Twitter just announced a major new feature soon to launch: the ability to create sharable lists of users around topics of interest. This will tackle several problems with one feature: the ability to discover diverse high-quality users quickly and easily and the undue power Twitter HQ has had as the only curator of lists on the site so far.

Curation of dynamic topical expert sources is an act of poetry. Just like Twitter has caught on faster than RSS, Twitter Lists will probably catch on a lot faster than OPML has. If you’ve seen the new service TweepML then you’ve got the idea. This is going to be a very big deal.

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“For example,” Nick Kallen writes on the company blog, “you could create a list of the funniest Twitter accounts of all time, athletes, local businesses, friends, or any compilation that makes sense.”

Twitter says that the lists won’t just live on the site, either; there will also be a Lists API available to outside developers. That could mean that clients like Tweetdeck, Tweetie and Seesmic will no longer have any excuse to keep your group lists locked-in.

There is some question whether having Twitter control this technology, instead of an outside, standards-based body like TweepML is trying to be, is going to be a good thing. We’ll have to see how they implement the feature and the API.

The possibilities here are endless, hopefully we won’t have to wait too long for this feature to go live.

Speaking of TweepML, you can follow all the writers of ReadWriteWeb via this link.

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Google is now giving webmasters the ability to prompt users for automatic translations of their pages. With the new website translator gadget, site owners can paste a short snippet of code into their websites and instantly increase their reach to up to 51 languages.

The gadget will automatically detect a user’s preferred language, and if that user’s language settings differ from the content on the gadget-enabled website, a frame will appear over the web page, prompting the user to click a button for instant translation of all text content.

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In a post today on the official Google blog, these screenshots were used to illustrate the simple, streamlined process:

Of course, the new feature will only work as well as Google Translate, which project manager Jeff Chin admits is best used to let readers “get the gist” of a page. Still, giving webmasters control over how users see their pages - with minimal effort and no downloads on the user’s part - will likely do a lot to expand both the reach of a given website and the breadth of information available to Internet users around the world.

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Today, Google announced a new search offering for mobile devices. The redesigned search experience will free handset users from having to type by including browseable categories. Local mobile search will also integrate with saved Google Maps information on a user’s computer.

At first glance, this seems to be a great new tool to streamline the flow of information between our online and offline worlds. But how well does Google’s new local mobile search work in reality?

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On the Google Mobile blog, project manager Joshua Siegel writes about using the search functions on a recent trip to Hawaii. “The new category browse feature made it easy to find a place to rent bicycles for a quick tour of the coastline. I just tapped on ‘Entertainment & Recreation’ and then ‘Bicycles’ to execute a search - no typing necessary. When it was time for scuba diving, I didn’t see an appropriate category, so I started typing ‘SCUBA’ in the search box and clicked on a suggestion for ‘Scuba Tour Agency.’ A few hours later, I was petting a white-tipped reef shark!”

This video from the Google team shows more about how to star certain locations in Google Maps while at a computer and use the different features of local search for mobile:

Sounds great, right?

But when we tried to use Google’s local search tab on a mobile device, some of the results we got were strange and disappointing. We were searching for “coffee” and “WiFi” in southeastern Virginia, and the top result was for the Hotel Taj Bengal Kolkat in West Bengal. And although we do enjoy the Cafe de Paris in Monte Carlo, we do not think this was an appropriate second result for local search in Virginia.

When we narrowed our search to just “coffee”, we got better results, but who wants just coffee with no WiFi?

Next, we tried browsing the categories, again with mixed results. The ability to access saved and recent searches, however, was stellar and is probably users’ best bet for getting around to local businesses while on-the-go.

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With bleary eyes and bellies full of coffee, a roomful of investors, journalists and young entrepreneurs gathered this morning for the Bay Area TechStars Investor day. The Boulder and Boston-based startup incubator pulled out all the stops as 13 companies took to the stage to plead their case for funding. Below are the summaries of each.

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1. Everlater: Similar to Dopplr, Everlater is a travel site that offers users a chance to record, share and discover travel experiences. However, the difference between this service and some of the others ReadWriteWeb has covered is that Everlater allows users to create their content offline and sync it once they are within range of a Wi-Fi connection. From here, users can also share their stories via Twitter and Facebook.

2. Have My Shift: This service offers hourly workers a chance to coordinate a substitute worker to take over their shift. Rather than calling the entire employee list, users simply add their shift to the Have My Shift site and choose whether they’d like to add a few dollars to the wage as an incentive. From here, users broadcast their needs out to Twitter and Facebook. So far, the service has 80% market penetration with the Starbucks outlets in Chicago and is poised to tackle the country’s 74 million hourly workers.

3. Localytics: This service is a cross-platform analytics program that offers real-time data on mobile developments. So far, the company offers analysis for Blackberry, Android and iPhone applications. Symbian, Palm and Windows Mobile integration is on the way.

4. Filtrbox: This service was a 2007 TechStars company and is currently raising its second round. The company tracks brand conversations via sentiment analysis and real-time monitoring dashboards. It also offers an enterprise solution where users can brand a white label API solution to produce their own company-wide internal dashboard.

5. Vanilla 2: Started in 2005, Vanilla is open-source forum software used to power thousands of sites across the web. Similar to WordPress’ offerings, Vanilla now has two separate services: a new a la carte hosted service with advertising revenue and a free open-source service.

6. LangoLAB: LangoLAB offers users a chance to learn new languages through popular online video clips. The service translates media from sites like YouTube and College Humor and offers complimentary concepts, vocabulary and tests. The company plans on charging for premium clips in the near future and is looking to expand into Asia.

7. Next Big Sound: This service offers analytics for musicians and their bands. Similar to Band Metrics, the service measures fan data spread across disparate services like Twitter, Facebook, Last.FM and Imeem. The company’s mission is to track fan interactions and create better leads for publicity, concert tours and fan engagement. For a more in-depth look at this company, check out our past coverage in the ReadWriteStart channel.

8.Take Comics: This service is best described as the “iTunes of Comics”. Users install the store to their desktops and mobile phones and check out their favorite comics in an App Store-like environment. Rather than reading cumbersome PDFs, panels appear one at a time and users can increase text size for mobile devices. The service offers social features such as Twitter integration and friend-based comic recommendations. It is a well executed tool with multiple points of purchase including shopping alerts for missing issues and “buy all” buttons to encourage diehard fans to complete their collections.

9. ReTel Technologies: This service is an analytics tool that offers managers a chance to reassess their work environments. The service breaks down surveillance videos into digital snippets and helps franchise owners determine cleanliness, worker habits and efficiency. Dunkin’ Donuts and Shell franchise owners are already testing ReTel for pilot programs.

10. AccelGolf: This service is a GPS rangefinder and mobile scorecard. It allows golfers to analyze the performance of their strokes and new clubs. The company offers a database complete with course data from more than 60 countries.

11.SendGrid: This cloud-based service offers enterprise clients a chance to analyze and improve their transactional email systems. The company helps ensure that purchasing orders and invoices are delivered to clients with little to no coding for customized campaigns.

12.OneForty: This service is best described as “Twitter’s app store”. ReadWriteWeb covered the company’s funding announcement just 15 days into the TechStars program and it has since grown into a full-fledged web phenomenon. After a barrage of press, founder Laura Fitton explains that Twitter developers are already referring others to her community in the Twitter API and developer groups.

13. Sensobi: Sensobi is a mobile address book for business professionals. The service organizes all of your emails and calls on a contact-by-contact basis and encourages you to maintain the ties you need to keep your business afloat. Users can schedule reminders to ensure that they’re giving the proper attention and care to their colleagues.

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In the wake of my last post I’ve starting thinking about the broad topic of virtual worlds and gaming and my attitude towards them. As surprising as it may sound, I’ve always looked at the topic of learning through virtual worlds and MMORPGs like World of Warcraft with a fair degree of skeptical interest.

These sorts of enviroments are a fascinating phenomenon to me, not necessarily from the standpoint of the environments themselves, or the experiences they help facilitate, but with the degree of engagement, dedication and time investment that people willingly and independently put into them.

Just minutes ago in fact I echoed a similar sentiment regarding my indulgence in D&D growing up, and single-player role playing games years later. Perhaps it’s the sensation or practice of becoming someone else that pulls people in so much; the process of exploring and discovering who the character is, where they fit within their environment; how they interact and engage with the people, places and things around them; how they react to adversity and challenges – both intellectual, physical, even life-threatening – when there is absolutely no risk of injury or repercussion to them in real life.

Educators often introduce role-playing exercises into the classroom and call it a learning activity. Why is opening a virtual amory to sell plate mail, joining a war party to conduct a raid, or working collaboratively in an army to fend off an orc attack any different to this?

Remember, I’m posing these questions for my own benefit as much as I’m trying to inspire discussion around it.

I’ve yet to run across it just yet (as I said before, I’m still a n00b), but I’m told there is a vibrant unschooling community in World of Warcraft who even have their own guild where parents and children participate together. Likewise there are staff in formal educational institutions who also advocate gaming and virtual worlds as a way to foster engagement and empower the learning process by making it fun.

So why the obsession with delineating where learning stops and open-ended fun begins? Why must there be a distiction?

Certaily the dynamic is different between a controlled classroom environment and one in which social boundaries have disappeared – or rather have been re-written by a virtual socio-political realm in which real world stuctures, relationships and demographies do not exist. Then again, perhaps that’s the point.

Perhaps the real issue critics or skeptics have (realised or not) is not a lack of learning, or learning outcomes, but rather the complete divergence from existing structures and ways of managing and controlling the learning processes that virtual environments and MMORPGs entails.

Maybe that’s why so many educational “games” feel so contrived. They’re designed upon traditional pedagogies where instructors dictate learning outcomes, rather that letting them emerge through serendipity as a natural process of engagement in a meandering process that individuals themselves control

Posted via email from Mike Bogle

The Tech from the Non-Techie blog featured an interesting article, “Educate Don’t Alienate,” giving voice to something I think many library staff feel: charging for printing and setting up complicated print management systems causes grief for the customer, grief for the library, and does it really save the library any money?  The author, Beth Tribe, proposes not charging for printing and instead educating the rare offender who prints out his/her entire thesis eight times.

Philosophically, I am a proponent for eliminating all charges in libraries whenever possible, including late fines, print charges, copy charges, and not investing in expensive systems to track these minor charges and alienate our customers in doing so.  I understand the arguments that some library services are “extra,” or “not basic,” and that taxpayer money shouldn’t go to Mr. Public’s 800 color copies of his retirement party flyer or 17 late children’s books.  I also understand that these are “revenue streams” that might be hard to convince a city or county governing body to abandon.  At the same time, I argue that the investment of staff time, technology infrastructure created to handle these small charges, and bad customer service (including people who just don’t ever come back to the library) outweighs the money we potentially make back.

If you’re thinking about this yourself, just lay out a quick and simple cost-comparsion between resources gained from each of these services at your library and resources spent.  You might be surprised to find that the difference in what you’re gaining with the current method isn’t as big as you thought it was.

OK, now everybody–argue with me

This Psychology Today article, “Understanding the Psychology of Twitter,” has been getting a lot of play in the library world in the last couple of weeks.  I found it quite interesting, and likely helpful for all of those folks who don’t like Twitter or understand its appeal.  It focuses on the use of Twitter for social aspects more than, say, resource sharing as is often done in the library field.  Still useful, and amusing…

The Internet Librarian 2009 Blog is up now!  If you’re attending and blogging, check it out for instructions on getting your “Blogger” ribbon for your name badge. And read all about LibCamp Monterey, a free un-conference two days before the main conference starts, and being held at the Monterey Public Library.  If you can make it a day early, this would be a great chance to discuss the issues that matter to you and learn more from your colleagues!  If you need more info on Internet Librarian 2009, check out the:

• Conference website
• Conference wiki
• Conference program

Google will unleash 100,000 invites to use Google Wave later today. While Wave itself is obviously an exciting product, Google is also trying to create a developer ecosystem around Wave and has selected six Wave extensions to feature as good examples of what developers will be able to do with Wave: a competitive Sudoku game from LabPixies, a teleconferencing extension from Ribbit, video chat from 6rounds, travel planning from Lonely Planet, a weather widget from AccuWeather, and a map widget courtesy of Google Maps.

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Ribbit and 6rounds

We got to try the Ribbit and 6rounds extensions first-hand over the last few days and they have turned out to be pretty interesting.

The Ribbit conference call extension allows you to quickly set up a teleconference in Wave. Calls can be routed to any phone, and you can use the wave simply to provide context for the call or to keep notes. Because Google doesn’t currently give developers direct access to contact information, you have to type in your own number, but otherwise the operation couldn’t be any easier.

While Ribbit focuses on telephone, the team at 6rounds has built a video chat gadget. Currently, 6rounds supports only one-on-one chats, but even given this limitation, the app builds nicely on Google Wave’s real-time emphasis and allows you to watch YouTube videos or play games with your friends.

We didn’t get to test the Lonely Planet, AccuWeather and LabPixies extensions yet, but they all look pretty useful as well. When we talked to the Wave team earlier this week, they especially raved about LabPixies Sudoku game, which looks to be quite addictive.

A Few More Things to Do When You Get Your Wave Invite

• Invite your friends. You will be able to nominate up to 8 of your friends for a Wave account. Wave is a lot more fun when you have somebody to help you test it.
• When you start a new wave, click on the Google icon. From there, you can add links and search and embed YouTube videos and images.
• Try to add a map (just click the Google Maps pin). As you scroll, everybody else in the wave will see a live update of what you are doing.
• Need to vote on where to go for dinner tonight? Try the Yes/No/Maybe gadget.
• Try the ‘playback’ feature - it replays a wave step by step. This comes in really handy if you want to check who has made what revisions.
• Invite a robot to your wave. Just add elizarobot@appspot.comto your contacts, for example, and you will have a robot shrink to chat with while you’re waiting for your friends to sign up.

And a Few More Things to Remember

• Wave works in most modern browsers (and even runs on Safari on the iPhone), but it works best in Google Chrome (IE users will be prompted to install Chrome Frame).
• To add a contact to a wave, just start a new wave and drag and drop the icon from the Contacts sidebar to the new wave.
• The blue lines that appear when you scroll through a list show you where your reply goes. Just click on the line and a reply will show up.
• Pressing ‘Enter’ will take you to the next line in your reply - you have to hit “Shift + Enter” to finalize your reply.
• Private replies are hidden in the pull-down menu at the right edge of the message that you are editing.
• Stuff will break - remember that this is a very early beta!

Feel free to post a comment if you have additional tips and tricks (or favorite robots and extensions) you would like to share.

Handheld Librarian II is an online conference being held February 17 and 18, 2010. Proposals are due November 1, 2009. Below is information from the official call for proposals:

THEME: Alliance Library System and LearningTimes invite librarians, library staff, vendors, graduate students, and developers to submit proposals for programs related to the topic of mobile library services for the online conference. Proposals are due November 1, 2009.

TOPICS: The Handheld Librarian II conference will feature interactive, live online sessions and links to recorded events following the conference. We are interested in a broad range of submissions that highlight current, evolving and future issues in mobile library services. These include but are not limited to the following themes:

• Ebooks and audiobook
• Managing mobile content: eBooks, Journals, video and more
• Mobilizing the library: web presence, OPACs, databases and other electronic resources
• Promoting mobile services and using mobile devices to promote traditional library services
• Information security on mobile devices
• Access to and licensing of databases on mobile devices
• Mobile products and services in the medical library
• Text Message reference service
• Vendor development
• iPhone applications

PROPOSAL SUBMISSIONS: This conference accepts proposals for presentations delivered in several online formats:

• A featured 45 minute presentation
• Panel discussion with others (10 minutes of presentation)
• Virtual Roundtable discussions on selected topics
• Virtual poster presentation

Submit proposals by November 1 to: handheldlibrariancfp@gmail.com. You will be notified by December 15 if your proposal has been accepted.

PRESENTERS ARE EXPECTED TO:

• Conduct an online session using Adobe Connect
• Provide a photo, bio and program description for the conference website by December 31, 2009
• Respond to questions from attendees
• Attend an online 30-60 minute training on Adobe Connect prior to the conference