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Study: Usability hampering mobile content adoption

Usability challenges, not pricing, are slowing the adoption of new mobile data services according to a new report issued by service adoption management vendor Olista. The study, based on statistical information documenting 11 million mobile users and hundreds of millions of usage events across five different mobile operator platforms, says that over 60 percent of mobile video and music downloads are made off-portal, which Olista argues graphically illustrates the pressures facing operators in luring subscribers to their own content offerings.

See Also: Ease-of-use Outranks Price As Key Barrier to Mobile Data Usage (via Celluar-News)

Easy-to-Use Database Blist Raises $6.5M

The product’s big selling point is ease-of-use: it has the versatility and power of a relational database, but it doesn’t require knowledge of programming languages like SQL, and it can be used like a normal spreadsheet.

Source: LocalTechWire.com

Direct to Blist

Can the library be a publisher?
by Leo Waaijers
A PowerPoint presentation at Openingscongres Bibliotheek, February 21, 2008

Source: Via Peter Suber’s Open Access News

Resources of the Week: A Dozen (Plus) Time Savers
First posted November 9, 2006.
By Shirl Kennedy, Senior Editor

Sometimes, going in through the back door — or a side door — is much more convenient than using the front entrance. I looked at my list of bookmarks the other day and I realized how many of them are back entrances, side entrances and alternative ways of accessing information. Some of these may be “old friends,” deserving of a re-visit, while others may be completely new to you. In no particular order…

1. Today’s Reports at www.gao.gov: Want to see the latest releases from the Government Accountability Office? Use this “daybook” page, which presents them in reverse chronological order. Simple but elegant.
2. Virtual Chase’s Database of Sources page offers a simple search box that allows you to query the site’s excellent collection of resources “for finding legal or factual information or information about companies or people.”
3. The GPO’s Internet Publications page lets you search only for “records for and links to Federal Government publications that are available online. Records date from July 1976 to the present.”
4. Open Source Web Design is a great place to find templates to use or modify if you need to put a web page together and you’re emphatically not a web designer. The advanced search page gives you a variety of interesting options, from a simple keyword search to the ability to search by color, contrast, number of columns and more.
5. We mention the superb Librarians Index to the Internet quite a bit here on ResourceShelf. Another venerable librarian-built directory — which concentrates on scholarly resources — is INFOMINE. I usually head right for the advanced search page, which offers a bunch of check boxes and dropdown menus that allow for a closely focused search — e.g., by field, subject area, type of resource and more.
6. The U.S. Department of State FOIA Electronic Reading Room is a particularly well-stocked fishing hole. Among other things, you’ll find directories and databases galore — including phone, fax, country offices, key officers, forms (e.g., passport, visa, etc.), regulations, international local holidays, declassified documents, and much more.
7. The large, diverse collection of Baker Library Research Guides, from Harvard Business School, is good starting point not only for those doing business or industry research. Anyone looking for international information will be dazzled by the extensive list of country guides. Each one includes links to such major reference sources as the CIA World Fact Book and the Library of Congress Country Studies as well as to some sites you may not be familiar with, and sites that are local to the specific countries. (Some resources are Harvard-only accessible.)
8. DefenseLink is the official gateway to U.S. military information, but it’s not the easiest site to use (although the search engine isn’t bad). I much prefer Navigating the Military Internet, an incredibly comprehensive and nicely organized site maintained by the Dudley Knox Library at the Naval Postgraduate School. (Another excellent choice: the Air War College Military Index to the Internet.)
9. Most of the photographs and images found on federal government websites are in the public domain and you can download and use them for free. If you drill down into the Reference Center at FirstGov, you’ll find a large, alphabetized list of links to image collections on government agency websites. The fishing is good here. (A possible alternative — the Creative Commons image search engine.)
10. A List of Every Website Statistic Publicly Available comes to us by way of the SEOmoz blog. For any web domain, you can look up technical information, ownership/hosting data, statistics/popularity data, search engine indexing data, link data, social tagging information, and more. Fascinating.
11. Just recently, I happened upon Zamzar, a free online file conversion site which supports four categories — document, image, music/audio and video. You upload a file from your hard drive, use the dropdown menu to indicate which format you want it converted to and, when it’s ready, you’ll receive an e-mail with a live link you can click on to download your converted file. The link will be good for 24 hours. There are a few not-terribly-burdensome file size, etc., limitations. Read the FAQ. Also check out DocMorph from the National Library of Medicine, which “allows users to convert more than 50 types of electronic files into 5 possible outputs” — PDF, TIFF, single page TIFF, text, synthesized speech. You can use the synthesized speech option to make your own audio books.
12. Have you ever had the frustrating experience of upgrading a software application and then discovering that the new version is buggier, more bloated, more resource-intensive, less convenient to use…whatever? Yeah…BTDT. OldVersion.com belongs in everyone’s bookmark list because, as the site says, “Newer is not always better.” Nothing fancy here — just 1203 versions of 114 popular freeware and shareware programs, organized by category: communications, graphics, multimedia, Internet (browsers), file sharing, utilities, security, enterprise and ftp. Alas, Windows only at this time, although the FAQ page says they are looking for contributions of Macintosh software. (If, on the other hand, you’re looking for the latest versions of Macintosh, Palm and Windows software, VersionTracker is the place to go. There are even RSS feeds.)

Postscript from Gary:
Here are a few more. Aimed at the growing number of mobile web users out there for whom time is often a key issue.
+ A
Compilation of a Few Favorite Mobile Web Resources and Tools
From finding the best seat on a plane (SeatGuru) to tracking Amtrak to Radio4PDA (listen to radio live on your PDA)
+ Guide to Wireless “Mainstream” Media Sources (#2)
+ Guide to Wireless “Mainstream” Media Sources (#1)

Answer to a frequent question. Want to Archive an Entire Site? Part of it? Try HTTRACK
Note: Frequent question two. Yes, a webmaster will likely notice your IP if you begin taking massive amounts of pages. To go “undercover” consider a proxy server or anonymizer.

Finally, ResouceShelf Beta File:
ZSlide, Send Attachments of Any Size Using P2P Technology
Beta Time: ZSlide, Send Attachments of Any Size Using P2P Technology

Four months ago zSlide released Podmailer: a simple software which enables one to send and receive e-mail attachments of any size without clogging e-mail boxes thanks to Peer-to-Peer transfers. Today podmailing.com introduces a new feature called “Podmail Express” which assures a fast and reliable delivery in every situation, for files up to 2GB. The files in transit are stored on a highly scalable infrastructure that we have built on top of the Amazon S3 web service.

Register for Podmailing (free).

SMU Will Host Bush Presidential Library
From the article:

Southern Methodist University will be home to George W. Bush’s presidential library.

Today’s announcement came after more than one year of exclusive negotiations involving the school in Dallas.

SMU’s board of trustees approved the official agreement with the Bush Foundation, which will manage construction and raise money for the project.

Source: AP

See Also: Official Announcement from Southern Methodist University

+ Mobifusion inks deal with Penguin Books (via FierceMobile)

Mobile media solutions provider Mobifusion announced it will partner with Penguin Books India, Asia’s largest English-language publisher, to make a range of Penguin content available via mobile handsets.

Ariadne Issue #54 is Now Online

Articles include:

+ Web 2.0 in U.S. LIS Schools: Are They Missing the Boat?

+ SWORD: Simple Web-service Offering Repository Deposit

+ Human-powered Search Engines: An Overview and Roundup

+ Ancient Cultures Inside Modern Universes

+ RepoMMan: Delivering Private Repository Space for Day-to-day Use

+ E-Publication and Open Access in the Arts and Humanities in the UK

+ Collaborative and Social Tagging Networks

The following is the text of a Frequently Asked Questions communication sent by Microsoft to all employees in its platforms & services division on february 22, 2008. It was sent by Kevin Johnson, President Microsoft Platforms & Services Division.

The FAQ discusses culture, bringing multiple brands together, how to act with Yahoo employees, and more.

National Science Digital Library: Shaping Education’s Cyberinfrastructure

As a National Science Foundation program, the NSDL is reaching maturity, but the library is already forging a strong link among research projects, which argues compellingly for continued NSF investment, although with new directions.

Source: IEEE Computer

Economics and Statistics Administration Reverses Shutdown Decision for EconomicIndicators.gov

EconomicIndicators.gov will continue operation. Last week, we noted that the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economics and Statistics Administration, which runs the economic data site, would be shutting it down due to budgetary constraints. This arrived in my inbox this morning:

ESA initially planned to discontinue the service due to cost concerns but given the feedback ESA received, the decision has been made to continue the site and improve its functionality.

A popular feature of the site is the calendar that links directly to economic indicators on the Census and BEA websites. By continuing the Economic Indicators (EI) site, the fifteen major indicators released by those bureaus will still be listed, along with links to the full text of each release. EI’s information will continue to be provided free of charge.

Source: OMB Watch

The Librarian Wins In The Data Breach David Vs. Goliath Battle

A Florida librarian—whose confidential data was apparently accessed in a databreach involving Wells-Fargo and Sprint Nextel—won his lawsuit against the two giants on Tuesday, when neither company bothered to send anyone to represent them at the hearing.

Source: StorefrontBacktalk (Evan Schuman)

Conversation with Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Larry Brilliant hosted by Tom Friedman

The chat titled, “World Economic Forum: A Climate Change Conversation” took place at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on January 25, 2007.

++ Video

++ Text Transcript
PDF.

Source: Google

+ PRISM 2.0 Specification Addresses Online and Multimedia Content

+ Google, Yahoo, Microsoft & Other Search Engines Must Comply With EU Privacy Rules (via SEL)

Fall Fare: The NISO ERM Forum
by Medeiros, Norm (2008)

Abstract: This article reviews the NISO E-Resource Management Forum held September 2007 in Denver, Colorado. The meeting brought together librarians, systems vendors, and serials agents to discuss issues surrounding electronic resource management systems (ERMS). Key topics
included interoperability, staffing, and workflows.

Source: OCLC Systems & Services 24.1; (via E-LIS)