I just bought the ProJive XLR mic cable for my iPhone. What’s it do? It’s an XLR to headphone jack cable adapter, and it’s made to plug a normal XLR microphone into an iPhone.

This lets me use my better-quality microphones (well, better than the built-in iPhone mic, anyway) for recording. It works with any audio app (like the voice recorder) or with video apps, too.

So – check out the video above, and listen to the sound. Not bad for an iPhone video, huh? Also listen for the unmistakable cell phone interference – that “beep beep beep” noise that you sometimes hear when a cell phone is close to some speakers. I’ll have to experiment more – if that interference happens a lot, the cable isn’t going to be all that helpful.

But we’ll see. Until then, I can now get quality audio in my iPhone videos effortlessly. Sweet!

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When talking to librarians about ebooks and econtent, I often hear things like this: “we can’t do anything – we’re just a small public library going up against Amazon/Apple/Barnes & Noble/fill in the blank.” Or “we don’t have the right connections” or maybe “we don’t have the resources we’d need to do something.” Etc.

I think we CAN do something. Many somethings. From my library alone, here’s what we’re currently doing:

• Our Ebooks for Libraries campaign – going for 10,000 signatures on a petition that will be mailed to the big six publishers, asking for books in all formats for libraries.
• Our community novel project – our community is writing a serialized novel, and we plan to publish the finished novel in print and in ebook formats. This is a small step in teaching our community that they can “do it themselves.”
• We have two staff members on the Library Renewal board – we’re giving time and expertise to organizations that are trying to make a difference.
• We have staff members on ALA boards – this one is indirectly related, but it gives us a say at the table when ebook-related issues get raised. And again, it’s giving time and expertise to organizations that have the potential to make a difference for libraries.

Other libraries and organizations that are trying to make a difference?

• Douglas County Libraries – you might have read about they are purchasing ebooks directly from publishers, and serving them back out to customers? Here’s an article with more info on that.
• Califa, a California-based library consortium, is doing a similar thing.

And those are just six examples – I’m guessing there are many others out there (and please – if I missed a major one, share the details in the comments!). My point? You CAN do something about it. Whatever “it” is to you and your organization, there are definitely ways to start successfully tackling the issue.

Why tackle this particular issue? Read Jason Griffey’s recent post about Amazon’s Lending Library. Amazon wants your customers to borrow from THEM. For free (well, after the purchase of a Kindle and an Amazon Prime subscription, anyway).

Sound like a challenge to you? Let’s meet that challenge head-on, folks!

ebook pic by nikkorsnapper

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My library is heading up a really cool project that I thought I’d tell you guys about.

In short, we thought we’d write a novel.

A community-driven novel, that is. Here’s a blurb about the project: “A community novel is one that is written collaboratively by members of your community. The library invites writers to each contribute a chapter to advance the group’s story. The story is set in Topeka and will use landmarks and a setting that all will recognize. Writing and publication began in April and continues through August with a chapter added each week (just like any other serial novel you’ve experienced). Each chapter will appear here so you may read them in order, with a new chapter published each week.”

Here’s a link to the main page for the project, and here’s chapter one. Please read it!

When we’re done writing the novel, we plan to throw an author book signing party! We also plan to publish the book in both ebook and print formats, and sell it online. And we’ll put the book in our collection, so people can check it out.

We have two goals:

1. We want to showcase content creation in our local community, and this type of focused writing project provides us with a fun way to start doing that.
2. We also want to get our feet wet in content creation. Libraries traditionally house books, help customers find books, and create programs around books and authors, etc. Why can’t a library and a community … create a novel?

Anyway – check it out – chapter two comes out this week!

book pic by Remi Mathis

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Ebooks in libraries got you down? Feel like you can’t do anything about it, or that you don’t have a voice? My library wants to help!

We have created a petition website – ebooksforlibraries.com. Visit the website, watch the video (also embedded in this post), and more importantly – fill out the petition today!

What’s going on? Pretty simple:

• Libraries are having trouble getting ebooks from the largest publishing companies. These publishers are adding restrictions and price increases, or simply not selling ebooks to libraries at all.
• This means that library customers can get a print copy of a book from a library, but can’t get that same book in an ebook format. And that’s just weird.
• Goal – we need 10,000 e-signatures from readers.
• Once we hit that magic number, we plan to mail the completed petitions to each of the big six publishers. Why? We want to communicate directly with publishers through this petition process, with the intent of establishing formal and consistent communication between publishers and readers.

One other thing – you can help!

• Fill out the petition!
• Share the petition – on your website, in Facebook, in Twitter, etc.
• Point to the petition in your buildings – put up signs, mention it in your library’s newsletter, etc.

Why do this? Our ultimate goal is to get books, in all formats, to our readers. This helps authors, publishers, libraries … and most importantly, our readers.

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I’ve been working on some large writing projects this year, and in the process, came across some great lists of web design trends for 2012 that I thought I’d share. Let me know if you are incorporating any of these into your websites!

Web design trends for 2012

Web Design Trends in 2012

• Responsive Web Design
• Fixed-Position Navigation
• Circles
• Big Vector Art
• Multi-Column Menus
• jQuery/CSS3/HTML5 Animation
• Ribbons & Banner Graphics
• Custom Font Faces
• Infographics
• Focus on Simplicity

15 Web Design Trends to Watch Out For in 2012

• Responsive Interface Design
• Touchscreen Mobile Devices
• Tons of Freebies!
• HTML5 & CSS3 Standards
• Ribbons and Banners
• Premium WordPress Themes
• Online Magazines
• Easy Drop Shadows
• Dynamic Typography
• Image Gallery Slideshows
• Modal Popup Boxes
• Inspirational Lists
• Generated Image Thumbnails
• Oversized Icons
• Exaggerated Hyperlinks

Web Design Trends for 2012

• Oversized Logos/Headers
• Sketch/Hand-drawn Design
• Slab Typefaces
• Typography
• One Page Layouts
• Huge Images
• Change of Perspective
• Interactive/Intuitive Design
• Modal Boxes
• Minimalism
• Oversized Footer
• Retro
• Intro Boxes
• Magazine Layouts

Top Website Design Trends for 2012

• HTML5, CSS3 and JQUERY
• Mobile Compatibility and Responsive Layouts
• Typographic Layouts
• The Grid
• Large Background Images
• Perceived Affordance and Metaphoric Design
• Social Media Integration
• Illustration
• Single Page Websites
• Parallax
• Elegant Modal Boxes

15 Top Web Design and Development Trends for 2012

• Progressive enhancement
• Responsive design
• Flash will survive
• Native support for plug-in features
• Appification takes hold
• Web app fragmentation
• Mobile gets bigger
• A device explosion
• Respect beyond aesthetics
• social battles heat up
• Growth of the two-screen model
• Distributed workforces
• Stronger customer service
• Better value, not lower prices
• Pushing the boundaries

The State of Web Design Trends: 2012 Annual Edition

• Responsive Web Design
• Grid Systems
• Typography
• Technology Pushing Art
• Scrolling, Vertical Narratives
• Like it’s 1983
• Modular Interfaces

So – get busy and start designing like it’s 2012!

image by Mike Licht

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Gina Millsap and I gave this presentation last week at the Texas Library Association’s annual conference (this year in Houston, TX). Great conference, fun people!

Especially check out the final part of this presentation – it will give you a little insight into how my library decides on strategy – through data-mapping and GIS market segmentation data. Really handy stuff.

Enjoy!

asdf

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A couple days ago, one of my children showed the rest of the family a funny Facebook meme/game being passed around. Here are the rules:

1. Open Google
2. Search your first name
3. Take the first picture that comes up
4. Upload it to Facebook
5. That’s you in 10 years

The rest of us thought it’d be funny to try, so we did. And yes, my family tends to gather around the computer to watch a funny Youtube video, look at a silly website, etc. Anyway, here are the results my family got while playing this game:

• My son found a normal-looking, slightly-pudgy, balding middle-aged man (I think he said “aww, man!” when that photo came up).
• My wife found a young woman.
• My oldest daughter found a female wrestler (she found that sorta odd).
• Me? I got the naked statue of David, King of Israel (and a bit of ribbing from the family)
• My youngest daughter, age 12? She found … herself. From one of my Flickr pics (I put her name in the photo description). She found that a little weird, and a little pleasing at the same time – she won the game!

A couple of observations:

• Kids games these days … how funny that you can make a game out of a google search, huh?
• Anyone catch what’s involved in playing this game? A Google image search (Image search wasn’t even mentioned, just assumed), downloading an image, then uploading it to Facebook, then posting all of that as a Facebook status update. There’s a good 2-3 skillsets there that some of us have actually taught in a formal setting in the last 15 years, reduced to the ease and throw-away-ness of a goofy game. Wow.
• Copyright, anyone? Yes, it’s harmless fun. But still, it does involve randomly lifting and reposting photos of strangers into Facebook … without their permission. And it’s easy to do, too.
• Privacy, anyone? My daughter found herself. In the results of that same search, you can also find a photo of my oldest daughter and a photo of a ballet production both my daughters danced in. Weird, huh?

I’m fine with finding photos of my kids online, and wasn’t too surprised at those results. I know how it works. But how about other people who put private moments online for, say, a grandparent to see? Or someone posting photos and information, and not really thinking of the connectivity that the web provides? That can REALLY freak some people out, and might feel a bit like “Google knows who you are.”

What to do? Teach your customers (and staff) the implications of posting online, whether that’s a blog, a photo-sharing site like Flickr, or even an all-in-one social network like Facebook.

If it’s online, people can find it. Period. Teach people how to set their privacy setting in social networks, and also teach them that once something’s online, it’s most likely available to EVERYONE IN THE WORLD.

And then, teach them how to deal with that. Fun, huh?

Update – check out Posting Photos of Your Kids on Facebook: The Realities by the ReadWriteWeb.

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Two huge social media sites have been mentioned in the news in the last couple of weeks: Pinterest and Instagram:

• Pinterest – Experian claims Pinterest is the 3rd most popular U.S. social networking site.
• Instagram – just purchased by Facebook for a whopping 1 billion.

• Pinterest = visual
• Instagram = visual
• Facebook = visual (depending on what you do with your status update)
• Youtube = visual
• etc.

Visual is in. Why? Because you visually “get it” immediately. It takes seconds to look at a photo and understand what’s going on. It’s very easy to look and like … and then click through to the meat of the post/site/message/video/etc if the visual carrot being displayed is interesting enough to make you click.

Is your website visual? Do you use visual parts and pieces to get people interested in your stuff? If not, you should maybe take a hint from the growing popularity of visual-based sites, and … add some things to look at.

Some visual starter ideas:

• blog post – add an image that relates to the post. The image can help some people “get” the post better (I’ve had people tell me that about the images I use in my blog posts).
• Video post – make a short video, showing off a new thing in your library. Videos are easy to watch and share. Since the video is usually embedded into a site, there’s a visual component, too. Do video well, and people will stick around (and hopefully click around, too).
• Facebook – add an image of that packed program. This visually shows popularity – much better than having someone type “the event was really well-aattended.”
• Twitter – tweet links to your photos and videos.
• Pinterest, Instagram – start experimenting, and figure out how (or if) you can use one or both of these for your organization. I’ll bet you can.
• Websites – add photos and graphics. That’s what we try to do on our website, and our customers love it (they’ve told me that numerous times).

How are you making your website visual? Adding visual elements to social media?

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I was just looking at March 2012 statistics on my library’s website. Here’s what I saw:

• 39,161 visits to our website in March
• 3486 visits via a mobile device.
• that means slightly more than 11% visited via a mobile device
• Those devices? Mainly iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches – 57.89%
• That fits with the web browsers that visited our site – 14.11% were Safari (think ithingies here)

Now look at Pew’s newest Smartphone Update, released on March 1: 46% of American adults are smartphone owners as of Feb 2012. There was an increase of 11% in just 9 months.

And check this out – it’s not just wealthy people getting smartphones:

“Nearly every major demographic group—men and women, younger and middle-aged adults, urban and rural residents, the wealthy and the less well-off—experienced a notable uptick in smartphone penetration over the last year. Overall adoption levels are at 60% or more within several cohorts, such as college graduates, 18-35 year olds and those with an annual household income of $75,000 or more.”

So my question to you: are you designing for mobile? A mobile app, or a mobile website?

If you haven’t yet started building with mobile in mind, now is definitely the time to start – you are very close to alienating almost half your customers. They are interacting with their favorite sites online using their smartphone (think Facebook, Amazon, Youtube, etc.).

Wanna be one of those favorite sites too? Then you had better get that mobile site up and running FAST.

smartphone photo by Bigstock

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As usual, I had a great time at Computers in Libraries 2012 (#CILDC). I learned some interesting things, and met some really cool people too.

I also gave a few presentations (ok – five presentations). Here are a couple of my slidedecks and some notes people took during the presentations, so you can get a feel for my sessions. Enjoy!

1. Seven Essential Elements to an Awesome Library Website

Nicole Engard took some pretty thorough notes! This slidedeck made the main page of Slideshare, in the Featured and the Top Pro Content sections!).

2. Digital Hangouts: Reaching Outside the Building

4. Benchmark Study – Library Spending and Priorities 2012 (another panel – notes from Joanna’s Conference Reports blog).

5. Let’s Make Video! (a preconference workshop with Michael Porter. Notes from the Montana BTOP Technology Training blog).

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