Monday, September 29, 2008

LILI IT Interest Group Meeting Notes - September 25, 2008

For the September meeting, the IT Group chose a theme: Mobile Devices

iPhone = Nancy and Dave, Blackberry = Anne, iTouch = Sheila, secret admirers = Jim, Emily, and Tom

Dave – Demoed the way to connect to either the satellite or the Memorial wireless network on an iPhone. Also explained that one could publish a WiscCal schedule to a “share” which can be viewed in the iPhone also.

Nancy – She uses the share link from WiscCal to publish her schedule in google calendar, which can also be viewed with the iPhone.

Anne – Uses her Blackberry to collect/view the feeds off of the Wendt site, which also includes some scheduling information. She also uses the WiscCal share.

Sheila – Mentioned the Apps Store on the iPhone, which she used to obtain ITunes as well as sports scores. Sheila noted that some university classes have iPhone apps for the class, where students can download flashcards/notes and other helpful tools.

Nancy – Explained the Apps Store further, mentioning that there are many apps available. Some for free and some for a cheap price ($1). These include things like movie previews/reviews/showtimes, golf tips, book reviews, etc. There are book readers too, such as “Stanza.”

Phyllis – Mentioned that there is a potentially useful app called “scribble” which one could use to draw pictures or write notes, and then send them to a student (or vice versa).

Nancy/Dave – Mentioned that the music service “Pandora” (http://www.pandora.com/) is helpful, and that you can access this via your iPhone also. The service detects your preferences based on your choices and revises the play list continuously. Nancy mentioned that there is a related app called “Shazam” (http://www.shazam.com/music/web/home.html) where you can use your iPhone to record a short sample of music and the iPhone with Shazam on will identify the song, artist, and album.

Phyllis – Noted that the review service “Urban spoon” (http://www.urbanspoon.com/) can be used to view restaurant ratings, but that there do not seem to be any for Madison just yet. Anne and Sheila noted that these reviews are contributed by the public. Phyllis also took a look at LTG’s test version “Mobile LWS” (http://mobile.library.wisc.edu/).

General Discussion of iPhone/Mobile Devices - Phyllis noted that at first she was skeptical of the iPhone but is now a convert. Dave agrees, it is like a mini computer that you can carry around, and can be very handy. He notes that it is really no competition to the standard InfoLabs or Tier 1s though, as the use of the iPhone is limited in that you can’t really do a lot of typing. Sheila noted that when LILI had asked students what they used their iPhones for, they replied that they use them for: 1) looking at stack guides, 2) looking at library hours, and 3) doing quick/basic searches (such as for the call number of a specific book as they walk to the library). Anne added that students seemed to use them to look for where their reserves were.

1 comment:

Nancy McClements said...

Here's a story about the Stanza reader app that I showed. I'm not the only one who thinks that it could replace the Kindle:
IPhone Steals Lead Over Kindle
http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/10/02/stanza-kindle-iphone-tech-personal-cx_ag_ja_1002stanza.html