We have reached an age where the trajectories of the advancement of technology including mobile applications, artificial intelligence, and virtual and augmented reality may rapidly spike at any given moment, potentiating an increased incidence of unforeseen consequences in the form of distraction-related morbidity. In the not-too-distant past, logging onto the internet meant sitting in front of a computer.
The post Dosing distraction in the world of augmented-reality appeared first on OUPblog.
Did your tweens and teens get new tablets/devices during the winter holidays? If they haven’t already come into your library asking for advice about apps, they might be soon! Here are some already curated app reviews perfect for teens and tweens. This way you’ll be able to help your young patrons find exactly what they need for their new device!
Photo App:
FotoRUs
Reviewed by Karen Jensen, Teen Librarian Toolbox
Review Excerpt: “FotoRus is an app that does multiple things. You can create a collage, add a sticker or edit like a pro using the pro edit feature. My two favorite things about FotoRus are the Mag Library feature (InstaMag) and the PIP (photo in a photo) feature.”
Storytelling App:
Plotagon
Reviewed by Joyce Valenza, Neverending Search
Review Excerpt: ” Plotagon encourages users to script a story–selecting locations; building dialogue; adding emotions, attitudes and postures; responding to characters; choosing sound effects and music.”
Art and Architecture App:
Apprentice Architect
Reviewed by Daryl Grabarek, School Library Journal:
Excerpt from review: “Touch Press built a highly visual, interactive app with numerous opportunities for exploration, discovery, and creation in Apprentice Architect (iOS, Free), an introduction to the new, Gehry-designed contemporary art museum in Paris, the Fondation Louis Vuitton.”
Poetry App:
Lark
Reviewed by Wendy Stevens, YALSA Blog
Excerpt from Review: “Lark, Storybird’s Poetry app, is a digital incarnation of a refrigerator magnet poetry set, inspiring creativity within a finite vocabulary set as you move and reorder the words it generates over an image.”
Puzzle Game App:
Last Voyage
Reviewed by Donna Block, YALSA Blog
Review Excerpt: “Last Voyage is an abstract puzzle game inspired by science fiction movies. It features hypnotic, minimalist graphics that often consist of simple geometric shapes; but also more cinematic scenes that pay homage to icons like the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey.” (Bonus: mentions of other excellent puzzle game apps!)
STEM App:
Brian Cox’s Wonders of the Universe
Reviewed by Daryl Grabarek, School Library Journal
Review Exerpt: “Brian Cox’s Wonders of the Universe immerses viewers in a spectacular look at the mysteries of our solar system and beyond.” (Bonus: on sale for $1.99 now!)
No matter what your tween or teen is interested in, there’s an app out there for them. Let this librarian-reviewed list of apps help you help your patrons!
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Our cross-poster from YALSA today is Ally Watkins (@aswatki1). Ally is a library consultant at the Mississippi Library Commission.
The post Tween App Review Roundup appeared first on ALSC Blog.
If you haven’t updated your website theme yet, you should do it today.
Why, you ask?
In an article over at Boost Blog Traffic (BBT), it noted that in January of 2014, “mobile Internet usage exceeded desktop usage for the first time in history.”
And, that was a year ago!
Here are a couple of other statistics from BBT:
65% of emails get opened first on a mobile device.
76% of Facebook’s
Facebook is about to become even more addicting (with a photo sharing application for iPhones. As sending images via mobile devices becomes increasingly popular, it’s no surprise that Facebook wants to expand its technology. The social network... Read the rest of this post
Now that I’m on a smartphone that has a real web browser and is capable of multitasking (the Palm Pre), In fact, I find myself expecting it to act like my laptop. I’ve stopped carrying my laptop or my netbook to work each day because I can do so much on my phone, but I’m still noticing where decisions made by web designers make my mobile life easier.
So here’s mobile developer tip #1, my two cents: use plugins and widgets that let users automatically share your content on sites like Twitter, Delicious, Facebook, etc., because you’ll make the user’s life easier. Granted, not all phones support the Javascript that powers this type of service on a web page, but more and more will, so consider getting ahead of the curve and adding it now.
The alternative for me as the reader (acknowledging each person’s situation is different) is to:
- Leave the site up in a card until I get home in the evening and can manually bookmark it on my laptop. This works about 50% of the time.
- Email the site to myself so I can bookmark it later on my laptop. This works about 80% of the time but is annoying.
- Try remembering to revisit the site later on my laptop to bookmark it. This works 0% of the time.
As a result, I’m finding that I’m far more likely to bookmark something if there’s a direct link to post it to Delicious, and that workflow will continue for me until there’s a Pre app that makes this easier, which means I really appreciate sites that offer this. Even better is if you can add it so that it appears in your RSS feed so that it shows up in places like Google Reader and Bloglines, too.
Here are some options to consider for adding this functionality to your site.
- For WordPress blogs, you can use the Sociable plugin (I’m sure there are others, but this is what I use so I know it works). I have another blog post brewing on this topic, but this is yet another reason I encourage libraries to make their “what’s new” page a blog - you can then use the wealth of plugins out there to improve the user’s experience.
- For Drupal sites, you can use something like the Share module (I’m going to look into this for ALA Connect. If you’re using a different CMS, check to see if there’s a similar module for it.
- Failing that, or even for use on general web pages, check out something like the Add This widget, although I have to admit I’m not sure how accessible it is.
Regardless, this can be a relatively easy way to help meet the needs of your mobile users, a group that’s just going to grow in the future. Food for thought. Nom nom nom.
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