e-textbooks :)

SCHOOLBAGS bulging with text books will soon be a thing of the past, as laptops, smartphones and iPads are increasingly used in classrooms.

James Cathro, who is managing director of Campion, Australia's largest supplier of school textbooks, stationery and educational software, says classrooms are yet to feel the full impact of new technologies - but it is already profound.

"It (e-textbooks) won't happen in the short term, but it is only a matter of time before it is commonplace in every school," he said.

"While the e-book revolution is only at the early stage in schools, laptop and now iPad usage by students is high and continues to grow, so it is a logical step that the demand for e-textbooks will increase."

Most schools in South Australia now have classroom sets of laptops with more and more also providing ultra-portable tablets and installing interactive whiteboards.

This is forcing schools to ensure their students are "multiliterate" - have ability to understand and communicate in a multimedia world.

Flinders University School of Computer Science, Engineering and Mathematics Associate Professor Paul Calder said new technology was making a significant impact of education.

"We're seeing a significant increase in the number of electronic devices that students bring with them to class. Most have a laptop, but it also includes portable devices like iPads or tablet devices and a mobile phone," he said.

"How effectively they use them is a work in progress and all educators are developing what works best."

Professor Calder said there was no doubt these devices were here to stay in the classroom.

"The device is just so useful for access to information, it's not just static, it's interactive, which works so well in the educational sense," he said.

"They will become an integral part of all classrooms, especially as the costs come down.

"Tablets can be used again and again and materials can be updated easily."

Aberfoyle Hub R-7 Year 1 and 2 teacher David Sickerdick said he had used e-books since the school had installed electronic white boards.

"It's certainly more difficult to maintain their (students') attention because they are bombarded with multimedia devices at home... so classrooms have to run with the pack," he said.

"It's highly motivational for them because it's big and bright.

"In all areas of our curriculum we use them (e-books) as another tool to focus on teaching them to be multiliterate."

Staff at Thebarton Senior College are using iPads to investigate best practices in senior school curriculum and plan to roll out class sets once the research is complete.

Student Hadi Bahrami said he found electronic resources were much easier to read and manage.

"It is easier to find the information you need and so much easier to carry around than lots of books," he said.

The need for speed

Lucy Battersby

May 5, 2011

The people of Brunswick are about to road test the $50 billion national broadband network on Victoria's behalf. Will it be worth it?

THE workmen's trucks have been dubbed ''traffic blockers'' and footpaths have become chequer-boards of old and new concrete, but Brunswick's residents and businesses are preparing to test optical fibre broadband on Victoria's behalf -even if they are not exactly sure how to use it.

There are about 2600 properties in the small test zone between Lygon Street and Sydney Road, and just under half of those have agreed to an optical fibre connection network that will deliver broadband internet at speeds of up to 1 gigabit a second. That's 10 times faster than the fastest broadband commercially available today.

Advertisement: Story continues below

NBN facts.

Clint Fisher is the owner of the Retreat Hotel on Sydney Road, and he says the main reason he is getting a fibre connection is to replace the ageing copper wires in the 170-year-old pub that he says slow down his ADSL connection.

The optical fibre broadband will make it easier to stream music from the web, Fisher says, but beyond that, it won't have a significant impact on the running of the pub.

''If [free wi-fi] became more economical, then we would provide that, but, to be honest, I don't think it would make much difference to us as a pub and a music venue.''

Fisher's position is similar to that of other residents who spoke to The Age - they know faster internet is better, but they don't know exactly why.

But the Retreat's dodgy wiring does help explain why the broadband project is going to cost $50 billion: over the next eight years, NBN Co, the company the government has set up to build the network, is going to replace Telstra's copper wires with optical fibre in nearly every property and street in Australia.

NBN Co will replace Telstra as the owner and seller of fixed communications, solving the industry's competition impasse of the biggest company competing at a retail level against its wholesale customers and controlling access to its network. The federal government will raise $27 billion to fund the first half of the project by selling bonds on the international credit markets. It is also considering selling infrastructure bonds to Australians and may provide more details in next week's budget.

NBN Co expects to borrow the rest itself once it is earning income and able to repay corporate lenders. According to its business plan, released in November, NBN Co anticipates repaying the government by 2034.

Other countries are building public optical fibre networks, but none is as big or expensive because Australia is unique in respect to its combination of size, population and prosperity.

That something this costly is under way in Brunswick is not really suggested by the appearance of book-sized grey boxes attached to the outside of houses or workers digging up the footpath.

Brunswick resident Kerin says she made a decision not to get a free connection because she wanted to protect the aesthetics of her house, even though this means she, or any future owners of her property, will have to pay for a connection when the copper network is turned off.

''[It is an] informed decision - being a low-tech user and wanting as little as possible on the outside of the house. I do not do downloads and things. It is beyond my needs,'' she says.

The owner of the Kitchen Kultcha cafe on Glenlyon Road, Chris Lytras, has no complaints about the trucks or construction crews and says his building will be added to the network as soon as possible. But the only immediate use he can think of for fibre broadband at a cafe is offering free wireless internet to customers, and he already does this.

Brunswick is also a test site for using Telstra's existing underground pipes to slide cable underground and straight into houses. This is meant to be cheaper, faster and less disruptive than laying new trenches. This option is supposed to save $1.7 billion in construction, but it costs $13.8 billion to lease Telstra's tunnels.

However, it increases NBN Co's revenue, because Telstra has agreed to decommission its copper network, thereby forcing customers onto the fibre network. Property owners who do not get a free connection in the initial rollout will have to pay NBN Co to revisit their property to install a connection, or rely solely on mobile networks for communications.

The rollout in Brunswick has not been without surprises. Telstra technicians contracted by NBN Co have found asbestos in the concrete lining the pits that hold all telephone cables, and in some cases pits were already full of cabling. The lining had to be replaced with plastic and new pits dug to accommodate more cables.

Altogether, contractors have had to rip up and replace at least 700 square metres of concrete in the test site. NBN Co says costs like this have been factored into the $50 billion national construction cost (including payments to Telstra).

No one knows what condition the rest of Telstra's infrastructure is in around the country, or how much needs to be replaced before it is fit for NBN Co to lease.

It is likely Telstra will be responsible for the cost of preparing tunnels for NBN Co as part of the leasing agreement, which is still under negotiation and remains confidential.

With the rollout in five mainland test sites nearing completion, NBN Co will soon start focusing on the next 19 test sites. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has announced fibre will be rolled out in a further seven sites in Tasmania later this year, adding to three sites already connected and using the fibre.

NBN Co is still working out where to go after that, but the Labor Party has promised the independent MPs who helped it to form government that regional areas will be a priority.

While the rollout is well under way, the project does have its critics - of the cost, the fact the government is building a new monopoly, and NBN Co's deal with Telstra to turn off the phone and internet capabilities of its hybrid fibre cable network, except for Foxtel services, which runs past 2.5 million households.

''What I want to see is really a much more competitive marketplace, and I think creating an NBN that is like the old Postmaster-General's Department - that is, effectively a monopoly - is a very, very bad idea,'' says Michael Porter, national director of research and policy at the Committee for Economic Development of Australia.

Porter does want to see faster and more reliable broadband spread around Australia, but believes NBN will be duplicating a lot of infrastructure.

He is also concerned that the deal between NBN Co and Telstra to turn off the hybrid cable will shut down a viable market. He is concerned that the commercial deal to decommission hybrid fibre cable and force customers onto NBN Co's fibre will give consumers less choice between different technologies.

Fibre will be the only fixed option by the time the network is complete. Optus also owns cable that runs past roughly the same areas, and is rumoured to be working on a similar deal with NBN Co.

''What we should be doing is commissioning by speed and quality. We should not be commissioning by technology,'' Porter says.

Janelle Brennan, of the Hobart suburb of Midway Point, has been using an NBN fibre connection since August. While she and her two teenage sons mostly use the internet for entertainment at home, Brennan says she could not go back to ADSL (on the copper network).

''It is just incredible - the ability for us to download movies and stuff off [ABC's] iView. It has changed the way we think about television,'' she says.

For $80 a month, the family gets 200 gigabytes of downloads at peak times and 200 gigabytes off-peak. While this costs more than they were paying for the old connection, she says it is worth the price and includes an internet telephone.

Their connection downloads at 100 megabits per second and uploads at 40 megabits per second. ''Video conferencing would be a breeze,'' she says.

Broadband will eventually alter every household in the country - not because everyone will suddenly become data hungry, but because every home or office will get new cabling and plugs.

NBN Co will issue plugs with two points for telephones and four points for internet services. All four plugs could be used for separate internet connections, or spread between television, utilities smart meters and any new inventions.

Households will be able to buy each service from a different provider.

Houses in regional areas will be fitted with a wireless or satellite receiver rather than fibre and will get a constant dedicated supply of at least 12 megabits per second. This is different to commercial wireless networks, which are shared between all users and have fluctuating speeds.

By 2021, every home and business is expected to be using NBN Co's fibre rather than Telstra's copper network.

While Telstra is both a retail and wholesale company, NBN Co will be strictly wholesale. It has promised to offer every wholesale customer the same service at the same price, regardless of size. This is likely to see many new companies entering the internet market.

''The National Broadband Network will transform communications markets in Australia,'' says Ed Willet , commissioner with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission says.

''Telstra will remain a large player in communications markets, but it will lose its advantage in monopolising fixed-line infrastructure. Telstra competitors will compete on a level playing field, for the first time buying the same access service in the same way on the same terms as Telstra.''

There are still many other potential hiccups that may be beyond the control of NBN Co or the federal government. For example, Leighton Holdings, the parent company of three construction firms bidding for a billion-dollar contract with NBN Co, was recently forced to raise $757 million after disclosing massive cost blowouts and delays in two public-private partnership projects in Victoria and Brisbane.

These issues, including problems in Leighton's Middle East operations, could make it harder for NBN Co to select it as a long-term construction partner. This narrows its choices. Already NBN Co has suspended its original tender process and is working on a new deal, after accusing bidders of inflating their quotes.

Another hurdle is the lack of skilled technicians and manpower available for the project. Tens of thousands of workers will be needed to dig trenches and install fibre-optic cable.

And then there are state property laws, which require NBN Co to collect written consent from owners before entering a property - a bureaucratic nightmare involving millions of permission slips.

Before the state election, the Brumby government announced it would give NBN Co an exemption to trespass laws, as the Tasmanian government has done, so every property automatically gets a fibre connection. But a spokesman for the Baillieu government told The Age that ''the Victorian government has no plans to change trespass law to accommodate the NBN rollout''.

This could leave the state with some houses connected to fibre, some still on copper, and, when the copper is decommissioned, some with no connection.

Brunswick's network is scheduled to go live before July. It will be the only Victorian NBN site until mid-2012, when the second phase test sites of Bacchus Marsh and South Morang are activated.

Asked whether the whole project can be completed, NBN Co chief executive Mike Quigley says:

''You create a big machine and it just replicates. You get a momentum going and you replicate. It is not a one-off - it is not like trying to build a harbour bridge or a Snowy Mountains scheme. We will be doing the same thing over and over again, and we will be getting better and better at it and more efficient at it as we go.''

But unlike the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the NBN is not a project that can be pointed at and said to be ''for crossing water''.

The Labor government is counting on Australians finding ways to use faster broadband that will justify the project's cost and the disruption it causes.

Lucy Battersby is Telecommunications Reporter.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/the-need-for-speed-20110504-1e8he.html#ixzz1LR5jaenM

iPad 2 is it 4 u?

The wraps come off iPad 2

Stephen Hutcheon

March 3, 2011 - 7:42AM

Apple CEO Steve Jobs briefly emerges from his medical leave to unveil the second-generation of the popular iPad in San Francisco.

• Thinner than the iPhone 4
• Available in Australia on March 25

San Francisco: Apple's chief executive Steve Jobs has taken the stage to unveil the iPad 2, the upgraded version of its market-leading tablet computer.

His appearance is a surprise given he announced he was taking medical leave in January as a result of pancratic cancer and a liver transplant.

He's back ... Steve Jobs has unveiled the iPad 2. Photo: Reuters

Jobs said the new iPad - which goes on sale in the US on March 11 and in Australia on March 25 - was an "all new design" with a new processor that would make the device twice as fast.

A new version of the Apple mobile operating system - iOS 4.3 - will also come out as a free update on March 11.

"The first thing is it's dramatically faster," he said, talking about the new dual core A5 processor. "It’s up to nine times faster on the graphics."

Steve Jobs says the new iPad 2 will be 33 per cent thinner. Photo: Getty Images

As expected, the iPad 2 comes with front and rear-facing cameras and a built-in gyro for advanced gaming.

The Apple CEO said the new iPad would be 33 per cent thinner - from 13.4mm to 8.8mm thick. He said that would make it thinner than the iPhone 4. The iPad 2 will also be lighter: 590 grams versus 680 grams.

He said the iPad 2 would come in two colours - black and white. "And we will be shipping white from day one," he quipped, a reference to the long-delayed white iPhone 4 which has been held back due to production issues.

Dressed in his usual black mock turtle neck and faded Levis, Jobs said the new iPad will go on sale at the same starting price. The base model iPad sells for $699 in Australia.

"We think 2011 is going to be the year of iPad 2," he said.

He also announced a swag of new apps, accessories from cables to multicoloured magnetised covers.

The Apple co-founder was in good form, poking fun at the competition. He said they had been "flummoxed" by the iPad and declared that this year would also be the year of the iPad "copycat".

Jobs said Apple had sold nearly 15 million iPads last year, generating $US9.5 billion in revenue in the nine months after its launch.

Jobs also announced that Apple had sold over 100 million books on the iPad's iBookstore.

He said the majority of Apple’s revenues now come from these post PC devices such as the iPad.

Apple turns 35 on April 1.

Among the other announcements are:

• Apple has just shipped its 100 millionth iPhone

• Apple has paid out a total of $US2 billion to app developers

• There are now 200 million active iTunes accounts

• Apple has sold over 100 million ebooks in nine months

Stephen Hutcheon is in San Francisco as a guest of Apple.

Scary new world's uncertain Borders

Richard Flanagan

February 19, 2011

Book customers are being told to spend double the amount of vouchers for beleagured bookstores.

THE failure of Borders and Angus & Robertson has little to do with online selling and much to do with corporate stupidity and greed.

REDgroup Retail, the owner, was a typical early noughties business, created by a private equity firm, overly indebted, seeking to make up the growing difference between its mounting debt burden and its more humble income by using its businesses to fleece customers and suppliers.

Thus in 2007 came the unedifying and frankly disgusting attempt by Angus & Robertson, bearer of the oldest and one of the proudest names in the history of the Australian book trade, to charge small Australian publishers for simply stocking their books, demanding up to $20,000 to make up for their supposed reduced profitability.

While REDgroup's chairman, Steven Cain is now telling the federal government the company's failure is in part because of the government's decision not to open up the book market to parallel importation and thus, supposedly, cheaper books, that didn't stop the company routinely charging above recommended retail prices for its books. If it was worried about retail pricing, it wasn't reflected in its own pricing structure.

A&R's strategy was, I was told some years ago by one of their senior executives, to go to war with the publishers and win. They looked to retailers like Woolworths as their model, with their crushing of the suppliers and producers as the key to making more money.

Ugly as all this was and hubristic as it has proved, there is no comfort for anyone in the failure of the two chains. Together they are believed to represent about 20 per cent of Australian book retailing. The independent bookstores account for about another 20 per cent. Combined, they were the segment of book retailing in which many of the books that matter most to an Australian identity and culture were sold. It was also here that the books we think important to a larger idea of our world and ourselves - novels, essays, poetry and histories - were sold.

Publishers needed that critical mass to push many books that otherwise might have been dubious commercially over the red line into a small profit. It meant a first novel, a history, a book of essays might just be able to sell 3000 copies. But with Borders and Angus & Robertson in voluntary administration, with the independents struggling and more and more closing, those days are perhaps gone. Many small publishers we have come to see as vital - Text, Black Inc, MUP to name a few - must be looking today at their future publishing schedules with very heavy hearts, wondering how on earth they can continue to make it all work.

Many large publishers will continue the process already begun of sacking staff and slashing their Australian lists, telling authors that despite their promise or their record that the market has vanished. To survive they will concentrate ever more on the books stocked by the discount department stores - Kmart, Big W and the like: celebrity titles, overseas mass-market hits, cookbooks. Here today and gone tomorrow books, ephemera, massively discounted by the department stores, sometimes below cost, as loss leaders that might drag the punter into the shop to make some other more profitable purchase.

It is of course a perfect storm - the ineptitude of a major player in REDgroup, the global financial crisis that slowed retail, a society increasingly besotted by price rather than value, the refusal of the government to either get rid of the GST on books or charge it on online purchases, the rise of e-books and the growth of online selling at the moment the Australian dollar reached record highs.

But as well as the high Aussie, there are other reasons why books are now cheaper overseas. One is that they are so heavily discounted by publishers to players such as Amazon in Britain and the US that many writers there now, in effect, receive only a 3 to 4 per cent royalty on their books, as opposed to 10 per cent in Australia. And because our books may well have to end up at a comparable price to that available online, it may be that a similar royalty ends up applying here.

In Australia, where 20,000 sales is a bestseller, the maths on 4 per cent of an average UK-US price of $14 is sobering - $11,200 for two or three years' work. That is, if you get published. The maths is little better for the indie stores and small publishers whose fate may be as bleak as that of many writers. It becomes a volume game for big publishers and a handful of big retailers.

Some, increasingly more, books that should be published won't be. Some writers will give up. Some that need nurturing will never get a chance. Many good books will never be. In the great halls of Big W and Target you will still be able to buy the latest self-help book or cookbook, or the memoir of an English TV celebrity.

Those who think it's about infinite choice will drag the cursor a few centimetres onto the shopping cart and click on the new Franzen or McEwan, and think that's all there is and that's how it is, and we will once more be lulled into thinking it all happens anywhere else but here.

Some years ago I spent a few weeks in the great suburban swirl that is the Golden Corridor between Brisbane and the Gold Coast, where bush vanishes and suburbs seem to rise in the space of a weekend. As I drove down a new freeway, I saw a koala trying to cross from one new suburb to another construction zone, little knowing that there was no bush left anywhere for it to live.

The position of Australian writers, publishers and booksellers is not dissimilar. Disoriented, confused, hoping to get across the new super-highway before the next B-double wipes them out. I hope we make it, but to where and what, no one can say.

wikipedia turns 10 love it or hate it?

So what do you know?

Bridie Smith

January 15, 2011

Click to play video

Wikipedia celebrates 10th birthday

Wikipedia turns 10 today, and while it has its critics, the online collaborative encyclopedia is one of the world's top websites, with no plans to go commercial.

BILLIONAIRE retailer Gerry Harvey has been in the news a bit lately. And as federal minister Mark Arbib knows from experience, if you're in the headlines, chances are you're also getting a Wikipedia workout. So while the Harvey Norman co-founder was acting as spokesman for a coalition of retailers trying to pressure the federal government to tax overseas online sales under $1000, someone, somewhere was editing Harvey's Wikipedia entry.

''Gerry Harvey has recently called any person buying online un-Australian,'' began the contributor this month. ''Yet he has failed to provide quality customer service and has not passed on the savings of the high Australian dollar. Basically becoming a billionare [sic] who would rather turn on his fellow countrymen than provide quality service!''

Advertisement: Story continues below

The only part of that paragraph to survive into this week was the un-Australian line. The rest of the rant was removed.

This, says John Lenarcic, RMIT's information technology lecturer and social media commentator, is the website's strength. An example of why the free, collaborative, online encyclopaedia - which turns 10 today - works.

In the decade since the site was launched by American co-founders Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia has remained true to its original altruistic goals: to create an open, global, non-commercial online encyclopaedia.

''That's one of the stellar achievements of the site,'' Lenarcic says. ''It's opened up knowledge to the world and allowed people to contribute to this vast body of knowledge.''

Wales, who still dabbles in a bit of editing, believes the site's global growth is limited only by literacy rates and internet access.

The wiki software was created six years before the website's launch, but Wales says applying it to an encyclopaedia was ''the real innovation''. That it worked was not a surprise, but he says the scale of today's ever-expanding site was. ''It's evolved pretty much the way I thought it would, but it's much bigger than I ever imagined.''

What began life as a single, English-language edition has ballooned to more than 250 languages, including Greenlandic, which is spoken by only 57,000 people. That edition recently passed the 1000 milestone for number of entries.

English is the dominant language but makes up less than 20 per cent of the total. There are more than a million articles each for French and German speakers and more than half a million each for several other languages, including Chinese and Japanese. But there is always room for more. A new language can be added by users creating a ''test wiki'' to prove there is enough demand.

The site has its critics, among them co-founder Larry Sanger, who left in 2002 and has since lamented the site's ''lack of respect'' for expertise, which, he says, exposes it to questions of credibility. However, the number of hits alone indicates the resource has become a regular point of reference.

According to web information company Alexa, Wikipedia is ranked the seventh most-used website in the world, with about 300 million page views each day. And despite the success - not to mention the potential dollars that could be milked from that - co-founder Jimmy Wales is adamant the site, which costs millions a year to run, will not accept advertising. Ever.

''We have no plans to do that,'' he says. ''It's just not who we are.''

Instead the site will continue to rely on yearly fund drives, which bring in millions of dollars, cobbled together from average donations of little more than $A40 a pop.

The potential worth of the website, which this year will open an Indian office, its first outside America, can only be guessed at. But to put things in context, the site sitting one spot above Wikipedia in the global popularity stakes is that of Chinese web services company Baidu, which includes Baidu Baike, an online collaboratively built encyclopedia. In 2009, revenue generated by the company was US$651 million.

But a commercial approach is not for Wales. He believes Wikipedia has become a core part of the globe's ''information infrastructure'' and he is not about to compromise that by going commercial. ''We prefer to have broad community support, which has worked for us in the past and we want to maintain that,'' he says.

The site, owned by non-profit organisation Wikimedia Foundation, has only 50 paid positions, most of them technology-based roles such as programmers and operations staff. The bulk of the manpower is supplied by a global community of volunteers. More than 91,000 active contributors work on more than 17 million articles in more than 270 languages.

But what of the accuracy and credibility of the site, which must surely inform its success? Lenarcic believes users should view Wikipedia as an encyclopaedia of popular culture - best consumed with a pinch of salt. This plays out in the stats, with Facebook, John Lennon, sex and YouTube the top queries driving traffic, according to Alexa. Searchers don't linger for long, spending about five minutes on a visit to the site and 59 seconds for a page view.

It's not what you'd call in-depth research, but the site doesn't pretend to be the authority. Like many other articles, the Gerry Harvey entry carries an eye-catching banner warning readers that it ''needs additional citations for verification''.

Last December, Labor powerbroker Mark Arbib's page was edited following WikiLeaks revelations that he was in regular contact with US diplomats. The news prompted descriptions of him as ''CIA agent, US mole, traitor, and US embassy hero'' to be added to his Wikipedia entry, at the expense of his portfolios. Arbib's page was altered 18 times over six hours before moderators reverted the page because of ''vandalism by multiple editors''.

The media interest passed and the page has not been modified since December 19.

''Wikipedia is self-correcting and if enough people see that article and flag an anomaly, somebody will change it,'' Lenarcic says. ''If something is open like Wikipedia then there is vigilance.''

However, its strength as an open site can also be its weakness.

''It's not subject to the same editorial process that other publications are bound by,'' Lenarcic says.

The most common gripe is a lack of academic vigilance, a claim that makes Adam Jenkins jump to Wikipedia's defence. A lecturer in information systems at the University of South Australia, Jenkins is also a regular editor of the site and vice-president of Wikimedia Australia, the Australian chapter of the organisation. ''There will always be problems there, but the reality is that there are a great number of experts on Wikipedia,'' he says.

Jenkins estimates that up to 90 per cent of editors who work on complex topics such as mass and formal logic would describe themselves as experts.

''The accuracy comes into play on those complex areas but when you come to ones like society and culture, then we're probably talking 50 per cent of editors who would describe themselves as experts,'' he says.

Jenkins, who is organising a ''meet-up'' at an Adelaide cafe today to mark Wikipedia's first decade, started editing three years ago because he found the concept interesting.

''It's not the topic that concerns me, it's the research. I'm an academic and you live for that stuff.''

He researches within his area of expertise but also edits content beyond that, such as the history of the Australian Capital Territory and cane toads. ''In Wikipedia, everyone's equal,'' he says. He is more than happy for others to edit and expand his work and agrees with Lenarcic that entries are best thought of as providing an overview of a subject. ''You can then follow the links and track down the sources and develop your own picture from there, which is what I recommend students do because it works really nicely.''

Has this search for a quick, easy, digestible overview changed or compromised the way we research? While fans praise the site for its global, collaborative structure and staunch determination to remain non-commercial, critics warn that it risks mixing facts with popular opinion. But whichever side of the online fence you favour, the site has undoubtedly changed the way information is shared, compared and reviewed.

That the website is so often a port of call for frustrated people reflects the position it occupies in contemporary society. Gerry Harvey is a case in point.

''If Wikipedia didn't exist, what could people do?'' Lenarcic asks. ''They could probably go and deface a Harvey Norman store. But these online sites have changed things. Graffiti now is largely purposeless; it's just tagging without any kind of commentary or opinion. That social commentary aspect of graffiti is being subsumed in the digital form through blogging or sites like Wikipedia.''

Bridie Smith is science and technology reporter.

Campbelltown Library

FOXTEL, iPads, areas that allow teenagers to listen to music and conference rooms open until 11pm - libraries are evolving into one of the coolest places for kids to hang out.

Hi-tech features are increasingly being added to attract teenagers once reluctant to frequent services with a reputation of being quiet and boring.

At the forefront of the innovation is the Campbelltown Library at Newton, which includes a "magic tree" that uses audio and visual technology to create effects from starry nights to bright pink ripples and sounds like birds singing as children read.

An outdoor reading area is another recent feature.

Library services manager Ursula Hickey said the north-eastern suburbs book hub had grown in popularity, especially among teens, since the new look was unveiled in September.

"Teenagers can be noisy, they can watch Foxtel and listen to music or they can sit quietly and study," she said. "It's the type of thing a lot of libraries are making small moves towards."



Architecture firm DesignInc Adelaide managing director Richard Stafford, whose business created the new look at Newton, said bookstore cafes have had a significant influence on the change in community libraries.

"There was a time when you couldn't eat or talk in libraries and now you can do both," he said.

Sam Jonas, 15, liked a library where you could "make a bit of noise".

"I usually go to do research for school projects, but I think it's cool you can use technology and not be scared to make a little bit of noise."

Paper vs Pad

The iPad's role in saving newspapers is far from certain
ANDREA CARSON
June 9, 2010

It may make delivery easier, but a different partnership is needed for quality stories.

THE young man with a new iPad sat in a city cafe, sipping a short black as he swiped electronic pages, seemingly effortlessly. A dozen or so of us gazed at him through the cafe window. And why not? This machine is many things: lightweight, clever, portable and - having outpaced the iPhone with 2 million sales worldwide in two months - also popular. But will this tablet technology be the miracle panacea for the uncertain future newspapers face?

Newspapers are expensive to own and run. The ''rivers of gold'' advertising revenue of the heady 1980s have slowed as new online tributaries compete for market share. Today, any popular online site can attract advertising. As competition watchdog chief Graeme Samuel can testify, healthy competition drops prices. Advertising rates are no exception.

This paper's technology editor, Gordon Farrer, is optimistic the iPad will provide the ''smart interface'', backed by a company's track record, to get consumers to pay for content. But writing online, Eric Beecher - whose long newspaper experience includes writing, editing and publishing - says it is unclear how the iPad will create advertising revenue for newspapers.

The truth is it's hard to know who's right, because the iPad is an infant. Like all infants, it brings excitement, has wonderful potential, and has some growing up to do.

But it is a winner for Apple chief executive Steve Jobs's marketing team. Even though it has built the iPad without convenient modern features such as a USB port, camera, memory card, Adobe flash and multi-tasking capabilities, Apple has forced a deliberate market space for the new device. It has ensured consumers ''need'' a laptop, an iPhone, an iPod and now an iPad. Why merge functions when you can sell more products?

This model is perhaps a precursor to a better servant for newspapers, but not yet. Salvation waits.

Here are some facts about newspapers:

■The internet is barely a teenager. Western newspaper readership decline began before the internet became a word in the dictionary.

■British research shows quality newspapers have lost fewer readers relative to their circulations than tabloids.

■Quality journalism builds public trust. US media doyen Philip Meyer asserts democracy is strongest when several conditions are met, including survival of ''quality'' newspapers. This is supported by studies showing a positive correlation between healthy democracies and hard-copy newspapers. Meyer says the internet serves democracy as a distributor of information rather than an originator.

■Research shows that online newspaper content is less diverse and more entertainment focused than its print equivalents. Content converges when a medium relies solely on advertising revenue rather than a mix of sources.

For journalism to serve democracy, it seems clear that the content is of most importance. With this in mind, the question is less about whether the iPad is the right delivery method and more about how to sponsor good journalism.

Relying on subscription-based online delivery is flawed because the modern trend is free, free, and free. Rupert Murdoch may think readers will pay for content, but that genie is out of the bottle. Also passe are family-owned newspapers. Moreover, public broadcasters provide a quality non-subscription alternative.

Only niche publications such as business mastheads can get away with charging for content because credible information is specific and not easily found free.

In the United States, quality journalism has been funded by philanthropy. The success story is ProPublica, which recently won a Pulitzer Prize for its investigative journalism. But a philanthropic model requires a steady flow of donations and goodwill. And there is a risk of perceived and actual conflicts of interest. Some Scandinavian and European governments subsidise newspapers. But seeing as we already have the excellent ABC, this seems indulgent.

A more effective model builds on this idea. Innovative partnerships such as a recent one between The Age and the ABC delivered a bigger audience and broader coverage of an important story about Securency, a Reserve Bank subsidiary, and allegations of corruption involving its polymer note contracts.

Time will tell if the iPad was a step in the right direction for delivering newspapers. But clever partnerships to pursue public interest journalism? That is cause for optimism.

Andrea Carson is working on a PhD on the role investigative journalism in broadsheet newspapers plays in a democracy.