I find this article fascinating – One Music Label or Several? Pearl Jam Weighs Options. Pearl Jam has found a way to create a constantly renewable, inexpensive source of content – their nightly recordings. Given the file sharing networks, you have to wonder if more bands don’t move to live recordings as their primary recorded output, instead of studio recordings. Studio recordings are expensive to make, and in a sense they discourage consumption of live music. Pearl Jam seems to making the right steps as artists to respond to file sharing networks, by emphasizing the live experience and unique (and low incremental cost to produce) recordings from these live experiences.

Good article this weekend in the nytimes about ultralight camping gear. GoLite designs, manufactures and sells ultra-lightweight hiking and climbing gear, clothing and equipment. GVP is another provider. BackPackingLight is the online mag to read. I’m already hauling around enough extra weight on my body, going really lightweight on gear makes sense.

Gary points to yet another small form factor pc – Creative SLiX. You have to wonder how long it will be until the desktop market flops entirely to this formfactor. The tower and minitowers look so clumsy by comparison.

Good analsys of public wifi: _Two clues for vendors:

1) It costs nothing to provide WiFi. If that’s not true, you’re doing it wrong. The billing infrastructure is probably 90% of Starbucks’ cost. So loosen up on access, don’t freak out if somebody finds a hole that gives them free access, and focus on keeping costs down.

2) If users can’t log in and get going in a hurry, your WiFi is useless. You can’t charge a premium *and* provide bad service, and since charging a premium means that you have lock down the system so tightly that it takes a while to log in, don’t do either._ Thanks Gary for the pointer.

Good read – Amazon.com: Books: Justice Hall – the latest in a series involving Sherlock Holmes in his later years, now married. A little deeper and more modern characterization than I remember from the original Sir Arthur Conan Doyle works.

Ohio State to Examine Special Help for Clarett. Not happy news.

I post this every year or so but always worth a reminder – this is the site at which to buy skeletons or parts of skeletons – The Bucky-n-Thrifty Boneyard Bargains Page – the bags of bones at $2 a pound are always handy – pick up 10 or 20 pounds today!

Note to self – Zempt recommended by The Shifted Librarian: Saturday, July 05, 2003 as a good mt posting tool.

Rich is digging into DVD burning problems – Tong Family Blog: Sony DRU-120A Won’t Read DVD9 anymore – this is just one of several posts. Man it sounds like a pain. I know that I have given up on DVD burning on the PC, the software is crap and the hardware is buggy. It just is not worth the time with the current generation of products.

Good read – Extreme Mobility. I’m not sure I like Groove as the answer – requires too much software on the end nodes – I am more of a lightweight client guy myself: data stored centrally, ubiquitous access, smart cacheing, a presumption that users are always connected. I am also a fan of the thinking embodied in the LOCKSS work – achieve data reliability thru lots of copies.

Some great recos from steve for our banff trip – The Furrygoat Experience: Banff pictures – thanks

Animatronics Curriculum, Kits and Hardware – not the band, but a source for talking skeleton heads. Expensive tho.

Purchase glue guns and hot melt glue sticks online-Hotstik.com! – here’s the best site for glue gun stuff. Particularly note the availability of colored glue sticks.

For you non-halloweeners – there are a number of plans and suppliers out there for creating spider web shooters from glue guns. Makes very nice spider webs and colored sticks could make some cool effects.

I’ve used Money with my local bank for years to pay bills. And before that used Checkfree. I’ve become increasingly unhappy with Money as it seems to have a lot of database corruption problems. And my bank is screwing me on fees. So it is time to look around for alternatives.

I found one review site of online billpay products – Online Bill Paying Product Reviews and Reports by Consumer Search - ConsumerSearch.com. This seems to summarize all the services that include bill presentment in some form. Paymybills has been folded into Paytrust since this review. I kind of like the idea of electronic bill presentment but the costs are nontrivial – basically $1 per bill presented and paid thru the system. That is a steep price to pay for the convenience of all online bill handling. I do 40-50 bills a month easily, it is going to cost me close to $50 a month for the service. Maybe I can get smarter about setting up autopay thru a credit card for some of my bills to get the volume down.

Checkfree is cheaper – free! – but only handles online bill presentment for a limited number of vendors. But the price is compelling.

Then there are all the bank offerings. For instance Citibank or BofA. Bill paying is free with an account with either one. Citibank additionally has bill presentment, pricing similar to paytrust. Citibank was rated #1 in some Forbes 2002 Best of Web review.

Finally the portals have offerings. MSN Bill Pay is free for their very limited set of participating billers, but costs $.50 a transaction after that. Bill presentment from a very small set of billers. Yahoo Bill Pay looks similar, $.40 a transaction tho. Basically they save you the hassle of buying stamps and envelopes for a very small premium.

So I am not sure what to do. Path A: go whack on my current bank and get them to drop all their fees so they are in line with citibank and bofa. Solves my cost problem but still stuck with money. Path B: Use Yahoo Bill Pay – pretty cheap. Path C: Switch to Citibank and get the lowest cost for most bills plus the option of paying for online bill presentment. I need to think about. Switching banks is a PITA.

Dave says they need a CEO and new management team, maybe they are for sale. John Robb left, and now his blog has been wiped so you can’t read his statements about his leaving. Seems like a soap opera.