Many people who want to read electronic books are discovering that they can do so on the smartphones that are already in their pockets — bringing a whole new meaning to “phone book.” And they like that they can save the $250 to $350 that they would otherwise spend on yet another gadget.

[Snip]

All of that activity raises a question: Does the future of book reading lie in dedicated devices like the Kindle, or in more versatile gadgets like mobile phones? So far, e-book software for phones does not appear to have cut into demand for single-function e-readers. According to the Codex Group, a consultant to the publishing industry, about 1.7 million people now own one, and that number could rise to four million by the end of the holiday season.

Source: New York Times

Note from Gary: I have a Kindle (first generation) but do most of my eBook reading using the Kindle for iPhone app. Yes, the screen is smaller but I want to be able to read in low light (before bedtime) and the Kindle doesn’t cut it. Attaching a booklight cover to the Kindle cover is possible. I’ve tried it and Amazon suggests it. But, IMHO it doesn’t solve the problem. For me, the light causes a glare that makes reading not very enjoyable. The Kindle for iPhone app lets you move around the eBook very quickly, offers the same note and highlighting features as the Kindle device does, turning pages is a breeze, and allows you to change the background color and the color of the text.

The first text messages were sent during 1992 and 1993, although commercially, text messaging was not widely offered or used until 2000. Even then, messages could only be sent between users subscribed to the same wireless carrier, e.g., Sprint customers could only exchange messages with other Sprint customers. In November 2001, however, wireless service providers began to connect their networks for text messaging, allowing subscribers on different networks to exchange text messages. Since then, the number of text messages in the United States has grown to over 48 billion messages every month. Additionally, text messages are no longer only sent as “point-to- point” communications between two mobile device users.

More specifically, messages are also commonly sent from Web-based applications within a Web browser (e.g., from an Internet e-mail address) and from instant messaging clients like AIM or MSN. For Congressional policymakers, two major categories of issues have arisen: (1) “same problem, different platform” and (2) issues stemming from the difficulty in applying existing technical definitions to a new service, such as whether a text message is sent “phone-to-phone” or using the phone’s associated email address. There are numerous examples of each. An example of the first category would be consumer fraud and children’s accessing inappropriate content, which have existed previously in the “wired world,” but have now found their way to the “wireless world.” An example of the second category would be that spam sent between two phones or from one phone to many phones does not fall under the definition of spam in the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act, P.L. 108-187); however, if that same message were to be sent from a phone or computer using the phone’s associated e-mail address, it would.

The increasing use of text and multimedia messaging has raised several policy issues: applicability of CAN-SPAM Act to unwanted wireless messages; refusal of some carriers to allow users to disable text messaging; carrier blocking of Common Short Code messages; deceptive and misleading Common Short Code programs; protecting children from inappropriate content on wireless devices; “sexting”; mobile cyberbullying; and balancing user privacy with “Sunshine,” Open Government, and Freedom of Information Laws.

Access the Full Text (19 pages; PDF; October 22, 2009 Version)

Links to Previous Versions

Source: Congressional Research Service (via OpenCRS)

Today, Peter Scott informs us via a post by Mike Mintz on the Martindale.com Blog, that LexisNexis now has an iPhone app.

The App is free and has a name, “Get Cases and Shepardize.”

So what do you think it can do? (-:

According to the blog post you’re able to:

+ Find and review a case instantly by reading the Case Brief – an overview of the issues, rules, and reasoning (written by LexisNexis experts) just by entering its citation.
+ Get an at-a-glance indication of how closely they need to evaluate the case with Shepard’s Signal Indicators.
+ Get an overview of a case’s legal treatment up front by viewing the Shepard’s Summary, right at the top of your Shepard’s reports.

If you have iTunes on your computer, this link will take you directly to the LN App.

Btw, this is not the first time LN has offered tools for the mobile researcher. This news release from October, 2004 talks about offering services for Blackberry users. In 2005, the service won a CODIE Award for Best Mobile Content Service. According to the web site, LN Content on the Blackberry is still available.

Source: Martindale.com Blog
Hat Tips: Peter Scott, Steven Cohen

If you’ve never seen it, it’s one cool database and eReader. It allows users to search and/or browse newspaper and magazine content (over a thousand newspapers on their publication day) and then read the material online In addition, users see the content the same way it’s presented in the paper. Same fonts, same pictures (color) and always of use charts and graphs. Other features include interactive tables of content, full graphics and text views, foreign language translation, text to speech audio, and many other features.

PressDisplay has several pricing plans including one (for personal use) that’s free and allows you to view two articles each day and unlimited access to the front page of over 1000+ newspapers and magazines. Institutional customers can choose corporate or professional plans. To learn more, take a look at this multimedia tutorial. It provides a good overview of many features and this list of the papers printed on-demand (another part of NewsPaperDirect or online).

But there is more. Two days ago, NewspaperDirect/PressDisplay introduced an iPhone/iTouch app along with a Blackberry app.

According to CNET:

+ The iPhone/iToucj app is free to download
+ Includes speech to text. Have the paper read to you

For the month of November, developer PressDisplay is offering seven free editions of any paper–basically, a chance to give the app a test-drive (test-read?).

After that, each paper will cost you 99 cents–about what you’d pay if you picked it up off the newsstand.

[Snip]

If you’re a voracious reader, you can sign up for one of two PressDisplay subscriptions: $9.95 monthly for 31 credits (one credit equals one issue, in most cases), or $29.95 monthly for unlimited content.

Those are the same subscription rates as the online version. We need to find out if subscribing to one service (iPhone) also gives you access to the other (online). My hunch is no, you would need to have two subscriptions.

That’s it. I’m off to download the app.

See Also: PressDisplay Blog Post

See Also: While The Apps are New PressDisplay Has Been Available for the iPhone Capable (via the Safari Browser) Since 2007

As we mentioned last week, both EBSCOhost and Summon for Serial Solutions have officially been released. We’ve had only a short time to use both and for the most part were very impressed. Let’s review each news release and share a few comments. Btw, we used the Safari browser on an iPhone 3G to visit these mobile sites.

After a Click Much More

Summon

IMPORTANT: The news release is a bit misleading. To use Summon for mobile you do NOT have to download any app or software to your phone/smartphone.

From the News Release

… [users] simply key a term in the Summon search box and instantly retrieve relevant results that span the gamut from print to digital. It’s the latest innovation from the rapidly-developing and pioneering service, which is the first and only available web-scale technology that enables single searchbox access to the breadth of the library’s content – from books and videos to e-resources at the article leve

This is where it gets a little tricky. Summon is an information “discovery” service and accessing the actual content (full text articles for example, on a mobile device, can only take place IF the underlying database is outputting it’s content for mobile devices or in some cases, users don’t mind moving around the screen to see the material. If that’s not possible (or you don’t want to do it), users can select results and then mail them back to themselves (or anyone else for that matter). Later, when their using a “regular” web browser, they can then get the links and and access the material be it a full article or a book citation from that particular library.

Interested in taking a look at Summon Mobile with the caveat that you can only see results pages, not the actual content?

Head to the following URL from Grand Valley State University in Michigan: http://gvsu.summon.serialssolutions.com/

The URL will work on a non-mobile browser and it’s worth a look to see what the full Summon service looks like but it’s not the mobile version we’re talking about today. Remember, you’ll be able to view the citations but to get to the actual content you’ll need a Grand Valley logon/password.

The mobile version has the “Google-like” search box on its home page. It’s simple and clean. Enter your search terms and hit go.

Here’s where Summon Mobile needs a bit more work (and they are aware of it). All of the results for the search “Michigan” only contain a one word and that word is Michigan. Not very helpful. Summon needs to extend the entry title information beyond one or two words. Obviously, if you enter more terms you’ll get more precise results but many users still only use one or two terms. Even when doing a know-item search it’s possible to run into problems. No matter what type of search you’re doing, you have to click again to see the full title, the source, and if available, an abstract.

You’re also able to click the plus button the sign next to each result listing and save it to a folder you can send to yourself later.

Also, on the mobile home page take note of the “Refine Search” button near the top of the page. Click here and your provided with numerous options to “refine” your search results including to full text only material; content type; language, library location, and subject terms. If searchers use this feature is very useful. We ran a known item search for the book by JFK, “Profiles in Courage” and first came up with numerous journal articles. Refining to only books returned only 15 results and we then would have to to go through each one to find the actual book. The search “Profiles in Courage Kennedy” got results down to seven but again, we needed to check each result for the actual book.

It would also be helpful to be able to see the limits you’ve selected as you look at your results perhaps directly below the search box. It’s great to see that Summon does offer a spell check feature since mobile typing can often be a challenge.

Overall. Summon Mobile is off to a solid start and with a few tweaks it will become even more useful. However, don’t forget that the underlying content (e.g. full text articles) can only be able to be read in a mobile-friendly environment if the underlying database is offering it’s content in a mobile-friendly format. However, with a little persistence, and some scrolling around the page you might be able to get to some material even if the underlying database is not serving content that works with mobile browsers.

Today, also marks the official release of EBSCOhost Mobile with the publication of this news release.

Fast Facts from the Release:

+ All databases and services currently available on the EBSCOhost platform will be available via EBSCOhost Mobile.

+ Many of the existing EBSCOhost features such as search modes, limiting to full text, date ranges, peer-reviewed content or by publication are available. Users will also be able to search images from their mobile devices.

+ The result list is scrollable and available data includes citations, Image Quick View™ and access to full text article.

+ The interface has been designed with a lower resolution, simplifying the interface by removing folders and some other more advanced features for increased speed and user convenience.

+ In addition to providing access to smartphone users, EBSCOhost Mobile will also work on desktops helping libraries with low bandwidths since it uses only a fraction of the bytes compared to a traditional EBSCOhost search. EBSCOhost Mobile will also open up access to research databases to researchers in remote locations who are only able to access via satellite links.

We’ve been using EBSCOhost Mobile with the Academic Search Complete along with three other databases and we are impressed.

Like we mentioned in our Summon overview, the home page is clean and offers the single search box look. Here users can select from the databases that their libraries make available and also click to use an image database (if available). Another link takes you to a full page of search options (even with our bad eyes we found then very easy to read), and even a page of filed codes for the most sophisticated of mobile searchers. (-:

Results pages are straightforward with each showing entry showing title/source article, a relevancy ranking, and links to access the article either as text document or a PDF file. Of course, what formats are available depends on several factors including the arrangements EBSCO has with each publisher. You can also mail 10 results (the number on a results page) to yourself or anyone else. It would be useful it users could pick and choose which results to send.

An actual listing for an article provides an “envelope” icon to mail the article, links to the versions of the article that are available (text or PDF for the most part) and other bibliographic info including hypertext subject headings. Very impressive. You’ll even find drop down menu to mechanically translate the page.

One thing we did find missing was a spell check. We searched for Obamma, Eengland, Booston and at no time did we see a spelling correction.

One very mpressive debut from EBSCO. We hope subsequent releases continue to increase the usability of this product.

One final time, let’s be clear. EBSCOhost and Summon are two different types of products. One is an information discovery service (Summon) while EBSCOhost offers full text content. directly from its own database. It will interesting to see if library’s using Summon Mobile and have EBSCOhost subscriptions will be able to link to EBSCOhost Mobile for their mobile users.

Finally, the big question is who is going to use these resources. This is what Gerry McKiernan pondered last week when he said to LJ:

“At this point [mobile-specific searches] are supplemental, or impulse, such that if you’re on the road and you want to search a particular resource … you could do that,” he said. But, he added, “The mobile phone is becoming an all-in-one tool for a variety of functions,” and as that happens, users will come to expect some kind of mobile interface to the tools they’re grown accustomed to using.

I agree with Gerry 100% and will go a bit further to say after spending some time with both of these services (especially EBSCOhost, at this point) I am more sure than ever that a mobile device (from an eBook reader to a Palm Pre to a Droid to a iPhone) can be powerful research tools in their own right. Perhaps the most important issue is how much promotion/marketing will EBSCO and the libraries that use EBSCO give to the new mobile interface? Like we always say, people can’t use what they don’t know about.

Stay tuned!

Postscript: Here are Two Screeshots of the EBSCOhost Mobile Interface 1 ||| 2

Postscript 2: Gerry McKiernan Has Posted, “How To Configure The EBSCOhost Mobile.” Share it with your systems librarian.

For those of you who have never visited and/or used the massive amount of data OpenSecrets provides. Here’s how the site describes itself:

OpenSecrets.org is your nonpartisan guide to money’s influence on U.S. elections and public policy. Whether you’re a voter, journalist, activist, student or interested citizen, use our free site to shine light on your government. Count cash and make change.

A blog post from OpenSecrets.org says this first version of the mobile site has profiles of members of congress (it’s searchable) and also provides access to the always interesting Capital Eye Blog. The post is clear in saying that more sections and data will be added to the mobile site. We will be waiting and watching.

The site should auto-detect your mobile web browser or you can go directly to: http;//m.opensecrets.org

Source: Capital Eye Blog / OpenSecrets.org

Access the Complete Report ||| PDF Version

From the News Release/Summary:

People who use modern information and communication technologies have larger and more diverse social networks, according to new national survey findings that for the first time explore how people use the internet and mobile phones to interact with key family and friends.

These new finding challenge fears that use of new technologies has contributed to a long-term increase in social isolation in the United States.

The new findings from the Pew Internet & American Life Project show that, on average, the size of people’s discussion networks – those with whom people discuss important matters– is 12% larger amongst mobile phone users, 9% larger for those who share photos online, and 9% bigger for those who use instant messaging. The diversity of people’s core networks – their closest and most significant confidants – tends to be 25% larger for mobile phone users, 15% larger for basic internet users, and even larger for frequent internet users, those who use instant messaging, and those who share digital photos online.

[Snip]

Key Findings

+ Some have worried that internet use limits people’s participation in their local communities, but the Pew Internet report finds that most internet activities have little or a positive relationship to local activity. For instance, internet users are as likely as anyone else to visit with their neighbors in person. Cell phone users, those who use the internet frequently at work, and bloggers are more likely to belong to a local voluntary association, such as a youth group or a charitable organization. However, we find some evidence that use of social networking services (e.g., Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn) substitutes for some neighborhood involvement.

+ Challenging the assumption that internet use encourages social contact across vast distances, this study shows that many internet technologies are used as much for local contact as they are for distant communication.

+ Internet use does not pull people away from public places. Rather, use is associated with frequent visits to places such as parks, cafes, and restaurants, the kinds of locales where research shows that people are likely to encounter a wider array of people and diverse points of view. Indeed, internet access has become a common component of people’s experiences within many public spaces. For instance, of those Americans who have been in a library within the past month, 38% logged on to the internet while they were there, 18% have done so in a café or coffee shop.

+ People’s mobile phone use outpaces their use of landline phones as a primary method of staying in touch with their closest family and friends, but face-to-face contact still trumps all other methods. On average in a typical year, people have in-person contact with their core network ties on about 210 days; they have mobile-phone contact on 195 days of the year; landline phone contact on 125 days; text-messaging contact on the mobile phone 125 days; email contact 72 days; instant messaging contact 55 days; contact via social networking websites 39 days; and contact via letters or cards on 8 days.

More After a Click

+ Social media activities are associated with several beneficial social activities, including having discussion networks that are more likely to contain people from different backgrounds. For instance, frequent internet users, and those who maintain a blog are much more likely to confide in someone who is of another race. Those who share photos online are more likely to report that they discuss important matters with someone who is a member of another political party.

+ While participation in traditional social settings, like neighborhoods, voluntary organizations, and public spaces, remain the strongest predictors for the overall diversity of people’s social networks, internet use, and specifically use of social networking services like Facebook, are also associated with knowing more people from a wider variety of backgrounds.

Access the News Release/Summary

Access the Complete Report ||| PDF Version

Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project

Summon from Serials Solutions

The Summon mobile interface should provide students and researchers most of the same features and options as the regular search interface, including access to both local materials and electronic resources available from the library. The mobile search site will debut today in time for the opening of the Charleston Conference in Charleston, SC.

The mobile search option is an alternative interface, [our emphasis] not a separate downloadable app.

UPDATE: Here is the official news release from Summon regarding their mobile service.

EBSCOhost

EBSCO will soon release EBSCOhost Mobile; according to a post on EBSCO’s support site, “the interface will include many features for an enhanced mobile experience, is optimized for internet-enabled handheld devices, and qualified for all the major SmartPhones (such as iPhone, Blackberry and Treo).”

ResourceShelf has also learned:

+ Mobile functionality can be turned on or off with desired options by the staff who handle online databases

+ The mobile service will be available for all EBSCOhost databases that use the EBSCOhost interface (there are a few that don’t),

+ A library can select which databases to “mobilize”

+ A persistent link is then available which can be placed on the library web site (portal)

+ Another method allows users with an id password to go to new short urls

The article goes on to ask an essential question. Will searchers utilize these tools? Gerry McKiernan says:

“At this point [mobile-specific searches] are supplemental, or impulse, such that if you’re on the road and you want to search a particular resource … you could do that,” he said. But, he added, “The mobile phone is becoming an all-in-one tool for a variety of functions,” and as that happens, users will come to expect some kind of mobile interface to the tools they’re grown accustomed to using.

Source: Library Journal

Yes, you can access Twitter many different ways including SMS, a service that’s available on most phones these days. But apparently some people want/desire/need a tool that can only access Twitter.

So, say hello to the TwitterPeek, a device that comes via a partnership between Twitter and a company named Peek.

It’s for sale via Amazon.com for $99.95 (six months of service) to $299.99 with a lifetimes worth of service.

From a mocoNews.net Article:

The challenge for Twitter and Peek will be to convince consumers that they need to buy another mobile device just for Twitter access—since TwitterPeek doesn’t offer e-mail and almost every smartphone can access the service with clients like Tweetie and TweetDeck. Sarva told VC Dispatch that the companies were going after social media marketers and companies that rely heavily on Twitter to promote their businesses. The TwitterPeek launch also aligns with Twitter’s goal of getting more people to use its service via mobile device; Sarva said it was designed to get people that may have tried and disliked Twitter on the desktop to “realize how fun it is.”

As the article points out Peek also sells an email only device via Amazon.com.

Source: mocoNews

From a News Release:

It’s a free application.

Pulse offers the power of friends’ recommendations, the Loopt community’s real-time feedback, and information from premium, local content sources to help users find what to do.

“It’s difficult to get results from lots of different premium, local content sources at once, and it’s always great to receive your friends’ trusted recommendations on the places they like. We think we’ve taken a huge step forward on all of these fronts,” said Sam Altman, CEO of Loopt.

Coupons based on your location. (This has been an obvious use of location-aware services. We wouldn’t doubt that others will be doing this or something similar in the not so distant future.

We learn more from the NY Times:

Loopt aims to distinguish itself by making its service comprehensive. It incorporates feeds from 20 sources, including listings and review services like Zagat, Citysearch and Eventful as well as content sites like DailyCandy, Thrillist and The Village Voice.

Pulse produces a personalized and ever-changing list of recommendations based on where you are, the time of day and Loopt’s own data on where you and your friends have been. It shows editorial descriptions and reviews from the partner sites and averages the ratings a business has received.

See Also: A List of Mobile Devices that are Loopt Friendly
It’s available for over 100 devices from all major carriers. The iPhone version of “Pulse” is “coming soon.”

OK, but wait, ALA does have one (as far as we know) mobile friendly site. It comes from ALA’s Washington Office.

The well-known District Dispatch blog with the latest happenings involving politics, politicians, DC happenings and libraries/librarians is mobile friendly.

Simply enter the regular URL into your mobile browser and in just a second or two a nicely formatted mobile version of the blog will appear. The URL for the ALA’s District Dispatch is: http://www.wo.ala.org/districtdispatch/ or we can make it shorter for you to type before you bookmark it. Simply enter: http://bit.ly/352Fph.

District Dispatch is published with WordPress and the MobilePress plug-in makes the blog ready for mobile readers.

See Also: The M-Libraries Wiki has a great collection of mobile versions of library websites, online catalogs, as well as SMS services. If your library offers mobile services and it’s not on the list, you should add it. That’s the wiki way. (-:

Note: We can here the RSS geeks already and you’re absolutely right. District Dispatch does have an RSS feed and yes, making that RSS feed mobile friendly is as easy as adding it to your mobile aggregator (web-based or app) and reading away. So, let’s modify. The District Dispatch mobile version is for non-RSS users.

It’s a latter-day social affliction: you visit friends or family, only for them to whip out a laptop and run a seemingly endless photo slide show – perhaps using an online outfit such as Flickr or Picasa. But for those people used to savouring prints as they are passed around, such shows can be about as compelling as “death by Powerpoint”.

Help could be at hand, however. Researchers at Deutsche Telekom in Germany and the University of Newcastle in the UK have dreamed up a curious cellphone-centred way to bridge the gap between what they call the Kodak and Flickr generations.

Source: New Scientist

From the Summary:

The qualitative research with second year undergraduate students from a range of disciplines and universities, consisted of four focus groups and eight depth interviews, held in Manchester and London. The research was conducted by FDS International on behalf of Intute and the findings reinforce the motivation behind the work of the project, which is to provide a user friendly mobile site that is fast and inexpensive to load, providing the right content, presented in the right order and with an adapted layout.

[Snip]

The extent to which the mobile Internet was used varied greatly, with only a small number of students using their mobile Internet for academic work. Given the cost and generally slow access to the Internet from mobile devices, primarily determined by the type of contract and the handset, most students only ever occasionally accessed the Internet using their mobile phone for social purposes and for short durations of time. Consequently, those most likely regularly to access the internet on their mobile phones possessed new telephones with large screens, and had a contract which included free internet access. These represented only a small fraction of those interviewed.

Despite the fact that students rarely used the mobile Internet for their university course, many stated that they would if:

+ their phones had larger screens;
+ it was quick and easy to load and navigate websites; and
+ it was cheaper or free (included in their contract) to access the Internet.

Access the Complete Summary

See Also: Mobilising the Internet Detective (August 14, 2009)

Source: Intute

IBM has announced that a team of IBM researchers has created technology that makes it simpler for Webmasters to make their Websites more readable on mobile devices.

The technology, initially developed as an accessibility feature aimed at visually impaired users, helps to reduce the burdensome scrolling through out-of-order text and graphics, IBM research officials said.

To help Webmasters of all skill levels, IBM researchers in Tokyo developed a visual editor technology that enables Webmasters to arrange their Website content reading flow in a logically ordered sequence—without changing the existing content—that can be easily read on small, mobile devices’ screens.

Source: eWeek

Alas, the vast majority of us were not fortunate enough to attend Gary’s presentation on Mobile Access to Information at Web Search University last month in Washington, D.C. But since this is a topic of intense, growing interest — 56% of adult Americans have accessed the internet by wireless means, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project — we thought we’d link to Gary’s presentation as our Resource of the Week.

In his presentation, Gary covers mobile terms and jargon, how scholarly publishers are joining the mobile revolution, mobile search, podcasts/phonecasts, television on mobile devices, location-based services, “m-commerce,” fast/free directory assistance, traffic reports and other real-time information…and much more. You’ll also find links to information about such cutting-edge services as Google Voice.

Gary has been touting the virtues of mobile internet access for *years* now — keeping track of new services that come online, experimenting with new mobile technologies, etc. This presentation gives you the opportunity to take advantage of his expertise. (sdk)

+ Access to over 1000 films*

+ Preload films for up to 24 hours for offline viewing

+ The collection is searchable

+ Browse films by categories

+ Watch movies that others in your area are also viewing

Access the National Film Board of Canada iPhone App (via iTunes)

Here’s a review from CNET.

See Also: Official NFB News Release

* The 1,000 titles is equal to about 1/13 of the complete NFB catalog. Let’s hope that they will be adding new content on a regular basis.

See Also: Search the Complete National Film Board of Canada Database

From the Announcement:

The NASA App collects, customizes and delivers an extensive selection of dynamically updated information, images and videos from various online NASA sources. Users can access NASA countdown clocks, the NASA Image of the Day, Astronomy Image of the Day, online videos, NASA’s many Twitter feeds and other information in a convenient mobile package. It delivers NASA content in a clear and intuitive way by making full use of the iPhone and iPod touch features, including the Multi-Touch user interface. The New Media Team at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., developed the application.

The NASA App also allows users to track the current positions of the International Space Station and other spacecraft currently orbiting Earth in three views: a map with borders and labels, visible satellite imagery, or satellite overlaid with country borders and labels.

This page has some screen shots from the app. One thing that Version 1.0 is missing and we would love to see is a live feed from NASA TV*. Hopefully, it will be coming in future releases.

If you would like to try the app out, this URL will take you to the appropriate iTunes page to download.

Source: NASA

* See Also: An app does exist that streams one NASA Television channel. It’s named NASA News and costs $.99.

+ Cable television programming being available at any time over the Internet

+ Real-time search. We posted the other day about Twitter search results now being available from Bing and something new also featuring Twitter results coming soon from Google.

Finally:

Looking at how we use our phones now compared with five years from now, David Ko, a Yahoo senior vice president, said we probably will no longer leave the house with our keys, wallet and phone in our pockets or purse. “Maybe you’ll just take the phone,” he said. “That will turn on the car, be your office key, wallet and badge for work.”

Source; USA Today
Hat Tip: P.W.

Want one of many examples of what you’re phone can already do. Be prepared to say adios to boarding passes when you travel by air. Several airlines are already doing it. Here’s an example from American Airlines.

Here are a Few of the Highlights from The Scholarly Kitchen Post:

Meeker notes that while the desktop Internet was largely paid for by advertising and other sources of support, the mobile Internet is so far largely paid for by individuals, a significiant shift in payment sources.

She also notes that social networking has gone mobile in Japan, with Mixi’s traffic flipping from 86% desktop in 2006 to 65% mobile in 2009, mostly due to the emergence of mobile bandwidth.

Facebook has quickly assumed a leading position in its share of global time spent online (6 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day).

Apple and Facebook together create an interesting innovation intersection, with Facebook bringing 390 million users, 350,000 applications, and 500 million downloads, and Apple bringing 85,000 applications and 2 billion downloads. Whether the two will dance more closely remains to be seen.

Source: The Scholarly Kitchen

See Also: Access Mary Meeker’s Slide Deck (68 Slides; via Scribd)

Here are a few more notes from Meeker’s slides:

+ This is her sixth Web 2.0 “Trends” presentation. Other have focused on social networks and online video. This year it’s mobile. Meeker says that mobile, “is and will be bigger than we think.”

+ Mobile Internet adoption outpaces desktop Internet adoption

+ Apple iPhone/iTouch fastest hardware user growth in consumer history

+ Social Networking and Mobile is a Key Theme

+ Facebook numbers one site in global minutes, YouTube second global minutes and the second largest global search engine.

The Nationwide Graveside Locator service is available on handheld devices with Internet capability. The service provides locations and driving directions to both national cemeteries and private burial grounds, according to the agency.

“This innovative program continues VA’s commitment to use the latest technology to provide veterans and their families with information they need,” VA Secretary Eric Shinseki said. “It will simplify and enhance the experience of many who visit our national cemeteries.”

[Snip]

The Web site allows for searches by name and by cemetery, if the location is known. A search will provide a grave location, a link to a Google map and driving directions, and a link to the cemetery map if available.

The VA is adding about 1,000 new records to the database each day, agency officials said.

Access the Mobile Version of the VA Grave Locator

Access the Non-Mobile Version of the VA Grave Locator

Source: Federal Computer Week
Hat Tip: P.W.