Current CITE-ings from the popular and trade computing press

Citation

(2010), "Current CITE-ings from the popular and trade computing press", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 27 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2010.23927aae.001

Current CITE-ings from the popular and trade computing press

Article Type: Current CITE-ings from the popular and trade computing press From: Library Hi Tech News, Volume 27, Issue 1.

The recent Computer and Electronics Show in Las Vegas highlighted important advances in gadgets and technology. Consumer electronics continue to become more sophisticated, and more interoperable. There is more and more blending of media between computers, handheld devices, and TV. During the coming year we are likely to see major opportunities for libraries with the sophistication of new ebook devices, mobile phones and other devices, and wide and improved access to valuable content services.

Ebooks

More ebook readers were debuted at the International Consumer Electronics show than ever before. This past Christmas, Amazon sold more ebooks than their print counterparts! Ebook reader manufacturers have relatively few exclusives because publishers have shown little interest in favoring one device over another. The Entourage Edge was released, and features Google's Android operating system. With this device, one can browse the web and watch videos. It also has a small camera for video chats. A trend emerging is the ability to download books through a wireless carrier, and not just WiFi. Skiff LLC is focusing on a reader for newspaper and magazine content (Metz, 2010). Amazon's Digital Text Platform is enabling writers to publish without a publisher. Authors can upload their books via PDF, text, Word, or HTML. Authors can also set their own prices and receive 35 percent of sales (Whitney, 2010a).

Mobile devices

The Forrester Research Group expects us to see more growth in smartphone ownership this year. Smartphones are classified as a mobile phone running a high-level operating system such as iPhone OS, Blackberry OS, Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Web OS, Symbian, or any variant of Linux such as Android (Whitney, 2010b).

Google has finally unveiled its Android powered Nexus One smartphone which is a serious competitor to Apple's iPhone. Google says their cellphone is a "multi-purpose mobile computing device," capable of Internet access, email, digital images, mapping, etc. The GPS locator it comes with can pinpoint the user's exact location on Google maps. It has a touchscreen keyboard and is touted to be one of the best products in voice recognition. It also receives WiFi signals (Potter, 2010). Analysts feel that this introduction is part of a strategy that envisions open phones with open application stores running an open-source operating system. This is in contrast to the gatekeeper role that wireless carriers have had over access and pricing of phones (Krazit, 2010).

Google has also introduced the Google search engine for cell phones which utilizes picture recognition. You snap a picture with your cell phone, and Google analyzes the image and returns with information about the object. This technology is called computer vision and uses the massive amount of information Google has collected throughout the years. World Surfer and Wikitude will also return information based on pictures, but they also must rely on GPS locators to retrieve the correct information (Helft, 2009).

4G is the upcoming technology to watch. Also of interest is roaming between WiFi and cell services. Currently, there is a fight for dominance between LTE (long-term evolution) and WiMaxx (worldwide interoperablility for microwave access). Once rolled out, both technologies will provide a lot more bandwidth. Campuses wil be affected because students will find better performances for their smartphones and netbooks. Two standards will make it easier for roaming between different networks are IEEE 802.11r-2008 Fast Basic Service for Transition and IEEE 802.21 Media Independent Handover Services. Companies will begin to develop products that rely on these standards (Chretien, 2009). As smartphones become more sophisticated, they are going to start to allow the viewing of local TV for free. The Open Mobile Video Coalition, an organization made up of consumer electronics companies, broadcasters, and mobile TV companies has finished a standard for new chips that will allow mobile devices, such as cell phones, to receive broadcast TV signals (Reardon, 2010a).

There is now a way to place and receive calls over the internet from home using your cell phone. The connecting device is called the MagicJack, and it is made by Ymax. It uses the ASM standard radio frequency, and is legal because wireless spectrum licenses do not extend into the home. US Cellular carriers have also been experimenting with these devices, also know as femtocells. They use the carriers licensed spectrum to connect to a phone, then route calls over a home broadband connection. They improve coverage inside the home and offload capacity from the carrier's towers (Svensson, 2010).

Clearwater Inc. has announced that it is remaining flexible in the future as to what technology it will apply to 4G, 5G, etc. networks. It currently has a head start using WiMax. There is a dual wireless market right now in the USA. Verizon and Sprint use CDMA, while AT&T and T-Mobile use GSM. The GSM standard is what is used the most worldwide, so wireless devices made for GSM can easily be adapted for worldwide sales (Reardon, 2010b). Other mobile phone developments include the MiFi hotspot 2,200 modem that provides a broadband hotspot to a 3G wireless network (Levy, 2009). With speech recognition capabilities, the Dragon Dictation application by Nuance for the iPod 2G and 3G was released. It allows a person to dictate via an external microphone up to 20 seconds of speech that is converted to text (Whitney, 2010c).

Web trends and net neutrality

Website magazine has listed the top 50 websites for professionals. The top 15 are: Google.com, Yahoo.com, Facebook.com, YouTube.com, MySpace.com, Ebay.com, Bing.com, Aol.com, WordPress.com, Ask.com, Blogger.com, Twitter.com, Adobe.com, PhotoBucket.com, and Answers.com (WebSite Magazine, 2009). The market share of alternative web browsers is gaining some ground on Microsoft Internet Explorer. The current market share statistics are Microsoft IE 62.69 percent, Mozilla Firefox 24.61 percent, Google Chrome 4.63 percent, Apple Safari 4.46 percent, and Opera 2.4 percent (Reardon, 2010a).

The US Federal Communications Commission is determining whether to sign into law the concept of net neutrality. Net neutrality implies that all users have unfettered access to content and services, without prevention or favored access to particular sites or applications. The FCC is in charge of creating these rules and in making them official regulations. There are camps that support or oppose net neutrality. Skype, the Consumer Advocates Free Press, and the Open Internet Coalition (consisting of several technology companies such as Amazon, Skype, and Google all favor net neutrality. Most network operators, including AT&T and Comcast, say they support keeping the net open, but they do not believe rules are necessary. CTIA, the industry group representing the wireless industry says the rules are "inappropriate and unnecessary." Existing rules dictate that network operators cannot prevent users from accessing lawful content, applications, and services of their choice, nor can they prohibit users from attaching non-harmful devices to the network. The first of two new principles would prevent Internet access providers from discriminating against particular Internet content or applications, while allowing for reasonable network management. The second principle would ensure that Internet access providers are transparent about the network management practices they implement. Some providers disagree about how the "non-discrimination" principle would be implemented. Some service providers say that they need to be able to manage their networks, particularly when it comes to services that require a lot of bandwidth (i.e. Cisco's Telepresence). Wireless carriers also disagree with the proposed rules because their networks are built within a limited spectrum (Reardon, 2010c).

On the content front, a fairly comprehensive article discusses the use of Google Analytics and how it is used for traffic and service reports on how users engage with an organization's website (Eisenberg, 2009). An example of changes in commercial content comes from the New York Times which has announced it will start charging for full computer access to its newspaper in 2011. It is still deliberating on how to charge for access on handheld devices. It will offer a few articles for free to casual users, and charge for deeper access. Subscribers to the print version would still have free access to the website. Their plans would not stop search engines from mining their articles, so this will continue to generate traffic (Vanacore, 2010).

Multimedia

A hot topic at the International Consumer Electronics show was 3D TV. Samsung, Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba, and JVC have all announced partnerships with 3D powerhouse RealID to bring 3D to home televisions. TV networks are also launching channels catering to HD 3D. Also, the industry group behind the Blu-Ray disc format has united on a standard for a 3D version of the disc. You will still need special glasses for viewing (Huessner, 2010).

One article discusses switching analog media such as VHS and videotapes to digital formats. Common digital formats include DVP, hard drives, flash drives, Windows media, Quicktime, RealPlayer, and Podcasts. The advantages of digital media archiving are a longer lifespan for your data, better storage opportunities, the creation of an archive database for tracking and retrieving purposes, and lastly, online access to share with interested people (Harvey-Brown, 2009). Netflix chairman Reed Hastings envisions the future for Netflix. His first idea was to develop a TV set box for on-demand ordering of Netfix titles. He sold the idea to Roku, which is now producing the players. Hastings then came up with his vision of embedding Netflix chips into existing devices such as TVs, game consoles, DVD players, laptops, and even smart phones. The idea was a success. He feels if he can produce enough revenue for Hollywood, he may be a player in influencing movie blockbusters (Roth, 2009).

Computers

Computer technology is extending into the automobile. A concern today is driving while distracted that is the cause of 40 percent of all accidents. The International Consumer Electronics show introduced even more in-vehicle technology. The electronics industry and automakers are working to integrate phones, music, 3D navigation systems, HD videos, and games into a single screen on the dashboard that responds to touch or voice commands. Everything a desktop PC does would be available on a 10" dashboard screen (Marconnews.com/WebsiteMagazine, 2010).

Other computing news

Samsung is using OLED (organic light emitting diode) technology to bring see-through screens to a laptop and a MP3 player. OLED technology allows for brighter, clearer pictures, while using less energy (Huessner, 2010). Apple has launched Mac OSX 10.6 also known as Snow Leopard. It is faster, built for greater capacity, and works well with multimedia and social media work flows. A negative is that it no longer supports PowerPC and already has some bugs (Henderson, 2009).

Tech trends

The technology research firm Gartner group has released some of its predictions for 2010 and beyond. In the near term, as virtualization and cloud computing continue to be more popular, 20 percent of businesses will own no IT assets of their own. Facebook will become the social networking hub in 2012. By 2013, mobile phones will surpass PCs for web access. To support mobile devices, most websites will revamp their pages to make it easier to view on a handheld. Finally, electronic commerce will become more firmly entrenched in the next four years (Whitney, 2010d).

An article in Scientific American talks about the future of the internet as a quantum internet. Quantum physics deals with elementary particles that can be anywhere at any time. So for a bit to register 1 or 0 as it does today, it cannot be copied. This is known as the no-cloning theorem. This would safeguard your privacy when you search the Internet. If another person was trying to peer into your research, the channel would be disturbed and the intrusion noticed. This technology is not far-fetched. Today, quantum messages along a dedicated line are being used in the field of secure communications. Quantum routers and quantum microprocessors may be five to ten years away. However, a full fledged quantum computer may be decades away (Lloyd, 2009).

Lois Trapasso

Further reading

Whitney, L. (2010), "IE shrinks in '09 but maintains dominance", 6 January, available at: www.cnet.com