SD Cards Hit a Higher Capacity

"SanDisk has begun production of SD memory cards with a 1GB capacity and expects them to begin appearing on store shelves before the end of this month.

SD, or Secure Digital, cards are widely used in devices such as digital still cameras. The higher capacity will mean users with large data storage requirements won't have to carry around as many cards. The 1GB card should be able to accommodate around 2000 images taken at 1,600-pixel by 1,200-pixel resolution. It should also be able to store about nine hours of MPEG4 video or 16 hours of MP3 audio.

The company expects the cards to cost around $500, says Bob Goligoski, a spokesperson for SanDisk." [PCWorld.com]

They can't come down in price fast enough for me. I'll probably have to give in and get a 256MB card in the interim, because the 1GB version costs almost as much as the Treo 600 itself!

RSS and Productivity

"The scroll bar for my Outlook inbox vanished for the first time in 7 years.

This indicates that I have fewer messages in my inbox than will sustain the need for scrolling. ;-)

This is a landmark event for me - I receive about 100 business-related emails every 24 hours (used to be 200, and about 500 if you include spam). I deal with this level of communication by supplementing email with RSS and channels. Both afford me the latitude of responding to many inquiries with a simple link (i.e., an answer that is encapsulated in some content item previously created). I've learned that the best way to improve my own productivity is to publish discrete information objects that can be easily shared and consumed by people seeking my help, guidance, or direction. Making that information available as RSS causes many productivity-enhancing events to unfold....

I think I'm about 7% more productive by taking the time to publish more and react less - and in a form that supports immediate RSS availability. That's the equivalence of about fourteen 8 hour workdays per year which is roughly equivalent to the amount of time I plan to spend in Kona, Hawaii.

RSS for personal information management - who'd a thought?" [Think Outside The Feed]

Hey, I want to go to Hawaii...!

Steven M. Cohen just IMed that the Sun-Times article about technology in libraries is out. Note: ST articles are usually available online for free for one week.

Woman Key in Bringing Tech to Libraries in Suburbs

"Hard-core Web searchers can scour databases free, check out an MP3 audio book or sign up for e-mail news alerts, courtesy of tech-enabled libraries in Chicago's suburbs.....

If you haven't owned a library card in years, you're in for a surprise. Libraries fortunate to have tech resources, such as ones in DuPage County and members of the Heritage Trail Library System, allow checkout of MP3 players programmed with audio books.

Library users can listen to best-selling fiction and non-fiction books from Audible.com, a digital audio publisher, on a single player....

Levine hopes Weblogs will help libraries get their information out to the public in a timely and efficient way."

I can't say too much about it because I figure my 15 bytes of fame are officially up now. It was a difficult interview for me and a difficult article for the columnist because we threw a lot of different subjects into a short amount of space: the newly-launched ListenIllinois site, remote database access for patrons, blogging, RSS, and even a quick reference to the Open WorldCat project. None of it gets covered in any depth, but it's a start.

There's a nice picture in the print edition of me holding an Audible Otis player. I'll try to scan a copy today. I don't technically own a copy yet, because when I walked to the end of our street in sub zero wind chills where sits a Sun-Times news box, I deposited my money only to find that there were only two copies therein. One was from December 30, one was from December 31. This, ladies and gentlemen, is why I don't do print.

Luckily, Gloria gets the ST at home and she brought it in. I'll try to scan it in later today but in the meantime, you can see the picture Aaron took of the event with my Treo 600.

Update: here's the scanned version as a PDF.