SLS and HTLS libraries - listen up! We're finally moving ahead with a group purchase for Audible titles! I can't go into the details here, but I will on April 16th at an informational meeting at SLS at 9:30 a.m. This is a really incredible opportunity - trust me - and you don't want to miss out on it. It will be major bang for your buck, as well as a great service to provide for your patrons. Register today!

RSS: Hits & Kb

"NewsIsFree got 28 million hits last month, for 63Gb. About 90% of the hits are for the RSS files!

Top feeds: CNN, Washington Post, Associated Press, BBC World (just setup a redirection to their RSS feed that they have one), AP Sports...

Now: how can we keep those numbers down? There has got to be a better way then pounding the site every hour.... [Too Much News]

You don't suppose that CNN, the Washington Post, and the AP are awake enough to see this swell of opportunity, now do you?

Early Web Folk Art

"A student of Clay's is compiling a catalog of 'early popular web culture' and she needs our help (via bb). Let's reminisce...

Here's a few things I remember: that dancing baby, The Really Big Button That Doesn't Do Anything, the $250 Neiman-Marcus cookie recipe spam, and URouLette. What do you remember?" [kottke.org]

How about the web site that claimed to take a picture of you and then showed you an image of a monkey? The Hey Macaroni screensaver. The DotComGuy. I still miss the Centre for the Easily Amused.

Next week I'll be at the Computers in Libraries conference (where Steven Cohen and I are presenting a session on RSS), and unbelievably, the conference hotel (the Hilton Washington & Towers) in Washington D.C. doesn't have high-speed internet access in its rooms, let alone WiFi. So before I start dragging out map sites, does anyone know if there is a nearby hotel that offers either of these services? I'd rather not spend all my time at a Starbucks, and I would gladly trade a Hilton hotel room today for a high-speed-internet-access-enabled one tomorrow.

Kate and Gloria, please make sure this link makes the rounds at work tomorrow!

The Horror of Blimps

"On this occasion I awoke to the sense that there was a large menacing presence approaching me silently out of the gloom, so I opened my eyes, and there it was! A LARGE SILENT MENACING PRESENCE WAS APPROACHING ME OUT OF THE GLOOM, AND IT COULD FLY!!!" [via life - listed chronologically]

Ray Matthews already puts his money where his mouth is by using RSS at the Utah State Library and teaching others in state government how to do it. Now he's kicking it up a notch, though, by starting a new weblog dedicated to RSS in Government ("News about how RSS is being used in federal, state, and local government")! Of course, I count libraries as government, no matter what type of library you're at, so you should be reading his blog and subscribing to his RSS feed to track and learn more about the value of RSS. He's already posted a great essay that describes Four Models for Aggregating and Publishing RSS Headlines. [via David Fletcher's Government and Technology Weblog]