Senator Asks Permission to Bring Laptop to Work. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - You can still find brass spittoons on the floor of the United States Senate, but don't look for personal computers -- they're not allowed in the historic chamber. By Reuters. [New York Times: Technology]

Do they allow pencils?  10:37:26 PM    

Statistics firms revisit QuickTime counts. New numbers from Nielsen/NetRatings could help Apple Computer push the multimedia industry toward MPEG-4. [CNET News.com]  10:26:20 PM    

TiVo Generation Takes Control of Viewing

"Ours is a TiVo house and my kids -- Alexandria, 6, and Zachary, 4 -- are TiVo kids. And that means that they (and I) can sit down whenever we want -- maybe before bedtime on a Tuesday evening -- and watch an episode of 'The Proud Family.' Or 'The Brothers Garcia' or 'Kim Possible.'

In our house, two of the founding members of the TiVo generation are growing up to realize that they control the schedule of their favorite shows -- not the network.

TiVo is becoming synonymous with the digital video recorder, a VCR-like device that records TV shows to an internal hard drive instead of a removable tape. Like competitors ReplayTV and UltimateTV, TiVo offers a user interface on top of the basic DVR technology that allows users to record a program based on its name, rather than its time slot....

Kids like Alex and Zack don't need to understand how it works. They just know that their shows are on when they want to see them. And that means the kids can come home and do their homework, play on the swings or ride their bikes without having to worry that they'll miss their favorite shows.

'There is a youth element to TiVo,' said Mike Ramsay, CEO of the San Jose-based company. 'Kids' programming is the largest segment of programming being recorded...'

A survey by TiVo found that 96 percent of subscribers would never give up their TiVo service. About 40 percent of the respondents said they'd rather give up their cell phones than their TiVo units.

'That's a fairly typical response,' Bernoff said. 'People are in love with this product and they are not going to give it up. The churn rate for TiVo is tiny.'

But penetration into homes remains a challenge. Existing subscribers have a tough time explaining it to their friends -- so instead they offer demonstrations....

My wife and I did our part to spread the word, too.

My dad was quickly impressed with the TiVo service at our house and hinted that TiVo was what he wanted to unwrap on Christmas morning. My mom took advantage of the holiday promotion and ordered one.

At first, they had a tough time understanding how to work the remote control. But that was easily fixed. We brought Alex and Zack to their house." [Mercury News, via The Lost Remote]

Emphasis above is mine, mainly because the numbers are so stunning. I'm not at all surprised by them, though, as we fit comfortably in, if not ahead, of the curve. We'll be getting our third ReplayTV by year's end (no TiVos).

In his book Growing Up Digital, Donald Tapscott reminds us of the adage that technology is only "technology" to those that didn't grow up with it. Baby Boomers don't think of television as technology, and kids don't think of DVRs (or interactive television) as technology. Although DVRs aren't perfect (our ReplayTV didn't notice the subtle change from Power Rangers Time Force to Power Rangers Wild Force so it stopped recording the show a few weeks ago, thereby causing much consternation), they allow for more efficent time-shifting of recorded shows. It's the best chance the networks have of reaching any viewer in our household, and this will be true of the kids for the rest of their lives.

I can't recommend DVRs highly enough, so if you don't already have one, consider purchasing one in the next year. You'll thank me later.

[The Shifted Librarian]  10:19:01 PM    

Music Piracy Not Hurting Recording Industry After All

"You[base ']d think by now the recording industry would have at least bought a clue, but you[base ']d be wrong. If it[base ']s not the pirates that are the problem, and if it[base ']s not that damned Internet file sharing that[base ']s the problem, it must be the businesses that sell used CDs. Yeah, that[base ']s it; it[base ']s the businesses that sell used CDs that are the problem. In the never-ending quest to find an enemy that doesn[base ']t live in the mirror, the recording industry is now setting out to extract royalty payments from the sale of used CDs.

This is a good one; stay with me here. The recording industry claims that the growing market for used CDs is cannibalizing sales of new CDs and [base "]promoting piracy by allowing customers to buy, record and sell back discs while retaining their own digitally pristine copies.[per thou] So the recording industry says that it wants a 6% flat royalty on all used CD sales.

There[base ']s only one problem in this most recent recording industry foundering: it[base ']s a violation of the doctrine of first sale....

The short-term solution for the recording industry is simple: continue to sell your units of atoms in the form of CDs at about one-half the current prices and sell all-you-can-eat subscriptions to the component bits[~]the real, complete, open, non-DRM, and non-protected bits[~]on the net at, say, US$30 per month. Oh, and realize that your days are numbered in any case. The smartest artists and fans have already realized that they don[base ']t need you." [Arts & Farces, via John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Another excellent overview by Michael Fraase in which he pulls together many of the recent stories about the recording industries attempt to find a scapegoat to blame for falling sales of CDs (not plummeting, mind you, just falling). Another handout for my presentations....

[The Shifted Librarian]  10:12:15 PM    

John Robb. How to boost employee productivity by using a news aggregator. [klogs]

A small change in the way we work could shave 45 minutes off of the average workday.  That small change is to use a news aggregator to get news instead of gathering it by hand.  Applied across a 200 person company, that 45 minutes of savings could be worth $1,650,000 a year.  The wild part is that the cost to implement this is only $8,000 and requires little if any support from the IT department. 

If we are going to really boost productivity, we are going to need to focus on those improvements that provide the most bang for the buck.   Small changes in work habits can have amazing results.  To get at these nuggets, companies need to spend time really watching what people do with their time.  If they did, they would find that much of the time they spend is wasted on simple tasks that could easily be automated. 

Other things to focus on:

1) Auto-categorization of e-mail.

2) Integrated search (desktop, LAN, K-Logs, Web) with all proprietary doc formats revealed as HTML.

3) Voice mail on the desktop PC. 

4) Accurate K-Logging of current activities:  status, thinking, plans, projects, etc.

5) Online presentations, to-do lists, project plans via outlines. 

6) K-Log personal portals that integrate all connection info (e-mail, IM, phone, address, bio, resume, picture).

Very simple stuff can yield big results. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]  10:04:04 PM    

rcdb - Roller Coaster DataBase Am sitting in a session being given by Gail Lovely, http://www.gaillovely.com. The topic is online math resources. A good overview of the many math related web sites. Everything from online manipulative Java applications, to using real data in math classes...

She just shared the roller coaster site linked above.  12:24:07 PM