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While the mobile site (http://mtest.nlb.gov.sg) is currently in beta, I've been impressed with its simplicity and ease of use. More importantly, this is a step forward in putting library services at the fingertips of users on the move. Note that you can only access the site on a mobile phone browser.
My favorite feature has got to be the catalog search. I still remember the days when I had to write down call numbers on paper after searching for books on the library website at home or in the library before I hit the bookshelves.
On NLB's mobile site, you can perform a catalog search like you would on the full library website, and have the details of a title sent to your cellphone as a text message. It makes a lot of sense - we all carry cellphones with us wherever we go, at least here in Singapore, so why do we still end up with call numbers written on slips of paper while we are in the library?
Besides putting the catalog in your pocket, you can reserve a title, check its availability and choose a library branch to pick up the item, just like what you would do on a full-fledged site. You can also check out the latest arrivals, read the posts from NLB blogs, and download short novels in the form of e-books written by local authors such as Ho Minfong and Wahab Hj Hamzah.
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It's interesting to see a library experimenting with e-books on a cellphone which can be potentially challenging. The diverse range of handsets can present compatibility issues with Mobipocket Reader, the mobile reader software that NLB has chosen for its e-books. I'm sure these issues were taken into account, since PDF versions of the same e-books are also available to cater to users with mobile PDF readers.
In the long run, my guess is that reading e-books on a mobile phone will continue to be a novelty. The small screen sizes and celllphone user behavior (short bursts of usage, in-transit), do not lend themselves to reading full-length novels. The only place where e-books have worked on a cellphones is Japan, where a genre of writing called the keitai shosetsu, written with truncated text and often with little plot or character development, has become part of Japanese popular culture. While controversial from a literary point of view, these mobile novels, some of which have been republished in book form, continue to appeal to Japanese youths.
Outside Japan, the declining cost of data plans and improvements in cellphone user interface designs will be key drivers in attracting more users to the mobile Web in years to come. In fact, telcos that are carrying the Apple iPhone are already reporting higher data revenues from iPhone users.
Just as libraries today are now expected to have a website on the WWW, they will have to establish a presence on the mobile Web. Particularly in developing countries such as India, where wired infrastructure is still limited in reach, the cellphone is proving to be the only way for people to access the Internet.
If you're interested in finding out more about what libraries can do with mobile technologies, check out ALA's fifth Library Technology Report written by Ellyssa Kroski, an independent information consultant. She recently presented at the NEASIS&T Mobile Mania event in Boston. Her slides below provide a good overview of things that libraries need to think about when going mobile:
Microsoft yesterday announced that it will begin rolling out social networking features to Windows Live over the coming weeks to U.S. users and globally by 2009.
It's a significant - though somewhat belated - move from the software giant, given that its Windows Live products have been natural candidates for social networking. After all, there's always an element of social networking in applications like instant messaging, photos, events, calendaring, groups, file sharing and e-mail.
Prior to the announcement, I participated in a private beta for Microsoft's Windows Live Wave 3, essentially an updated suite of the company's Windows Movie Maker, Photo Gallery, Mail and Messenger products, plus new products including a blog editor called Windows Live Writer and Windows Family Safety for Internet filtering. These products are now branded as Windows Live Essentials and available here.
While the updated products displayed a marked improvement over their predecessors (I'll talk about a few of them in a later post), it's their integration with online services that's worth noting.
You can, for instance, upload your images from Windows Live Photo gallery directly to your Flickr account, or to Windows Live Photos. These photos can then be shared with your friends on the new Windows Live homepage, which has been completely spruced up.
The most notable difference for anyone new to the revamped homepage is the list of status updates from your Live Messenger contacts. Besides aggregating your content and activities on other Live services and sharing those with others, you can also add third-party sites to your Windows Live Profile and have activities on those sites appear in your "what's new" feed across your network of friends.
So far, the list of third-party sites include Twitter, WordPress and Yelp with more expected to be added on. Microsoft said it is collaborating with over 50 Web companies, including Flickr, LinkedIn, Pandora, Photobucket, among others. Reports have indicated that Facebook and Amazon are also in the list.
You can also include RSS feeds from just one blog on your profile, though it would have been much better if more blogs were supported. Most people track or author multiple blogs and it's silly not to allow users to include more blog feeds.
With all these, your new Windows Live homepage looks similar to current aggregators such as Netvibes and iGoogle, plus social networking features.
Early this week, Barrie Ooi, regional product manager at Microsoft's online services group in Southeast Asia, started his presentation and dialog with a group of regional bloggers by pointing out that users are now swamped with multiple social networks, and that the new Windows Live can now aggregate them all.
But, questions linger over the willingness of users to start adding pictures and engaging in conversations on their Windows Live network when they're already doing that for things hosted on some other Web 2.0 service or social network site.
While I can now include my list of favorite books in my Window Live profile, I'm not going to start putting out a list all over again when I've already done that on LibraryThing. More importantly, my network on LibraryThing is different from my Facebook and LinkedIn networks, which are different from my Windows Live network. The kinds of conversations I have with people on different social networks vary both in depth and interest.
That brings me to one important point about any social network. It has to create stickiness among users. If Microsoft wants Windows Live to be a social network made up of Hotmail and Messenger users, there needs to be something more compelling for users besides aggregating users' stuff from other services.
It's a good idea to build on the user base of Messenger and Hotmail, but people started using those services as IM and e-mail services respectively - and not in social networking terms even as elements of social networking are clearly present.
For now, I don't have more than a handful of friends on Messenger who've created Live Spaces profiles, the starting point of any social network site. The first thing Microsoft needs to work on is to convince users why they should do that.
This week, the Financial Times will launch a newly revamped website that looks cleaner than before.
New features include an integrated search box that allows you to search both news and stock quotes, a list of top 10 must-read and most popular stories, as well as thumbnail and italics that identify Lex commentaries on the main landing page.
The website will also use the same masthead design of the printed newspaper.
Besides user interface and aesthetics, FT editor Lionel Barber wrote in an email to readers that the new website will also expand coverage of important subjects such as macroeconomics, energy and technology, better integration between market data and news to give context to market movements, and more opportunities for readers to become part of the FT community by contributing to discussion forums and blogs.
Update: The new FT website has launched, but it's disappointing to see the inside pages retaining the old template. Apparently, this revamp only applies to the homepage, which makes one question the point of it all. Not only is FT confusing users, they are forcing people to use inconsistent navigation menus (drop-down on the homepage and left bar on the inside pages). This doesn't do any good for FT's branding - homepages are seldom the only entry point for visitors.
I recently caught up with the folks at Oracle who gave me a glimpse of the company's Social CRM products that integrates the social networks of sales reps into existing CRM systems, even those from Oracle's rivals.
Oracle's Social CRM portfolio comprises the Oracle Sales Prospector, Oracle Sales Campaign and Oracle Sales Library. Sales Prospector is now available, while the other two are expected to be released at a later date here.
CRM is often seen as the most likely candidate among enterprise applications to be enabled by Web 2.0 tools. As customers become more comfortable with social media, they'll be using Web 2.0 tools to seek out information about a company's products and services from others in their community. Indeed, such platforms to enable conversations among customers about products and services are beginning to emerge.
Several months ago, I was approached by ProCompare, a New York City startup that has built a platform to link technology buyers, consultants and IT experts in the SMB market, for potential opportunities. With communities like ProCompare, sales reps will be pressurized to seek as much information from their colleagues. Employing social media tools to tap into the collective knowledge of the enterprise will reduce prep time and effort in meeting the needs of sales prospects.
According to Sathya Prasad Rai, senior director for Oracle CRM On Demand in South Asia, Asean and India, Oracle Sales Prospector is aimed at sussing out this information from the an enterprise and its partners.
Leveraging on network effects, Oracle Sales Prospector uses business analytics to combine internal customer data (such as purchasing history and product profiles) with external information sources to propose qualified sales leads. IMHO, the next phase of development for any kind of social CRM application would be to find a systematic way of mining conversations on external business social networks such as ProCompare and LinkedIn.
While Sales Prospector is focused on sales leads, Oracle Sales Campaigns lets you create, share, manage, and track the effectiveness of email campaigns. Users can build campaign templates from scratch or use a colleague's templates for a similar campaign, complete with tags, comments and ratings. Similarly, sales reps can also share presentation slides with others through the Oracle Sales Library.
Before you jump on the bandwagon, remember the most important thing is to first foster a knowledge sharing culture. The success of the social CRM assumes that sales reps will share information with one another. Competitive pressure to top the sales figures for the month is likely to discourage sharing. What companies can do is align the reward structure for sales reps with collaboration. This will provide incentives for knowledge sharing and collaboration since each sales rep will want to increase the overall revenue and profits for the company - and their individual share of it.
Also, consider appointing an Enterprise 2.0 champion to communicate the benefits of social CRM. If sales reps feel that social CRM is a just another management fad, adoption is likely to be lackluster. Finally, it's important to develop metrics to gauge success. Some potential metrics to consider include lead conversion rate, sales cycle time and quota achievement rates as a result of the use of social CRM.
