Thursday, October 23, 2003

Michael Robertson's SIPphones now unwired. Consumer 'Net telephony company SIPphone.com (founded by Michael Robertson of MP3.com, Lindows, etc) announced today the release of an adapter that allows you to plug in any cordless phone and go. Previously, if you wanted to use their service to make supercheap (basically free) international calls, both parties on the phone conversation had to have a SIPphone. Now, you can use a "regular" cordless, with adapter. A single SIPadapter can be purchased for $79.99 and a 2-pack is available for $149.99. Each SIPadapter comes immediately ready to use with no monthly fees or activation fees. There is also no per minute fees, so callers can avoid large long distance charges which means a SIPadapter can pay for itself in a very short time. There's background in this story I did for Wired News a few weeks back. [Boing Boing Blog] 8:45:26 PM

Picasa launches photo "Hello" digital photo communication thingy. Two words that explain why this -- and similar new services I'm seeing of late -- are so important: Image conversations. Online consumer digital-photo-organizer service Picasa just launched a new realtime share feature called Hello. I had a chance to sit down with Picasa/Hello CTO Michael Herf for a demo over coffee a few weeks ago, and was totally blown away by it. Don't think there's a Mac version yet, but for Windows users, it is most certainly teh win. Snip from the press blurb: 'Hello' opens an entirely new way of sharing photos with friends and family through it's' private Peer-to-Peer network. Through this live experience, users connected via the internet are able to instantaneously share photos, and provide each other with immediate feedback using 'Hello's' chat function. 'Hello' simulates the experience of sitting down on the couch with a friend and showing them your photo album. This integrated software program eliminates email attachments so your readers can bring the highest quality of photos to life while allowing its users to organize, edit, make and share through its own private network Link [Boing Boing Blog] 8:44:20 PM

Big Screens Open Windows on World. Giant public video-conferencing systems are coming soon to two European capitals. In a decade, they could be all over the world, providing an ultra-realistic portal into select urban centers. By Leander Kahney. [Wired News] 8:33:33 PM

Animation in SDL: OpenGL. SDL, the cross-platform multimedia toolkit, is powerful enough to have brought over 40 commercial games to Linux. While it has its own graphics primitives, it also supports the popular and powerful OpenGL API. In the third of a series of articles, Bob Pendleton introduces OpenGL and demonstrates how to use it in your SDL programs. [O'Reilly Network Articles] 8:22:43 PM

Apple's Knowledge Navigator revisited. During my session at BloggerCon I referred to Apple's famous Knowledge Navigator concept video. I first saw that video in 1988. Today I tracked down a copy and watched it again. It stands the test of time rather well! Certain elements of that vision are now routine -- for example, Google found me the video and WiFi delivered it to a PowerBook which, when equipped with its iSight camera, bears a family resemblance to the Dynabook-like talking computer featured in the video. Other aspects are still far out of reach, especially the conversational interface based on deep understanding of natural language. ... [Jon's Radio] 7:55:50 PM

Open WorldCat Project!. In response to my BloggerCon comments, Bill Brembeck from OCLC sent me the following message: "We began efforts in June of this year running through June 2004, which we have named the 'Open WorldCat' pilot. The purpose is to determine the feasibility of a new service to raise the visibility of libraries to information seekers on the Web. OCLC has completed initial communications for the pilot to our member libraries. Web services participating in the pilot will provide links to WorldCat library ownership information. Participants in addition to BookPage include: Abebooks, Alibris, Antiquarian Booksellers of America, and HCI Bibliography.... As to more details, right now all I can say is that we intend to aggressively expand the scope of the pilot which would potentially increase the list of partners. We should have more news to report later this Fall. We are also working on a public website that will provide further details on the pilot and which should be available shortly." Sure enough, if you search any of those sites, there's a "find in libraries" button that takes you right into WorldCat based on a zip code you enter. It's not perfect, but it's a sight to see (or is that a site to see?!) and is certainly a step in the right direction. It must set a cookie, too, because now when I go from site to site, it automatically brings up libraries from the zip code I originally entered. Each library listed also gets links for a "map" and "library info." Unfortunately, you can't directly request the item from this page and to view the status of it (available or checked out), you have to manually re-run the search in the library's native catalog. Plus there's the standard caveat that non-OCLC library holdings are not represented (duh). Still, it's an evolutionary step forward to see WorldCat being put to good use like this out on the open web. Especially when taken in context with news of a Google-OCLC partnership: Google to Contain Holdings Records? "It says Google, OCLC, and Gale have announced new partnerships that will help highlight the resources of libraries for Internet searchers: The Google/OCLC partnership will involve OCLC making a subset of OCLC WorldCat records available for indexing by Google as part of a pilot project. Holding information attached to the WorldCat records will be retrievable, so Google searchers will be able see which libraries in their area own copies of the particular title. Directors of MINITEX/OCLC libraries will soon receive a letter providing more information about this pilot project." [LISNews.com] Again, this is all just a start, but it's an important first step. As we say at SLS, "baby steps." I will be watching the Open WorldCat pilot project quite closely, and hopefully we'll start seeing some of the potential materialize. Congrats to OCLC on this one! [The Shifted Librarian] 6:06:31 AM

Kalamazoo PL Offers Streaming Videos (In-house). I was searching the Kalamazoo Public Library's web site for information about their MP3 audiobook program (using Audible), because they used to offer some statistical reports and I wanted to see if they have been updated. I can't find anything recent about that, but in the Audiovisual link I did find the following note: "STREAMING VIDEO HAS ARRIVED!  In collaboration with United Streaming, KPL now has hundreds of educational video selections available for online viewing in our AV department.  Additional viewing stations can be found at our downtown location in the Children's Services and Teen Services areas, and at all branch locations - call or visit library staff for more information." I'll have to find out more about this, but I wonder how far off we are from streaming videos outside of the library.... Very nice! I think I'm going to have to take a field trip to KPL someday! [The Shifted Librarian] 6:05:14 AM

© Copyright 2003 Ted Ritzer. Last update: 11/2/2003; 11:29:22 AM.