Hello, all. It's been awhile... I've been busy (a good thing). Ok, some of that time was playing monopoly online, but still...

So I've been stacking up interesting news, so let me clean out the ol' news locker.

Enron just got approval to pay another $140 million in stay bonuses. Shouldn't they just stop paying them so they'll go away? Someone else needs to buy this company and fire everyone. $140 million!?!?!?! (MSNBC.com)

This might explain why they're not giving out free phones anymore... Customer loyalty to cell phone companies is eroding more and more each quarter. (MSNBC.com)

As promised... the swing-set patent story. Yes, some kid received a patent for swinging. (News.com)

Oh, great, another format... not to worry, consumers probably won't adopt it. A new smaller CD will be introduced this summer and its launch will be accompanied by some big name artists. Who cares? What's the big advantage to smaller CD's? Unless someone's willing to offer a portable small CD changer, why get something new? (MSNBC.com)

A new study says that legitimate music is losing ground online in Europe. (Newsbytes.com)

Is it any wonder?

Soap box time.

The music consumer who's online is typically under 25 years old. And they're shunning the legitimate online music offerings. I don't know, but I think the music industry is in a heap of trouble. They failed to recognize a major shift in the way people listen to music, then they made themselves out to look like a bad wolf by being so letigious(sp?) without offering any real solution to the problem.

Now, late to the game, what they're offering isn't what the public wants and they don't understand. I feel sorry for them, but until they get it right, they really shouldn't be blaming anyone but themselves. Too long they've been fat cats sitting back churning out crappy CD's (usually with one or two good songs on it) while ripping off the consumer and the artist at the same time. I'm not saying music should be free, but how different is it to copy a song off the radio, or better yet, DirecTV's digital music channels onto your hard drive than to rip a song or download a song off the internet? Sure, it's a little quicker to let someone else do the work, or to let a program simply lift the track off a CD, but it solves a need that the music industry is unwilling to address, or perhaps even unable to comprehend.

Simply put, we like music. But in its current legal form, it's cumbersome, bulky and only sort of solves our needs. We want a large library at our fingertips, the ability to quickly jump from one artist to another. To have many songs available to us so that when our mood or disposition changes, we need the soundtrack of our lives to quickly follow suit. And we need to have it with us. 10 discs in a CD changer in a car is fine, but then you have the annoying quiet while it switches discs, and even then, you're limited to 10 artists.

And that's only good if you're in your car. And your car has a 10 disc changer. Or you even own a car. Or are old enough to drive.

But imagine... if every record store had a self-service kiosk where you could go in, pick and choose any song you wanted, and have those songs burned onto a CD, either as a standard music file, or as an MP3 file, and you paid per song, how great would that be? If you can get a CD now from Target for $12.99 with an average of 14 songs, that's 92 cents a song. Forget about the costs of marketing, the CD books, etc. and charge 75 cents to $1 per song. The machine burns the CD, it's guaranteed to be correct (I HATE burning CD's... It's time consuming and you cannot guarantee that it's going to work correctly.) But these kiosks could guarantee that the songs would be perfect, without pops, hisses or odd volume changes, and that the CD's would be burned correctly.

Suddenly, you've got a perfect answer... it won't end piracy, but I think there are plenty of people who would pay for the convenience of making their own albums and you'd get some real data back on what people are really listening to. But it would involve the record companies working together and making a major shift in their thinking. Which is why we're stuck with these lame offerings which don't feature full catalogs and don't offer portability and really don't meet the needs of too many people.

End of the soap box.

Hilarious... AOL Time Warner might just be a better company if they spun off their online service, AOL. (MSNBC.com)

They're calling this a "jobless recovery." Um... and how is that a recovery again? (MSNBC.com)

If you're using AOL's Instant Messenger (AIM), check your Internet Explorer security settings because AIM has most likely hacked them. (Instantmessagingplanet.com)

Hollywood vs. High-Tech: This is a great, in-depth article on why you shouldn't buy any new electronics any time soon. (Business2.com)

Look! It's the amazing studendous double-decker toad!... On second though, eh. (Metrowestdailynews.com)

L.A.'s former mayor Richard Reardon's decides to start his own newspaper. (LABusinessJournal.com)

Remember War Games? Matthew Broderick had that computer that would dial every number until it found other computers to talk to? Crooks are using computers to warcard... that is, they're tossing credit card number and expiration dates at authorize.net and seeing what sticks. (MSNBC.com)

This is kinda cool... some guy figured that he could help schools... let them teachers write proposals and then let people decide to donate directly. There's no automatic overhead factored into the donation, so unless you elect to give some to the overhead, 100% of your donation goes directly to the end recipient. (MSNBC.com)

Cool Signs... not just a description, also their name... I wish this company had L.A. offices... I've sent several resumes and would love to work for them. (MediaPost.com)

And now, some pictures...

Two firefighters got married and then cruised around town. (MSNBC.com)

It's ok, he's sleeping. The bear got hit by a car and they had to tranquilize him to get him out of the tree. Then they fixed up his broken leg and expect a full recovery. (MSNBC.com)

I think this looks kinda cool. What to know the mindblowingly insane part? For $145,000, you can buy all the dots, 11 balloons and installation instructions. (Building not included.) (MSNBC.com)

AOL posts $54,200,000.00 loss. Guess they shouldn't have fired me. (Excite.com)

Viacom posts profit. They should buy AOL. (MSNBC.com)

Newspaper prints photo of city check, crooks use the signature and bank account numbers to write themselves checks. heh heh heh (Belleville.com)