05 Apr 2006
Are germs good for children's health?

Makes sense to me. The rates of asthmatics and allergy sufferers has been growing steadily since the "clean revolution" began urging us to live in white rooms. In my opinion this is the real battle in the soap wars.

Little Madison Sukenik crawls around her Fort Lauderdale home, grabbing everything in sight, putting much of it in her mouth.

(link) [CNN.com]

23:00 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

Podcasting Roils NPR Fund Raising

Another podcasting piece, this one detailing the trauma the format is causing NPR stations around the country. What somebody needs to do is to develop an adequate pricing/subscription model for podcasts, or, alternately, figure out how to weave commercials into them seamlessly so that end users can't just skip them (a la Tivo).

Otherwise, podcasting may indeed be a blip, not a boom.

Fans of top shows download to dodge pledge drives, leading some local affiliates to worry about declining dollars. By Steve Friess.

(link) [Wired News: Top Stories]

23:00 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

Podcasting: Blip, not boom, researcher says

Let's see: according the the best data I could find, if only 1% of users in North America download podcasts on a monthly basis (as this study claims) then that's over 2.25 million podcasts downloads a month. Hmm, could I make a living selling to 1% of that population: 22,500 monthly customers?

I think I probably could.

Podcasts are to bloggers what MySpace sites are to teens: All the cool kids have one. So Forrester probably expected a big reaction with a new report that claims podcasts are not exactly taking the wired world by storm.

(link) [CNET News.com]

23:00 /Technology | 2 comments | permanent link

Allowing cattle tests is bad policy

What am I missing here? NAIS will increase our export capability but testing every cow for BSE won't? How's this work? How stupid does USDA think we (the farmers and ranchers of this country) are?

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said Monday that the federal government can't let an Arkansas City company test its cattle for mad cow disease because doing so would be bad for international trade.

(link) [Wichita Eagle]

23:00 /Agriculture | 1 comment | permanent link