New Palm OS

This story courtesy of Tom Peters(thanks, Tom!):Palm launches new OS in effort to retain lead in handhelds
A year ago, investors were losing faith in Palm Inc. The once high-flying company itself admitted to frailty and mistakes. But Palm never gave up, and launches Monday a new operating system -- a crucial weapon in its battle to remain dominant in the competitive handheld market.
The full article will be available on the Web for a limited time:
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/3437512.htm

The new operating system will be faster, better audio and
video capabilities, built-in wireless networking, and added performance
without much price increase or battery power. These devices
should be in the stores later this summer.

PDAs are being utilized mainly in special and some academic library
settings. Besides the Experience Library, I have not heard of many
public libraries using them, or offering training sessions. A few weeks
ago, I had an opportunity to talk to one of the most forward thinking, creative
public librarians in our area of central Illinois. He works with a computer
users group of retired men who are interested in technology. This librarian
wanted to buy a PDA (Palm or Pocket PC) which he could introduce to
this group and check out to them with all the accessories. He thought they
would really enjoy trying this technology and once they tried it, that they would
probably purchase one. He thought the accessories, capabilities and the low
price would appeal to them. I thought this was a great idea, and an innovative
program a public library could offer to begin to offer this technology to the public
in an introductory way!

Congratulations to Jenny Levine, who has made it big
time in the world of blogging! Jenny is the Shifted Librarian
(http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com) In her pre-library life,
Jenny was a journalist! Read the story below to see how
Jenny's blogging has paid off big time: she is now the Tech
Goddess and her blog has become a regular newspaper column.
Congratulations, Jenny!
"It's official, so now I can finally link to it. I'm a freelance blogger now since the Spartanburg Herald-Journal (in South Carolina) is syndicating some of my content to a blog on their site. Radio makes this obscenely easy on my end, and over at GoUpstate.com I'll be known as the Tech Goddess. Here's the press release.

Andy Rhinehart is the wizard behind the curtains here, and when we first started talking about this, I came to an interesting revelation. My undergraduate degree is in Journalism (University of Kansas, Go Hawks!), specifically Broadcast News. That's a capital "J," in case you're wondering.

But instead of becoming Holly Hunter in Broadcast News, I wound up being a librarian and then a techie librarian, but now I find myself at an interesting nexis of broadcasting and information. I see blogging in general, and the GoUpstate blog in particular, as a new type of "broadcast news," one that I doubt anyone ever imagined back when I was in j-school.

Doc Searls, Dave Winer, Glenn Reynolds, and others are currently debating the differences between "big J" journalism and "little j" journalism, and it will be interesting to see what piece I might be in this puzzle (if any). I don't lay claim to being a journalist in this role, but I am definitely broadcasting news, starting discussions, and informing readers. I'm not quite sure what to call that yet. I'm content to just do my thing and see where it all ends up.

So you can catch all of my posts here at TSL, or you can subscribe to the more techie stuff over at the TechGoddess. Same content, different focus. Down the road, we may try to figure out some unique content for the Herald-Journal's site, but right now we're still taking those necessary baby steps.

I can't say enough great things about Andy, so I'll just sum them all up in a big THANK YOU and note my eternal debt to him. I think it's great that the SHJ is willing to experiment with blogs in this way (they'll be starting their own blog soon, too), and they deserve full credit for their initiative. While some folks are getting bogged down in labeling, it's nice to see others making the most of this rising tide.

Stay tuned, because it's going to be a fun ride!"