Old Maps app for iPhone

Old Map App allows an iPhone user to explore the effects of time on geography and urban development. While it isn't in general release quite yet, you can register at the site and you will be notified when it is released or when beta testers are needed.

The application displays layers of geo-referenced historical maps projected onto a modern coordinate system, so that the same location can be compared over time. Layers can be faded, adjusted, and explored freely. If the user is located within the region of the historical map, the user's position will be mapped on the old maps to the position of the compass indicator.

Several maps of New York City & Region are included from the 17th to 19th centuries. All are high-resolution images from the Library of Congress. I am an old map nut and can not wait!

A metaphor for so many things

Thanks to TYWKIWDBI for at least half the inspiration

Libraries of the Future

In a library environment which is increasingly moving to the delivery of online rather than print resources, what of the academic library’s traditional place at the heart of campus life? What about the impact of repositories and open access on the delivery of library resources? And the need to digitise and make more widely accessible key scholarly resources? And what of the calls for libraries to play a central role in the promotion of ‘information literacy’?

Through ‘Libraries of the Future’, the UK's Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) is hoping to explore these and many other questions, to open up - with partner organizations and librarians themselves - a debate about the future of the academic and research library.

Your Tweets can get you sued!

TG Daily carried an article this morning that referenced a lawsuit filed by Horizon Realty Group against a tenant after she complained about mold in her apartment via Twitter.

The real estate firm says it stumbled across the tweet while defending a class action lawsuit Amanda Bonnen filed against it last month. It is now filing a libel lawsuit against Bonnen.

The tweet read: "Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon Realty thinks it’s okay."

Apparently water leaked into several apartments when a contractor made mistakes with roof repairs and, in a statement, Horizon says the apartment wasn't moldy - just damp. I am pretty sure a damp apartment is a moldy apartment. Lord, do you think they will sue me?

Horizon Realty's manager, Jeff Michael, had this to say about the lawsuit:

"We’re a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization".

Just fills you with warm fuzzies doesn't it.

From Fast Company:

It may all sound trivial, but the reality is that your tweets are under scrutiny. In December, the National Law Journal reported that Twitter conversations don't really differ from letters, emails or text messages, calling them "damaging and discoverable."

This isn't the first time something like this has happened. In 2008, a Yelp user faced a defamation lawsuit for posting a poor review of a chiropractor. And just earlier this year, a New York teen who said she was harassed by classmates on Facebook (she said they created a Facebook group that made false claims about her) sued not only her classmates and their parents, but Facebook itself.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which works to defend digital rights, states on its Web site that bloggers (and technically, Twitter is a blog) are entitled to free speech, and "internet bullies shouldn't use copyright, libel or other claims to chill your legitimate speech."

We'll see how this pans out, but in the meantime, be careful what you tweet.

Are eBooks Apple's next frontier?

Having sold more than 6 billion songs to date, the iTunes Store has revolutionized the music industry. It also turned mobile software into a goldmine via the iPhone’s App Store, which recently surpassed 1.5 billion downloads. Apple has yet to enter the e-book market, but it is a short hop from music and software to literature. eBook downloads is the obvious next step for the entertainment mogul Apple has become. Lookout Amazon. To quote Wired:

"What can Apple do better with e-books? For textbooks or anthologies, Apple can give iTunes users the ability to download individual chapters, priced between a few cents to a few bucks each. It would be similar to how you can currently download individual song tracks from an album. It might even have the same earthshaking potential to transform an entire industry by refocusing it on the content people actually want instead of the bundles that publishers want them to buy. (Of course, Apple would likely offer the à-la-carte purchase model in addition to the option to purchase the entire book as one download — a more attractive option for shorter works such as novels.)"

"College students would love this: Teachers rarely assign an entire textbook, so they would save hundreds of dollars by downloading only a few chapters of each textbook. Apple is already popular in the education sector, so here’s even more money to milk from students, with the textbook industry worth an estimated $9.8 billion."

"Sci-fi fans might only want one story from an anthology, or a historical researcher might target certain subjects. All Apple has to do to secure the book publishers’ enthusiastic cooperation is to offer them a generous cut of the revenues, like the 70 percent it currently offers app developers."

When Wired asked students about their interest in Amazon’s large-format Kindle DX reader. Several of them said they couldn’t imagine ditching textbooks for a Kindle DX, foreseeing challenges with tasks such as notetaking, highlighting and switching between books while writing essays.

If its interface and capabilities are anything like the iPhone’s, a touchscreen tablet would make these student-oriented tasks as easy as a few swipes and taps — far more pleasant than clunking around with the Kindle’s cheap buttons and sluggish interface. Also, students would be able to type their papers on the tablet.

Finally, an Apple tablet would have color, making it better for displaying magazine pages, which could also be purchased through the iTunes Store. It wouldn’t be saddled with a slow e-ink screen, so it could display video and browse the web.

More from Wired:

"Let’s not forget to mention the multitude of other tasks an Apple tablet will likely be able to perform if developers decide to code applications for it. Think along the lines of an interactive remote control to enhance the movie-viewing experience on your TV, or a music video player to accompany the tunes blasting from your stereo. Or, heck, even an album-cover display screen for you to gaze at while listening to music. (For more on an Apple tablet’s advantages versus current e-book readers, see Dylan Tweney’s story “Large-Screen Kindle Won’t Mean Squat if Apple Tablet Arrives.”

The market for Apple here is huge. The challenge lies in establishing the right partnerships. If Apple weaves e-books into the iTunes Store, will book publishers hop on board? Given Apple’s success in numbers, probably.

Social-media skills and job hunting

Having recently posted about BestBuy's 250 Twitter followers requisite for a marketing position, we now notice the Atlanta Journal and Constitution has published a piece about the growing significance of a "social presence" in the résumés of those applying for positions in advertising, marketing or communications. It seems the horse is definitely out of the barn and you Twitter-haters are gonna be trampled. The article cites several recent job listings in the Atlanta market:

A senior account executive position at Softscribe Inc. requires “5 years Tech PR Agency Record + Twitter.”

Mosaic Sales Solutions describes the “key characteristics” of its ideal Atlanta market training specialist as “an avid user of the Internet, blogs, Twitter and/or has a facebook page or other social networking account.”

Valtech Technologies seeks an Atlanta scrum master/project manager whose critical responsibilities will include “social collaboration including work spaces like Wiki’s, blogs, Twitter, etc.”

“It is now the rage,” said Brett Stevens, president of SearchLogix recruiter company. “Do you Facebook? Do you Twitter?”

Stevens said social media skills are particularly important for jobs in tech business, sales, public relations and media. In non-marketing or PR jobs, Stevens said, social media skills are not as critical, but they can indicate to employers how technologically savvy an applicant is.

“They just want to know can you do it,” Stevens said. “It’s not a must-have.”

"This social media craze among employers is creating some complications for job applicants and employees such as blurring the lines between personal and professional lives", said Bob Van Rossum, president of MarketPro, a marketing recruitment company,

“Facebook pages aren’t about business, they’re about you as a person, but how people perceive you as a person will ultimately impact how they perceive the place where you work,” Van Rossum said. “It’s a very complicated challenge.”

Van Rossum’s advice to job applicants? Use social media to search for jobs and use your own Facebook pages and Twitter accounts to protect your “brand” image.

Van Rossum said his company uses Facebook, blogs and LinkedIn to advertise positions and “reach people where they are,” and that social media provides opportunities to show you’re an expert in your field by generating interesting content that will get you noticed by employers.

Duke University's Archive of Vintage TV Ads

AdViews is a digital archive of thousands of vintage television commercials dating from the 1950s to the 1980s. These commercials were created or collected by the ad agency Benton & Bowles or its successor, D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (DMB&B). Founded in 1929, Benton & Bowles was a New York advertising agency that merged with D'Arcy Masius McManus in 1985 to form DMB&B. Major clients included are Procter & Gamble, Kraft, Schick, Vicks, and Post, among others. Commercials will be added in phased batches over several months in 2009.

Unfortunately, the videos are only available on an iTunesU channel, which allows for downloading but not much else. The archive is still a work in progress, though, and greater accessibility is planned for the future.

The Associated Press auto-flagellates

As further proof that the print media just doesn't get it, Richard Perez-Pena, reporting for the NYT on the AP’s latest announcement regarding their attempt to restrict their articles from being linked to or appearing in search results writes (I read it online, btw...):

"Tom Curley, The A.P.’s president and chief executive, said the company’s position was that even minimal use of a news article online required a licensing agreement with the news organization that produced it. In an interview, he specifically cited references that include a headline and a link to an article, a standard practice of search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo, news aggregators and blogs."

And:

"Each article — and, in the future, each picture and video — would go out with what The A.P. called a digital “wrapper,” data invisible to the ordinary consumer that is intended, among other things, to maximize its ranking in Internet searches. The software would also send signals back to The A.P., letting it track use of the article across the Web."

Full NYT Article here.

Trompe-l'œil video projection on a building - amazing!

OK, this has to have some information science applications. Truly amazing!



Found at BoingBoing

Had to post....

Things to do with books other than (or after having) read them.

We are NOT advocating in any way the destruction of books, but these seemed clever and provocative. A few more here.

Wheel of Lunch

Enter your ZIP, select a meal or cuisine (Chinese, Seafood, etc.) and
Give it a Spin!

Usability, accessibility and affordance.

I have recently been associated with a workgroup that is evaluating our organization’s web-based products and services for accessibility and to help chart a course for the organization that will lead us to develop new products and services with accessible usability (!) in mind. That has caused me to revisit my personal understanding of the concept of “universal accessibility” and to try and better understand its implications for our organizational future.

For many of us designers, accessibility is often served by a small, nondescript hyperlink usually at the bottom of a web page that leads to a Section 508 statement which sounds something like: “We are committed to making our site accessible to everyone. Contact us if you have any problems accessing any of our content.” While that may be in the spirit of accessibility, it certainly falls short of the ideal. And, very often we wait for criticism or comment before expending the effort required to address accessibility issues. Basically, “if they ain’t complaining...it ain’t broke.”

It was helpful to remind myself of the differences between universal and accessible design, and there are many. To further muddy the water, there is another term that is bantered about in this arena and that is “affordance”. Affordance refers to an object’s inherent understandability. If a user can look at a web page (or cell phone, for that matter) and intuitively understand how it works and what actions need to be taken to get desired results - then the design is good and universally usable - right? Nope - that is affordance. I may understand that certain buttons on my cell phone need be pressed to reach my desired party, but if I have no fingers that knowledge does me little good. On the other hand, curb-cuts - those wheelchair-friendly ramps at street crossings and the like - not only benefit those rolling in wheelchairs but also benefit parents with strollers, movers with dollies and me on my speed skates. That is universal design. When affordance meets universality there is often a true accessibility. (Just kidding about the skates).

So, is a universally accessible design always the best solution? Not necessarily, and that is a point frequently driven home in my day to day work as a web designer for it is not always required that we build to the least common denominator, and it is often simply wrong to do so. What may seem obscure and confusing to a casual web user or one accustomed to doing things in a particular way, may seem efficient and intuitive to the savvy users you are addressing with your latest product. The key to that dilemma is to understand completely who your customer is and what his expectations and capabilities are. It seems we often miss that.

All that said, it is almost always better to develop products with accessibility in mind - not just for those who “need” it, but for all of us who may simply use it. We should stop thinking of all of this in an “us” and “them” context and focus on doing what is best for everyone. Usually.

BestBuy expands their Twitosphere

As a follow-up to our previous post regarding BestBuy and Twitter the electronics retailer is encouraging hundreds of employees to handle online customer service and company promotions via Twitter. Twelpforce was debuted over the weekend but so far hasn’t garnered a lot of notice. Currently it has less than 2000 followers.

Best Buy employees can use their company and Twitter ID to register for the service, after which tweets from all of them will be displayed in a single stream on the same page.

Once registered, tweeting Best Buy employees from across all operations can send messages from the @Twelpforce account, and if they add the hash-tag #twelpforce, their messages will automatically show up under the twelpforce handle with a credit to their proper Twitter account.

I am not really sure how I feel about all of this except to say it is at least encouraging that the company is trying to engage customers. We'll see.

Barnes & Noble launches eBook store

With what the company claims is the world’s largest eBook store, holding more than 700,000 titles, Barnes and Noble has entered the downloadable e-Book market in a big way. Furthermore, Barnes & Noble said that it will have exclusive rights to distribute Plastic Logic’s fantastic reader device, which may be the Kindle’s biggest threat today.

More than 700,000 titles are available, which, according to Barnes & Noble, include “hundreds of new releases and bestsellers at only $9.99.” More than one million titles will be available by next year, “inclusive of every available eBook from every book publisher and every available eBook original,” the company said. The current stock also offers more than a 500,000 public domain books from Google, which can be downloaded for free.

Barnes & Noble uses and upgraded version of its eReader application, which was part of the company's Fictionwise acquisition earlier this year and is available for the iPhone and Blackberry smartphones, as well as regular Mac and Windows computers.

List of common misconceptions

The sad reality is that much of what we "know" is simply wrong. Hardly a day goes by without someone, usually me, espousing some half-truth we have heard most of our lives but which we have never bothered to verify. You want examples? Well, here you go:

• Cinco de Mayo is Mexican Independence Day. Wrong.

• Napoleon Bonaparte was short. Wrong.

• Searing meat seals in moisture. Wrong.

• Naked exposure to the vacuum of space means immediate death. Wrong.

• Exposure to cold or wet weather increases the likelihood of catching a cold. Wrong.

• The Bible says God made Eve from Adam's rib and it was an Apple that Eve ate that caused so much trouble. Wrong...and, wrong.

It is almost depressing how often we are just plain wrong. Much more illumination here courtesy of Wikipedia.

Restore the noble purpose of libraries

Community college librarian William H Wisner worries that librarians focusing to much on technology may be deconstructing the very libraries they serve.

"Libraries were once a sacred secular space of silence and reverence – a place where one automatically lowered one's voice ... a testament to the self-evident integrity of mankind, the belief that we all desire to find the truth through knowledge ... before libraries became the noisy computer labs they now are, with their jingle of ringtones, clattering keyboards, and unquenchable printers. And we reference librarians had a higher, more dignified calling than merely changing the printer paper."

He offers ideas for restoring the higher calling of knowledge over information.

William H. Wisner has been a librarian for 22 years. He is the author of "Whither the Postmodern Library?"

Probability Theory, the Birthday Paradox, Web Security and Free Beer

On the off-chance that the above doesn't make it crystal clear for you, what I am trying to say is the probability that in a set of randomly chosen people some pair of them will have the same birthday. In a group of at least 23 randomly chosen people, there is more than 50% probability that some pair of them will both have been born on the same day. For 57 or more people, the probability is more than 99%, and it reaches 100% when the number of people reaches 366 (by the pigeon hole principle, ignoring leap years). The mathematics behind this problem leads to a well-known cryptographic attack called the birthday attack, often discussed as a potential weakness of the internet's domain-name service system and digital signatures.

Actually, I don't really care about all of that, but was trying to figure the odds of winning a bar bet and a free beer by exploiting the stats.

This should be fun....Microsoft to open retail stores "right next to Apple"!

I'll quote Fast Company right out of the box:

Why is it that everyone competing with Apple chooses to compete on Apple's terms? If you've got to beat Lance Armstrong at something and you get to choose the game, would you really roll up to his front door, pedaling your Huffy?

I am completely willing to eat crow a year from now if proven wrong, but this can not possibly end well for Microsoft. After all, this is the company that brought you the brown Zune, a device so repugnant that a hollowed-out example was billed as the perfect place to safely hide your iPod as NO ONE would want to steal it.

While store designs have not been revealed, their recent "concept" store on the Redmond campus manages to look exactly like the love child of a Circuit City and a Walgreens, to again quote Fast Company.

Speaking at the Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans on Wednesday, Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner told people to "stay tuned" for more news on the retail front.

"And stay tuned, because we're going to have some retail stores opened up that are opened up right next door to Apple stores this fall," he said. "Stay tuned, just stay tuned."

I can't wait.

Nokia Fail - profits down 66%

OK, I know Nokia is big in Europe and that their smartphone share is hovering around 40%, but this can not be good news for the Finnish firm (no pun). In a recently released performance statement, the company turned in a second quarter net profit of €380 million on sales of €13.15 billion - that compares badly with a net profit in the same period last year of €1.10 billion on sales of €13.15 billion. The statement also predicted that volumes for the third quarter will be about the same as for the second quarter, and overall the entire mobile industry is expected to fall 10 percent from levels in 2009.

Originally, Nokia had expected market share to rise in 2009, presumably based on a successful launch of the N97 flagship device. However, the N97 has been almost universally panned as out of date, cumbersome and behind the curve. Furthermore, Generator Research says that Nokia's smartphone marketshare will plummet from over 40 percent today to only 20 percent by 2013. On the other hand, they predict that Apple will hit 33 percent market share by that point, matching Nokia sometime in 2011—just two years away—with 77 million phones. There is always a chance that Nokia could pull out of the slide, but it will take something a lot more compelling than the N97. And, that 77 million number that Apple needs to hit is looking pretty big - even for an admitted fanboy like me.