Day: February 28, 2006

My favorite shopping list Internet web application shopping list site, Lists of Bests, has been acquired by the Robot Co-Op. Lists of Bests allows you to mark off CDs, books, and videos that you have consumed that appear on various “best of” lists. I always thought it was a cool concept but the content didn’t update often (I would have loved to see the Village Voice’s Pazz’n’Jop list or the KEXP Top 90.3 lists, for instance) and the community features were weak. Since the Robot Co-Op have done 43 Things, 43 Places, and AllConsuming, I would expect that the revamped Lists of Bests would be much stronger in the community aspect.

Anyway, congrats to Bill Turner and here’s hoping Lists of Bests doesn’t stay offline too long while it is being overhauled.

ABC and Apple have posted two volumes of Schoolhouse Rock videos on the iTunes Music Store for download. There’s interesting backlash in the reviews section about the pricing: no attempt was made to provide a volume discount, so each eleven-song video set is priced at $1.99 * 11 = $21.89, or $43.78 for the whole set. Since all 46 songs can be heard on the 30th anniversary DVD for $12.99 at Amazon, I can only assume that the assumption is that people will only be buying individual songs. Which is probably right—born a year before the series started in 1973, I only remember less than half of the ones on iTunes and would only pay money for “Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here,” “Conjunction Junction,” and “I’m Just a Bill.” But those three alone would be half the price of the DVD.

Complaints about the business model aside, this is great stuff and would almost be reason by itself to buy a video iPod.