You'll be able to wave your smart phone at a product in a store and buy it if this article in the New York Times is to be believed.
Of course, the notion that people will be willing to turn their phones into a delivery device for retail marketing based on their every GPS move, called "aggressive merchandising" in the article, is a complete absurdity.
This however sounds more promising:
Many big retailers have already created cellphone applications that do more than just dole out coupons. Target, for one, has an application that can identify which store aisle sells nightgowns.
We don't do nightgowns (at least not yet) but it's the same idea for say, books on English Literature or the Life Sciences. Our wares can just as easily be exposed.
In any case, the more general point is how powerful the potential is for a device that's both networked and capable of real-time audio/video.
Enough already with the fetishism about eReaders! It's the market for Smartphones and Netbooks that's advancing in leaps and bounds.
Shipments of netbooks have gone up 103% (Engadget) and while they're nowhere close to equaling sales of more traditional laptops, both of these devices are about to be left in the dust by smartphone sales (InformationWeek).
The question from a library perspective is how to accommodate a clear consumer preference for devices like this. That's where the focus should be. That's why when faced with two distribution methods, one relying on a netbook/smartphone or one relying on a library-issued ebook, it probably would make sense to choose the former.
Every once and a while I come across an article which pretty much declares any device larger than a cellphone as dead because cellphones are what the kids are using and hence everything else is on the road to extinction.
This is silly.
I use my smartphone/pda/call-it-what-you-like -- all the time but even I know it doesn't replace my need for larger devices depending on what I'm doing.
I'm not going to write my research paper on a cellphone, for example, for the same reason that I wouldn't do the same, twenty years earlier, on the back of an envelope. You choose the tool to fit the job.
Posted in Submitted by Leo Klein on Wed, 11/19/2008 - 12:06am.
I was studiously trying to avoid any mention of the iPhone today. I'm at home putting the finishing touches on a site for work. Anyway, I ducked out for a chicken and baguette and what do I see? A line around the local AT&T/Cingular store with people waiting for the new contraption!
This is the North Side of Chicago. We're not even close to Downtown. Still there was a line starting at the front of the store and going around the corner into the alley (bottom photo). The guy at the head of the line said the phones were expected by 6pm.
As a personal contribution to iPhone-mania, I'd like to present 'iPhoney' -- a software program (mac only) that gives you "pixel-accurate" views of how your site would look on a real iPhone (if you had one). This may be of slight consolation to those of you who'd rather have the unit itself but hey, iPhoney is free for the downloading!
Meanwhile in other mobile news, you can also try out your website in Operamini's new online Simulator.
Posted in Submitted by Leo Klein on Sat, 06/23/2007 - 4:19pm.
