Month: November 2005

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Libraries, Patrons Clash Over Audiobooks

Yo, Libraries: say No to DRM – Excellent article by Doc Searls about the mess libraries are getting into trying to distribute audio books. In a nutshell, libraries are trying to offer audio books for download, but the major vendor in this area only offers the works in WMA format so patrons cannot use their iPods.  This leads to a lot of frustration.  

Providing a service that allows patrons to downlaod and listen to audiobooks is a very good idea.  Getting locked into a format battle between closed systems is not.  Librarians need to take a closer look ath the technology involved in these sorts of decisions before committing.  Audiobooks in a format that allows use by the greatest number of patrons while protecting the author’s rights would be ideal here.


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MSFT To Delete Sony DRM as Malware

Microsoft Corp. will start deleting the rootkit component of the controversial DRM scheme used by Sony BMG Music Entertainment. The software giant’s Windows AntiSpyware application will be updated to add a detection and removal signature for the rootkit features used in the XCP digital rights management technology.

Microsoft Zapping Sony DRM ‘Rootkit’

This is kinda funny:)  One wonders if MSFT would be taking the safe position if Sony was using MSFT DRM.

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InfoTrac Gets Podcasts

Thomson Gale, part of The Thomson Corporation (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC), announces the addition of podcast feeds to InfoTrac on Thomson Gale PowerSearch and its Student Resource Center, Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center and History Resource Center databases. Weekly presidential radio addresses by George W. Bush from January 2005 to the present will be podcast beginning today. New presidential radio addresses will be added weekly.

Gale – Press Room – 2005 – 11 – Thomson Gale Adds Podcast Feeds To Database Resources – Home

Via Library Stuff.  So, will Thompson West pickup on this and include Classcaster stuff in Westlaw?

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Basic CMS for YOur Homepage

XHP (eXpandable Home Page) is a personal home page program (CMS) that is easy to install, easy to use, and easy to expand. It includes blog, image gallery, content modules, and an API for contributed modules. It tries to fill the lack of personal home-page oriented CMSs, since most of the current CMSs are dedicated to the enterprise market or large portals.

freshmeat.net: Project details for XHP

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O’Reilly Launches Podcast Page

We’re gathering some of the things we’ve been working on in podcasting in one spot. Come visit and let us know what you think.

O’Reilly Podcasts

The page is sort of a short directory of the podcasts folks at O’Reilly are listening to.  One would assume that original content will follow along.

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Tracking Wex in the Wild

Since Wex is new and didn’t show up in Google’s blog and web searches before 11/10/05, I thought this would be a neat opportunity to track the spread of a new site across the blogosphere and the web.  What I’ve done is create a page at gada.be: browse on over to wex-lii.gada.be to watch it spread.  Of particular interest is that within 36 hours a couple of splogs are linking through to parts of Wex, and how the major search engines at MSN, Yahoo, and Google have already crawled the site.