Heavens to Reese's mergatroid! Apparently I've already missed Dark Chocolate REESE'S Peanut Butter Cups, and I'm running out of time to find White Chocolate REESE'S Peanut Butter Cups. Somehow, I will also have to find REESE'S Big Cup, Honey Roasted REESE'S Peanut Butter Cups, and REESE'S Inside Out Cups.

Clear my schedule now! Admittedly, most Reese's spin-off products don't have the correct peanut butter to chocolate ratio, resulting in an unsatisfactory experience, but still.... [via Bag and Baggage]

RIAA Radar: Know Whose CD You're Buying

"RIAA Radar is a bookmarklet that will tell you whether a CD for sale on Amazon was produced by an RIAA member-company or an independent.

Just as people can currently find out where some products come from and who made them (Is this banana organic? Does this milk contain GMOs? Were these clothes made in a sweatshop?), it is important to have that knowledge for as many consumer goods as possible. Knowledge is power, and knowing where the product came from can (and should) influence what you buy...

Why is it important to know if an album was released by an RIAA member or not?

That's possibly a fairly long answer, but just the highlights of the RIAA's practices involve price-fixing, blaming its poor financial state on unfounded digital piracy claims (and in turn, blaming its own consumers), lobbying for changes that hinder technological innovation and change copyright laws, underpaying the artists it represents, invading personal privacy to enforce copyrights, and dismantling entire computer networks just because of their ability (of their users) to share copyrighted files. Feel free to visit the RIAA and Boycott-RIAA.com to learn more. (Thanks, Jason!) [Boing Boing Blog]

Of course, this assumes that you're still buying CDs, a very rare occurrence for me these days.

Libraries should also keep in mind the list of Fat Chuck's List of Corrupt CDs and News that come with some type of DRM that prevents them from being used as regular CDs. Eventually patrons are going to start complaining about these if you circulate them. They'll report them as defective, which they technically are. There's just nothing you can do about it.

MediaCon: Glenn Reynolds into the Breach

"Glenn has a great column on the 'internet will save us' meme. The final paragraph captures it perfectly:

So, Michael, here's the deal: if you think that concentration in Old Media is okay because New Media will provide the discipline, then stand up for freeing the New Media from the shackles that the Old Media are trying to weld on. Because if you're not serious about freeing the New Media, then you're not serious about competition, and what you're describing isn't a bold new world, but a sellout.

Exactly right." [Lessig Blog]

• Will Cox noted to me that there is an RSS feed for the questions appearing on Ask Yahoo. Interesting reading, especially from a librarian point-of-view. I'm tempted to ask them to quantify the value of libraries.
  Addendum: Will got it from Michael Radwin, who also points to the Most Popular Questions page.
   
• Steven Vore found the online video for the Ad Council's chilling commercial about the potential consequences of the federal government tracking what you do at your library. "Chilling" because it appears to be quite prescient.

Special Interest Group About Library Use of eBooks

"From the announcement, 'The Open eBook Forum (www.openebook.org), the trade and standards association for the eBook industry, today announced the creation of a Library Special Interest Group (SIG). The group was formed to enable publishers, eBook resellers, DRM, software and hardware companies to communicate directly with librarians to better appreciate the opportunities and challenges of service for libraries and their patrons. The group meets on a weekly basis via conference calls and maintains communication through an email list. Participation in the group is currently open to the public and further information can be found on the Open eBook Forum (OeBF) website at: http://www.openebook.org/oebf_groups/library.htm' " [The ResourceShelf]

Don't you think this group needs a blog??

Roy Tennant drinks the RSS kool aid in an article in this month's LJ called Feed Your Head: Keeping Up by Using RSS, and he has the [overall] same idea as Steven Cohen about highlighting Library Purchases Via RSS. Curiously, an RSS feed is not listed as one of the Fifteen Library-tested Programs and Policies to Increase Circulation of AV Materials, so let's just write it in ourselves as #16.

Also, Steven has started a weekly feature to highlight a homemade RSS feed of interest to librarians. This past week's entry is for BookSlut, with more promised RSS goodness to come. For example....

Library Journal RSS Feed?

"Rachel reports via LISNews that she has created an RSS Feed for Library Journal via My RSS.

I'm not going to waste my time subscribing. First of all, I would get an annoying redirect, which just doesn't work for me. Sorry. Second, it skips many stories (take a look at the feed, then go to the Library Journal web site). While, in essence, it is an RSS Feed, it is a terrible one at best. I would rather use the ones that News Is Free created and get that similarly annoying "Customize this Feed" after every 5th item. Not for me thanks.

I'm going to create a LJ Feed using Stapler and will release it as soon as an "RSS Feed of the Week" as soon as I get a chance to make sure it works correctly...Stay tuned." [Library Stuff]

Which brings home the point (that I think Corante finally figured out) that you really want to control the RSS feed for your site. After all, ideally you'd like to control the dissemination of how others receive your newsletter, web site, mailing list, etc. Why wouldn't you include your RSS feed in that list? Would you really outsource it to someone else over whom you have absolutely no control?

While I appreciate the third party services that help feed my RSS habit, I'll never understand sites that ignore this simple truth. Don't let your library fall into this trap!

• We're in Kansas, More
  "As goes Kansas, so goes communities nationwide: Seattle writer Brian Chin shows how a local Kansas cable operator is expanding its cable customer base into Wi-Fi by partnering with the right local businesses, and offering a small flat rate add-on to the cable bill. $9.95 per month gets you unlimited Wi-Fi; makes sense, as many costs involve billing, collection, and marketing...." [Wi-Fi Networking News]
   
• "So, we've got wireless here at the liberry. Article appears in the paper this week. Don't expect lots of demand, but if anyone's passing through town...." [LibraryNotes]
   
• And just when I said hanging out at the library would be better than hanging out Schlotzsky's, we learn that Schlotzsky's Unwires Public Libraries
  "Just got off the phone with a PR person for Schlozsky's Delis who pointed me to this Austin Chronicle article. Schlotzsky's is offering free Wi-Fi in several of its stores as a test -- which they say has increased business on average by six percent in those outlets -- but it's also trying to help the community by unwiring libraries." [Wi-Fi Networking News]

Alternatively, we could just get all high falutin' about this and declare libraries to be an easy answer to U.S. Neo-Feudalism. After all, there are more public libraries in the U.S. than there are McDonalds.