Saturday, April 30, 2011

Lugging Laptop Not Cool--Need iPad2

Thursday, March 31, 2011

I've been debating about getting an iPad since the first one came out. After my mega-trip across America for almost 2.5 weeks, I've decided that I must have one. I love my Mac but hoisting it into and out of the overhead bins of innumerable planes and having many, many nice tall people ask me if I need help, has convinced me that I need to get this small device that will make my life more pleasant.

My husband and I went naively down to Kahala Mall to pick up an iPad2 one evening but were told that they were all sold out and that we'd have to show up when the store opened up and wait in line to get whatever was shipped to them that day. Oh my! I also heard the same was true of the UHM Bookstore which opened at 7:30 a.m.

So, I opted to buy directly from Apple and wait for three weeks. The cool thing about the whole experience was that I finally got to meet Rachel, our classmate and she gave my husband and me an in-person tutorial of all the cool things we could do on the iPad2. (I don't think my husband was really convinced but after the tutorial, he was.)

I've been counting the days. Kim

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Running Through Airports

Friday, March 18, 2011

I took a mega-trip across the United States the last 2 1/2 weeks. First I went to Seattle during spring break to attend to medical issues for myself and my daughter. The medical world seems to be completely digital these days. My doctor e-mails me my test results. I can access my medical history going back more than a decade online and see charts showing how my health is improving over time. My mammograms are all stored digitally and changes over time can be compared from doctor to doctor. I wouldn't be surprised if my doctor starts tweeting me
someday soon. She has young children so is always up on new technology.



Then I went on to Denver to visit an old friend for a couple of days. As I was running to catch a plane I noticed this billboard in the airport. A local Denver bank posted these huge QR codes advertising free crossword puzzles to download to your phone. There was one for easy, medium and difficult. I downloaded one. Fun!


From Denver I went on to a week-long conference for the Association for College and Research Libraries in Philadelphia. The theme of this year's conference was Interdependence. Philadelphia, birth of independence of the United States, was the site of a conference proposing that for academic libraries in higher education must acknowledge that we can no longer see ourselves as independent of one another. We must act interdependently.


Two of the keynote speakers who underscored the theme of interdependence were Tiffany Schlain and Raj Patel. Tiffany Schlain http://connectedthefilm.com/ talked about her new film Connected. She is an award winning documentary film-maker. She studies and speaks on humanity and the impact of technology and the Internet. Raj Patel http://rajpatel.org/ is an activist and economist. A witty speaker, he uses food as the centerpoint of all he speaks about.




From Philadelphia I went to a two-day conference in San Diego called the Coalition for Networked Information. This was a gathering of information technology officers and library administrators who reported cutting edge uses of technology.

I listened to not one, but two reports of academic libraries who designed gaming rooms into their new buildings, touchscreen walls, large cafes, digital media studios, and who said that libraries needed to make sure that electrical outlets were everywhere so that students could charge their phones, iPods, iPads, and laptops. Libraries of the future are about digital information AND also unique archival information.

Seattle was gray and overcast for the most part except the cherry blossom trees provided beautiful relief. Denver was snowbound in the mountains, unbelievably beautiful except for the tree bug that infested many of the pine trees causing them to die. Every other tree on the mountainside was brown and will fall over soon. I understand the wood has turned blue. Philadelphia was cold and also snowed. San Diego was warm and blue skies.

But Hawaii no ka oi! Aloha, Kim