Library Tech Confidential

Much digital ink has been spilled about the lack of unlimited data plans for the iPhone on Rogers & Fido 3G mobile networks in Canada.  I worried that the 1gb iPhone data plan @ $30/mo would prove too restrictive for my needs, but couldn’t justify ponying up for a more capacious plan at the outset. Take a look at my first month’s data usage in the graphs below (the second with a logarithmic scale to more clearly illustrate daily data):

I’ve just barely broken the 10% threshold! For now, at least, it seems that 1gb/mo is plenty given that at half of the time I’m using the iPhone on my home WiFi network. Perhaps as I begin to more fully integrate the device into my various quotidian information seeking routines I’ll start to push its limits… but I’m no longer too concerned.

I’m actually using my iPod Touch to compose this post, but the Wordpress app is the same. Not bad!

As is often the case with text-heavy programs, though, it suffers from the lack horizontal (i.e. landscape mode) keyboard. Why, developers? Why?

No iPhone means no camera, so to test the image function I’ve taken these interface screenshots:

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I previously blogged about Wifi at the Toronto Reference Library, but neglected to note that the Toronto Public Library now offers free wireless internet access at 31 of its 99 branches. They’ve even got a Google map showing wifi-enabled branches.

That reminds me, now that TPL has its own decent Google map of branches, I should either comprehensively update or decommission mine. 

Chumby is an eminently hackable, wifi-enabled, open-source, widget displaying ambient device currently in pre-release (full launch in early 2008).For now, you can play with a plethora of widgets that pull data from tons of popular sites and web2.0 services as well as pretty much anything else via RSS. Best of all, you can try setting up your own channels (essentially pre-programmed widget slideshows) and view them using an embeded ‘virtual’ Chumby like the one above.

It pulls down content from the web via wifi, but suffers from the need to be plugged in to draw power rather than incorporating a battery. With any luck, some enterprising hardware hacker will come up with a simple way to add an external battery (or, dream on, an internal one plus a handy docking station).

Price? ~$180USD. Do not want!

Threadless delivers, yet again. Click the thumbail below to enlarge the design and get the punchline:

Seneca@York: Freedom toaster dispenses open source software - “The product of a student project, the Freedom Toaster burns open source software to your own CDs, quickly and free of charge.” [Seneca Libraries]

Apparently this is modeled after an initial freedom toaster project in Africa. Neat!

Guiding Light: Which book light outshines the others? - “If these people have nothing to hide, why do they sneak off to a dark corner with their tiny, battery-operated lights? Why do they continue to read after their spouses have gone to sleep? What, exactly, are these book lighters planning?” [Slate]

From Spacing Wire:

Toronto Reference Library finally has Wifi. While this is one of Toronto’s most wonderful places, the lack of wireless internet has been the only drawback, as laptops get lonely when they can’t connect to anything, and sometimes books just aren’t enough…

Microsoft’s Live Search Books, which indexes texts digitized by the Internet Archive, is now out in beta. [CNet]

Some sample searches:Robert Louis Stevenson, Shakespeare, poetical works, Toronto, ontology.

Zotero is a bibliographic management plug-in for Firefox 2.0 [via TechCrunch]

LibraryThing has released UnSuggester, “the worst recommendation system ever devisedâ„¢.”

From Google’s Web Search Help Center:

Our “Usage Rights” feature helps you find published content — including music, photos, movies, books, and educational materials — that you can share or modify above and beyond fair use.

If you set the search filter to “free to use or share,” you’ll get results that you can copy or redistribute. If you set the filter to “free to modify,” you’ll get results that you can use, share, or modify. (Please be sure to select “even commercially” if you want to use a work commercially.) If you leave the filter at “not filtered by license,” you’ll simply get standard, unfiltered Google results.