KZIONradio

Rachel Seymour has taken her car into the dealership 12 times to fix a “Check Engine” light that continues to come on, sometimes even on her way home from the repair shop. Each time she takes her car in to diagnose the problem light it costs her $120.

There is really no time in my schedule for sitting around a car dealership listening to some fat guy in a clip-on tie tell me that the problem is my fault

Congress is taking a look at a Motor Vehicle Owners’ Right to Repair Act forcing automakers to share diagnostic codes with car buyers and independent mechanics. This will allow consumers to take their car to independent auto repair shops possibly getting a better price.

Why can’t I just pull out a chip, plug it into my PC, and run a diagnostic program that tells me everything that’s wrong with my car?

Select individual diagnostic tests you would like to complete or select ALL:

Check tire wear
Check levels of all fluids
Look for metal shavings in transmission fluid
Report powertrain diagnostic trouble
Calibrate speedometer
Diagnose Check Engine light and ensure results are in human language
Etc.

Seems logical to me.

How can Women Outspend Men on Electronics? Men unite! We can’t let the women take over our DVD’s, big screen TV’s and iPODS. Women, electronics belong to us, Ok? One of the few joys in life is going to the big electronic stores and watching sports or Star Wars on the 61” plasma screen while my wife is shopping at Bed, Bath & Beyond. Now when I go into Best Buy they’re gonna have TLC or Lifetime on my 61” plasma screen! The End really is coming…

In the Are-You-Serious department? “A student who was booted off his degree course for plagiarism is to sue the university. He says tutors at the University of Kent should have spotted what he was doing and stopped him sooner.” Yeah, uhm…OK.

Robert Scoble sat down with an executive from eBay and learned some interesting facts about the auction giant.

1. $7 to $8 billion runs through the eBay platform every quarter.
2. Every hour eBay registers 3,000 to 4,000 new users.
3. Every day about a terabyte of data courses through eBay’s data centers.
4. They have about 5000 employees right now and are hiring about 1000 new employees this year.
5. eBay’s founder, Pierre Omidyar, started eBay because he wanted a way to sell and buy Pez dispensers and there wasn’t a good way to do that on the Internet before. (This is actually not a true story)

Here’s an extensive five part article on the PBS web site about what it takes to make it in the music industry. The article also talks about the state of the music industry and how the consolidation of ownership has drastically changed the way the music industry operates. The article also profiles Mark Hudson’s daughter singer/songwriter Sarah Hudson as she prepares to release her first single and album. There is also an interview with David Crosby.

I really enjoyed the piece titled, The Perfect Storm. Interviews with musicians and industry leaders on the forces that have come together to lead the music industry to nearly collapsing. I didn’t necessarily agree to a lot of the article. I think the blame for the dismal state of the music industry should be placed on the record industry itself for failing to embrace the digital age. They still don’t have a clue, and instead of picking themselves up by the bootstraps they wallow in self pity. As some have suggested the music industry may not be in all that bad of shape. It seems that the RIAA may have been misleading the public as sales are up but shipments are down. The dismal numbers reported by the music industry is units shipped, but in the digital age retailers do not keep the old industry standard of ten weeks worth of inventory. The standard now is two weeks. The music industry may be more profitable than ever.

A word of caution, The Way The Music Died is very pro RIAA and feels like propaganda. But it is an in-depth look at how the wheels turn in a multi-billion dollar industry.

The California Senate approved the anti-Gmail bill that was discussed here yesterday. “The California state Senate on Thursday approved a bill that takes aim at Google’s new Gmail service, placing strict limits on e-mail providers seeking to scan customer messages for advertising and other purposes.”

David Sundwall, the blogger responsible for A Soft Answer along with links to virtually every LDS blogger on the planet, has been upgrading to the latest version of Movable Type weblog system. If you have been by to visit ASA you probably noticed things are a little amiss. But I think that’s OK. So many times web developers keep redesigns in the closet, hidden from friends and visitors. But it’s OK to let others see your dust. Let us watch as you make design choices, test new looks, break the code now and again. It’s OK David. We drop in unannounced and we don’t mind the mess.

Do you get a sense of animosity here?

Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software maker, will begin selling portable music players for as much as 80 percent less than Apple Computer Inc.’s iPod…The Microsoft-branded devices will “look and feel” as good as the iPod for as little as $50.

Canada allows file sharing, Italy puts you in jail. Slashdot points out this article.

“Italy has made transferring content via the Internet without the permission of the copyright holder a criminal offence.Those found guilty of the unauthorised distribution of copyright material now face a fine of between 154 and 1032 ($185-1240), a jail sentence of between six months and three years, the confiscation of their hardware and software, and the revelation of their misdeeds in Italy’s two national newspapers, La Repubblica and Corriere della Sera.”

I’ve been test driving the Mozilla Firefox browser for the past few days and so far I’ve been impressed. My browser of choice is SlimBrowser because it has tab-browsing, has a cool auto-login feature, and uses a built-in pop-up killer.

Firefox also has tab-browsing, pop-up blocking, an easy to understand interface and best of all a really large viewing area. But some of the problems I’ve noticed are when opening a new window, another browser opens rather than just a tab. That could be a setting I just haven’t found. It appears to be slower than SlimBrowser, and it doesn’t minimize to the systray. At least I haven’t found out how to do that.

I’m not sure I can give up my auto-login feature in SlimBrowser so maybe I’ll use Firefox for pleasure and SlimBrowser for business.

Interestingly enough, in Canada file sharing is legal. A Canadian judge ruled that by putting files on your hard drive and allowing others to remotely access them is not copyright infringement. Canadians can and do upload and download music files without the threat of lawsuits by the CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association). So why is Napster II making its debut in Canada? Why pay to download when you can get it for free? I’m wondering though, an album on Napster II in Canada goes for under $10 CAD which is currently $7.31 USD, can I shop on Napster.ca and save a few bucks?

KZION hit an all-time record today with 225 simultaneous listeners. I just added 20 new slots last week in hopes that I would’nt need to add any additional slots for a few more months. This afternoon when I checked there were just 3 open slots. I’ll have to keep an eye out this week and see if the trend continues.

In the Cool Tools department I have two items to share.

This first tool is more for web developers. I have been a big fan of the programmers at Gossamer Threads for about 4 years, ever since I put MormonFind online. MF was a LDS themed directory similar to yahoo!. In fact it was designed to look kinda like Yahoo! It ran off of Gossamer Threads popular Links Directory Management program. Great software, great community, and free. They also develop a web-based file manager called, File Manager. This is one of the coolest and useful applications I use for coding on the web. Rather than having to open an FTP program every time I want to test or update a file, I just open up my browser. I can edit, search, upload, create a new file or directory, CHMOD, copy, delete, move, and download files. I can navigate throughout the entire directory structure of my server with ease and simplicity. It’s easy to install and virtually bug free.

The second Cool Tool is Tasks by Alex King. This application is a web based, hierarchical task manager, to-do list, and lightweight project manager. Features include:

Dynamic hierarchical view of your tasks – expand/collapse tree using client side JavaScript
Scheduling due dates and associating URLs with tasks.
Full mobile version for easy access with a PDA.
Localization in 16 languages.
Daily e-mail reminders.
iCalendar of your tasks (scheduled tasks can go into the calendar or task list).
Rich, responsive interface.
Advanced search functionality.
Graceful handling of data collisions.
Includes blog posting (WordPress, b2, MoveableType) from a task.

It’s easy to install, PHP and mySQL required. I use it to record code changes I make to any of my websites so if something goes wrong I have a log of what changes I made. I also use Tasks to outline projects I’m working on with subtasks and deadlines. I love organizing a large project into smaller tasks which helps me to stay organized and on track. I love the blogging feature as I can compose a draft entry in Tasks and continue working on it until it’s developed enough to post to the blog. My copy of Tasks is littered with entry ideas for my blog. This is a must have for multi-taskers.

Keeping life simple and web development easy.

To date, almost 3,000 file sharers have been sued by the RIAA. About 400 of those have settled for about of $3,000 each.

A California lawmaker is formulating a bill that would make it virtually impossible for Google’s new Gmail service to operate in the state. The lawmaker’s interest lies with privacy issues which at first glance made me blow it off as another way for government to meddle in the lives of its citizens. But I think there are some valid concerns that need to be addressed. In case you’re not familiar with Google’s soon to be released 1 GB free e-mail service, Google will be able to scan all mail stored in the users Gmail account and target ads based on harvested keywords.

The point of concern is what about the people sending e-mail to Gmail account holders? Don’t they have a certain expectation of privacy when sending the e-mail? What about sensitive business information? I’m assuming this is a mechanical scan of e-mails and there is no intent on Googles part to extract information and make it available to employees. Imagine if Google finds employees scanning e-mail content and stripping credit card numbers, social security numbers or other personal information. The California law would

...forbid[s] e-mail providers from retaining personally identifiable information that is obtained from the use of the technology; it forbids human access to the information; and forbids the transfer of information to third parties. And it requires that when consumers delete e-mail, the file is deleted and is not retained somewhere.

On the face of it, Gmail seems like a bad idea.

No surprises but Bob’s latest column has a few quotable quotes.

A study by the Pew Research Center this weeks shows that national reporters – TV, radio and newspaper – self-identify as liberals 34 percent of the time and as conservatives 7 percent of the time…Among Americans in general, 20 percent of us say we’re liberal and 33 percent of us say we’re conservative. So, if you do the math, liberals are almost 75 percent more common in the media than they are in society, and conservatives are almost 80 percent less common in the media than they are in society.

For example, among journalists, less than 15 percent believe that faith in God is a necessary part of being a “moral person.” Among the American population, however, the number is 60 percent. Americans in general are four times more likely to value religion as a part of personal morality than are journalists.

He concludes that we obtain our news from a minority viewpoint and so what we hear and read is often skewed. Hollywood is the same way. The people who provide the majority of our entertainment do not represent the morality of the people who partake of it. Unfortunately, most of us just accept it.

Kim found this Music and the Spoken Word website. He says it’s new but I’m pretty sure its been around for at least a year or so.

Mitt Romney in the The Christian Science Monitor

Here are some details on who’s playing who in the film adaptation of Gerald Lund’s “The Work and the Glory”. Jonathan Scarfe is playing Joseph Smith, Eric Johnson will play Joshua Steed, and Tiffany Dupont as Lydia McBride.

Next time you want to rent a movie in Denver, CO be sure to get one with your Big Mac Extra Value Meal. A buck per night without any membership or late fees.