Ian started the discussion off by demonstrating the new (still in development) UW-Madison Campus iPhone app. It looks very handy! The functions include a campus news tracker, an interactive map, a directory, and a link to campus related video, as well as other functions. Ian is also very interested in bringing together library system and other campus partners to form a group to work on mobile technology issues related to the libraries.
Karen alerted us to the very useful Charity Navigator website: http://www.charitynavigator.org/ From this site you can get information about many of the charitable organizations that you see advertized, and then make a more informed decision regarding your potential donations. Nancy followed up with a suggestion to not forget about the Foundation Directory Online. From the (i) file: “A web-based database from the Foundation Center, a foundation-supported clearinghouse of information on private funding sources, Foundation Directory Online Professional is available in Memorial Library only.”
Dorothea directed us to the very intriguing “Hacking the Academy” book. It was compiled (under the expert direction of Dan Cullen, from the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University) by crowd-sourcing the content in one week. http://hackingtheacademy.org/ There is a section on libraries! http://hackingtheacademy.org/libraries/ “In keeping with the spirit of hacking, the book will itself be an exercise in reimagining the edited volume.” It looks fascinating. Dorothea notes that the purpose was to test the limits of what counts as scholarship and scholarly publishing. The directions that publishing and scholarship are following are many, and varied.
Joe raised the issue of UW-Madison’s creation of official check-in points versus user created check-in points for the same locations in FourSquare: http://foursquare.com/ For example, the Memorial Union has an officially created UW-Madison “presence” http://foursquare.com/venue/103173 . The group discussed the various merits of social media where you check-in. Ian noted that though this and similar applications have a core of followers, it is not yet used widely.
William pointed out the extremely useful W3C “mobileOK checker” http://validator.w3.org/mobile/ It works similarly to the other validators to return potential problems with mobile sites when a link to a mobile optimized site is submitted. That tool may turn out to be critical in the future as we develop more mobile-optimized pages.
We all watched the YouTube video “The Twitter Experiment - UT Dallas” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WPVWDkF7U8 It was interesting. The students seemed to take it seriously, and the professor found it useful. Dorthea noted that it looked like they were using TweetDeck http://www.tweetdeck.com/ to aggregate the various tweet feeds from the students. Ian noted that he has seen times when the Twitter backchannel overcame the “official” messaging platform during a Webinar.
Tom finished up the hour by playing a couple of additional YouTube videos related to Augmented Reality. One of the really interesting things that is developing out of augmented reality for mobile devices is the ability of the mobile application to interact, interpret, and augment physical objects dynamically in ways that enhance their already existing informational nature. A couple of examples are: “Augmented Reality GIS Maps” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFwzFby2eNo and “Augmented Reality Furniture Instructions” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVb5jPr-VuI
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