Pocket-Sized RC Cars Hit U.S. Soil

"The latest Asian craze, modifiable radio-controlled cars that fit in the palm of your hand, has finally hit the U.S.

In a press conference Wednesday, Radio Shack introduced the ZipZap line of miniature RC cars. Each is based upon real-life roadster, and can be tricked out with body kits and other accessories. Customers also have the option of upgrading and tweaking the gear ratios to give their car an extra boost.

The ZipZaps will go on sale later this month.

The ZipZaps Starter Kit comes with the Ford SVT Mustang Cobra, Porsche 911 Turbo, Honda Civic or Chrysler PT Cruiser body top and all the parts needed to zip the car together, the company said. The battery charges in less than a minute, and lasts between eight to twenty minutes, a company spokeswoman said....

Prices for the cars start at $19.99, and accessories and upgrades are priced from $1.99 to $12.99. A track kit will also be sold, Radio Shack said." [ExtremeTech, via Slashdot]

I think we have a new Friday sport at work!

Sony to Unleash Wi-Fi, Camera Toting PalmOS 5 Clie

"Next week, 2nd October, Sony will launch a deeply cool-looking PalmOS 5.0 Clie range, according to confidential Sony documentation seen by The Register. It's still only PalmOS 5.0 of course, rather than the Next Big Thing, but from the look of the flagship PEG-NX70V Sony is mounting a serious stab at making the stop-gap intensely desirable, even compelling.

The NX70V will be available in November, and has a US price tag of $599.99. It and the NX60 have a "wireless card slot" which takes a Sony 802.11b card, but presumably no other variety. The 70 runs a 200MHz ARM chip, has a 310K pixel camera (this is the only one that does), 320x480 TFT, an MP3 player, and it does video clips too....

It has Word and Excel viewers/editors, does web browsing and email, and is is positioned to govern your life on the move, syncing with your desktop. The usual stuff, and it'll all depend on how well it does it." [The Register]

I'm glad to see Sony finally providing some support for 802.11b wireless access in the Clie line. I've been saying for three years now that the only way Palms would be able to fight off Pocket PCs would be to come up with a wireless, color version. This is finally a step in that direction, although I worry that it comes too late. I would certainly love to own one of these, but I don't think it can compete with true smartphones that will do all of these things AND let you make phone calls. The new Clies should be Bluetooth-enabled and come with a Bluetooth-based headset for cellular calls. It's no longer enough to play catch up. You have to start leapfrogging the competition at some point. I'd buy such a device in a heartbeat if it was able to access the beginnings of the 3G-like services we're starting to see in the U.S. (like Sprint PCS Vision or AT&T mLife).

Library Records Post-Patriot Act (Federal Law)

"A chart to help librarians understand the USA PATRIOT Act. Identifies the types of allowable court orders for library records, categories of information that can be requested, and legal standards. Essential reading before the knock on the door. Created for the Law Library Resource Xchange (LLRX) by Mary Minow, an attorney and former librarian." [Librarians' Index to the Internet - New This Week]

I'm trying to play catch up, so I want to make sure everyone has seen this and I want it in my archives. You can tell a lot of hard work went into this resource.

Addendum:

"Teleconference on the USA PATRIOT Act. AALL, ALA,and other library organizations are sponsoring a teleconference on December 11, 2002, entitled Safeguarding our Patrons' Privacy:  What Every Librarian Needs to Know about the USA PATRIOT Act & Related Anti-Terrorism Measures.  The intended audiences goes beyond librarians to include legal counsels,  library administrators/executives and governing board members, information technologists, and state networks/consortia staff. More details are available here and site registration is here. I expect we'll have a site here, and other universities will/should have sites as well. It looks like AALL will maintain a list of sites willing to accept guests, so interested parties should check in the site later in the fall for more information." [Leah's Law Library Weblog]

Spears, Madonna, Other Stars in TV Ads on Piracy

"Spears, rapper Nelly, hip-hop diva Missy Elliott and other pop stars will be featured in coming weeks in TV spots funded by the world's biggest record labels to educate people about illegal downloading of music, which the music industry blames for a protracted sales slump.

After falling more than 5 percent in 2001, CD shipments dropped another 7 percent in the first half of this year as illegal downloading of music persists at high levels....

The print ads ask the question, 'Who Really Cares About Illegal Downloading?', then answer it with a diverse list of nearly 90 major recording artists and songwriters, including such superstars as Eminem, Madonna, the Dixie Chicks, Missy Elliott, Elton John, Sting, Phil Collins, Luciano Pavarotti, Brian Wilson, Spears, and Natalie Cole." [Mercury News]

I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out how Eminem, the artist with the best-selling album of the year (you know - the album that broke sales records), can equate "illegal downloading of music" with decreased sales figures.

Do you think I can get equal time on the air and in the papers to point out the [lack of] wisdom of continually raising your prices while taking to market music for the masses that the masses don't seem to care for? I'd love to "educate" these folks about why we're really not buying their CDs.

Even better, I'd love to do a survey of buying habits of recording artists and executives. With all of their money, are they still buying the number of albums they used to, or do they find less and less to like on the radio? When was the last time Britney Spears was in a record store buying CDs?

Addendum: I just saw this Blog Cognosco pointer to another Mercury News article about this campaign in which David Benjamin, Universal Music Group's senior vice president of anti-piracy, says, "What we're doing is we are robbing our cultural past and we're destroying our cultural future."

I sure hope Lawrence Lessig quotes him during the upcoming Eldred vs. Ashcroft hearing!

In response to my post last week about libraries circulating videos to PDAs and smartphones, Ryan Greene ran with it and offered the following thoughts:

"Now we have the opportunity for your local library to stream a file to you, wirelessly, wherever you are in the range of their WiFi network*. Imagine if you could 'check out' public domain recordings that are streamed to you, allowing you to listen to music, read books that are from Project Gutenberg, watch movies, or access the internet, all from your home, and all because instead of a library card, you've got a NEXiO that the library lends out to users, allowing them to get all kinds of information that they have on hand.

Instead of giving kids full blown laptops, give them NEXiOs (or OQOs) and then they have something small enough to be carried easily, but so useful that they will not soon forget it. Get the school or library to use a P2P network like a customized version of The Circle for file sharing, or better yet Frontier so that the kids can upload/download their homework, check their grades via a Flash based digital dash, and keep an eye on their schedules (Userland, have you considered this market?) Parents can keep track of their kids performance, as well as keeping an eye on their schedule from wherever they might be.

Now imagine that the library/school/town has an IMbot that retrieves information for you, just the basics for now (Library hours, is a particular title available), but later it could be programmed to do an information request interview (Forgive me Jenny, for forgetting the proper term) to help you get the info you need, either from home, on the road, or via the NEXiO.

So how do labels fit into all of this? They should be using local libraries as a means of distributing music files, either as a donation to the libraries, or by helping to convert their existing music banks to MP3 in order to share the music with local users. By providing the hardware and training to do so, they would then help the communities to get a leg up technology wise, and get some local good will going.

*I've been reading about WiFi networks that are getting a 20km range through a combination of directional antenna arrays and masts. A new use for the town clock tower, water tower, or co-locate with a hidden cellular tower? regardless, this would more than cover most towns, if not some smaller cities."

Ryan is on the right track overall, and he proposes some great ideas that help illustrate why public libraries need to get over their fears about public WiFi access. Ryan is the type of patron we need to be thinking more about - how are we going to get digital content to him?

However, one way or another, libraries won't be in the hardware business for too much longer, which will be a good thing because librarians really aren't trained to be technical support helpdesks, and it doesn't make the best use of our strengths (such as "reference interviews" ;-)  ). We'll be caught in the middle until these groups (ebook, recording industry, MPAA, etc.) get their acts together and standardize on formats, digital rights management (DRM) software (the content-loving kind, not the lock-it-down-so-I-can't-take-it-where-I'd-use-it kind), and pricing. Either we'll be able to circulate the digital content itself to patron-owned devices, or we won't be able to circulate digital content at all (because the embedded DRM software won't let us). Why do libraries circulate CDs? Because they play in every CD player (well, until recently they did). Let's get this show on the road already and see some progress (instead of regress) and extend the market for ebooks, MP3s, etc.

The overall problem is access to the content, since as publishers these groups want to cut libraries out of the loop altogether and sell directly to consumers. Libraries need to start working with publishers to figure out how to circulate digital content to people that already have the devices because in the near future, most folks will have their own smartphone and they're not going to want to carry around a second device just for library-retrieved content. Content is what libraries have always been about - it's just that it was mostly in print media (books, newspapers, magazines) until recently.

Remember when I higlighted the Westminster Libraries partnership with Classical.com to offer streaming music for its patrons? It's a great idea but for now, you have to be physically in one of the Libraries to authenticate and hear the music. How crazy is that? I love my local library, but I don't have time to go there to listen to music. It totally defeats how I use music. We need to start working together now to fix these problems and overcome these barriers - before we've been cut out of the loop. Because there are folks out there like Ryan who "get it" and already want this type of service from us.

To get back to Ryan's post, I love the idea of the student P2P network with a digital dashboard front end. I might have to develop that one further in my head for next year's grant cycle. I definitely want to investigate the IMbots, too, as I do believe these would be in demand now if they were available.

10 Mobile Technologies to Watch

"DemoMobile is the playground for these dreamers. The annual Southern California conference, which ran Sept. 19-20, draws some of the smartest companies, and previews technology that could affect the way we live in the next five years.

1. On-Field Live Football from Sorrent (www.sorrent.com).... A football game the company is launching with Fox Sports has good color on next-generation phones, features multi-player action, and might be as much fun as Snake -- if the wireless carriers who will offer the game don't get too greedy. The single-player version is due in mid-October and the multi-player version in mid-November.

From the looks of it, this could be the Super Mario Brothers of cell phone games, a type of game that opens up the floodgates, allowing people to have fun in new and unexpected ways.

The part that worries me is the pricing. Sorrent expects wireless carriers to charge $5 to download the game, a flat rate of $3 a month to access the online version, and on top of that, a per-minute charge to compete with other opponents wirelessly. This could prevent the main force that makes a video game a hit: addiction. If game addicts know they're paying by the minute for the fun, they're more likely to be cautious about how often they play....

5. Modtones Polyphonic Ringtones from Faith West (www.faith-inc.com): This company's technology makes it possible for cell phone tones to sound more like instruments. For those who love to change ringer melodies to suit their mood, this is great news. For those who are annoyed by the constant jingling of phones during presentations, church services and other events, this is a new form of torture.

There are real benefits to Faith West's efforts in ringer technology. The company is working on ways to let people record their own ringer tones, say, voices. It might even be possible in a year or so for one person to 'push' a ring tone to someone else, perhaps 'Hey, it's Jon. Answer the phone!'...

6. Mobile Music Engine from Shazam Entertainment (www.shazam.com): Hold a cell phone up to a tune, and a text message tells you the song title and artist. This technology is just plain clever, and it's locally grown. Two scientists at Stanford University invented the underlying technology.

If you've got old songs on tape that you want to find again, or if you keep missing the part where the DJ names your favorite new song on the radio, the service could help. It's already active with all of the major wireless carriers in the United Kingdom, where Shazam is based.

Dial 2580, and play 30 seconds of a song into the phone by holding it near the speaker of a radio or stereo, and the carrier sends you a text message with the name of the song and artist. The service typically costs 75 cents per call, and works with most every type of music you could buy in a store, except classical. The U.K. is the hottest music market in the world, so it was a good place to start. We'll see if the sometimes slow-moving carriers here in the United States will catch up." [Mercury News, via Lockergnome's Bits and Bytes]

I don't suppose holding up a book to a phone will solicit the same type of response, though. It'd be cool if smartphones included an infrared port that could be used as a barcode scanner. What if I could then scan a CD or book and find out if my local library has it? Or maybe do some research using the library's databases via remote access.

When folks ask me what type of content or service anyone will ever want from a tiny little cell phone, think about these types of things. As always, the devil is in the pricing, though. Obviously businesses are thinking about wireless services; libraries need to start planning for them, too.

Another newspaper hops on the clue bandwagon. The Arizona Daily Star is offering several different RSS feeds for personal and non-commercial use. They give special mention to blogs, too. [via BlogRoots]