A colleague at work told me on Friday that Zap2It was closing up its API. They had threatened this very action quite some time back claiming that too many were using the free service for commercial ventures. At the time, I was skeptical--however I have been proven wrong. It appears that as of September 1, the listing service will be locking up access.

Many opensource DVRs, like MythTV, have traditionally made use of this free service to the opensource community. It seems that folks from this community are working on a solution. Members of the ReplayTV community are also working on a solution to feed WiRNS and it appears that DVArchive won't be affected by this decision.

Today I updated our ReplayTVs for the new daylight savings times. It comprises a rather convoluted process of erasing the ZIP code on the unit and then putting the ZIP back. This got me thinking about the insanity of Daylight Savings.

Part of the 2005 energy bill in the US was to add an extra four weeks to DST. Millions of dollars have been allocated to see if it saves energy. This very kind of study has been done several times before and it has been proven that it doesn't conserve energy. Add to that when there is an hour more of sunshine, folks are more likely to head out in the car to do things in the evening, well it undermines the whole concept of energy savings. Retailers love it, because folks tend to go out shopping more during DST.