.. did better than I thought I would. [jenett.radio]

ing from heart surgery).  One of the doctors was the head of the American Heart Association.  Personally, I believe Gary.  It has always been my contention that eating high fat makes me feeeeel better.  It also helps me keep off the pounds and keep my "numbers" in the excessively healthy category (I remember sitting in a room of extremely fit people in a mandatory "health" program at USAFA and getting my numbers disclosed to the class -- the doctor said, and I quote verbatim: "you have the worst diet but you are the healthiest person here.  This is really strange." [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

EarthViewer.

One of the facts of life for a state CIO is that much of the information you deal with has latlong coordinates associated with it (all the other records have social security numbers).  While I was in Colorado this week, I had an opportunity to spend a few hours talking with John Gage, the Chief Scientist at Sun. 

John showed me a piece of software called EarthViewer.  If you like maps, even a little, you'll love this program.  The program uses Keyhole satellite data to give you a view or anywhere on earth.  The software allows you to fly over the landscape.  Type in an address and you "fly" there in seconds.  I had fun going from where I grew up in Idaho to my brother's house in Virginia.  If the target point is in a metro zone, you can see things with 1m resolution.

Dave Lorenzini, the CEO of Keyhole, Inc, makers of EarthViewer, has been great in getting me hooked up and talking to our GIS folks.  We have data layers for everything.  Putting them in this system would allow police to fly over an area and become familiar with it, find manholes, utilities etc. and even enter buildings based on plans all as part of a simulation with real live data.  We could make it as detailed as we want.    In a disaster, you could take reconnaissance pictures of the area and then survey the damage area in as much detail as you like from a safe distance.  Of course, you could do those things before, but the EarthViewer makes it accessible to people without training in specialized GIS tools. 

[Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog]

What the Major Labels Don't Want to Hear: 2,000,000 Celtic MP3s Downloaded Free

"The two millionth MP3 was downloaded from Austin's Brobdingnagian Bards' MP3.com website on Thursday, July 25th. This landmark achievement makes them one of the Top 15 bands out of over 200,000 one the world's largest free music portal. It also shows that the Celtic musical tradition of The Chieftains, Clannad, Enya, The Corrs, and countless traditional and not-so-traditional bands is no passing fad. It is the wave of the future.

While record labels are struggling to stay afloat while fighting the growing number of illegal downloads, the Brobdingnagian Bards adopted a more innovative method by giving away over two million downloads advertising 'Download One Free Celtic CD' from their website. While this may seem outlandish considering sluggish record sales, The Bards see it as a means to an end.

'I love giving away music,' begins Marc Gunn of the Brobdingnagian Bards. 'Not only is it rewarding to hear the response of 1000s of people every month, it also sells CDs. Sure we only sell maybe sixty CDs a month online, but that's a hell of a lot more than most bands! If we didn't would we still sell as many? Maybe, but at least were building a solid fan base in the process.' " [MP3.com]

Guess what else The Bards Crier is doing? In addition to giving away free MP3s, Marc Gunn is also putting together a free ebook about how to sell CDs effectively online.

[The Shifted Librarian]