[Web4lib] Android app for library catalog

Tue Apr 13 23:46:42 EDT 2010

The one thing to keep in mind about your web traffic is that it is skewed
towards iPhone from the beginning.  The reason that is is that iPhone users
know they can have a reasonable experience on the iPhone on 'normal' web
sites.  Any other handset user is used to a crappy experience.  Therefore,
anyone that is gauging mobile interest by their web logs is making a
mistake.  What you really need to do is ask the right question: poll your
audience as to what mobile devices they actually have vs. what you see in
your web logs.  Secondly, if you had a reasonable experience on your mobile
phone, would you use it.  The 2nd question is easily answered because of the
fact that you are indeed getting iPhone traffic.  Therefore, there is an
interest in accessing the data from a mobile device.  If you have an app
that runs on all platforms (or at least 90% of the platforms) that your
audience is using, then you will see a much higher use rate across your
library materials.  We've seen this in virtually every library we have
mobilized (I am the CEO of Boopsie, FYI).

The other thing you should keep in mind is that the majority of phones in
the market are not Javascript enabled - so, a lot of the 'modern day' web
sites are unusable on mobile devices.  If you stick to basic HTML then you
may able to create a web presence that is accessible across all devices.
The biggest problem with that, however, is that you typically scale your
user interface to the least common denominator of devices.  So, you may look
good on an iPhone, but you look terrible on a BlackBerry.  CSS and other
tricks are usable here, but you then have to detect the phone model and
browser version to offer a tailored experience.  I would challenge anyone to
do that if your customers use Opera - as they hide the true underlying phone
and features by design.

So, it comes down to whether you want to take the insane number of man hours
to figure out a cross platform (meaning phone OS platform) web based
strategy, or you can isolate your use to a sub-set of devices, or you can
use a 3rd party vendor like Boopsie that has spent nearly 4 years developing
a platform that addresses the above issues and gives a clean and usable
experience across all platforms with integration into your existing ILS.

Given the nascent market, leveraging a 3rd party that 'does this for a
living' isn't a bad way to go.  Our mobile publishing platform allows you to
generate an application that leverages the fastest search in the industry as
well as integration into your existing ILS *and* allows you to customize
additional channels in minutes, not weeks or hours - at an incredibly low
price and with minimal impact on your resources.  In addition, the resulting
app runs as a native app (meaning much faster) on Android, BlackBerry, J2ME,
Palm OS, Symbian S60, Windows Mobile, iPhone/iPod/IPad *and* generates a
scaled web lite version for all feature phones - all in a single app.

When it comes to web vs. app, there is clearly a better solution that
leverages both - which is what the Boopsie platform is doing.

Cheers,

Greg

On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 8:01 PM, Steven Pryor <pryorsw at slu.edu> wrote:

> I generally agree with the sentiment about basing a mobile presence on
> mobile-friendly websites first.  I would not, however, expect Android users
> to stay anywhere near 5%.  The platform seems to be coming into its own all
> of a sudden and there are a LOT of Android devices hitting the market with
> some major publicity and vendor support now.  Coupled with Apple's recent
> practices to alienate developers and others (the same sort of thing that
> basically marginalized their platforms the first time around), I think
> starting on an Android app -- if you really want or need native app
> functionality -- would pay off in the future when the platform gains some
> serious market share.
>
> Just my opinion,
> Steven
>
>
> On 4/13/2010 8:35 PM, William Denton wrote:
>
>> On 13 April 2010, Heather J Klish wrote:
>>
>>  Has anyone created, or is anyone working on, an Android app for searching
>>> their library's catalog?
>>>
>>
>> I have an Android phone (and like it a lot), but I'm curious about why
>> you're asking.  Are you asking out of general interest, or are you actively
>> thinking about working on this?  Is there enough Android usage at Tufts to
>> warrant it?  At www.library.yorku.ca we're seeing 75% of mobile vists
>> from iPhones and iPods, and about 5% from Androids (4% if you take away me,
>> probably).
>>
>> We're going to start on a mobile-friendly version of our site.  I agree
>> with MJ Suhonos about apps versus web pages.  Google Sky Maps and Layar are
>> fascinating apps that have to be apps, but I want everything my library does
>> to be on the web first, and if that leads to services that apps can reuse,
>> great.
>>
>> Bill
>>
>
>
>
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-- 
Greg Carpenter
Boopsie - Type Less, Find More
tel: 650-241-3300 x203