March Magazine Madness

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Magazines and Newspapers

Magazines and newspapers contain good quick, current grabs of information and statistics. Our library holds a little collection of cultural magazines including: Time, Cosmos, New Scientist, Empire, Health & Fitness, Vogue, New Internationalist, House & Garden. You can also browse daily print editions of The Cairns Post, The Courier-Mail and The Australian.  Our March Madness promotion puts everyone who borrows a magazine this month into a prize draw.  Newspapers and magazines can also be read online, if you can’t work out from our information portal, how to access Time, New Scientist and Cosmos online, please ask the library staff.  We can also help you read any newspaper in the world for free, using your public library card – see Mrs Robins if you have trouble figuring that out.

The rest of  this blog, we’ll devote to statistics and snippets of information about the differences between online and printed mediums.  The Washington Post recently ran a story about how digital natives still prefer to read in print.  Co-founder of the internet Vint Cerf, is worried that, a lot of what we have saved only in a digital format has already been lost. He urges everyone to keep a print copy (e.g. photos) because the operating systems of the future will not necessarily enable us to access our old files. Lastly, a new study has found that recall is better from a book than from a Kindle.  This is my favourite- a recent article in the Brisbane Times arguing that reading can make you more successful on many levels.

Top 25 sites in Australia (March 2015)

1.Google.com.au 2. Google.com 3. Facebook 4. YouTube 5. Yahoo 6. eBay 7. Wikipedia 8. Linkedin 9. Twitter 10. Live.com 11. Amazon 12. news.com.au 13. Paypal 14. Bing 15. Gumtree 16. Commbank 17. smh.com.au 18. abc.net.au 19. realestate.com.au 20. Reddit 21. Pinterest 22. Instagram 23. bom.gov.au 24. imdb.com 25. Westpac.

Yet, our SSHS portal has heaps more functionality than all these sites – a Google search is included by default in every search, in addition to simultaneous searching of many functional educational databases.

Devices?

According Australian Multi-Screen Report (Nielsen Report Dec 2014) TV is still the centrepiece of viewing; Australians watch nearly 97 hrs per month of TV; internet is in 80% of homes; smartphones are the most common internet-connected devices in homes (91%) – tablets (60%); 74% of people aged 16+ own a smartphone; 45% of homes own tablets; 13.377 million watch some video on the internet each month (7h30m per month).

 Australian e-Generation Report (Nielsen Report Feb 2015)

2-15 yr olds spend an average of 11h12m online each week; 13-15 yr olds = 18.7 hrs/wk. Children go online at an increasingly younger age due to tablets, apps and smartphones; younger children use tablets; teens have all devices; 9 in 10 homes own laptops; 6 in 10 have wifi; 7 in 10 own tablets.

Passwords – choose something unique for your own good.

Web security firm SplashData analyses several million leaked passwords each year. Most popular in 2014 and 2013 was  ‘123456’ (in 2012, ‘password’ won). Other favourites; ‘qwerty’; ‘trustno1’; ‘letmein’; ‘abc123’. If ‘123456’ is too short, just add ’78’. Eventually we’ll see the end of passwords. The Fujitsu Purse Wallet identifies the vein patterns on your hand and the Bionym Nymi wristband uses your heartbeat as a password.

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