Rich's Random Thoughts

Here’s a link to the outline of the Mobile Computing Discussion I’m leading today at the UVic Libraries.  Once I’ve cleaned up the notes, I’ll post them below:

Reading List for Mobile Computing and the iPad Discussion:

• Reminders From Out of the Blue [please take note of the location features] – David Pogue
• Urbanspoon iPhone App Adds Augmented Reality – Barb Bybwad
• QR codes for libraries – some thoughts – Aaron Tay
• Evernote for iPhone – Jeffery Battersby
• Looking at the iPad From Two Angles – David Pogue
• What are mobile friendly library sites offering? A survey. – Aaron Tay
• Amazon.com’s Kindle fails first college test – Amy Martinez

Read more…

Introduction to the Survey Results

In addition to the technology questions we’ve been asking UVic law students over the past seven years, we decided to ask some extra questions about the increasing important mobile technology that students are arriving at Law School equipped with.  One major change to the methodology of this survey compared to past years is that we sent the survey to all students at the law school, not just first year students.  The response rate was 25% this year rather than close to 100% in previous years.

[Note: if you have problems seeing any graphs on this page, please look at the underlying Google Doc's page for this blog post]

Executive Summary:

• 30% of students own “Smart Phones” that can browse the internet.
• 97% of students own laptops, and over 60% own both a laptop and a desktop computer.
• 39% of student laptops are Mac’s.
• The average laptop price dropped to $1,200 from $1400 in 2007, and from $2,100 in 2004.
• All students now report having high speed internet in their homes.
• 82% of students bring their laptops to school almost every day.
• 86% of students own MP3 players capable of listening to recorded lectures.
• 54% of students use Gmail as their primary email account, 18% use UVic email and 15% Hotmail.
• 58% of students identified MS Word as their favorite tool for collaborative document editing.  27% chose Google Docs, 5% OpenOffice Writer & 10% “Other”.
• 100% of students now have access to high speed internet at their homes.
• 86% of students use Facebook and 65% of those students would like to see law school events and activities published on Facebook as well as through the online faculty calendar of events.

Read more…

You may have noticed the new sign outside the Law Library computer lab with the funky looking bar code on it (a QR Code).  What does it do?  It allows our patrons who have a smart phone (like an iPhone or BlackBerry) to download a free application (NeoReader), and then take a picture of the bar code with that app… The app then launches their smart phone’s web browser and takes them to the room schedule page so that they can see when the lab is booked for classes.  While this is useful, it hopefully will be a lot more useful once we are using the Main UVic Library’s room booking system, so that students will be able to check the availability of a room, and then book it from their cell phone while standing in front of the room.

This is just a trial to see what sort of uptake we get from students, and how helpful they find it. Some other possible uses for this technology in the library are:

• Study room availability and room booking as I already mentioned.
• Library tours – posters in different areas of the library with the bar codes so that students can access information relevant to that particular space. Audio tours can also be provided this way.
• Library Maps – Instead of just a map that has, Reference, Reserve, Computer Lab on it, put QR codes for each area that has a web page, so that the patron can go directly to that web page for more information.
• SMS reference service via a 2D bar code on the library web site.
• Library Reviews – if someone has done a review on a book or item, a bar code can be put on that item, linking to the review.
• Event Posters – if there is a web page associated with an event, a bar code linking to that web page can be put on the poster.
• Link to Phone number on a web page so people don’t have to dial the number on their phone.

While installing the bar code scanner app on an iPhone is quite easy, it remains to be seen how many students have a smart phone capable of reading the bar codes, and how many of those students will actually find this useful. I just sent a survey out to law students, asking in part what cell phone they use, so we should have some good data on the number of students who have a device that can read the 2D bar codes in a week or two.

I have also spoken briefly with Ben Naylor about how the LSS might find this technology useful in their communications with students.  If multiple organizations in the Fraser building begin to use it, and enough students have cell phones that can read the 2D bar codes, we can hopefully make all our lives a little bit easier.

If you want to create a 2D bar code, here is a link to a free QR Code Generator that anyone can use.  Let me know if you have any other ideas on how we could use this technology!

Do you want the good news or the bad news first?  I’ll start with the good news: Google Voice is the best thing that has happened to phones (including cell phones) and voice mail in decades… and it’s another free Google service!  The bad news: It is only available if you live in the United States.  So that means I cannot use it here in Canada where I live.

So for those of you living in the US, feel free to go to the Google Voice “Invite” website, and request an invite.  If not, take a seat on the bench beside me and wait for Google to roll out the service here in Canada.  Google has publicly stated that they will make Google Voice available in other countries, but have not given a time-table. So what are we missing?

Here are a couple more videos that talk more about specific benefits, and I’ll copy some text from the Google website outlining the features of Google Voice that explain why I think it is so revolutionary:

Use Google Voice with your existing number and get:

• Google voicemail: voicemail like email
• Voicemail transcription: read what your voicemail says
• Custom greetings: vary voicemail greetings by caller
• International calling: low-cost calls to the world
• Notifications: read voicemail messages via email or SMS
• Share voicemails: forward, embed, or download voicemails

Add a Google number to get these additional features:

• One number: a single phone number that rings all your phones
• Free SMS: send, receive & store text messages online
• Block calls: send unwanted callers straight to voicemail
• Record calls: record phone calls and store them online
• Conference calls: join several people into a single call
• Screen callers: hear who is calling before you pick up

Twice in the past two weeks, I’ve gone to stores in order to purchase specific items, but was been shocked at how high the in store prices were.  Both times I quickly pulled out my iPhone and checked the price of the item I needed to purchase at Amazon.ca, and then purchased it online while still in the store.

On my first shopping trip I was looking for toner for my Lexmark 250DN.  At Staples, the toner I needed cost $150!  Can you believe that!  I only paid $250 for the printer, and now they want to charge me $150 for the toner.  A quick check at Amazon.ca showed the exact same toner costing $105.  I ended up saving $45 dollars. If I had just purchased it directly from Amazon in the first place, I would have saved  another $5 or more in gas for the trip to the store.

The second “in store, online purchase” incident took place last night.  Our son had asked us to purchase Assassin’s Creed 2 for the xBox 360 for him.  At EB Games in our local shopping mall, they were asking $70 for the game.  My iPhone informed me that Amazon.ca was selling the game for $57.  The kicker was that they didn’t even have the game in stock, so I simply purchased it from Amazon.ca as we walked away from the store.  I later learned that if you purchased the game from the EB Games online store you would only have to pay $60 (plus shipping… no shipping charges with the Amazon purchase).

New iPhone programs are making this type of comparison shopping easier and easier. RedLaser for example lets you scan bar codes and look up pricing (american pricing only for the time being).  SnapTell is another program that allows you to take pictures of products and get Amazon.com pricing for them, along with product reviews.  The product review can be very helpful, especially if you are not very familiar with the product you are trying to purchase.

There is real value in being able to go to a store and consult with someone about the purchase you are going to make.  There is also real value in being able to take something home right a way, if you need it in a hurry.  If I’m not in a hurry, and I feel that the price difference is too great, I for one am not afraid to walk away from a store and make my purchase online.

I’ve been using RunKeeper for 7 months now and love it!  RunKeeper is an iPhone application that maps your runs for you via the GPS device built into all  iPhone 3G and 3GS’s.  You can look at your iPhone during your run to see what your pace is and how you are doing time wise (see the image to the right for an example of what you would see during a run). The paid version of the application reports your distance and pace through your head phones.

After you’ve finished your run, you can see the route you took on Google Maps on your iPhone, or go to your computer and log on to RunKeeper.com and see a more detailed map of the route you ran. The map on the website is excellent, complete with a graph showing your speed during your run, as well as the altitude you were at.  For me this clearly shows how I slow down when going down hills, and how I speed up at the end of the run as I push to the finish line. Click here for a view of a run I did a few months ago.

There are both free and paid versions of RunKeeper.  The free version has most of the features of the paid version, but $10 is not a high price for this excellent application if you end up using it a lot.  Have run running!

Guy Kawasaki wrote a great article on 14 great ways to make your life easier by using Evernote.  There is a desktop client for Evernote on Windows & Mac Computers, as well as iPhone & Blackberry clients, so that you can capture and recall information where ever you happen to be.  I’ve narrowed Guy’s list down to the 9 that I think are most helpful:

1. Take notes. Taking notes in Evernote is way better than searching for that pad of paper that’s lost or at home. It’s also better than a text document on your computer because either you won’t remember the name of the document, you won’t have that computer, or you will have deleted the document inadvertently.

2. Take pictures. Got into a fender bender? Take a picture of both cars, the other car’s license plates, and the other driver’s license. Drink a great bottle of wine? Take a picture of the label. See a book that you must read? Take a picture of the cover. Evernote has a great iPhone app that enables you to upload these pictures directly to your account.

3. Save documents. When I receive a document (PowerPoint, Word, Excel, or PDF) that I’ll need again, I forward it to Evernote for safekeeping. This is easy because Evernote provides a unique email address to enter documents in your account. I do the same for pictures that people send me. This is very useful when you use more than one computer to create documents or send/receive email.

4. Photograph business cards. Rather than collecting a pile of business cards that you’ll never go through, photograph them with your iPhone and send their images to Evernote. Evernote recognizes text on the card, so you can search for names such as “Apple” or “John” when that’s the only thing you can remember about the person. If you’re using Evernote on a mobile phone, it can also geotag the photo so that if you can only remember that you met the person in Cupertino, you can still find it. And you can save trees: When someone hands you her card, take a picture of it and hand it back.

5. Track expenses. When you get a business receipt, photograph it, and send it to Evernote. Then you or your secretary can grab it later for expense reports and tracking. I lose many of my receipts, but if I stick them in Evernote, there’s a backup when I need them. If you’re really anal, you can configure your scanner to sendyour receipts to Evernote so you have great looking scanned receipts.

6. Store your online passwords and receipts. Whenever I buy something online or create an online account, I forward the confirmation or receipt to Evernote. Now when I forget my password, registration number, or date of purchase, I don’t have to go through all sorts of gyrations to recover them. (This happens approximately once per week.) You can, by the way, encrypt portions of documents at Evernote for greater security.

7. Retain news and content from websites. As you come across interesting article, use the Evernote web clipper to review and use later. It’s much more likely you’ll read these articles than if you bookmarked it unless you’re a fanatic about processes such as organizing, synching, and reviewing bookmarks. Even if you are, bookmarks often break when URLs change. It’s much better to have captured the article once and for all.

8. Record the wisdom of whiteboards. Think of Evernote as a poor man’s Smartboard to convert text on a whiteboard to a digital format. This means that after the enjoyable day at the company offsite, just take a picture of the whiteboard and send it to Evernote. Evernote will scan the text so that you can search for the word “mission” to find the fifty-word mission statement that you promptly forgot. This works for projected slides, too.

9. Dictate your thoughts. The Evernote iPhone application enables you to record your thoughts and then upload it to your account. This is perfect for when you have a brilliant thought and want to ensure that it’s not lost among the detritus in your brain. If you give your secretary access to your account, you could make a dictation on the fly, and he can listen to it back at the office. [I personally use Reqall for transcribing text - Rich]

One thing I’d add to Guy’s list is Evernote’s ability to consolidate your itinerary into one place when you’re travelling.  Very handy indeed.

SimpleMind is a Mind Mapping tool that turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a brainstorming, idea collection and thought structuring device. As you can see in the image to the right, you start out with a central idea or concept, and then branch out from there to other sub ideas. Those branches can themselves branch out as far as you need.  For those who like to use mind mapping tools, this is a must have iPhone application.  If you don’t use them, this might be a good introduction to see if they could be useful for your research or project work.

SimpleMind’s Mind Map comes in two editions.  The free Express edition allows you to create and edit mind maps on your iPhone and export them out of the application via jpg pictures.  The Paid Edition, which costs $7 has all the same features as the free edition, and additional ability to send your mind maps to other users via email, or export your mind maps to Freemind format (Freemind is an open source desktop mind mapping application for Windows, Mac and Linux computers) and OPML format.

You have a great idea for a research project with a colleague over lunch: In order to rough out the project so that you can get a better grasp for it’s scope, you map out all the ideas related to the project with your colleague, and then email the mind map to him and yourself in FreeMind format so that you can fill in holes and collaborate further from your desktop computers.

Cost: Free - Website: http://readeritlaterlist.com

Read It Later lets you save pages to read later, even without an internet connection.  In FireFox, simply install the “Read It Later” plugin, and magically a little button appears on the top right of your web browser.  When ever you come across an article that you want to read later, simply press the button, and it is saved in your online account.  Later from your iPhone Read It Later app, you can read the article that has been reformatted nicely for your iPhone or iPod Touch.  If it is something that you really like at that point, you can send it to Evernote for indexing and storage.

The Professional version of Read It Later costs $2.99, and allows you to easily post links to the article you’re reading to Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, and even plain old email.

Reading Documents on the Road: You are looking through a bunch of news in the morning and see a number of excellent articles that you don’t have time to read at that moment.  So you click on the “Read It Later” button, then later in the day while you’re waiting at the dentist’s office you read one or two of the articles before having the calculus removed from your teeth.

If you don’t use Firefox, don’t worry, there is an easy way to add a “Read It Later” button to all the major modern web browers (like Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Opera, etc.).

Stanza was just purchased by Amazon, so it will be interesting to see what new directions, the product takes in the near future, but currently it is the best way to read text on the iPhone. Not only can you buy books from online book stores like Amazon.com, but more importantly for academics, you can easily convert Word and PDF documents to eBook format, and transfer them to your iPhone in two easy steps.

Reading Documents or Books on the Road: You know that you’re going to be away from your office for a while and would like to catch up on some reading without having to schlep a folder of documents or heavy books around with you (think about a trip to a conference, or even a trip to your doctor’s office where you’re not sure if you’ll be waiting for 30 seconds or 30 minutes)?  Quickly convert your PDF and Word documents by opening them in Stanza’s desktop client, and the launch Stanza on your iPhone and import the documents.  Quick, easy and a much lighter backpack!

As you read documents or books in the Stanza reader, you “turn” pages much like you would do with a physical book.  By touching the right side of the screen you page forward, and when you touch the left side you page backwards.  A touch in the middle of the screen brings up the menu navigation menu where you can quickly see how far in to the book you are as well as allow you to navigate back to the table of contents for the book.  You may also navigate back to your “Library” page to read other documents, or change settings such as font size and orientation of the screen.

One drawback to  Stanza is its current inability to highlight and annotate text.  It sounds like those features are being worked on, and with Amazon’s resources behind them I guess that it should not take them too long implement.   For just reading, Stanza is an excellent product, and the price is right.