"From an IT newsbreak from BQ:

'Early this autumn as the academic year starts for its many clients, Ingenta, Inc., the online distributor of academic journal literature and document delivery service, will replace its existing online research interfaces ”http://www.ingenta.com and http://www.ingentaselect.com/”with IngentaConnect. The new interface will provide more reliability and scalability to handle rapid expansion of usage, which runs as high as 8 million user sessions a month on the two existing services. It will also support more access and authentication rules for the different business models used by Ingenta™'s over 260 publishers....'

Pretty cool, but check this out:

'New features scheduled for phasing in throughout the summer include enhanced personalization. For example, users will have the ability to subscribe to RSS feeds'

Hip Hip Hooray. Finally, a fee-based content provider for libraries providing RSS Feeds for their clientele. Before we go crazy here, I'd love to see exactly what they are offering. Anyone at Ingenta (who may read this) want to give me a test run, or any more information? [Library Stuff]

I had a long talk with the Proquest folks at the Texas Library Association conference, and they didn't have clue one about RSS. They promised to take the idea back to the mother ship so I gave them my business card, but I never heard anything back from them. All we need is one of these companies to start the domino effect, and it looks like Ingenta may be it.

The next issue will be for the folks that make the aggregators to step up to the plate with full authentication so that library patrons can authenticate in the background via their library card numbers.

Harry Potter Movie Reworked with a Downloadable Soundtrack

"Wizard People, Dear Reader is a remix of the first Harry Potter movie. It's a special soundtrack to the movie made by artist Brad Neely that recasts the story and tone of the flick. The idea is to buy the DVD and play the soundtrack (which is a free download) alongside of it.

With Mr. Neely's gravelly narration, the movie's tone shifts into darkly comic, pop-culture-savvy territory. Hagrid, Harry Potter's giant, hairy friend, becomes Hagar, the Horrible, and Harry's fat cousin becomes Roast Beefy. As imagined by Mr. Neely, the three main characters are child alcoholics with a penchant for cognac, the magical ballgame Quidditch takes on homoerotic overtones, and Harry is prone to delivering hyper-dramatic monologues. 'I am a destroyer of worlds,' bellows Mr. Neely at one point, sending laughter reverberating through the warehouse Friday night. 'I am Harry' expletive "Potter!"

Link (via Creative Commons)" [Boing Boing]

RIAA Wants Your Fingerprints

" Not content with asking for an arm and a leg from consumers and artists, the music industry now wants your fingerprints, too. The RIAA is hoping that a new breed of music player which requires biometric authentication will put an end to file sharing.

Established biometric vendor Veritouch has teamed up with Swedish design company to produce iVue: a wireless media player that allows content producers to lock down media files with biometric security. This week Veritouch announced that it had demonstrated the device to the RIAA and MPAA.

'In practical terms, VeriTouch's breakthrough in anti-piracy technology means that no delivered content to a customer may be copied, shared or otherwise distributed because each file is uniquely locked by the customer's live fingerprint scan," claims the company." [The Register]

How the hell is a library supposed to circulate these files? Does anyone still doubt that the record industry would love to shut libraries out of circulating digital music files?