From the Announcement:

The Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) will advance technology that can recover and digitally re-master rare early sound recordings made on wax cylinders – including experimental recordings created in the 1880’s by Alexander Graham Bell — even when the original cylinder is cracked or broken. The research project, which includes development of a mobile 2D scanning device, builds on previous successes of the “3D/PRISM” or “IRENE-3D” project, which significantly impacted research and practice in the area of early audio recordings preservation.

The current IRENE projects are funded in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) under the National Leadership Grant program. Other project partners include the Library of Congress, The Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology, The University of Chicago’s South Asia Library, The Berlin Phonogramm Archive, The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, the Edison National Historic Site, and the University of Applied Science, Fribourg, Switzerland.

Source: Institute of Museum and Library Services

From the Announcement:

Gartner, Inc. has identified the top 10 consumer mobile applications for 2012. Gartner listed applications based on their impact on consumers and industry players, considering revenue, loyalty, business model, consumer value and estimated market penetration.

The announcement has the complete list with commentary.

Here’s the Top Five:

No. 1: Money Transfer

This service allows people to send money to others using Short Message Service (SMS). Its lower costs, faster speed and convenience compared with traditional transfer services have strong appeal to users in developing markets, and most services signed up several million users within their first year.

No. 2: Location-Based Services
Location-based services (LBS) form part of context-aware services, a service that Gartner expects will be one of the most disruptive in the next few years.

No. 3: Mobile Search
The ultimate purpose of mobile search is to drive sales and marketing opportunities on the mobile phone. To achieve this, the industry first needs to improve the user experience of mobile search so that people will come back again. Mobile search is ranked No. 3 because of its high impact on technology innovation and industry revenue. Consumers will stay loyal to some search services, but instead of sticking to one or two search providers on the Internet, Gartner expects loyalty on the mobile phone to be shared between a few search providers that have unique technologies for mobile search.

No. 4: Mobile Browsing

Mobile browsing is a widely available technology present on more than 60 percent of handsets shipped in 2009, a percentage Gartner expects to rise to approximately 80 percent in 2013. Gartner has ranked mobile browsing No. 4 because of its broad appeal to all businesses.

No. 5: Mobile Health Monitoring

Mobile health monitoring is the use of IT and mobile telecommunications to monitor patients remotely, and could help governments, care delivery organizations (CDOs) and healthcare payers reduce costs related to chronic diseases and improve the quality of life of their patients.

Source: Gartner
Hat Tip: RWW (more…)

We wonder if Pew Internet is going to do the same type of study on adults? We also wonder if adults would admit to texting while driving and if they did, how those survey numbers would compare with what was learned for the following report?***

From the Overview:

One in four (26%) of American teens of driving age say they have texted while driving, and half (48%) of all teens ages 12 to 17 say they’ve been a passenger while a driver has texted behind the wheel.

These findings form the centerpiece of a new report from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project that looks at teens, mobile phones and distracted driving. The report is based on a telephone survey of 800 teens ages 12-17 and a parent or guardian as well as 9 focus groups with middle and high school students.

“Many teens understand the risks of texting behind the wheel,” said Amanda Lenhart, Senior Research Specialist at the Internet & American Life Project and co-author of the distracted driving report, “but the desire to stay connected is so strong for teens and their parents that safety sometimes takes a backseat to staying in touch with friends and family.”

Boys and girls are equally likely to report texting behind the wheel as well as riding with texting drivers. As teens get older, they are more likely to report riding with drivers who text.

“Cell phones are often seen as devices that can make our lives more efficient, allowing us to multi-task in our idle moments,” said Mary Madden, Senior Research Specialist and co-author of the report, “and whether you’re a teenager or an adult, it’s tempting to think you can manage several different activities at once.”

Access the Complete Report

PDF ||| HTML

*** Mary Madden, one of the authors of the report, sent the following in note via e-mail.

We don’t currently have plans to field a survey of adults on this topic, as there are already a lot of sources for adult estimates of this activity. Aside from survey data, there have also been a lot of observational and naturalistic studies of adult drivers.

Mary suggested that those interested in the topic (texting while driving, cell phones vs. impaired driving, etc.) visit this page from the National Safety Council for more research.

Finally, she gave today’s report a bit more context:

…these questions were partof a much larger study of teens and mobile phones, and we felt that there was such a need for fresh impartial data on this issue that we decided to issue this release before any of the other material. The focus group findings–which give us more insight into the attitudes and experiences of teens who text at the wheel and those who think it’s extremely dangerous–are really what set this study apart. What people can expect to see from us in the way of follow up is several additional reports that look at teen cell phone and internet use in greater detail.

See Also: Teens and Mobile Phones Over the Past Five Years: Pew Internet Looks Back (August 19, 2009)

Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project

From the Article

Egypt will open the world’s first Arabic language internet domain, its communications minister has said.

Tarek Kamel said the new domain name would be “.masr” written in the Arabic alphabet. It translates as “.Egypt”.

{Snip]

Last month, internet regulator Icann voted to allow non-Latin web addresses. Domain names can now be written in Arabic, Chinese, Russian and other scripts.

Mr Kamel, who was speaking at the start of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) being held in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, said a formal announcement would be made on Monday.

Source: BBC

An article titled “What Gets Lost When Our Finances Go Paperless,” includes a couple of comments by web-usability expert, Dr. Jakob Nielsen, that are worth mentioning.

From the Article:

The problem is we take in information from a website differently than we do from a sheet of paper. “The online medium lends itself to a more superficial processing of information,” says Jakob Nielsen, a Web-usability expert who has written a dozen books on how people interact with technology. “You’re just surfing the information. It’s not a deep learning.”

Consider the way we read online. By tracking people’s eye movements, Nielsen figured out that our focus moves around the screen in an F pattern. We start scanning horizontally, but pretty soon we’re dropping down to see what else is there. By the time we’re halfway down a Web page, we’re tuning out.

So while online statements are fine for retrieving specific information–say, last week’s bar tab–internalizing broader spending habits is a different story.

Source: Time

See Also: Why We Look at Some Web Ads and Not Others (via Time)

Another new article (November 8, 2009) that includes more from Dr. Nielsen. The article also mentions a new book that he has co-authored (not yet released), Eyetracking Web Usability.

See Also: Alertbox: Current Issues in Web Usability
Dr. Nielsen’s bi-weekly column that is available at no charge. You can read it online or have it sent via e-mail.

From a District Dispatch Blog Post:

…the Library Copyright Alliance (LCA), composed of the American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries and the Association of Research Libraries, filed comments on behalf of LCA, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies (COSLA) to the Copyright Office and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) regarding the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) draft proposal to facilitate access to copyrighted works for persons who are blind or have visual impairments and other reading disabilities in response to the Federal Register Notice of October 13, 2009.

The comments address possible solutions to enhance accessibility to information for the blind or other persons with disabilities, and also include an analysis of a new treaty proposal currently under consideration by WIPO and its effect on U.S. copyright law. LCA believes blind or persons with other disabilities should be afforded the same access to copyrighted materials as sighted persons. Accordingly, LCA believes that the United States should work for the adoption of a treaty at the WIPO that facilitates such access. We also recommend that legal solutions must be combined with practical solutions to improve and expand access for the blind and persons with other disabilities.

See Also: Access the Full Text of the Comments Filed Today (26 pages; PDF)

See Also: Issue Brief: Treaty for Improved Access for Blind, Visually Impaired and Other Reading Disabled Persons (via Library Copyright Alliance)

See Also: U.S. Copyright Office Publishes Request for Comments on Facilitating Access to Copyrighted Works for the Blind or Other Persons with Disabilities (10/13/2009)