This is interesting; President Bush wants nationwide broadband access by 2007.  "Bush's proposal is both incremental and deregulatory. It touts the introduction of low taxes, more available spectrum and limited regulation as the way to encourage private companies to bring broadband to the shrinking number of Americans who do not have it."  I can't help thinking: video-on-demand.

Did you watch the Lakers last night?  Man, when they are firing on all cylinders, they are great.  In fact, they have so many cylinders, they don't have to be firing on all of them.  Last night Kobe was dominating, and Shaq closed down Yao.  Last Sunday it was Karl Malone who delivered.  They're looking pretty good.  But, the Lakers have the defending champion Spurs next, who looked equally impressive putting away Dallas.  I think the winner of the Lakers-Spurs series is going to win the finals.

Wired reports New Study Urges Patent Upgrade.  "The council recommended in its report that the patent office and Congress take seven steps to improve the patent system.  Those steps include, among other things, hiring new patent examiners, creating a more open system for challenging questionable patents, and rejecting more patents on processes that are deemed to be 'obvious' by people in the field."  I suppose improving the patent system will help - the suggestions are obvious improvements - but the whole process is fundamentally broken.  Can a gene complex own a meme complex?

Andrew Grumet posted a nice rant about syndication and competing formats.  The RSS vs. Atom wars are probably of only esoteric interest to most of you, but when divergence of standards stifles innovation, users suffer.

A proper marriage of TV and blogs.  They're definitely going steady :)

I think the "amateur" software development in this area has been terrific (amateur in the sense of "free", not in the sense of "mediocre"!)  Now it will be interesting to see if any commercial models can take hold.  Like, er, video-on-demand.

David Bowie has invited fans to bootleg his music -- and he's offering prizes for the most creative theft.  The thin white duke stays ahead of the curve...

Apple celebrated iTunes' one year anniversary with a new release, including an optional lossless encoding format.  My ears can't hear the difference.  Also, you can now convert WMA files to AAC.  Not vice-versa, of course :)

By the way, iTunes was profitable in its first year.  So not only did it drive tons of iPod sales, it pulled its own weight, too.

The San Francisco Giants have implemented WiFi throughout Pac Bell Park.  Wired has a nice story about it.  But they don't ask the important question - what happens when people start video-blogging games?  Think it won't happen?  Then you don't know San Francisco bloggers :)

Finally, Eric Sink rants about Oreos.  Is it an Oreo if it isn't chocolate?  You make the call.