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Thursday, April 04, 2002 |
Rip 'n' Roll: A Date With 8 Jukeboxes
"If you have been buying CD's regularly for the last 10 or 15 years, then you probably have what is politely termed an organizational problem. Any attempts at alphabetical arrangement are foiled when you bring home another couple of discs, and besides, filing Mozart after Motorhead always feels a little strange...." [New York Times: Technology]
Obviously, the author of this piece is not a librarian, has never been a librarian, and doesn't know any librarians. I own more than 1,000 CDs, and I don't have any of the above problems and they are perfectly alphabetized. In fact, if you've been "buying CD's regularly for the last 10 or 15 years," then you're proud to file Mozart after Motorhead.
"To get a sense of what is going on in this new category of portable music, I put six top-selling MP3 jukeboxes through their paces and looked at two models that are expected to reach stores this month. Checking them out is like witnessing an evolution in fast-forward, starting with the simplest hard drive with headphones and leading up to a smarter box that is capable of handling all of your audio needs....
After loading 1,111 songs onto six different players, I can safely say that there is finally good reason to shop for these players. The iPod is still the best for gloriously seamless interaction with Mac desktops and laptops. But the RioRiot and Creative's Nomad Jukebox 3, a smaller version of the 20-gigabyte Nomad Jukebox with longer-lasting batteries and an improved version of an already top-notch interface, will soon give it a run for its money."
I second that emotion! Except that I have the Archos Jukebox, first version, but I love it love it love it. When we go on trips, I can take several CDs of kids music, several CDs of fun music for everyone to listen to, and several CDs of music for myself. I can then play them in the car (with a cassette adapter), in the hotel room (with a small pair of speakers), or when I'm walking outside or sitting by the pool (with headphones). I also take it to work and use my PC's speakers to listen to music there.
Like my ReplayTVs, the Archos has opened my intake valve even further for what I can consume at any given moment, but more importantly what I want to consume at any given moment. The combination of digital cable and the ReplayTV lets me pipeline what I want to see when I want to see it. It's only 6GB worth of storage (only?!), and I wanted the full 20GB of the new version as soon as I saw it.
Unlike my ReplayTVs though, the Archos makes my music collection portable in a way it has never been before. AT&T gets a decent cut of my income each month for the full digital cable package, three digital cable boxes (plus an analog one), and cable modem Internet access. I'm their ideal customer. It's too bad the RIAA doesn't want a piece of that action, because I would consume far more music than I do now (especially since I don't buy CDs anymore) if they would just provide it.
As John Robb noted, if you give me a megabyte, I'll take a gig. [The Shifted Librarian]
7:48:25 AM 
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Cyber School Flunking First Year. Before Einstein Academy could hire its first teacher, the online-only school gets hit with lawsuits from educators concerned about its practices. John Gartner reports from Philadelphia. [Wired News]
7:38:03 AM
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Lenses on Knowledge Management
"The first is to examine what KM means in the context of our own status as knowledge workers. If we are expected to create new knowledge, or better apply existing knowledge, or do a better job of sharing knowledge; what new skills and practices does that demand from us? It's too tempting and too easy to fall into the trap of thinking about KM as another one of those topics that affects somebody else in the organization, but I don't need to change. To borrow from the late Walt Kelly, "we have met the enemy, and he is us." I believe this is a fertile and, largely, unexplored dimension of the KM problem....
There will be KM issues that are better addressed at the organizational level than the individual knowledge worker level. Suppose, for example, that you concluded that it would be desirable to reduce an organization's use of email in favor of more KM friendly tools like threaded discussion (or weblogs for that matter). As an individual knowledge worker, you might come to that conclusion, but would make little progress organizationally implementing that decision for yourself. Someone needs to help the organization come to that conclusion and develop a plan for leading the way." [Jim McGee: TEC924]
These two paragraphs represent two of the major issues I'm facing right now. I want to incorporate k-logging into the intranet we're building, but until then (if I can even pull it off) I'm using Radio as my personal KM system. Not for projects mind you, although that might be next. Theoretically I can password protect those directories if need be, and then I'd have a proof of concept. But it would be individual, not organizational.
Most of the folks in my organization wouldn't consider themselves "knowledge workers." If I'm going to scale it beyond myself and a few others I've gotten to buy into it, I'll have to provide training, documentation, and compelling reasons why folks should do this. How do I identify the skills and practices I'll need to convey to them to make this successful?
Sorry... just worrying out loud here. Hey Jim - can you get me a pair of rose-colored lenses on KM? ;-) [The Shifted Librarian]
7:37:38 AM
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16067 » April 4 4:52 AM. Lego Serious Play "is the first application of Lego for the serious world of adults at work. The method combines 'play' and Lego bricks for the purpose of enhancing business performance." Cute. [MetaFilter]
7:37:25 AM
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"Did you see where Lego has developed a 'set' to help businesses and consultants visualize, plan and test business functions and processes? It's called Serious Play. I think I saw this one in the March 18th Fortune." [Steve Pilgrim's Radio Weblog]
This would be way more fun than many of the meetings I go to! I'd do this just for the "megaboxes of LEGO bricks and elements." [The Shifted Librarian]
7:37:16 AM
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Dave Reed's presentation on creating communities of value (an overview of Reed's Law). In simplified form. The value of a network can be calculated via these equations (where N is the number of participants or nodes):
Sarnoff's broadcast model = N
Metcalfe network = N (squared)
Reed community = 2 (to the Nth power)
A system moves from Metcalfe network (ex. e-mail) to a Reed community (ex. eBay or in a limited way Napster) when it provides context, collaboration, content, and commerce. The growing weblogging world would be classified as a Reed community. Weblogs.com, the blogger API, and Daypop are examples of technology that leverages multiple weblogging communities to create a greater whole. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
7:35:55 AM
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New Scientist. Early puberty in girls linked to shampoos. >>>...says Chandra Tiwary, former chief of paediatric endocrinology at Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas. "I believe that the frequency of sexual precocity can be reduced simply if children do not use those hair products," he says.<<< [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
7:35:32 AM
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16065 » April 4 4:05 AM. "Julia Child and a few of her male compatriots got together and literally cooked up a shark repellent" The "Clandestine Women" exhibit at the Women in Military Service to America Memorial (Arlington National Cemetery, Washington, DC) tells how the French Chef, as well as Josephine Baker and many others, used to work for American intelligence. [MetaFilter]
7:35:19 AM
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© Copyright 2002 Mark Oeltjenbruns.
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