23 Mobile Things #17: Connecting to Community

I glanced through the long list of possible apps for this Thing and latched onto Saint Paul Connect because it was the only one centered on St. Paul. I'm delighted this was listed, because it was exactly what I was looking for without knowing I was looking for it.

I spend a lot of time waiting at bus stops and walking around St. Paul, which puts me in a good position to notice burned out streetlights, walk/don't walk lights, and so on. (Admittedly, I don't tend to notice potholes unless they're in the middle of a pedestrian crosswalk.) But reporting them has always been a bit tricky because I have to remember to do so when I'm at a computer, and then remember where the problem was and how best to describe it. With this app, I can report a problem right then and there, and even take a picture of it, if that would help, and I bet the phone can tell the city exactly where the problem is. Majorly cool.

Apparently some things get fixed more quickly than others. I know that in the past, when I've reported a burned-out streetlight, it's been fixed within 24 hours. Judging from this app, though, the potholes are going to be with us for a while. But it won't be from ignorance of their existence: there are some dedicated pothole observers in this area. I tapped on every red pin you see here, and each one of them is a complaint about a pothole, some confirmed by as many as eight people (who all have this app? am I the last person in St. Paul to have heard of it?). I think some of these potholes have been fixed by now, though, so I'm wondering how often the city updates its information.

I foresee getting a lot of use out of this app. Although I probably still won't be much good at noticing potholes.

23 Mobile Things #16: Audio

It's a toss-up as to whether audio or video is the more alien world to me. I mean, at least I'd heard of Vine before I got to Thing #14, and I had an idea of how it worked which turned out to be vague but accurate. I didn't even recognize the names any of the apps listed for this Thing. I ended up choosing Audioboo because the name is cute. (This is maybe not what its designers intended.)

This was still yet another Really Easy App to Use. I'm glad it didn't force me to create an account; I feel like I'm leaving a trail of abandoned accounts behind me. Making my own recording was easy to do. I've owned my iPad since 2011, and I think Audioboo is the first app that's ever used the microphone. I couldn't think of anything profound or witty to say, but my random sentences came out clear and easy to understand.—okay, that might be more due to the quality of the iPad's microphone than anything Audioboo does. I see the description of Audioboo says that you can record up to three minutes of audio. I saw Boos that were much longer than that. Does downloading or posting recordings gives you more time?

This isn't an app I see myself using either personally or professionally. I don't listen to audiobooks and I think I've tried all of one podcast in my life. I'm just not attracted to pure audio. Professionally, well, maybe there's something we could say, but our library is only really oriented to Twitter right now, and there aren't any plans at present for adding in more social media. Although this seems like it might be more useful to us than a six-second video.

23 Mobile Things #15: Infographics

I decided to see what Infographics Hub could do. Now I'm used to infographics accompanying text articles. Sometimes there isn't much more to the article than Hey, look at this cool infographic of this interesting phenomenon, but usually there's something. It had never occurred to me that you could gather infographics, separate them from their parent articles (if any), and read them one after another like articles in a magazine, but that's exactly what Infographics Hub does. Now there are an awful lot of infographics out there, but Infographics Hub allows you to filter them by category, which makes the flood more manageable. Choose your favorite topics, sit back, and enjoy the data presentation.

As it turns out, I like reading an infographic every now and then. Reading one after another is overwhelming, even in just one subject area. Approach them with caution if you plan to use them in a professional project, because the sources are listed inconsistently. Some infographics list their sources clearly at the bottom, which is good, but some had no sources listed whatsoever. I see the infographics are introduced with a bit of text, but I couldn't tell if that was from the parent article or something Infographics Hub added. For one (apparently sourceless) infographic, the accompanying blurb states, "They wanted to share the top advantages of asynchronous eLearning so below is their infographic that shows those advantages." Nothing says who "they" are, and unfortunately the ad at the bottom of the app cut off the last line of the infographic, so I hope there wasn't a grand conclusion down there.

If you want to see a lot of infographics and get ideas of what to include in your own, this would be a fine app. If you want to use the infographics themselves, just be alert to which ones provide sources and which do not. And if you want to make your own, you'll need a different app altogether. But as a free source of infographics, Infographics Hub does well enough.

23 Mobile Things #14: Videos

Vine: Instagram for videos, right? It certainly looks a lot like Instagram in how the app is laid out, and when you add in the captioning, hashtags, ability to like videos, and so on, the differences seem almost nonexistent. It's hard to believe they're owned by different companies.

This was another easy app to use. I appreciated the micro-tutorial that Vine supplied: having the instructions right there on the screen while I made the video was so right that it was brilliant. A strong word, I know, but I've had too many experiences of trying to click back and forth between tabs or find my place in a set of printed instructions to not praise this. Now if only I could find something more video-worthy than six seconds of my ceiling fan. Ooh, I know: a montage of all my ceiling fans in operation! (No?) But if I wanted to inflict that on the Vine-osphere, Vine has made it simplicity itself to create that video.

I wasn't all that impressed by the videos Vine sent my way. Most of them were only half a step up from animated GIFs, and even the ones that were funny stopped being so after the third showing—which, you know, was only 18 seconds after I first laid eyes on the video. (Okay, the video of the irate chicken pecking the smartphone camera was above average. Given how many likes it had, much of Vine thought so too.) It turns out that almost none of my friends have made the leap to Vine, so I don't know what kinds of videos people I share interests with would make. 

No, I don't see us using this at work. I did click through Sajorenna's links on how libraries are using Vine. Some were more appealing than others. I thought the video of the 3D printer in action was probably going to entice more patrons than the video that just showed various shots of books shelved in the stacks. Books don't move; perhaps "plain" old photos would have been the better medium than video. Like all social media, you need to have a plan before you throw your library onto Vine.

Personal use? Well, at first I thought I'd drop Vine the minute I got this post written, but now I'm thinking I may stick around, see if I can find interesting videos without Vine's "help," and try to think of interesting topics to cover in six seconds. 

And film my Oscar-winning video of ceiling fans.

23 Mobile Things #13: Presentations

Through my life, I've mostly been able to avoid making presentations, at least until grad school when I was finally forced to get the hang of PowerPoint. So I was less than enthusiastic to see this topic on the agenda. I chose Deck Slideshow Presentations simply because it was the first app listed (I have such high-falutin' selection criteria).

Okay, this was lots easier than wrestling PowerPoint. There was an outline for five slides or so, and all I had to do was type in a little bit of text. Really, it was like making five related tweets in a row (indeed, like Twitter, Deck will cut you off if your text goes on too long on any one slide). I added a quick chart, just to see what that was like, and again, it was surprisingly easy. I tried my presentation with a few themes. I think the limited number would be a problem if I were using Deck with any frequency, but for just a test presentation, the free themes were fine. The animations were certainly more interesting than anything I've done with PowerPoint, and they didn't give me vertigo the way Prezi sometimes can. Even though my text was within Deck's limits on each slide, I noticed that I lost the last word or two on my longer slides with some animations: hopefully the Deck people will fix this in later releases.

Personal or professional use? Not much, which is too bad given how easy this app was to use. I don't make presentations in my personal life and don't need to at this point in my professional life. Since we have Microsoft Office and an abundance of desktop computers at work, I think anyone who needs to make a presentation will use PowerPoint (except for the coworker who likes Prezi—how do you think I learned it makes me dizzy?). But should I ever need to make a presentation on the go, with only a tablet to work with, I would be quite likely to choose this app first.

23 Mobile Things #12: Books, Books, & More Books

I first heard about Wattpad late last year, when reading Fic: Why Fanfiction Is Taking Over the World, but the description in the book hadn't really given me a good sense of how the site worked—something about a social network of readers and writers, fanfics and self-published works. Now I had an excuse to look at it closely.

The Wattpad app itself is easy to use: install, set up an account, choose a few favorite genres, and start reading. Mind you, the app started off by recommending books in genres like Romance and Adventure that I had specifically not listed as ones I'm interested in. (This probably won't be your go-to app for reader's advisory.) I hadn't realized that Wattpad had out-of-copyright classics as well as modern writing—I may finally get around to reading "The Picture of Dorian Gray." If you're comfortable reading on a tablet (I haven't tried Wattpad's iPhone app yet), you'll be fine reading things on Wattpad. The font is clear and navigation is intuitive.

Wattpad is a social network as well as a reading app, which will take some getting used to on my part. I mean, Amazon is sort of trying to promote social reading by giving you the option of making your Kindle notes and highlighting public, but Wattpad goes far beyond this (perhaps this is why Amazon acquired Goodreads). Naturally, the app offers you the standard option of inviting your friends from other social networks to come join you. I'm guessing that if I did have friends on Wattpad, the news feed would be showing me what they're up to, and not just Wattpad's recommendations for what to read next. But I'm used to this sort of thing from being on LibraryThing and Goodreads. What I'm not accustomed to is social networking practically written into the text itself. The book I chose was peppered with comment counts (this is the part that's sort of like the Kindle option of seeing what other readers have highlighted). Intrigued, I clicked through on a few of them. Some comments were about how much the readers were enjoying the book, some were asking for clarification on one point or another, some were offering editorial advice. The author was participating in the discussion at points, which has the potential to be really interesting. But I also found the discussions distracting, because I had to stop reading the book itself to read the comments. It's like trying to listen to the commentary on a DVD and watch it simultaneously—I have to commit to one or the other, not both. And completely unlike LibraryThing, Goodreads, or Kindle, Wattpad invites you to write your own stories. One tap on the Create icon, and a blank screen with keyboard appears: no obstacles between you and the muse. Whoa.

Okay, this is another app I'll be hanging onto for a while to explore further. Unfortunately, Wattpad hasn't solved the problem of how to find the good stories in these millions of self-published works, and it'll probably take me a while before I trip over one on my own. Not surprisingly, I can't see any use for this app in a law library. If someone wanted to read fanfiction, Wattpad can certainly deliver it to them. Do patrons ask to read self-published works that aren't fanfics? I'd think that reading the library's e-books might be more satisfying simply because most of them will have been edited at some point in the publication process. Of course, if the patron wants the social networking experience while reading, then they're probably going to want something like Wattpad, or maybe Goodreads or LibraryThing. (Yes, the perennial question: What do patrons want?)

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Another free source of fanfiction is Archive of Our Own (AO3). This isn't an app, but the site can be bookmarked on a tablet or smartphone. It has a much better search engine than Wattpad, allowing you to specify precisely what you're looking for. Membership is required to comment on works or create your own, but you don't need to be a member to read the stories.

23 Mobile Things #11: Library & Reference

I've been using the St. Paul Public Library's mobile app for a few years now. It seems to have gotten a new color scheme in the past few days: nicer to look at aesthetically, and easier to read. I mainly use it for the catalog, to see if the library owns a specific book I want, usually one that I've thought of when I'm out and about and realize that I could pick up if it's available. The mobile catalog isn't designed for browsing; you can search by title or author, but that's it. I pulled up a record and clicked on one of its subject headings to see if that would take me anywhere, but no. One of the app's options is a button to take you to the main catalog, which is good, although that would be more useful on a tablet. On my phone, I could tell I was looking at the catalog, but it would have taken a lot of zooming in and out to make use of it (I'm feeling seasick at the very thought).

But, okay, for this Thing, I should probably look at all those other button in the app, the ones I usually don't use.

• My Account: Indeed, that's what this is. Oh, and I can use this to renew the one book I have out. Nifty.
• Library Locator: A good idea, especially if you're out and about and are struck by a need to visit the closest branch of the library. It needs to be tweaked for focus, though. It asked if it could use my location, then listed every branch, without any indication of which ones I was the closest to.
• Ask A Librarian: Ooh, lots of options, and two of them ("Email Us" and "Call Us") can be done with just a click through my phone. Excellent! Too bad I don't have anything to ask a librarian right now, or I could test the system more thoroughly.
• E-books and Audiobooks Available Now: OverDrive, 3M Cloud Library, and OneClickdigital, all there and ready for me to access them. You'd need to know exactly what book you want, or you'd drain your phone's battery scrolling through endless lists trying to find something, but if you do, this is a convenient way to pick up more reading material when you're away from home and your library.
• New Books for Adults, Teens, Kids: Yes, that's what they are. Again, one can search the list rather than scroll.
• BookLook @ ISBN search: This lets you scan the barcode of a book in a bookstore or that a friend is reading, or whatever, and tells you whether or not the library has it. A great idea, although the results can be confusing. I got a hit for the book I test-scanned, but then it said no copies were available and didn't let me reserve one. I'm guessing this means all the copies were lost or stolen. If that's the case, please don't get my hopes up by telling me the library owns the book.
• Research: Databases. Got it.
• Events & Classes: Exactly.
• Metrowide Calendar: Events and classes at other Twin Cities libraries, I think.
• Facebook Connect with us: Find them on Facebook...
• Follow us on Twitter @stpaullibrary: ...and Twitter.
• Metrowide Libraries: Locations of the branches of other Twin Cities libraries. Wait...it can tell me I'm 4.7 miles from the Hosmer Library (Hennepin County Library), but it can't tell me which branch of my own library is closest with the Library Locator?! Luckily, the St. Paul Public Library is listed here too, so now I can see which branch I'm currently closest to. Sheesh.

Lots of services in a fairly simple app. I really must use this more.