These felt dancing shoes from Finland are designed to be worn by a parent balancing a child on her/his toes while dancing. Sweet! Link (via Neatorama)

The Chumby -- a squeezable wireless beanbag computer -- is finally shipping! I've been playing with one of these for months now, and I'm really impressed with them. The little beanbag is completely open -- from the flat-pattern for the bag, to the firmware for the device -- and the way it works is, you subscribe to any of hundreds of "widgets" that Chumby hackers have made and published. I use it as an alarm-clock, Archive.org video browser, weather display, Flickr browser, and all-round toy.

Though the Chumby isn't generally for sale yet, people who signed up for early notice of it are getting information for buying one today. I'm sure it'll be on sale soon.

I've been following the saga of Chumby production closely, reading about the manufacturing process on founder Bunnie Huang's blog (Bunnie is also the MIT hacker who broke the Xbox) -- and I can't wait to see these things in wide distribution. Link

See also:
Chumby chairman interview: squeezable, open bean-bag computer
Bunnie Huang's blog-series on Chinese manufacturing
China's manufacturing cities - photo gallery
Master Chao: Chinese virtuouso flat-pattern designer

On Tuesday morning 1200 AOL employees received their severance packages as the company continues trying to find its footing outside of the walled garden. Evidently, the transition to an advertising-supported web portal isn't going as well as they hoped. A memo from AOL CEO Randy Falco suggests a couple of the reasons they might be having problems. First, it's not clear whether they consider themselves fundamentally a technology company or a media company. Some of their products—especially email and MapQuest—face technology-focused competitors like Google and Yahoo who have been rapidly improving their products' capabilities. Others, such as "Food" and "Money & Finance," are competing more with traditional media outlets like CNN or the New York Times. The two types of companies tend to have different corporate cultures and pursue different business strategies, so being evenly split between the two might not be such a good strategy. Falco's memo also focuses a lot on AOL's advertising platform, but that seems like putting the cart before the horse; if you don't have a compelling product and growing traffic numbers, the best advertising platform in the world won't help. AOL may also be handicapped by the perception by many (including me) that AOL is the Internet for beginners. That was a great perception to cultivate when a lot of people were using the Internet for the first time, but it's not so great once most Internet users start to feel comfortable with the Internet and want to take the training wheels off. I have a feeling that this week's layoffs won't be the last of the painful changes at AOL.

Tim Lee is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Tim Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

Iddo Genuth sends us to TFOT for his extended series of interviews around the question of how electronic paper will change our lives in the next few years. The article leads off with the "father of e-paper," Nick Sheridon, who came up with the idea almost 35 years ago at Xerox PARC, and goes on to explore how e-paper may evolve past its current incarnations in the likes of the Sony Reader.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

TorrentFreak points us to the news that the RIAA's latest lawsuit target is Usenet.com, a company that provides private access to Usenet (as you might expect). The RIAA's argument here is that Usenet.com falls on the wrong side of the Supreme Court's Grokster rules, which basically said that "inducing" infringement is copyright infringement itself. Whether or not Usenet.com actually induces infringement is an open question -- which is what we assume the courts will be deciding. However, if it does get anywhere, it certainly could make for an interesting test case. Part of what clouded the original Grokster ruling was that, while there clearly were non-infringing uses of Grokster, they were harder to show. When it comes to Usenet, it's quite easy to show that there is a ton of non-infringing uses for Usenet (and have been since its inception decades ago). To completely shut down a Usenet service provider for offering access to all of that may be a tougher sell.

Many readers are writing in about the raids and arrests in Brazil's Cisco operation. At least 40 people were arrested earlier today, and Brazilian authorities asked the US to issue arrest warrants for five more suspects in this country. The allegation is that Cisco brought at least $500M of equipment into Brazil without properly paying import duties, and now owes over $826M in taxes, fines, and interest.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a special edition of its upcoming release of the latest Die Hard DVD, 20th Century Fox has announced that it will include a DRM-free digital version of the movie on the DVD. In order to copy the WMV file to a local computer, movie watchers will need to input a 16 digit code that is found on the DVD box. It seems ironic to require people to enter some code to get at the supposedly DRM-free file. This is a step in the right direction, but it still seems like they're making people jump through unnecessary hoops. Still, this feature will finally allow consumers to legally watch the movie on their computer and portable devices without having to pay again for that right... or having to use a third party ripping tool. Perhaps this move is more evidence that the studios find the DMCA unreasonable. As we've seen before, by embracing these formats, consumers will begin to find more value from the media, and, as a result, their consumption should increase, which is ultimately good for the entire movie industry.

In this episode of Boing Boing tv:

While the Dalai Lama visits with President Bush and others in Washington, over the weekend the Miss Tibet pageant occurred. Xeni introduces us to the pageant's founder. And an excerpt of an amazing short film made by Eames Demetrios, the grandson of Charles Eames. We're certain no elephants were harmed in the making of this film.

Video Link to BBtv episode: "Miss Tibet/Eames Elephants"

Russ Nelson writes "In a board meeting held October 10th and announced today, the Open Source Initiative approved two of Microsoft's software licenses: the Microsoft Reciprocal License and the Microsoft Public License. These licenses are refreshingly short and clean, compared to, say, the GPLv3 and the Sun CDDL. They share a patent peace clause, a no-trademark-license clause, and they differ only in the essential clause of reciprocation. Of course, Microsoft is not widely trusted in the Open Source world, and their motives have been called into question during the approval discussions. How can they be attacking Open Source projects on one hand, and seeking not only to use open source methods, but even to use the OSI Approved Open Source trademark? Nobody knows for sure except Microsoft. But if you are confident that Open Source is the best way to develop software (as we at the Open Source Initiative are), then you can see why Microsoft would both attack Open Source and seek to use it. It is both their enemy and their salvation."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Major League Baseball has been tilting at windmills for years, claiming ownership of facts -- even though facts cannot be covered by copyright. This resulted in a lawsuit over whether or not companies that provide fantasy baseball services online needed to pay MLB for a license to use player's names and stats. While such licenses have been very lucrative for MLB over the years, one popular fantasy baseball company, CBC, decided to stop paying the license and keep offering the service -- which resulted in the lawsuit. It didn't take long for the courts to tell MLB that it doesn't own facts and anyone is free to use stats and player names. Of course, rather than realizing that fantasy baseball helps promote the real thing, bringing in a lot more money to the league, MLB could only focus on the short term licenses it was about to lose, and appealed. This was a waste of everyone's time, because the law is quite clear and an appeals court has now ruled (again) that Major League Baseball does not own the names and data associated with the game and anyone is free to use that factual information for other things, such as fantasy baseball games. It's highly likely that the folks at MLB will appeal again, though it's equally likely that they'll get smacked down again. MLB had shifted strategies as these cases wore on, trying to get away from focusing on ownership of facts and claiming it was more about the "right to publicity," but the appeals court ruled that a right to publicity does not trump the First Amendment.

John Pojman Sr., a chemistry professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, has an online museum showcasing his collection of more than 520 pocket protectors. All of these protectors in one place is truly a majestic sight. Link (Thanks, COOP!)

John Pojman Sr., a chemistry professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, has an online museum showcasing his collection of more than 520 pocket protectors. All of these protectors in one place is truly a majestic sight. Link (Thanks, COOP!)

“The hole and the patch should be commensurate.”

Back in May we told you about a class action lawsuit that was being filed against Netflix, claiming that the company violated antitrust law by fraudulently obtaining the patents it was using to sue Blockbuster. This seemed like a really odd argument, and one unlikely to succeed. By definition, patents are monopoly rights which are granted by the government -- so it's difficult to see how they can violate antitrust law. Also, as we noted when the original suit was filed, these types of class action lawsuits rarely do much good (though, they do tend to make lawyers a lot wealthier). A little over a month after this lawsuit was filed, Netflix and Blockbuster decided to settle their patent dispute, at which point we wondered what would happen to the antitrust class action. Now we know. It's about to be dismissed. However, the judge apparently is worried that due to the original press coverage of the case (from folks like yours truly), potential members of the class may have held back filing other actions against Netflix -- and therefore has demanded that the lawyers get the same level of press coverage as the first time. Of course, the news that such an action has been dismissed isn't quite as newsworthy as the original filing (which was newsworthy for being an odd way to fight bad patents). Either way, the anonymous lawyer who tipped me off to the original case, has now emailed me again with the order demanding similar press coverage (to be clear: it's the order demanding similar press coverage, not the lawyer, who said rather little in the email). I'll post it here not because the dismissal of the case is interesting, but the idea that the judge believes the plaintiffs can "make sure that the end of these actions gets as much attention as their start." At this point it's unclear if the dismissal is because of the settlement (quite likely) or because it's just not a very good idea to claim patents violate antitrust law. As much as our patent law and patent system are screwed up these days, allowing people to challenge patents on the basis of antitrust class action lawsuits seems likely to only make things worse.

Over the past few months we’ve been getting requests from professors around the country inviting us to speak to their business, design, or engineering students about Getting Real.

So we’ve been thinking about putting together a 37signals Getting Real College Tour. We’d pick a dozen or so schools and put together a speaking tour over a couple months.

If you think you can pull together 100+ design, business, or engineering students to attend a one or two hour talk (including Q&A) on your campus, and you can offer up the venue, please drop us an email at svn@37signals.com.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Several readers pointed us to Torrentfreak's coverage of the RIAA's latest move: the major record labels have launched a copyright infringement lawsuit against Usenet.com. The complaint, filed in the federal District Court in New York, accuses Usenet.com of providing access to millions of copyright-infringing files and slams it for touting its service as a "haven for those seeking pirated content." Usenet.com has been refusing the labels' requests to block access to alleged "copyright infringing groups."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Back in May 2001 Olympus began to make noises about a professional five megapixel Four Thirds format digital SLR, two years after that in June 2003 they revealed the E-1. After much hinting, several 'accidental' leaks and some four and a half years, Olympus has today announced the ten megapixel E-3 professional digital SLR. We had been promised an E-3 before embargo to enable us to produce a preview but that for reasons best known to Olympus this fell through so all we can provide you with is a press release, specs and a couple of images. Body only price will be £1099 in the UK.