Rather than quote the whole posting in all its glory, I'll simply point directly to Pat Delaney's post about Net-networking between schools and libraries. It involves blogging, news aggregators, 8th grade poets, jazz, and Love Your Library month (which, BTW, is February, but I hereby grant you license to love your library the other 11 months of the year, too).

Too damn cool.

Today I came across Eight Fallacies of Distributed Computing [via manicwave] and 25 Information Architecture Theses via [McGee's Musings]. I enjoyed both lists.

"Quote: "RSS is the first working example of an XML data network. As such, and in this world of learning objects and metadata files, RSS is the first working example of what such a network will look like for educational designers. Just as news resources are indexed and distributed in the RSS network, so also educational resources can be indexed and distributed in a similar learning object network."

Comment: Nice article on RSS (Rich Site Summary)...timely as well - currently at RRC, we are trying to create a culture of bloggers...and use aggregators as a means of accelerating the reading process. RSS is already popular in the blogosphere and news sites. Stephen Downes extends the role of RSS from that of news aggregation to learning object network (which he contrasts with current LCMS models)." [elearnspace blog]

Hey, has anyone else seen the T-Mobile ad (yes, with Catherine Zeta-Jones) in which someone uses a cell phone to call a library to get a question answered? I saw it once a couple of days ago, and it was over before I tuned in to realize what was being said. Unfortunately, I can't find a video or the text online.

Nothing too wild about using a cell phone to call a library anymore. Too bad they didn't use text messaging or a virtual reference service during a game show to prove their point.

New Tool Makes DVD Copying Easy

"Hollywood says that it's illegal to burn a backup copy of your Austin Powers Goldmember DVD, and it builds in copy protection to stop you. But a small firm denies any kinship to Dr. Evil just because it markets software that lets anyone with a burnable DVD drive make an exact copy of a commercial DVD.

Missouri-based 321 Studios has released DVD X Copy, a $99 program that is the first to let users create a mirror image of an entire DVD on a second blank DVD. The copy even includes menus, special features, and enhanced audio, the company says.

The movie industry trade association Motion Picture Association of America contends that such products violate the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That law, currently under review, outlaws providing information or tools to circumvent copy-control technology, including the Contents Scramble System (CSS) used on DVD media.

But Robert Moore, president and founder of 321 Studios, says consumers have a fair-use right to make backup copies of DVDs they purchase....

During a recent demonstration of DVD X Copy running on an 800-MHz Compaq notebook attached to a USB 2.0 external DVD+RW Viper Drive, it took us about an hour to make an exact copy of the DVD Black Hawk Down....

During the copying process, 321 Studios takes three extra steps to appease its Hollywood critics. DVD X Copy inserts electronic controls into copied DVDs to prevent them from being duplicated further. It embeds a digital watermark that can trace the source of any file transmitted over the Internet to the software's licensed owner. And it inserts a disclaimer at the beginning of the recorded DVD, telling viewers that the disc is a backup copy intended for personal use only....

Moore believes that anticircumvention laws like the DMCA are unconstitutional. He cites the so-called "Betamax defense," a response to the motion picture industry's efforts to ban Sony's Betamax VCRs because they could be used to make illegal copies of movies. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1984 that, though some VCR uses do infringe on copyright, a banning the technology was not justified because it had sufficient noninfringing uses.

What's more, Moore says, DVD X Copy doesn't actually break the CSS on commercial DVDs.

Instead, 321 Studio intercepts the video and audio stream after a DVD player has decrypted the CSS code. Moore argues that all DVD players decrypt the CSS code when they plays a protected DVD. Because it intercepts the signal after decryption but before the video is rendered, the product does not run afoul of the DMCA, he says." [PC World]

So now we'll find out if the movie industry really believes in fair use or not. It looks to my non-lawyerly eye that they have taken measures to prevent widespread piracy and they've even included some DRM.

Hollywood, the ball is in your court. Are you with consumers, or against us?

Yahoo is already offering its Year in Review site [via ResearchBuzz]. Overall "buzz" winner for 2002? The Playstation 2. "Friends" over "The Osbournes?" Only because it won more Emmys.

We need a "Bloggers Year in Review!" Perhaps Daypop or Blogdex will provide one.

With The Sims Online coming out later this month, we should have been expecting a torrent of press about video gaming. Still, you know it's "not just for kids" anymore when you start seeing big stories in Time and USA Today and it's on the cover of Newsweek and now Entertainment Weekly. I just got the latest issue of EW today, and since the cover story isn't available online for free, here are some choice quotes:

"Some 60 percent of Americans (over 145 million people) play videogames. Average age: 28. More than $6.35 billion worth of computer and videogame software was sold last year; that's expected to increase this year....

'I've played videogames since I was in elementary school - from the Atari 2600 up the ladder,' says Tiger Woods, 26, a pro golfer who...oh, you know who Tiger is. Favorites: Madden and GoldenEye 007, the shooting game inspired by the 1995 James Bond flick. 'When I'm on tour and I'm staying at the house of a family I know, I'll bring the PlayStation with me. A lot of times, they'll have kids and we'll play. You'd be amazed. Every single kid knows how to play videogames....'

Aside from hip-hop and music videos, no other form of pop culture in the past 20 years has so pervasively cross-pollinated other popular media as videogames. 'When it comes to pacing, action, and capturing youth culture right now, it's all coming from videogames,' says Tom Calderone, MTV's exec VP of music and talent programming....

Or look at the NFL's running scoreboard, ref-mounted cameras, and even sound effects: They're all lifted from videogames. 'When we started Fox Sports in 1994, I went out and got...every videogame I could,' says Fox Sports Networks chairman David Hill. 'What fascinated me was how videogames were so rich and multi-layered, while television was two-dimensional....'

The next step forward will occur when the two movie sequels to The Matrix arrive in 2003, along with their videogame companion, Enter the Matrix. 'Companion,' because Matrix creators Larry and Andy Wachowski - hardcore gamers both - have been actively involved in the development of the game, conceived as a complement and continuation of the movies. This will finally bring The Matrix to the very medium that, had things gone differently, might have spawned it."

There's also an interesting chart that shows more video game consoles in U.S. households (44%) than DVD players (25%), which I find especially interesting since the Sony Playstation 2 and Microsoft X-Box consoles both play DVDs. The USA Today article, Video Game College is 'Boot Camp' for Designers, is also interesting, in part because it appears in the Money section. Some interesting stats from this article:

"DigiPen is the only accredited school offering a four-year degree in making video games, and it's fast becoming the Harvard among joystick-clenching students fresh out of high school....

No wonder: Even while the economy struggles, the video game industry has become one of the fastest-growing forms of media entertainment:

• Video game sales exceeded the movie industry's annual box office draw last year by $1 billion.
• The current video game hit, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, sold more than 1.4 million copies at an average $48 apiece in its first three days. That $70 million windfall easily puts it in the ranks of a blockbuster movie.
• The popularity of NFL video games has given longtime TV football announcer John Madden celebrity status among teens and young adults.
• Designers can make $50,000 a year right out of college and twice as much if they are part of a team that produces a hit video game....

Video games have morphed from being primitive toys for geeks and kids into a major form of entertainment. Sales of video game hardware, software and gear jumped 42.4% to a record $9.4 billion last year, says NPD Group. That's more than the $8.4 billion in movie tickets sold each year, says PricewaterhouseCoopers." (Emphasis is mine - take that, legislation-hungry Hollywood!)

Yes, the future is indeed video games, and what all of these articles fail to mention is how they will also drive demand for bigger-faster-newer-better cell phones, and PDAs, as well as broadband and 3G. Every kid knows how to play video games, and every kid is going to grow up and play them on mobile devices with always-on, very fast connectivity.

Every time I think this might be a limited phenomenon after all, I find Kailee playing Zoo Tycoon on the PC. She'd love to take the game with her and care for the animals throughout the day. She has already reminded us several times this month that Zoo Tycoon: Marine Mania, Zoo Tycoon: Dinosaur Digs, and Rollercoaster Tycoon are all available at Best Buy (I'm not sure how she knows this, but of course, she's right). I'm a little scared to think about how well she would take to The Sims Online.

Woman Uses Baby's Stomach to Start Car

"The first weird emergent effects of pervasive computing have begun to emerge, even in these earliest stages. Marc A. Smith, my consulting cybersociologist buddy, described the era when wirelessly internetworked sensor chips will be embedded in everything as 'nothing works the way it should, and nobody knows why.' However, here's a case of things suddenly working that never would have worked before, like using your baby to start your car.

'A woman whose baby swallowed the transponder of a car key managed to start the car by holding him close to the steering wheel, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph.

Amanda Webster's one-year-old son Oscar swallowed the pill-sized security device while fiddling with the keys.

Ms Webster, who was out shopping in west London could not start her car and called the Royal Automobile Club.

Keith Scott, the patrol man who went out to help her noticed that part of the key was missing and cottoned on to the possibility that the baby had swallowed the transponder.

Scott then suggested that Ms Webster hold Oscar as close to the steering column as possible and try to start the car with the key.

The vehicle responded and when the transponder made its appearance again, having made the route that Nature devised, it was none the worse for wear.' "

[Smart Mobs]