"Lawrence Lessig and his legal team are asking for your help. Kahle v. Ashcroft is a lawsuit that challenges changes to U.S. copyright law that have created a large class of "orphan works" -- creative works which are out of print and no longer commercially available, but which are still regulated by copyright.

The Kahle team is collecting examples of people being burdened by these copyright-related barriers to the use of orphan works. Visit the Kahle Submission Site and tell us your story." [Copyfight]

Listen To RSS Feeds

"A voice-powered RSS newsreader is now available for immediate try-out from NextUp.com. This is version 1.0 of its NewsAloud software that is designed to automatically retrieve news stories from any RSS source you may select. NewsAloud uses Voice Synthesis (Text To Speech or TTS) to read these news stories aloud on a PC (while converting them to MP3 if you like to!). NewsAloud’s automatic audio file creation can also keep the 100 most recent stories available as MP3 or Windows Media files ready for playback on your iPod, PocketPC, or even on your TV with Tivo’s Home Media Option. Optional premium voices are offered for a range of available speech including US, British, and Indian accent English as well as Spanish, German, and French voices. NewsAloud costs $19.95 and is available for Windows 98, NT, 2000 and XP. A full try-out is immediately accessible online." [Lockergnome's RSS & Atom Tips]

Color me intrigued, although obviously this would work best with those feeds that doen't consist mostly of links to other sites.

In a similar vein, Adam Curry recently highlighted (again) his RSS2iPod script that automagically loads new RSS enclosures onto his iPod each morning. Does anyone know of something similar for Windows machines that works with either the Treo 600 or an Archos Jukebox?

PubMed -- Medical Research in the Palm of Your Hands

"I just saw PubMed on Tap at freewarepalm.com. This is a wireless enabled Palm application (I think over any internet connection) that lets you search Pub Med, the free subset of Med-Line. Med-line is the repository of all current and recent medical research, with abstracts often available and full-text sometimes. While this is an amazing (and required) resource for medical professionals, savvy lay people will also find a wealth of information here." [Daily Palm]

Very interesting! I'll have to download this to see how well it works, but it really highlights how few applications there are for searching government and library databases. I know Innovative has AirPAC (I sure wish SWAN had it!), but how many other OPAC vendors provide this type of interface?

Today's Youth and Data Storage

"One of my friends told me a rather amusing story this afternoon. My friend's 8 year old sister came to visit her at college today, and stumbled upon a small stack of floppy disks in her room. She picked them up and asked my friend "What are these??" to which my friend had to explain what floppy disks are. After her explanation, her younger sister replied with "Oh, but I thought you could only store stuff on CDs, e-mail, and on your Palm Pilot." I guess many young children these days have started to recognize PDAs as a normal way to keep information, and don't recognize things such as floppy disks!" [Daily Palm]