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People have been sending me some great links which I’ve been consolidating for a “best of inbox” post here today. This is a rainy Vermont weekend coming up which means indoor projects and I’m waiting for the kitchen floor to dry.

The above image is from the Royalton Library up the road from here. I went there on Wednesday after recording the MetaFilter podcast. The librarian had a patron who had gotten a “free” computer (actually two) and needed help setting it up. I went over with Ubuntu CDs and a cheery frame of mind. That outlook soured somewhat when I learned more about the computers. They were given to this family by the VT Department of Children and Families. They were, I think, donated to them. Neither one worked right — one had no operating system (and a possibly broken CD drive) and one froze intermittently. DCF had given these computers to this family, this family already needing a bit of help, as a way of helping them out. All they wound up doing was giving them a project, a somewhat futile project. The mom and daughter were good natured about it, but I felt totally on the spot — if I fixed the computers, the family would have a computer. I took them home to mess with and I’ll probably just replace them with a working computer from my attic. What a pickle.

On to the links I’ve assembled.

• This one is sort of self-referential, but Steve Cisler died about a week and a half ago. I had met him when I gave a talk at SJSU and he came up and introduced himself to me. He was the first “internet librarian” I ever knew. There are a few wonderful memorial posts about him and I summarized some of them on MetaFilter.
• Superpatron Ed V is putting together a list of libraries that have catalogs with mobilesmall screen versions. Does yours? Contact him.
• I can never get enough of Brewster Kahle. In this podcast he talks about defending the Internet Archive from a National Security Letter. Good stuff.
• Noisy punky library fun.

That’s the short list for now, I have a few that are begging for more explication which I’ll be getting to shortly.

That's Larry Smith describing how he dreamed up Smith Magazine a couple years ago. He co-edited the new Smith book, to the six-word memoir collection, Not Quite What I Was Planning, with his Senior Editor, Rachel Fershleiser

They've been our special guests this week, both in print and in web video. Today, Larry Smith explains how an up-and-coming microblogging company Twitter changed his magazine.

Welcome to my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions (this week, each of our guests get two-and-a-half easy questions). In the spirit of Jack Nicholson's mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality conversations with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.

Jason Boog:

Larry Smith: 

Twitter was a great partnership for us, and exemplifies a lot of the way we think. Soon after SMITH launched (Jan. 6., 2006) I became obsessed with telling stories from SMITH on mobile phones. Continue reading...

Got a second? Why not publish your next story?

Last weekend I took my Flip videocamera to a book party, and shot a little video project to make my interview feature more exciting. That little camera is changing the way I tell stories. 

I'm not the only one. In our interview with Smith Magazine founder, Larry Smith, we spent a lot of time discussing fast and easy web applications for writers.  

In that spirit, I have two great links that will help you explore the mobile writing web this weekend. First of all read Jeff Jarvis' inspiring essay about Reuters/Nokia's mobile journalism project.

This has been one of my favorite new projects, and it was cool to see Jarvis jazzed about the whole thing. If this doesn't make you excited, then you might want to check your writerly pulse:

"I can also see using such video clips as part of larger stories – they become moving and talking pictures. They become part of a multimedia narrative, now that journalists no longer need to pick one medium but can work in them all. In short, we’re not using cameras to make TV with all its trappings and orthodoxies. We’re just making video, video that’s good enough to tell a story."

Then check out the Visual Editors website. Besides having lots of video advice, they also have a great feature on using Twitter as a journalist.

Mobile! Mobile! Mobile!

I keep saying it, and every day I'm seeing more examples. The Internet is quickly filling up with bright, hungry writers who are setting the standard for cellphone writing. You should be one of them.

Here are three writers I discovered in the last week, people who can inspire you to try using your cellphone and videocamera as writing tools.

I was reading Galleycat when I spotted Barry Yourgrau (that's his picture) and his mad collection of multimedia stories. He wrote a series of short shorts intended to be read on cellphones and plays with web video writing as well.

Earlier this week, journalist Sarah Meyers stopped by our website. Check out her Consumer Electronics Show coverage for tips on live video and breaking tech news. 

Finally, smojo (a writer with Twitter and webvideo on his site) reminded us about the future implications of all this tech. "Once the picture quality is a little better I can imagine reporters using this kind of technology to go into disaster zones. The news van with the giant satellite tower will no longer be needed."

Anybody else have some bright ideas?

Can you tell a story while filming something on your cellphone? Do people want to watch a live video streamed from a journalist's cellphone?

These are questions all writers need to be asking--it's almost as important as the question, "Will people upload videos to YouTube?" was in 2006. If you can find news and narrate, there will be plenty of opportunities for you on the mobile web.

The infrastructure already exists for you to report and film any event live from your cellphone with a website called Qik. Over at Lost Remote, Cory Bergman built the most amazing set of links that study and teach you how to jump on the live-video bandwagon.

As you can see from the Robert Scoble linked above, the video work isn't anything fancy--but it gets the job done if you manage to quickly corner the founders of YouTube. Check it out: 

"Self-described “lifecaster” and internet cutie Sarah Meyers is packing around a high-def camera, microphone and laptop with an EVDO card to webcast live via both PopSnap and Mogulus (she started on Justin.tv). You can see how she does it in this ZDNet video clip."

How do you tell stories on a cellphone screen? You should figure it out.

The Poynter Institute has a fascinating article about mobile journalists that are bopping around the world with laptops, cameras, and a notebook. While journalist Pat Walters sees some dangers in the practice, the article links to plenty of sweet storytelling experimentation. Check it out:

"At The News-Press, that means deploying a team of MoJos armed with laptops, cameras and recorders. At the Post, Ahrens says, it means hiring newspaper Web site designer Rob Curley, known nationwide for his groundbreaking work in creating an intensely local and interactive Web site for the Naples (Fla.) Daily News and the Lawrence (Kan.) Journal-World."

For the novelists in the audience, the Wall Street Journal has covered the evolution of mobile phone fiction. In addition, the Institute for the Future of the Book has a great essay about the future of the cellphone novel in  America, speculating if the bitty-text wave could affect us. Read it and weep:

"In other words, improved telcom services in the States wouldn't necessarily translate into a proliferation of cellphone novels, but other mobile media services would undoubtedly start to flourish. Broadband internet access is also pathetically slow in the US compared to countries in Europe and East Asia—the Japanese get service eight to 30 times faster than what we get over here."

The word for the week is "mobile."

Over the weekend, I met one of Reuter's first mobile journalists. These reporters are armed with powerful videocamera phones and portable hardware--a single reporter can create print and video features miles from any newsroom.

The experimental Mobile Journalist Toolkit includes a portable tripod, computer keyboard, a directional microphone, and the Nokia N95 cell phone.

The United States is lagging behind other countries in adapting to cell phone possibilities, but the change is coming.

Last week, the MediaShift Idea Lab explored the slow transition to mobile media, offering ideas for writers interested in using this new medium. Paul Lamb writes: "According to a just released report by Jupiter Research, only 16% of U.S. subscribers are browsing the mobile web. According to the report, the low uptake is due primarily to lack of interest (73%) and the high cost (47%)." 

The change is coming, it's just taking longer for Americans. Someday soon, the mobile phone market will be begging for content. The journalists who can figure out how to write for this bitty medium can take their pick of stories. 

How will you write and report for the smallest screen of all?