A couple of readers have sent me links to news about SonicBlue's decision to declare bankruptcy and sell off the ReplayTV division. I had seen some of the articles but didn't have a chance to read them thoroughly until tonight. As the articles note, this is disturbing but not unexpected; after all, if you were paying $1 million a month in legal fees, you'd go broke pretty quickly, too.

However, I'm still not that upset by this, in part because SonicBlue bought ReplayTV in the first place. CNET is playing both sides of the story, announcing DVRs Set for a Bright Future, which is pretty much how I feel. It's a shame the DVR makers can't get the price of these boxes down to something more reasonable. Then everyone would echo FCC Chairman Michael Powell's statement that they are "God's machine."

So I'm still optimistic, and we still love our Replays. In fact, I spent part of my weekend trying to get our newest one on the wireless network and downloading the Photo Viewer software. I've got the Linksys WET11 Bridge working, but the Replay won't grab an IP address. When I have time, I'll call SonicBlue, but I'd appreciate any advice from folks that have done this before (I tried the advice at PlanetReplay but no go).

Web Page Analyzer

"Enter a URL below to calculate page size and download time. The script sizes each individual element and finds the total for each type of web page component. Based on these page characteristics the script then offers advice on how to improve your page download and display time." [via WebWord]

An excellent resource from the folks behind the recent Web Site Optimization book. You can catch a full interview with them on this topic courtesy of Sean McManus.

Today I had lunch with Kate and her 17-year old daughter Clare. A goodly part of the discussion centered on Clare's relatively new cell phone. It's a spiffy LG that does 3G CDMA on Sprint's network. It has a color screen, ringtones (she had songs by the Backstreet Boys and Men at Work, among others), screensavers (Heath Ledger's picture), wallpaper (a picture of Stitch from the movie Lilo & Stitch), cool games, an application for calculating tips, and text messaging. She even uses the web on it, which she says works pretty well. She was quite the proud parent.

After she finished the tour, she said, "Yeah - you're jealous." And I was. But I'm still holding out for an embedded camera, Bluetooth, and synchronization with Outlook at a bare minimum.

Update: Of course, it's not just 17-year olds when you look at other countries. Check out this amazing statistic:

The UK Loves SMS

"According to this article in Cellular News, the UK sent 1.53 billion person to person text messages in February 2003, giving an average of 55 millon SMS per day. With some of the major news services offering text alerts for breaking news stories, the actual figure including these services must be crazy, especially given current events. To put this into some kind of perspective, about 1 billion text messages were sent in the US in 2002 (according to InphoMatch)." [Mobitopia]

It will be interesting to see the numbers for March 2003.

• RSS Feed Jackpot - The FeedRoom
  "I was checking out a link that someone sent me earlier, and stumbled upon this jackpot of RSS feeds. Insane! They've even got one set up for Robert Blake, for chrissake. I'm telling ya - if you don't have a RSS file, I ain't likely to return to your site. M'kay?" [C:PIRILLO.EXE]
   
• Last week, Morbus Iff announced that SourceForge is providing RSS feeds for their projects, so you can easily keep track of news for and changes to any of their software projects (such as Mailman!).
   
• Old Data Update Tool Gains New Converts
  "One researcher has written an RSS application that sends out server status updates. That could allow an information systems department to keep users updated when there are server problems, so that people aren't constantly calling up to report network problems.
  
  'RSS is proving to be a nice, robust and easily used tool for moving data...not just news headlines, but everything--from orders and inventory to whether or not the servers are up,' said Ben Hammersley, a journalist who has written a soon-to-be-published book on RSS. 'Thanks to the tools the RSS development community has made these past few years, it has a great future in the enterprise.' " [News.com]

Hey, The Laughing Librarian's blog is back, with an RSS feed no less! Thanks, Brian!

Ed Summers made note of the following to the PERL4LIB mailing list:

"Documents in Information Science has a new RSS feed available for INFORMATION RESEARCH. Thanks to Tom Wilson (University of Sheffield and IR's editor) for suggesting it, and Jose Barrueco (University of Valencia) for making it possible.

The Perl that generates the RSS feed is also available. Fortunately IR embeds Dublin Core in each of their articles, so the program only needs to figure out what the current issue is, and then extract the Dublin Core from each article. It would be nice if more online publications used Dublin Core metadata in this way.

A side benefit of this work is a new CPAN module, HTML::DublinCore which makes it easy to extract Dublin Core from HTML."

I don't know enough about this stuff to say for sure, but doesn't this mean that there an easy way to integrate metadata into blogging tools, or at least into "tables of contents" pages? For example, if a library trade journal publisher was already posting TOCs of its issues online, wouldn't this be a good way to add an easy feed to those pages while also making them more accessible in a future semantic web? (Hint, hint.)

Al Jazeera now has an english version of its web site, and paying NewsIsFree users can even track it via RSS. Then there's the WorldNews Network, and CyberJournalist.net is maintaining a compilation of Great Iraq Conflict Coverage online. In addition, Dear Raed is back online, and CNN has a story about this Iraqi blogger in Baghdad (even though they've ironically shut down Kevin Sites independent blog).

This is easily the most covered military conflict ever, even with the debate about "embedded" journalists. It will be interesting to watch what type of effect the access to international news sources - and blogging in particular - has on Americans, as well as the rest of the world. Here at SLS, we use a product that prioritizes internet traffic in order to optimize access to our online catalog. I'm waiting to see numbers for the increase in the use of video and audio over the past week.

Update: Instapundit thinks CNN's story isn't cool, and he must have some clout there because Jake Savin notes it's already gone from their site. It now produces a 404 error, and Jake's wondering why. It didn't occur to me that they would pull the story, so I don't have a copy of the article. If you do, please let Jake know because he'd like to mirror it.

Utahns May Get Piece of CD Settlement, Thousands of CDs Go to Schools and Libraries

"Nearly 30,000 Utahns who filed claims in a nationwide lawsuit against CD distributors and retailers may soon claim a total of about $362,300, according to a press release from the Utah Attorney General's Office.

Each consumer who took a few moments to file a claim before the March 3 deadline may get $12.60 each to buy a new CD, if a proposed settlement is approved by a judge.

Attorney General Mark Shurtleff joined 42 attorneys general last September to settle the lawsuit against five of the largest distributors and three of the largest retailers of pre-recorded music for allegedly conspiring to raise prices. The distributors and retailers agreed to pay $67,375,000 in cash and provide $75,700,00 worth of CDs. They also promised not to engage in sales practices that would artificially hike retail prices.

The 28,754 Utahns who purchased CDs, cassettes or vinyl albums between Jan. 1, 1995, and Dec. 22, 2000, and filled out a claim are in line to receive the checks, the release said. Utah also will get 43,500 CDs to distribute to schools and libraries.

A federal judge will hold a hearing May 22 to determine if the proposed settlement is fair." [DeseretNews.com, via Utah and National Public Library News]

Doh - I hadn't even thought of this! Think of how many CDs libraries bought during that time period and how much money they lost due to the record labels' price collusion. It doesn't seem like $12.60 is much of a settlement, now does it? (It doesn't seem fair even to little ol' me who bought hundreds of CDs during that time.) Does anyone know if similar settlements will be implemented in all 50 states? And how will they determine which 43,500 CDs go to Utah schools and libraries?

And don't forget that if you submitted a claim before the deadline and you do end up getting a check, one option is to send it to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom

"I downloaded the PDB version of Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom a few weeks ago and have slowly been reading it in my spare time (It's really a quick read, I just have no time). Cory Doctorow released the book free in a zillion different file formats and I highly recommend either grabbing up one of the free versions, or spending a few bucks to get the print version. This is one of the best fictional works I've read in ages. Biting wit, intellectually stimulating ideas, and social criticism all make this a fun read for anyone who has been living and breathing in the last few decades. If Cory has more works like this one in him, he should emerge as one of the brilliant sci-fi writers of his time." [ReadYourPalm]

I'll reiterate that this book is a relatively easy way for libraries to get some experience with digital downloads. For those that are curious about interacting with ebooks in the library's OPAC, you can buy the paper copy for your physical collection and download digital copies for circulating through your online catalog. Very few libraries are ready for something like this, but it's one way to get your feet wet with little overhead and no worries for how to check the title in and out.

Interesting that there's still no WorldCat record for digital versions.