Posts Tagged ‘mobile’

“Excuse my typo” signature lines, a collection

July 16th, 2012
For about a year I’ve been collecting email signature lines. After receiving an email purporting to be “Sent from my rotary phone” I thought it was time to share.
  • Touched, not typed
  • Sent from my $DEVICENAME
  • Consider any misspellings my gift to you
  • Typed with thumbs
  • Sent with mobile solution
  • Sent from a mobile operating system. Which one isn’t of any importance to you, the receiver. However, if you feel that knowing this detail would affect positively your reading of this email you can, of course, ask me.
  • Sent from my smartphone platform of choice….hint not a fruit
  • I prefer robots to fruit.
  • Fruits are for fruitcakes, Robots are for emailing.
  • bots best for smart phones
  • Smart fruit is an oxymoron
  • Sent via a really tiny keyboard
  • Sent from a mobile device. Erroneous words are a feature, not a typo.
  • Sent from mobile; pls excuse typos
  • $DEVICENAME = specific mobile operating system of choice
  • Sent from my stationary operating system of choice.
  • Erroneous words are a feature, not a typo.
  • (Short, curt and ill-formed message sent from my portable telephone machine.)
  • > Sent wirelessly from my BlackBerry device on the Bell network.
    > Envoyé sans fil par mon terminal mobile BlackBerry sur le réseau de Bell.
  • *Sent from a mobile phone – please excuse the brevity of the message
  • via small communication device/pardon random autocorrects and fat finger typos.
  • Warning: I either dictated this to my device, or I typed it clumsily. Expect typos and weirdness.
  • Sent from a mobile device. Excuse brevity and typos.
  • Typed by thumbs and sent by my Verizon Wireless gadget
  • Sent from a mobile device. Please excuse brevity and tpyos.
  • Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE smartphone
  • Sent from tiny touchscreen gizmo, excuse any auto correct nonsense that slips in…
  • Sent from my rotary phone
  • Sent with my thumbs (Thanks to Andy Powell.)
  • sent from my shoe (Thanks to Larry Hynes.)
  • Sent while walking into stuff(Thanks to Ryan Sarver (via Laura Dragan and Tim O’Reilly; used by David Cohen)


Previously discussed on Twitter (thanks to David Crowley and Becky Yoose for spreading my question). Apparently desktop users want forgiveness too.

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Posted in random thoughts | Comments (8)

Wanted: the ultimate mobile app for scholarly ereading

January 7th, 2011

Nicole Henning suggests that academic libraries and scholarly presses work together to create the ultimate mobile app for scholarly ereading. I think about the requirements a bit differently, in terms of the functional requirements.

The main functions are obtaining materials, reading them, organizing them, keeping them, and sharing them.

For obtaining materials, the key new requirement is to simplify authentication: handle campus authentication systems and personal subscriptions. Multiple credentialed identities should be supported. A secondary consideration is that RSS feeds (e.g. for journal tables of contents) should be supported.

For reading materials, the key requirement is to support multiple formats in the same application. I don’t know of a web app or mobile app that supports PDF, EPUB, and HTML. Reading interfaces matter: look to Stanza and Ibis Reader for best-in-class examples.

For organizing materials, the key is synergy between the user’s data and existing data. Allow tags, folders, and multiple collections. But also leverage existing publisher and library metadata. Keep it flexible, allowing the user to modify metadata for personal use (e.g. for consistency or personal terminology) and to optionally submit corrections.

For keeping materials, import, export, and sync content from the user’s chosen cloud-based storage and WebDAV servers. No other device (e.g. laptop or desktop) should be needed.

For sharing materials, support lightweight micropublishing on social networks and email; networks should be extensible and user-customizable. Sync to or integrate with citation managers and social cataloging/reading list management systems.

Regardless of the ultimate system, I’d stress that device independence is important, meaning that an HTML5 website would probably the place to start: look to Ibis Reader as a model.

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Posted in books and reading, future of publishing, information ecosystem, library and information science, scholarly communication | Comments (5)

Yes!

March 28th, 2009
sms by amf on flickr

sms by flickr:amf

Web acceptance letters are now old hat: Newly admitted students at Baylor can get a text message acceptance note.

Since 2006, Creighton University has texted acceptance letters (via SMS bulk sender Dynmark), with messages like “Katie, congratulations. You’ve been admitted to Creighton!”.

Princeton’s acceptance notes made news a while back:

Source: Howard Wainer, “Clear Thinking Made Visible: Redesigning Score Reports for Students,” Chance 15 (Winter 2002), pp. 56-58. via Tufte. Wainer is also the author of Graphic Discovery: A Trout in the Milk and Other Visual Adventures, a very readable classic in statistics and information visualization. If you’ve meant to read Tufte but keep putting it off, this is the book for you.

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Posted in higher education | Comments (0)