I tell you this because it's news, but also because WorldCat was one of the largest Oracle installations, if I recall correctly--and well worth it because now it can do Cool Things like FRBR views, a wiki in the works and more...
So one more giant tech merger. Scoop is on the Oracle site.
The Giant Tech Merger made personal: My AT&T Wireless phone, now owned by Cingular, has been giving me fits and the Cingular store representative told me my best bet was to wait the 227 more days until my contract expired. Ugh. Giant tech merger that someday result in better service for all of us.
In the meantime, I feel sidelined as a customer.
(Of course, I did hear that Cingular was scrambling to get temporary phone towers up after Katrina, so that people could call their families. So...I should cut them some slack.)
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Cingular has gone in as partners with Motorolla and Apple and is marketing the iPod nano. iTunes delivered music on your phone; elevator music of our own chosing--we never have to be more than an earshot away from U2 again. Such a deal.
What next, encyclopedias? Newspaper subscriptions? E-books? Children's programming?
Do you think Cingular can out-perform libraries customer-service-wise?
I seriously doubt it. But what should we be doing now to deliver library content and services over _our_ customers cell phones?
I will tell you, I love device convergence. But it's mainly because I have too many devices! Quality vs. convenience is always the factor.
Google is already delivering easy Google-type answers to mobile phones, with Google SMS. Libraries can do it, too, and we've talked about it here--especially for parts of the world that have lots of cell phones but not lots of computers. Maybe that's Montana?India? China?
I held an iPod nano in my hot hands the other night...it was so small, so flat--the size of a credit card, basically.
If my phone, iPod, camera, PDA, credit card, driver's license, library card, grocery store loyalty cards and car keys could all get incorporated into one device...I would pay big money for it.
I wonder if someday we could store water pellets on our converged devices. Or a grilled cheese sandwich. You think we could fit a micro-sized grilled cheese sandwich pellet into a mobile phone?
With God as my witness, I'd never go hungry again!
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