete handful of online properties

The browser really will be the new OS.

3. Consumer-based social networks will make big efforts to gain wider access to the enterprise, as more companies seek to open up to the social Web. The information architecture of social networks will change to accommodate the greater degrees of control that the enterprise requires. This will bring on the rise of "social middleware" - services that act as a layer between social networks and the enterprise.
4. A new breed of social networks will emerge that act as one-stop shops for applications and services. These will look more like marketplaces than social hubs for conversations around the proverbial virtual water cooler. SaaS leaders will face off for this growing market.
5. iPhone, Android or the Blackberry? I expect the Android to be the talk of the enterprise, especially if the Google Phone does make it to market. Such a phone would eliminate carrier costs and break down walled gardens that have limited application development

5. iPhones and other smartphones become the purchasing tool of choice

Social analytics features explode onto the scene in 2010. Twitter opens Pro accounts, including analytics and an API to access them. Google strikes a deal to integrate Twitter analytics with its Google Analytics product.

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