Buzzsonic.com

There is such an avalanche of information on RSS, RSS software and RSS feeds nowadays it is simply bewildering, even to someone as relatively ‘informed’ as me. What I do know is, apart from a hiatus this summer I was trying to wade through literally 100s of different feeds a day, each with multiple headlines.

Imagine trying to visit each individual website daily and pulling out all the new headlines manually. RSS delivery shaves hours off any news hounds day. I’ve been using the free aggregator RSS Bandit for a few months now but noticed as my feed list grew to a more sizeable proportion, when RSS Bandit updated the headlines the thing rendered my two year old laptop almost useless, grabbing almost 100% of system resources as it updated.

The solution was a lovely little Firefox plug-in called Sage. The tiny little app sits on your browser toolbar and kind of acts similar to recalling your history function or your favourites, opening up a column to the left in Firefox. Another big headache for me was that all the feed URLs I’d built up in RSS Bandit would have taken hours for me to manually type back into Sage. No worries.. I simply exported my collected feeds (as an OPML file) in RSS Bandit and then imported them back into Sage. Excellent!

I’m finding that Sage is extremely nimble, especially in terms of resource useage and feed updates. Still, if I’m away from my own PC I’m still stuck. Well not really, there’s been a number of web based RSS readers for a while now but the one I’m using right now is the Google Reader. Like most things from Google its functional and simple to use. Again, I simply imported all my feeds via the OPML file and bingo, access to all of my essential feeds from any computer anywhere.

Related Links

RSS Background
All About RSS (FaganFinder.com)
About Feed Syndication (Feedburner.com)
OPML (Wikipedia.org)
RSS (Wikipedia.org)
Choosing an RSS Reader (SearchEngineWatch.com)
What is RSS and Why Should You Care? (SearchEngineWatch.com)

Finding RSS Feeds
BlogPulse
Daypop
Technorati
Pubsub
Yahoo RSS

Free RSS Readers
RSS Bandit
Feedreader
RSS Reader
Pluck
Rocket RSS Reader
List of News Aggregators (Wikipedia.org)

Web Based RSS Readers
Bloglines
Findory
Google Reader
Newsgator
NewsIsFree

Big buzz for us here today as looking at our server stats earlier we realised we got ‘Slashdotted’ yesterday without even realising it (we had a day off !). So, we kind of got a whole weeks traffic in a few hours. We’ve heard of some peoples sites going into melt down when this happens so all credit to our robust hosting company MyAcen, who we rate very highly indeed and kept the fires burning. We just hope some of the Slashdot readers keep paying us a visit !

New York based ‘culture meets technology’ activists IPac are , according to their website, dedicated to preserving individual freedom through balanced intellectual property policy. Their latest project is Jailed For A Song which looks at the US Congress’s brushes with copyright law in 2004 and examines several of the craziest items on Big Content’s wish list.

Being Jailed For A Song is what a proposed law would allow. “Skipping commercials is stealing? That’s what some copyright holders think. And spending millions of taxpayer dollars to hunt down file-sharers? Congress nearly passed not one, but two bills that would have done just that in 2004.”

Included in some of the scary looking all encompassing law’s was, S.B. 3021. The bill (passed by the U.S. Senate on November 20, 2004 though still not passed as law due to procedural problems) specifically said that sharing a single pre-release work (song, movie, etc.) carried a possible five-year prison term for even first-time offenders. The two others we all read about last year were ‘The Piracy Deterrence and Education Act’ (PDEA, H.R. 4077) and ‘the PIRATE Act ‘(S.2237) which would have diverted law enforcement agencies to the pursuit of file-sharers at a time when the RIAA’s suits are paying for themselves.

“Copyright infringement is a problem, but the radical political agenda of copyright holders is far beyond what normal Americans want. We need constructive proposals for how to pay artists, protect technical innovation, and end the record & movie companies’ crazy litigation campaign. Congress isn’t listening to the public, and we need to be loud if we want to be heard over the Hollywood lobbyists and record label flunkies.” Points out the site. IPac are urging supporters to get involved and make a stand in the 665 days leading into the next federal election and make every day count.

Related Links

Electronic Frontier Foundation [EFF.org]
Banned Music [BannedMusic.org]
Downhill Battle [DownhillBattle.org]

Needless to say the closed nature of the Apple iPod software hasn’t stopped the Open Source mob getting their hands dirty with a whole collection of unofficial hacks and software add ons enabling geeks to do things that the standard Apple gear restricts you from doing. One of the main reasons after market firms like Belkin and Griffin can charge $50 for add on devices that enable the recording at a strictly low-fi 8khz.

Philip Torrone at Hack A Day has come up with a hacked work around that enables high quality recording for no cost using the Linux based user interface Podzilla.

iPod Linux Links

WikiPodLinux [iPodLinux.org]
Linux for the iPod Review [XLR8YourMac.com]
iPod Linux Forums [iPodLinux.org]
iPod Linux Installer [Sourceforge.net]
Free Your Music [Hymn-Project.org]
iPodHacks [iPodHacks.com]
Using an iPod with Linux [MIT.edu]
myPod Project [Sourceforge.net]
Podzilla and PTK [Dotink.org]
iPod Mini with Linux [Freedos.org]

Its been a while (actually the end of July no less) since we last posted here. A long list of disasters befell us around that time. Firstly a database crash and loss of all the sites archives, then a change of web hosts. At that point we were set to return all guns blazing mid August before the first of four hurricanes blew into Florida. The biggest for us was Hurricane Charley which blasted right onto our coastline, rattling the office and leaving a previously unwitnessed (for us Brits !) trail of absolute mayhem and disaster. Eight days without power and running water was only the beginning of a perilous and nervy six weeks as three more malevolent storms blew by in quick succession.

We decided to ‘lay low’ for a couple of months and concentrate on sprucing the site up a little and we’re finally back to publishing on a daily basis this coming Monday, November 8th. So, thanks for your patience !

Adrian (MusicBizNews24.com Editor)

Related Links

Florida Hurricane Relief Fund
Storm 2004 [Palm Beach Post]
Hurricane Ivan & Frances [Weatherstock.com]
Hurricane Headquarters [Sun Sentinel]
Ivan Gallery [Pensacola News Journal]
Hurricane Frances [Miami Herald]
Charley Blog [WeatherBug.com]
Charley [MTHurricane.com]
Sanibel Captiva Forums [BestofSanibelCaptiva.com]