CURRENT CITE-ings from the popular and trade computing literature: what’s trending in academic computing applications, Smart TVs, and more

Citation

Trapasso, L. (2013), "CURRENT CITE-ings from the popular and trade computing literature: what’s trending in academic computing applications, Smart TVs, and more", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 30 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2013.23930daa.001

CURRENT CITE-ings from the popular and trade computing literature: what’s trending in academic computing applications, Smart TVs, and more

Article Type: CURRENT CITE-ings from the popular and trade computing literature: what’s trending in academic computing applications, Smart TVs, and more From: Library Hi Tech News, Volume 30, Issue 4

This month’s column focuses on academia, play, and a general miscellany that involves the idea of a Nobel Prize for Google, Big Data in business (and any organization), and security related to social networking. Other than academic computing, libraries may wonder why they should be interested in televisions. But, today’s Smart TVs are much more than traditional televisions; they are now just another information device. Always of concern are security, business trends applicable to libraries, and personnel issues.

Digital academia

Digital signage is exploding as the technology has improved to make this possible such as better bandwidth and LED screens. It is now being integrated with media players that can continually display fresh content. Audiences are better engaged. The key is delivering the right message to the right audience using the right vehicle. AV staffs are critical in advising about costs, network impact, and remote management capability. They also need to choose the right technologies that grow with the organization (Derringer, 2013).

MOOS stands for massive open online courses. Three leading giants are Udacity, edX, and Coursera. MOOCS offer informal learning and provide high quality, highly interactive online courses for common curricula across institutions (Buck, 2012).

Many universities are making “wireless everywhere” an essential strategy. It helps students collaborate, and it also helps with security. A university uses a botnet to see if a device has been compromised. 802.1× also helps with security. Apps, controllers, and management technologies keep WLANs working (Rawland Gabriel, 2013).

Smart TVs

Right now, a Smart TV supplies internet content and apps. Interfaces are becoming more interactive. Toshiba is announcing its cloud TV. This TV includes peer-to-peer sharing via Miracast and Wi-Fi, social integration, and higher quality gaming experiences. Samsung is introducing voice recognition on its Smart TV. Two additional trends are being observed. One is 4K resolution. The other is organic light emitting diode (OLED) (Clauser, 2013).

With ratings, there is a new way to measure a show’s popularity. Usually the Nielsen ratings measure program watching on a conventional TV. Now, there is Hulu, NetFlix, Apple TV, etc. None of these platforms are ranked by Nielsen. Many shows spawn discussion on the internet, and this too is not measured. Nielsen is trying to catch up. Nielsen has purchased SocialGuide which analyzes the social impact of linear TV. It has also partnered with Twitter to produce a new social-TV rating (Vanderbilt, 2013).

With television technologies improving, binge watching is exploding where it is possible to watch multiple episodes of a TV show at once. NetFlix is instrumental in this. NetFlix has moved to streaming video. NetFlix is also buying content. Now Apple, Amazon, HBO, Hulu, Sony, Microsoft, and Intel are starting to bid for the same audience. To compete, NetFlix is now paying for original programming (Paskin, 2013).

Miscellany

Wired Magazine thinks that the Nobel Prize for Literature should be awarded to a mutable text that changes at the pace of society. On this premise, it feels that this year’s award should go to Google. Google tracks the entire world’s culture as it shifts and changes. It also keeps history. In addition Google Books fulfills the goal of providing the most outstanding work in an ideal direction (Keats, 2013).

Security suites are now protecting social networks. Some apps are providing protection for mobile devices, such as GPS tracking of lost phones, and remote wipe-out. This article used AV-Test to see if a security suite found all the bugs, and did not slow down computer performance. The top three suites are F-Secure Internet Security 2013, Norton Internet Security, and Trend Micro Titanium Internet Security 2012 (Mediati, 2013).

Big data is now being used to build business strategies but quite often big data is not being used effectively. For example, cloud-based data and mobile device data is generally being ignored. Web location data is also not being used. Staffing is key when trying to use internal and external data sets. Staffing should be cross-functional. CRM, phone, e-mail, and web analytics should be tied in, especially to analyze customer needs and preferences and data analysis can fix many of these problems (Healey, 2012).

It is critical to make sure IT restructuring of personnel is handled correctly and there are some rules to follow. Goals and objectives must be clearly stated. Input from in-house personnel is more important than input from outside consultants. IT managers are best at selecting a new team. The time between announcing and executing a restructuring should be as short as possible. This reduces anxiety by the staff. Outplacement services should be done at another location (Perkins, 2013).

Lois TrapassoIndependent Librarian