cil2008: mobile trends.

megan fox – simmons college

mobile access is common to patrons, so it’s incumbent upon librarians to help user understand the role librarians have in the mobile world. trends in mobile access to information. global market, global and transcoded web, what’s coming next.

devices and capabilities

there are 3x mobile phones as their are pcs. 3.5 billion phones in circulation. this year phones will outsell televisions. market for smartphones will grow from 10% to 30% of the market by 2013. in next 3-4 years 50% of phones will come with gps. mobile internet users doubled over the last year form 18% to 34% – iphone added significantly to this number. 85% of iphone users have accessed news, 35 compared to 4% of iphone users have watched video content on their phone.

trends in devices – slideout keyboard or full thumbpad, more devices are coming with big screens, increasing access to broadband internet. convergence in devices – communication devices used for other purposes. many competitors for iphones are being created. also, other mobile devices like sub, mini notebooks, ultra mobile personal computers (UMPCs), ULCPSs (ultra low cost pcs), etc.

in development, devices for phones running Google’s “open” software operating system Android – allow flexibility in developing applications for multiple phones.

multimodal interaction mitigates difficulty of using small screen/keys. gesture interactions on some phones, communicating with devices via sign language.

visual access. using camera phones to search, communicate, participate. taking pictures with a camera and finding advertising, entering contests. visual recognition. automatic photo tagging from visual recognition. 2-dimensional barcodes. holds much more information. datamatrix code or qr code. .semipedia visual recognition/wikipedia.

spoken/voice interactions. enhancing use of voice recognition, search capability of phones. ex: jott – spoken notes, translates verbal messages into text.

audio interactions. having something read to you, benefits for disabled users. program that recognizes currency and reads text for visually impaired users.

location interactions. child, senior monitoring, stolen vehicle recovery, fleet recovery, friend finders, etc. let people know where you are.

mobile web uses.

a ton of content created specifically for mobile users. simplified, mobile optimized content. roundpoint, volantis, miobisitegalore, winksite companies creating this content. mobile urls: m., .mobi, /mobile/, a consortium of stakeholders (google, etc.) trying to create display standards for mobile content.

transcoded mobile web – such as winksite, translating pages for mobile interfaces. this means you can now look at any webpage on your mobile device, but not flawlessly. problems with some services stripping out navigation elements, mangling information already optimized for the web. transcoding tools – esyURL, determines if a page needs to be transcoded.

mobile web software. different devices can handle different levels of information display, etc. apple iphone had built-in safari, displays webpage similar to large-screen version and uses zoom function to navigate.

mobile web content. usa.gov launching mobile site, baseball, trapster.com (speed trap service), mobifusion. mobile library web services – early adopters in health sciences, vendors acknowledging that services need to be used in a mobile context, but planning to use transcoders to provide this. ebooks, japanese fad of writing books on cellphones. fremont public library in illinois, ball state university library has mobile site.

what content will libraries want to put on a mobile device? hours, directions, upcoming events, catalog, etc. not much development recently from vendors, but most major vendors (iii – airpac) have developed special mobile interfaces. blogger, youtube, second life, etc. developing mobile sites.

mobile multimedia. users are starting to expect multimedia from all content. driven from both sides – devices can produce multimedia content, so people seek out devices to use and consume it. authors, publishers, news organizations experimenting with audio versions of print works.

mobile searching. increasing usage of mobile devices for ready-reference type answers, using major search sites such as google for this. directions, answers, etc. user typically wants facts and answers, so sites must provide chunks of information that provide answers, not more links.

besides full internet searching, text/sms searching is possible even on non-browsing mobile phones (text to google, yahoo, etc.). text updating also available. diet.com offers nutrition on the go – provides nutritional information on 1000+ major chain restaurants. in libraries, texting catalog records from catalogs, etc. amazon, purchase items via text (text commerce is already big in other countries). some airlines testing text boarding passages.

communicating with mobile users. libraries can use this for communication. altarama is text messaging reference services. translates text to email, notifies librarian of text message status. other means of integrating text into services – nokia developed way to connect phone to computer and do phone communication via the computer (may be useful for references).

other mobile tools – google gears is working on developing offline content for service disruption. content syncing/sharing services, shifted, sooner, logmein, etc.

what’s coming next

e-ink paper, flexible rollup e-paper. portability of printed word. other display developments – taking large projectors down to the individual level, developing the ability to project media from individual devices or 3d wraparound glasses, etc. developing contacts that project numbers, texts only contact lenses.

input and interaction – leapfrogs flyfusion pentop computer. $80 pen that translates written text to digital, also a scanner, etc. digital fountain pen – write a text and send it via bluetooth. way far out – developed by nasa, audio wireless neckband that taps into nerve signals in your vocal cords and translates it into written text, useful for disabled users and beyond. blood biocensorchip, tattoo phone on your arm and use it to communicate.

touch and gesture computing – tabletop touch interactive displays.