The Fourteenth Off-Campus Library Services Conference will be held April 28-30, 2010, at the Cleveland Marriott Downtown at Key Center in Cleveland, Ohio. The list of presentations has just been announced. Looks like there should be something for most everyone in that list!
Monday, November 23, 2009
Lifehacker readers pick the Five Best Screencasting Tools
I'm not sure if these are presented in rank order, but Lifehacker has a post reporting reader picks for the 5 best screencasting tools, which are: Screenflow, Jing, CamStudio, Camtasia Studio, ScreenToaster. Check the comments for all sorts of additional nuggets too.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Most students will be taking some courses online by 2014
One more find by Stephen Abram; a Campus Technology report indicating that by 2014, the number of US students taking at least some of their courses online will rise from 10.65 million in 2009 to 18.65 million. If true, there should remain plenty of opportunities for librarians supporting distance or blended learners!
You think newspapers have it bad?
The other week I pointed to a graphic showing newspaper circulation over the last two decades. Stephen Abram has uncovered a similar graphic showing circulation revenue for a few of the big general news magazines. Theme song: Free Falling, by Tom Petty.
Tools for Remote Collaboration and Interaction
Karen at Library Web Chic has a great list of tools that she uses for remote collaboration and interaction. I've used almost all of these, but will be playing with CamTwist and remembering to use my JungleDisk now :-)
3 more mobile-friendly vendor sites
All three now on the M-Libraries wiki page, Resource Shelf points out that LexisNexis, EBSCOhost, and Summon are all sporting fancy new mobile-friendly interfaces.
Adobe Captivate for Mac in 2010
eQuixotic reports and RJ Jacquez confirms in the comments that Adobe Captivate for Mac is scheduled for release sometime in 2010.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Thoughts on the Kindle in Canada
Today it was announced that the Kindle will finally be sold to Canada. Not IN Canada, but TO Canada. Hate to just be a complainer, but here's what's not right about this launch. I'm sure some of these will be addressed in time, but until pretty much all of them are, it won't be on my wish list.
- We have to pay duty to have it shipped from the States to Canada. It should be shipped to me from within Canada.
- The Kindle app isn't available in the Canadian iTunes store.
- I pay the same US price as you do in the States, but my Kindle won't have full wireless capability.
- Only four Canadian newspapers currently available.
- I can't buy books for the Kindle from Amazon.ca - I was seriously set to buy (ironically) The Case for Books right now. It is available for the Kindle at Amazon.com
- I don't think that Canadian authors / publishers can publish to the Kindle platform.
How have I been coping w/o the Kindle? Just fine, actually. I've read well over a dozen novels on my iPhone this year. My preferred ereader of choice is Stanza (ironically now owned by Amazon) - can't think of a single thing to do to improve it. I buy most of my books from Fictionwise. There's also the Canadian option of Shortcovers, with both a store and ereader. Shortcovers just hasn't been quite as seamless as Stanza/Fictionwise for me.
For newspapers, yesterday I discovered PressDisplay. It's got my local paper and an iPhone app, though if I do decide to subscribe I'll probably choose to read my morning paper on the laptop. For me, I think newspapers and magazines on an ereader would be killer, and that's one thing I was hoping the Kindle would do for me.
It does indeed frost my shorts that I can't share the books I've purchased with anyone else. I haven't yet, but will probably explore options for cracking the DRM in order to do so.
What am I missing, eh?
