It was with some sadness and nostalgia that we read that Tower Records (and Video) was finally going out of business. The company, which started as a record department in a Sacramento drugstore, was sold to a liquidator on October 6th. There is no final date announced, but it’s coming...soon.

Alas, Amazon’s low prices for physical CDs and Apple’s iTunes did Tower in. Here’s an example of a bricks and mortar store totally unable to see the digital business coming. Could they have taken advantage of the Tower brand and made headway as an online presence ahead of the more nimble cyber-competition? We’ll never know.
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As everyone knows, Howard Stern makes his world debut on Sirius Radio tomorrow (Jan. 9) at 7 am local time (here in Arizona). I won’t be listening as I don’t have a Sirius Radio (and am unlikely to buy one).

I return to my question of a few months ago: How quickly will illegal recordings of Stern’s show make their way onto the Net? I doubt Sirius is encrypted, but even if it is, someone will figure out a way to crack/hack the content.

I contend, as I have for months, that Stern cannot be as funny as he was for the past few decades if he is uncensored. The big thrill for listeners is to see how much the King of all Media can get away with. His ability to drop the F bomb at will (or let his guests do it) could get very boring very quickly. Nonetheless, I am a big fan and hope he succeeds. I am just not confident he made the right decision to leave "free radio."

Being an early adopter sort, I felt compelled to try CNN Pipeline this morning. CNN Pipeline is CNN’s new pay news service delivered via the Web. Being a thrifty sort, I am on the 99 cent “for the day” trial.

 

Some early thoughts:

 

1. If you want the desktop player, it’s a funky download requiring some sort of Microsoft runtime to be installed. I am not a big fan of such things, but I figured the collateral damage would be slight.
2. The picture is the size of an index card which is pretty decent. I don’t see a full screen mode anywhere.
3. There are many viewing options including a mini mode that is relatively unobtrusive. I cannot figure how to get the player to persistently stay on the screen no matter what else I am doing (checking email, using Word,, etc..)
4. There is a cool feedback feature that populates an email to allow you to share your thoughts. Gotta figure there will be an AIM client soon (AOL and CNN are both in the TWX family)
5. There are four pipes (channels) running at the same time on varying themes. Right now, there is an international story, something on the White House, weather forecasts and a general news feed. The anchor appears to be dedicated to the Pipeline as opposed to a rebroadcast of an existing feed.
6. There are no commercials
7. There are lots of on-demand feeds and segments on such topics as sports, entertainment, business, etc..

 

On a 0-10, it gets a solid 7.5 so far. There’s nothing better than watching a live feed of  heavy snow falling in Virginia when it’s sunny and 65 at your home.

As Mike and I mentioned on our most recent MADCast, we are crazy about Yahoo!’s new RSS feed reader which is baked into the Beta client of the new Yahoo! Mail (hopefully coming soon to a PC near you).

 

Today, if you go to Inform, you can create your own customized RSS feeds (and, of course loading them into your Yahoo! mail client). You need to do a search at which point you can follow a few steps and generate an RSS feed. You cut and paste the feed script into your reader of choice, and away you go. It’s especially useful for topics that don’t have a natural RSS feed. Worth a try.

On 7th Avenue in New York City, we encountered a peaceful and meaningful protest of the persecution of millions of followers of Falun Gong in China. Falun Gong, according to the group's literature, is "a practice of meditation, gentle exercises, and the cultivation of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance in oneself."