When they launched the Space Shuttle on Monday, STS-112 had a new RocketCam mounted on the large external fuel tank pointed down at the shuttle. NASA has encoded and released the video of the launch from the RocketCam point of view. All I can say is "Wow! What a ride!" It's worth a look if you've got the time." [Mary Wehmeier's Blog Du Jour]

Wanted to make sure my Dad saw this one. This is incredibly cool. I was in a meeting, so I missed watching it live, although Will said the feeds were pretty broken up.

When do you suppose we'll have the first astronaut in space blogging?

Pamela told a story she'd heard about a woman in Oregon who read a newspaper article about ALA's Banned Books Week. The woman was quite surprised to learn that the American Library Association would be in favor of banning books.

Hmmmm... maybe we should rename it Don't Ban Books Week?

"The upcoming line of inexpensive color Pocket PCs are going to shake up Palm OS market....

Palm is due to announce the Tungsten T later this month. Supposedly it is a 175MHz, 16MB device with 'classic' Graffiti area and an SD slot. It might include Bluetooth and will probably sell for $499. With those specs it is dead in the womb.

Pocket PCs have been Good Enough for a while, and next month's PPC devices will be cheap enough. If Palm and their licensees fail to produce competitive products in the $200-$400 range, Palm is dead. Growth at the low-end won't help Palm if those users have nothing in the mid-range to upgrade to." [Bryce's Radio Experiments]

Unfortunately, I think Bryce is right and that Palm isn't going to weather the storm. I've said for a couple of years now that they needed to offer a color, wireless PDA, and that was when the Palm VII was a leader. With the recent surge in 802.11b and Bluetooth, that type of wireless access is a natural fit for a PDA, and Palm has officially missed the boat.

If it's true that the new iPaq Pocket PC will offer both WiFi and Bluetooth, all your bases will belong to them. They won't rule the land per se, but it will be too late for Palm to catch up unless they can offer substantial price cuts, which I doubt they can afford to do.

TiVo Viewers Like 'CSI: Miami,' 'Firefly'

"According to TiVo, the five most popular new shows, based on the number of users who have configured their recorder to automatically record every episode, are CBS's 'CSI: Miami,' Fox's 'Firefly' and 'John Doe,' ABC's 'Push, Nevada' and CBS's 'Without A Trace....'

In the regular television ratings, as measured by Nielsen Media Research, all those shows have performed well, with the exception of 'Push, Nevada,' which has been soundly beaten in most airings to date and is in danger of being canceled....

In addition to ranking the top new shows of the season, TiVo also released statistics on how often prime-time programs are recorded by its users and watched at times other than their original window.

Overall, the company said 80 percent of prime-time programming is recorded and watched later." [Chris Van Buskirk's ITV Weblog]

Emphasis above is mine, because if that's not some major shifting, then I don't know what is. Now if I could just take those recorded programs with me on, say, a plane ride, I'd be an even happier camper. Too bad the television industry won't see the goldmine in the above numbers.

What is a News Aggregator?

"The key point is that I don't have to visit each of these sites to find out what's new. My computer, running aggregator software, does it for me, every hour, automatically. The information is formatted in XML, but I am barely aware of that, as with all compelling apps, the technical details are tucked out of the way. Like all open formats, it's easy to figure out what's going on." [Scripting News]

Here's another basic explanation of what news aggregators do. If you're still on the fence, give an aggregator a whirl and see if it works for you. I'm betting it will.

In other news, Steven Cohen and I will be doing a presentation about RSS and news aggregators at the Computers in Libraries conference in Washington D.C. in March. Hope to see you there.

For those of you that have seen my Information Shifting presentation, here are some interesting statistics from Wired News.

"The United States, the biggest cell-phone market in terms of sheer subscribers, now has a 51 percent penetration rate, according to the latest numbers released by market research and consulting firm Telephia.

Surprisingly, the markets with the highest levels of cell-phone users weren't in the Big Apple or Silicon Valley. The cities with the highest percentage of cell phone users were Greenville, South Carolina (68 percent); Atlanta (67 percent); St. Louis (67 percent); Raleigh, North Carolina (65 percent); Orlando, Florida (63 percent); Boston (61 percent); and Washington, D.C. (61 percent)."

So sales of cell phones are indeed on their way to catching up and surpassing PC sales. Of course, statistically speaking, none of the people that make up these statistics are using their cell phones to access the web.

I'm having trouble getting posts to appear online because Radio wants to re-publish my entire site for some reason. I need to stop this from happening again. I know Horst and Neil stopped rendering their categories in HTML and just send them out as RSS feeds. Is there any reason I shouldn't do this, too? Bueller? Bueller?

Live From Eldred v. Ashcroft - I

"Your humble reporters (Ernest Miller and Raul Ruiz) have just exited from the Supreme Court after hearing oral arguments in the case of Eldred v. Ashcroft. We are providing you this first report from memory as members of the public are not permitted to take notes in the Supreme Court....

The most disturbing thing about the Solicitor General's argument was that no questions were asked regarding the First Amendment issues. Conclusion: Eldred loses the First Amendment issues completely....

Although four justices were not satisfied with the government's arguments on retrospective copyright extensions, it is far from clear or even likely that Eldred will get the 5 votes necessary to overturn the statute. However, hope springs eternal.

It would appear that Jack Valenti, who also attended the oral argument, has a number of reasons to justify the smile he wore as he entered the courtroom." [LawMeme]

Geek Toys: MicroCar Smackdown

"It's not a beetle or virus. Nope, this latest Asian infestation is a tiny toy that's poised to become the latest productivity sapper from the western shores of the Pacific. Pocket-sized radio controlled cars, available for $20 or less with controller -- and infinitely customizable -- are now taking the New World by storm. These tiny cars, which measure about 2 ½" long, have been a favorite of salarymen and schoolboys in Japan and throughout Asia. Imports have been available in the US for a while; some using illegal radio frequencies. In fact, Hobbico has been selling a US-friendly version of Tomy's Bit Char-G, the R/C MicroSizers, since the end of August.

Just a few weeks ago, Radio Shack upped the ante by releasing its version in the US, called ZipZaps. With distribution in over 7,200 stores around the US and on the Web, these pint-sized speed demons are ready to hit every briefcase and knapsack in the US....

To get an idea of how these cars compare, head to the Inside the MicroCar section. For an analysis of performance, battery life, handling and wireless range, head to our How We Tested, and Test Results sections. We tested the stock, out of the box version of each car, but also added a faster engine to the ZipZap to see if it would boost speed.If you just want to know what to buy, head to our Conclusions and Recommendations....

You can adorn your chassis with a range of different cars. The ZipZap comes in PT Cruiser, Mustang, Honda Civic, Toyota Supra, and others, while the MicroSizers feature the Mazda RX-7 , Toyota Celica, the Honda S2000, and the Mitsubishi Lancer. You can also get clear bodies for your MicroSizer, which lets you paint on your own designs.

Curiously, the BMW Mini-Cooper is not currently represented – certainly an oversight....

In Asia, these cars communicate on four different channels-- 27MHz, 35MHz, 45MHz, and 57 MHz – which means 4 cars can race together at once. Here in the US only two frequencies, 27MHz and 49 MHz are licensed for wireless toys, and are used. That means only two cars can race each other at once, because otherwise the signals will conflict. You can find Asian imports in some places that operate at the other three frequencies, but they are not FCC-approved for the US....

...it's hard to draw any definitive conclusion.

At any rate, both are fun to run through racecourses, and both Radio Shack and TableTopRacers.com sell a $3-$4 kit so you can set up your own test tracks. Either kit will work with both types of cars." [ExtremeTech]