On Wednesday, the company is answering the call, offering biking routes in 150 American cities in Google Maps. Google plans to unveil the service during the National Bike Summit in Washington. The event will be followed by a group ride at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Tex.

The District is one of the 150 cities included.

See Google Maps Adds Directions for Cyclists for more.

Facebook has announced that next month it will be launching location-based services. This is likely in response to the very popular location-based services Gowalla and Foursquare. Location-based features connect the virtual with the physical, through people’s mobile devices. For instance, letting you know who else nearby you is a Facebook friend, or seeing who in your neighborhood is Tweeting.

People look silly using it!

Augmented Reality programs create a digital overlay to the real world. For an extreme example:

For a self-conscious view of AR, see You Look Ridiculous: The Other Augmented Reality Issue.

Twitter user Tamikalashelle registers a complaint that she couldn’t find some info on our website and has a library question:

A DCPL twitterer (there are a few of us) responds in a pretty much classic “we’re here listening to you on Twitter” way:

This response evidently worked for her. She went from having a gripe with the library and saying negative things to being excited about the library and a vigorously retweeteing our stuff:

I’m not quite sure how to measure the effectiveness of a library’s presence on Twitter but as long as I keep seeing people communicating with the library and helping to amplify our voice it seems worth our time.

Kudos to whoever engaged this patron in conversation. Make yourself known in the comments!

Turns out that an organization is ranking libraries by the number of followers. DCPL ranks 13th out of 172 listed. I’d say with a real campaign to increase followers we could easily get in the top 10.

Not that this is a popularity contest. Really, success should be measured by having meaningful conversations via twitter. We’ve been doing that and I’ll demonstrate it in a forthcoming post. But having more followers might mean the possibility of having more conversations.

 

What I didn’t realize is that Apple already made huge progress rethinking all of our computers when they released the iPhone. I knew that the iPhone was a fun and easy to use phone and computing device, but I didn’t imagine a future where many of our computers are iPhone-like in their simplicity.

Techy types that are accustomed to having tons of control are freaking out about the lack of options (no multitasking!!?) with the iPad. Just like many people did when Apple shipped computers without floppy disc drives. Remember those? Other people might be willing to trade that flexibility for reliability and simplicity.

Even without the “this is the future of computing” angle, the iPad still has some practical implications for libraries. For one, it may increase the popularity of reading books on a screen. Perhaps more importantly, it certainly will make for an excellent roving reference tool. Anyone interested in testing out this theory?

UPDATE: Here’s an interesting dystopian take on the future that Apple is attempting to create.

The times has this report on the movement away from Windows mobile. What happened? In our opinion, a combination of things:

• Moribund feature set – personalization, social media integration, and MMS  were neglected
• Uninspired user experience – a shrunken version of windows, lacking multi-touch or other newer interaction abilities
• B-list and C-list of manufacturers – Interestingly, HTC  which is improving was the biggest proponent.

Hopefully, this will result in Overdrive rearranging their priorities.

Coming to your neighborhood soon!