Four Weeks with my iPhone

Well I managed to get an iPhone four weeks ago after trying for about 8 weeks. I got it from the 3 Store at the bottom of the QVB Building near the entrance to Town Hall Station.
So I've had four weeks with it like I say and I thought I'd jot down my impressions thus far.
I like it is the shortened version, alot. Physically it's a little big to hold but all the same it feels good in the hand- not too light, not too heavy. The screen is bewdaful really- how they will improve it I don't know, sometimes finger marks come up clearly and other (most) times it looks pristine.
The volume control button on the left side I knock / accidentally touch when browsing in landscape but otherwise not a problem. The silent mode button I've been using as I've taken to carrying the phone with me whilst at work.
Putting the headphones in doesn't seem natural and I'm concerned i might scratch the screen, all the same no real biggie.
The sleep mode button on the top also is placed nicely and feels nice/right to depress.
Phone calls have been good, clarity is better than my old phone and no drop outs yet.
I use a set of Sennheiser over the ear headphones and I love it when I'm listening to music and I get a call- I slide the right side of my headphones away and put the phone up to my ear. I get the voice of the caller in my left headphone.
I haven't set up voice mail and don't use voicemail.
iPod-This is pretty good tho somethings/features I haven't mastered yet or they don't quite exist or happen for me- I've knocked shuffle a couple of times accidentally and the screen can be sensitive when u chop and change your view and thumbs are bigger than they should be. When in landscape i can't adjust the volume- am I doin it wrong? Also you can access the basic features of the ipod whilst in most other apps (double click the home button) tho I've found the volume slider a little clunky.
I love being able to use the speakers- been walking around stack listening to my music! Yeah.
Web browsing- frustrating and amazing tho mostly pretty damn cool. Mobile versions of smh.com and news.com are great cos they load so quickly but an edited version of the real thing makes the news seem censored or at best selected for the common denominator. Some times having to pinch and stretch the page is a pain but at the same time it still seems pretty cool.
In many ways the screen is too small to view web pages but any bigger and it's going to be a drag in your pocket- you just have to accept that this is mobile internet.
I've been using Facebook alot more and being able to view and post on the move is very cool.
Twitter- the app i'm using is Twitteriffic which loads 100 tweets at a time- it's quite good, it was providing the tweeters icon but has strangely stopped doin that, overall this is OK.
I've bookmarked my Bloglines account- bookmarks as icons on your home pages is a cool feature too!- but Bloglines isn't that great on the iPhone- i may have to get a dedicated app for this as some feeds don't appear and after you look at a post and click back it takes you to the top of the page not where you clicked from.
I have about 3 or 4 pages open at a time which I can cope with as far as load time goes- 3 isn't the fastest network (Telstra is) but I can't really complain AND i get over a GB included each month!
I've paid for one app so far, Pocket Weather which has been very good - it updates each time i open it and gets a new temperture reading if the temp has changed since last opening. It also gives a 7 day forecast, wind direction, humidity, apparent temp, high and low temp and sunrise and sunset.
Maps- this is mostly pretty cool tho no real world application yet- I'd like to be able to zoom in increase the text size or the names of roads and street numbers and again being able to zoom into street view is pretty cool.
I'm going to New York for a holiday in a couple of weeks and I think the directions option will come in very helpful tho I'm not sure I will get 3G while i'm there- i'm hoping to have access to lots of free wireless!
Mail- I use this more to send than receive but it has come in handy from time to time.
Video Recording- this was important for me even tho I haven't used it much - the lighting needs to be premium and the sound does too. I intend to post video blogs to the family while away.
Voice Control - i haven't looked into this but it really is the future especially in regards to laws for using mobile devices while driving. The other day I wanted to suss out the cheapest and most convenient petrol station while driving but I was also in a rush and didn't want to stop.
It's an OK camera phone, the focus feature is quite good.
SMS- this is quite good- the way you can see the flow of conversation. The auto correction is quite good i've found. Just typing can be better some days than others.
Cut and paste I haven't used too much either yet.
Tethering- using your mobile as a modem - I learnt how to do this in the nick of time as my home broadband was running very low so i hooked up my laptop to the iPhone- i have to do this via bluetooth as I'm running OSX Tiger (or my Mac is not an Intel processor) - but it worked well tho not as fast as my home broadband it was pretty good all the same.
OK so that will do it, plenty of room for improvement and lot's for me to learn too.
Even tho it's a little computer it seemed easy enuf to get my head around and also their are "How to's" on Apples web site just in case.
The Apps are just another thing that sets this phone apart in my opinion although I can't really say as I haven't seen a Palm Pre in action and although I see plenty of Crackberries around, the keyboard/ screen and text size seem shortcomings from a distance.

Visit to Australian National Library

On Tuesday the 30th June myself and 3 colleagues drove to Canberra to visit The National Library.
We went to find out how electronic printing of Request slips were implemented and to get an overview of their retrieval set up.
The guy who showed us around was very helpful and thinking about it we spent a large amount of the time asking questions.
They have 4 or 5 stack areas with one of those being offsite-they aim to deliver material within 45 minutes except with offsite which is within 90 minutes.
Clients can request material directly from the catalog- from memory a large percentage of the material can be requested this way. Clients can request 15 items at a time.
The material is checked out (their term:charged) to the client for 5 days- I can't recall why they check out for 5 days. If a client needs more items they need to return material and can request more once there items have been checked in (their term:discharged).
Once a client has made a request the system sends it off to the relevant stack area- each stack area has a printer, a fairly expensive looking one I might add. Each stack area is staffed by two stackies who collect the slips and retrieve the material. The slips are printed on A4 perforated in the middle- one copy for the shelf and another for the client. (A different colour slip for stack area or material type- i can't quite remember.)
The slip has call number detail and other bibliographic data- more data on the copy to go on the shelf and it has the clients name (they are reviewing this due to privacy), a barcode for the item requested and a barcode as a request number.
As a short explanation this is how they deal with issuing journals- the item is checked out by request # and they do something called "creating an item record 'on the fly' ".

They use Transcar to transport and deliver material to the Reading Room. Here's a transcar clip i found on youtube:


That may give you a bit of an idea. These machines transport the material around stack and deliver to the reading room via a specially designed lift.
The benefit is less staff walking to and fro between stack and the Reading Room.
Although we couldn't get a $ figure on implementing such a resource it is clearly very expensive.
We were also unsure if they had a transcar in each of the 4 stacks or if the transcar was able to manoeuvre between all the stack areas.

What's gonna happen?

It's been busy in the Reading Room and with less staff to call on for various reasons- which gets me thinking about the way we do things.
A while back Helene Blowers posted a comment about innovation on her Blog and I've been thinking about that for a while. The article in question suggests their are 12 ingredients to innovation. Check it out: how many ingredients do you think the library has in place? And how many don't we have in place? Not having 1 ingredient impacts achieving the other ingredients in my opinion. Reading the article in full makes me think we have a State Librarian in place who has these things in sight- I make this judgement without having interaction with said boss but by her statements and approach.
So- The way we do things? Innovation? In regards to what I do? Stack Retrieval right?
Doing what I do for such a long time now I'm at a loss for the way we do some things- in particular our inabilty to adapt to busy periods and the unnecessary pressure we put ourselves under at such times. The client focus is their but we don't seem to cope under pressure.
Example? One day this past week we had an unusual amount of staff away but we continued to provide a service as if we were fully staffed- we have things in place to help but they need to be looked at and sometimes they are overlooked. To (attempt to) solve this problem we call people from all over the library to help out which takes these staff members away from their own work and this may include librarians doing a LA's work.
Stack Delivery is being looked at in terms of considering electronic printing request slips and batching slips- I think batching will provide a longer delivery time and require more staff to deliver.
A general service model review is also in place which will be quite interesting too.

Another Blog i get feeds from has posted about a company called Zappos and praises there service approach- in particular check this post. Talk about innovation! And culture by the truckload. You really have to check out what Zappos does because judging by the post you wouldn't think they are simply an online retailer. Your job becomes your life but if you love what you do then what's the harm? Just to touch on some points if you can't be bothered checking the post: they have Xmas twice a year, work on culture and get rid of those who don't fit the culture, a full time 'coach', staff can't be overtrained and the more training courses you attend is reflected in your pay packet, tell your staff their opinion counts and mean it, create a welcoming culture, everyone is a VIP, keep on looking out for the next new/great idea, reward greatness. I know we are the public service but we can learn from others and if nothing else it's interesting to know how other businesses grow culture and innovation.

Don't tell anyone but I heard The Library/Reading Room got the budget go ahead to implement Vocera. I believe the positives of Vocera outweigh the negatives. Which brings up another point I've had on my mind: in the Stack Delivery Review process we haven't weighed up the pros and cons of the options being reviewed. It seems voices of dissent (?) or whatever you want to call it are ????? The notion that a good idea will stand up to criticism and in fact will be better for it is lost. I guess there are reasons for not doing things this way but....

I checked out this video that's about craft brewing in the US- they are appealing to people to support craft beers because they have something for everyone and the Brewers are community based and focussed, that Craft Brewing values are American values: check it

I Am A Craft Brewer from I Am A Craft Brewer on Vimeo.

It got me thinking about the libraries strengths: staff and diversity of the collection came to mind.

I'm back baby i'm back!

To quote George Castanza.
I've had a break from this blog but I thought I'd do a quick post and hopefully a few more still.
Today (thurs 26th Feb) I attended a Aboriginal Cultural Awareness Course. It was quite good and could easily been longer than 3 1/2 hours. Had a few things explained like why the ABC make those warning announcements about naming deceased Aboriginal people, that Koori is the word for a NSW Aboriginal. It was interesting to hear that some people in certain circumstances are required to prove that they are in fact indiginous people to both Government Departments and to Local Elders. Working in a Library really gives you an insight into the rich and colourful history of Australia.
I'll add a few vital links that were mentioned too:
NSW Department of Aboriginal Affairs (DAA)
NSW Aboriginal Land Council
National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee (NAIDOC)
National Sorry Day Committee
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Library and Information Resousrce Network (ATSILIRN)


Lastly, a Library Blog i've been getting RSS feeds from has been writing posts from New Orleans which is worth a look as she claims there's lots to do during Mardi Gras and in general.

Newspaper Digitisation Project

This is pretty amazing and you have to have a look at it to find your way around.
If you can see the screen shot above- on the left is the text from an article (from the Brisbane Courier, pg 2, Thursday 9th June 1864) which can be edited by subscribers and on the right is the article itself highlighted and how it appeared in the paper itself.
Did I say it's amazing?! And you can save want you want as a PDF file or print them.
This will make it easier for people to do large chunks of their family history from home.
Will this put clunky old microfilm readers/printers out of service for good? Probably not.

I have to suss out if something like this is available for New Zealand.

Best Tea Room Anywhere

Fort Denison you can see in the middle of the photo.

The weather hasn't been great for a couple of weeks but today (Thurs. 16th) was super- clear and 20 degrees.
This is on The Mitchell Rooftop where staff can have their lunch. I put a slideshow of the photos I took on Flickr.

Library 2.0 Conference

I found a post from one of my library feeds about a Conference being run by the State Library of Queensland.
It's in late November and they are asking participents to show a slideshow of your libraries experiance with Web 2.0 tools in your library.
The slide show tool to be used got my interest- it's called Pecha Kucha and was designed by two people in Japan (Wikipedia link). The unique feature of this tool is it sets a limit of 20 images to be shown for 20 seconds each- so all slideshows get an equal showing.

And just when I was going to say the library barely makes use of Web 2.0 tools they announce a bunch of historical photos have been uploaded to Flickr.

Blogging for a Living

I saw this article in the Australian this week about Bloggers in Australia who try to make a living out of Blogging. It mentions long hours but most don't make enough to equal the average pay.

The article mentions a few times that Australia is five years behind the States in terms of the impact blogs have on media and the general viewing public.
(links to the blogs)

TV Tonight

Media Spy

The Inquisitr Blog

Radio News

Girl With A Satchel

Campaign Brief

Robert Scoble At Library of Congress & Seagate

Above is an interview (recorded on a phone) that Robert Scoble did with Matt Raymond who does a blog on The Library of Congress website. Matt talks about some of the projects that The LOC are working on and the purpose of his blog which is letting people know what's going on at The LOC. (click on to the next 2 clips to see LOC's photo collection and stereograph collection. What's a stereograph you ask? From the LOC site:Stereographs consist of two nearly identical photographs or photomechanical prints, paired to produce the illusion of a single three-dimensional image, usually when viewed through a stereoscope). 

I've been checking on Scoble's blog for a while now but I've never checked out his video interviews before, but as he ran a post about a bunch of new hard drives released by Seagate I thought I'd check the vid out:

I've been thinking about getting a hard drive for a while now and some of the portable ones sound good. I've got all my music backed up on to a dozen DVD's!

The guy he's speaking to has been working for Seagate for 24 years- back then a 300 MB drive was the size of a washing machine and cost US$12,000!!

Helene Blowers

It's been a bit over a year since Helene Blowers spoke at The SLNSW and I'm dissapointed I missed her talk but thanks to the net I can keep up with presentations she does give- a recent post of 67 slides on her Blog doesn't quite put me in the audience but it's worth a look all the same.
I can't say for sure that I'm on the right side of The Digital Divide, but I'm enjoying getting involved all the same!
Check out the slides, they are quite uplifting!