Eccles Library has purchased three iPads, along with the Motorola Xoom (3), Amazon’s Kindle (6) and the Nook (6) from Barnes and Noble for students and faculty to check out and learn about (see previous post). Included on the iPad are the following applications:

• Kindle
• iBooks
• Nook
• Google Books
• Inkling
• Modality Body

along with the standard software that comes with the device.

Do you have an iPad, Xoom or other tablet computer? What medical or other software do you use on it? Tell us about it!

Some 35% of U.S. adults have software applications or “apps” on their phones, yet only 24% of adults use those apps. Many adults who have apps on their phones, particularly older adults, do not use them, and 11% of cell owners are not sure if their phone is equipped with apps.

The report goes on to note several additional observations about mobile app users:

• Apps users are younger, more educated, and more affluent than other cell phone users.
• App use ranks relatively low (9th) on a list of “non-voice cell phone use.”
• 29% of adult cell phone users have downloaded an app to their phone.
• One in eight adult cell phone users (13%) has paid to download an app.
• Data indicate that games are the most popular apps, followed by news/weather, maps/navigation, social networking, and music.

The authors of the blog post summarizing their findings call this “the Rise of Apps Culture” and call it a “pretty remarkable tech adoption story.” Yet games are the most popular items to download. Perhaps this is not a story of how one society adopted a new tech paradigm in record time. Rather it may just be people with “disposable” income acting like a kid who just got paid his/her allowance and raced to the corner drug store to buy a pack of sports trading cards for the new season.

What do you think?