I’m in it, so I guess I’m going to buy it. Very crafty Mr. Crawford. Very crafty

Quite a while ago, I set up a Google link alert so that I would get an email whenever someone linked to one of my blogs, and it worked as I had hoped. In the last couple of weeks or so, something changed and now I get an email whenever someone who has Tombrarian as part of their blogroll posts anything. Anyone else encounter this and know of a fix?

I just bought an Asus Eee PC 900HA. I bought it from Amazon on Thursday and it arrived Friday without me paying for expedited shipping, so I am rather pleased with Amazon right now.

Asus Eee PC 900HA 1

A friend of mine had me considering a Dell Mini, but the Asus is less expensive, has more storage, and was ready to ship. The last point was an important consideration because of the workshop I am giving in November in Chicago. I really didn’t want to lug a laptop around anymore.

Operating System: Genuine Windows® XP Home
Display: 8.9″ LED Backlight
Intel CPU & Chipset: Intel Atom N270
Wireless Data Network: WLAN: 802.11 b/g
Memory XP: 1GB (DDR2)
Hybrid Storage: 160GB HDD
Camera: 0.3M Pixel
Dimensions: 8.86 inches, 6.69 inches, 0.79 inches
Weight: 4.2 pounds

Asus Eee PC 900HA 2

So far, I quite like it. The keyboard will take some getting used to because of the size. The spacebar is short and I keep hitting the ALT key instead. I’ll need to work on my aim. It does not have a cd/dvd drive, so I spent some time this morning downloading tools. It comes with Microsoft Works which is a lot more robust than the last time I looked at it, but I still went with Open Office. Also downloaded Firefox 3. I haven’t taken the jump to 3 yet at work or on my home PC, so this will give me a chance to play around with it. Also did a little research for free anti-virus software and chose Avast. I never tried it before, so if anyone has any insights about it, I’d love to hear them.

Asus Eee PC 900HA 3

Coincidentally, the same week that Howard Rheingold presented at Internet Librarian 2008, TED published a blog post aggregating a few of their talks dealing with online collaboration and Web 2.0 technologies. The Rheingold talk echoes much of what he said at IL, so if you missed his great talk, you can watch this similar one.

A week or so ago, I wondered if Blu-Ray had won the format wars. I have my answer: according to Information Week, Toshiba plans to stop making HD DVD players.

Coming just a little over a month after Warner Bros. announced they were going exclusively with Blu-Ray, Best Buy and Netflix announce that they are heading that way as well.

Wired reports that Netflix will be going exclusively with Blu-Ray, and ComingSoon.net reports that, although Best Buy will still carry HD DVD, it will “prominently showcase Blu-ray hardware and software products.”

Despite being in a techy environment, I’m not always easily impressed by new technology. But this is really cool: http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

In his comment to my previous post, Dennis points to an excellent example on YouTube. That and another example are so good, I wanted to post about them to make sure anyone who was interested in the last post sees these.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ&rel=1]

And

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7t40xBpqfE&rel=1]

There’s a great article in Rolling Stone about how music engineered for mp3 players sounds worse than that for previous media. The article, The Death of High Fidelity: In the age of MP3s, Sound Quality Is Worse Than Ever, by Robert Levine, explains how newly released music can be engineered for loudness rather than range of sound. As I was reading it, I was thinking of the latest album I downloaded from iTunes, Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Allison Krause, which sounds excellent to me. At the end of the article, Levine lists some examples of “Bad” albums noted for their loudness and “Good” albums noted for their depth and range and Raising Sand was on the good list. Nice to know I’m not deaf yet.

Ted Johnson, in the September 3-9, 2007 Variety, makes an interesting observation about the moviegoing experience that resonates with some of the on-going discussion about how academic libraries serve their students. Johnson’s article, “Global Warming at the Box Office,” analyzes some of the factors that may have caused a jump in box office this summer after a few tepid years. One of the factors he calls “New Media Fatugue.” He writes:

“Hand-held devices were supposed to revolutionize the business — and they may have — but the novelty has worn thin. This was the summer that the iPhone was introduced, but it didn’t stop moviegoers from seeing ‘Transformers’ just a few days later. Parents have started to encourage their kids to get out of the house and to the multiplex, if only to get them away from the computer. ‘All of the alternative media sources that have been obsessing kids have become more regular,’ says the head of one production shingle. ‘They are spending less time playing around on new media and more time looking for something else.’ A case in point: Amusement park attendance also is up, so kids are anxious to get out of the house. Gas prices would seem to keep more people in their homes, but ‘they’ve gotten used to the sticker shock.’”

Granted, he only uses box office receipts and amusement park attendance as his research, but he raises an interesting question: are we going to see a leveling-off in the use of technology by younger students as new technologies loose their novelty? For those of use who grew up with telephones attached to the wall, the iPhone is a novelty. To kids who grew up with Internet-capable cell phones, the iPhone is a variation on a theme.

The implied argument is nothing new: focus on service and not technology-for-technology-sake. But there’s a danger to spending too much time trying to figure out what “millennials” want or need; we could potentially over-shoot the mark. There could come a time when are students aren’t as obsessed with new devices as we assume they would be. The lesson to be learned is to keep watching the trends and not assume that the fascination with new technology is always increasing.