Digital dancing in the virtual world and beyond

Jayne Gutry, professional development adviser attended a presentation by Richard P Hulser on 16 March 2009 at the LIANZA Hikuwai regional event. Richard spoke about Digital dancing in the virtual world and beyond.

Issues and trends

• Information delivery to Smartphones is now an expectation by people demographically
• There are new ways to get and deliver information through social networking. Twitter and Facebook is talked about through the media (i.e. CNN & Oprah). It is becoming common so that most people at least have an understanding of what they are
• Virtual worlds are slowly becoming of interest to businesses, not just individuals
• Most library vendors are incorporating web 2.0 tools into software. It is interesting to note that most of these are currently owned by venture capital companies
  

Information is growing exponentially
Have you heard of a Petabyte or an Exabyte? These are names given to units of computer information storage. They have already given names to future units of storage such as a Yottabyte. It is estimated that only 300 exabytes of information is available on the internet. To put this in perspective what these storage units mean:

• 1 Gigabyte = 1.7 hours uncompressed cd quality sound music:
• 1 Petabyte – Facebook has just over 1 petabyte of users’ photos stored, roughly 10 billion photos
• 1 Exabyte - As of December 2008], The world's total printed material could be stored in about 5 exabytes
• 1 Zettabyte – this is so large that it currently doesn’t have any practical use i.e it could store the phone records and their history for everyone worldwide
• 1 Yottabyte – doesn’t exist yet but it could store almost any imaginable digital data i.e. 1 copy of every movie ever made including copies for every single person.
  

Social networking sites

Richard challenged libraries to think about the number of people using social networking sites and asked:

• What is your libraries plan to be part of this network?
• How do you intend to target this online audience?

Richard mentioned some social networking sites that I haven’t covered in our web 2.0 programmes:

• Orkut – google’s answer to social networking
• Linkedin – professional networking
• Plaxo - see what the people you know are creating and sharing all over the open web
• Knol – another google project where contributers can create articles about a range of topics
• Mixi – japanese social networking site
  

How we carry information
Richard talked about how we are changing the way in which we carry information. Organisations have been branding USB devices for some time and there is an emerging market in purchasing personal USB devices that are fashionable and perhaps even wearable. Digital paper will be released in the USA in January 2010. Digital information is embedded in the paper, and when it is touched, the information comes out via printed speakers Eye scanners and microchipping are probably technologies that you originally saw at the movies but are now beginning to emerge in our every day life. Virtual keyboard has been out for a few years now, and people are using this along with their smartphone technology

Secondlife
With the economic downturn, conditions are right for libraries to explore how to engage the virtual world. Companies are using secondlife to meet online and you can use your own voice at meetings, making this an accessible option without the need to purchase conferencing equipment. IBM holds virtual Christmas parties and invite current and past employees.

To see how libraries are using secondlife, take a tour to see some librarians on second life and check out a book review.