"Wow - Can you believe it? 

Our blog is one year old today!

Time sure flies when you're having fun. " [Off the Shelves]

Congratulations, La Grange Park Public Library! Of course, they're already on blog #4 and counting, but this one started it all!

Tipped

"In the past week:

• Weblogs cover the war without mainstream restraints
• Reporting Reflects Anxiety
• Public's Appetite for Instant War News Fuels Spread of Web Logs
• On-the-spot blogs from war
• It's instant, but how much can we trust?
• A Medium Meets Its War
• Improved Tools Turn Journalists Into a Quick Strike Force
• War a Boon for News Sites, Blogs
• War reporting goes hi-tech
• Fascinating Web logs provide an unfiltered view of the war
• War coverage with personal touch emerges
• Blogs bring personal view of war
• Net news: live from the war zone
• War brings a surge of traffic on the Net
• Blah, blah, blogs
• US soldier "bloggers" report from war zone
• Straight or Slanted, 'Blogs' Add Spice to War Reports
• Web surfing for war junkies
• He's glad to admit he's a 'warblogger'
• Bloggers click on pulse of war news
• For war newshounds, nothing beats blogging

Etc.

Um...I think we're outta the closet." [weblogged News]

Can anybody else get to DMOZ? There's nothing noted on their blog, but I haven't been able to access it all day long. :-

Legal MP3 Downloads

"helping you legally download digital music that rocks
A service of Online Tonight and The Net Music Countdown with David Lawrence

So this new blog, Legal MP3 Downloads, is new. Why did I do this? Because as much as I love haranguing you all about how stealing is wrong and KaZaA is immoral, I'd also like to be able to direct you to free and low cost digital music.

So I created this blog. Took me about an hour in Movable Type. I've added some enhancements, and I'd love to get suggestions, but I simply want it to be a place you can slide through from time to time to find new MP3's, WMAs, OGGs, liquid audio files for your digital players." [via C:PIRILLO.EXE]

The radio show that lives behind this blog sounds interesting, too, although I've never heard it before. I'm still waiting for a price drop before buying an XM or Sirius satellite radio receiver.

I guess I was hoping that there would be so many legal downloads of good music by now that no one would bother trying to point them all out. Oh well. And don't forget that just because these are legal downloads that you've paid good money for, that doesn't mean you can take them with you on your MP3 player.

At least the site has an RSS feed.

Analyst: Internet File-sharing Bigger than Record Business

"Free peer-to-peer music file-sharing has become larger than the multibillion dollar recording industry with a growth trend that has become 'fundamentally unstoppable,' a media analyst told a state Senate committee exploring Internet piracy on Thursday.

The free downloading habit among 61 million Americans and millions more worldwide is 'cemented,' with only 9 percent of U.S. downloaders believing they are doing anything wrong, said Eric Garland, founder of Beverly Hills-based Big Champagne, which analyzes Internet trends.

'We see only one trend,' said Garland. 'More people are downloading more copyrighted material.'

Instead of fighting the trend, which he called a losing battle, Garland said the entertainment industry should embrace digital distribution rather than file lawsuits that only make more people aware of free downloads.

But industry representatives largely rejected the advice, instead promoting legal challenges and education, including a new anti-file-sharing movie clip that will appear soon in movie theaters....

'The record business, in the digital revolution, has been a day late and a dollar short,' said Kazaa lobbyist Phil Corwin." [SFGate.com]

Not that this is a good thing, as J.T.S. Moore well knows. And here comes MusicNow/FullAudio to try and prove the point that people will pay to download legal files. I haven't examined their catalog, but if they have artists from all five major labels and you really can download any track onto an MP3 player, I will actually try this one out.

"Gary Hart is BLOGGING." [InstaPundit]

Which will make it interesting if he's caught doing anything this time around....