Wednesday, March 5, 2003

RSS for Government "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")....He's already posted a great essay that describes Four Models for Aggregating and Publishing RSS Headlines. [via The Shifted Librarian] RSS stands for "Rich Site Summary" and is the basis for aggregating news. If you don't know what that means click here and follow the links there. RSS is a big deal, and when governments start to deploy it (as they should) it is an even bigger deal. [Ernie the Attorney] A VERY big deal indeed. Tools to produce and consume RSS will be big business with governments as customers. 10:54:19 PM

WinBlog I was able to whip this up in VS.NET using XML-RPC.NET in short order, it really needs a spell checker widget though (hey, MSFT wake up!, there's a spell checker API bundled in OSX) [Simon Fell] Wow, it seems .Net makes building XML-related apps very easy. Cocoa may be Appl'e UI weapon, but MS's focus on content may win the day (again!) 10:46:55 PM

OPA Finds Paid Content $1.3 Billion Industry in 2002 Years late and dollars short, but paid online content is becoming a reality. Press Release: U.S. Consumer Spending on Online Content Totals $1.3 Billion in 2002 PDF Report: Online Paid Content U.S. Market Spending Report MediaPost: Consumer Spending on Online Content Totals $1.3 Billion For those who maintain "users won't pay for content," I reply "neener, neener, neener." Paid content would appear to now amount to roughly 20% of all revenue for online publishers, and spending for content roughly doubled in 2002 over 2001. Posted by Rick E. Bruner at 01:18 PM [marketingfix] Interestingly, its not the content you might first think of... The Personals/Dating category surpassed both Business/Investment and Entertainment/Lifestyles to become the largest paid content category in 2002 with $302 million in revenues, up nearly threefold from $72 million in 2001. Those top three categories - Personals/Dating, Business/Investment Content and Entertainment/Lifestyles - accounted for 63% of online content spending in 2002, up from 59% in 2001. 10:44:00 PM

Fire from ice This one is for RB :-) How to make a firestarting ice-lens -- why didn't anyone tell me about this when I was between the age when snow-forts sucked and the age when I didn't want to venture into the cold, period? Starting fires, man, wow. LinkDiscuss (via JWZ's Livejournal) [Boing Boing] 10:40:14 PM

Today 'Spongeworthy' Once More One of P's favorite episodes... The Today Sponge contraceptive was all the rage when it was suddenly pulled from the shelves in the mid-'90s, disappointing countless women and inspiring a memorable episode of Seinfeld. Well, smile girls, because it's back. [Wired News] 10:38:51 PM

High Anxiety Tomorrow, our hard-earned savings leave us, and on Friday, we get a set of keys and a whole new set of responsibilities. Suddenly, I'm in high anxiety mode. Suddenly, I have a mortgage, in addition to a child to provide for, and student loans to pay off. Suddenly, it's like I've hit my late twenties a half-decade late. To top it all off, I'm contracting, which isn't necessarily a steady paycheck... aaaahhhg! It seems I do my best work living on the edge :-) 10:21:52 PM