A's Picked as Preseason Favorites by ESPN

As an A's fan, I'm used to the team being underestimated before the start of the baseball season, and the team surprising all the doubters with a tremendous run. Last year, the team was compared to the lowly Kansas City Royals, and widely anticipated to finish in last place in the American League West. Instead, despite a rash of injuries to key players, the A's youngsters far outperformed expectations and the team finished with an 88-74 record, good enough for second place in the division, and at one point in August, owned the division's best mark.

Now, only a few days away from Opening Day against the Yankees, the A's off-season changes and player experience has vaulted them into the favorites category by a lot of sports experts - not the least of which is ESPN, the sports media monolith. While this week's issue of Sports Illustrated picks the A's to win their division, and defeat the Yankees in the first round of the playoffs, only to lose to the White Sox, who they have pegged to repeat as World Series champions, ESPN offers no limits on their expectations for the men in green and gold. In their cover story for the magazine's April 10th issue, titled, "The Hot Pick: In 2006, the A's are Money".

In fact, ESPN's love for the A's goes beyond a single cover story. In the media site's "expert predictions", three selected the A's to win the World Series, and only a pair said the A's wouldn't reach the playoffs at all. Every other writer had them pegged as the division champs or wild card winner, and most were leaning to the former. Additionally, four of the writers said that ace pitcher Rich Harden would capture the Cy Young award, while another said Eric Chavez would garner the Most Valuable Player trophy.

All of this positive media coverage is confusing to us diehard fans, accustomed to rooting for an underdog. Now, as an avid Athletics Nation member and partial season ticket holder, I've already received a number of inquiries for potential unused tickets and games are already being booked months in advance. I expect to watch our team fulfill its destiny and win it all for the first time since 1989.

Listening to ''Back to Basics'', by 4 Strings (Play Count: 17)

"The Office" Special is... Special

I'm a huge fan of dry, satirical humor, and at times, it seems the British have a monopoly on the best comedy out there - ranging from the infamous Monty Python series to Absolutely Fabulous and of course, The Office, which we discovered on BBC America in 2003, and quickly couldn't get enough of - as the mockumentary chronicled Ricky Gervais as a ridiculous boss of a paper company in Slough, Britain, who tries to augment his dead-end career through being the most popular morale booster in the office, even if he is completely oblivious to the fact nobody finds him amusing and is generally appalled by his behavior.

The show had two solid seasons and seemed to come and go so quickly - especially as I felt we had just latched onto what we considered the best comedy on TV, whether domestic or not. And somehow, we missed the network's airing of a special 1 hour., 35 minute finale that aimed to tie up all the loose ends - what happened with Gervais after being removed from his position, and of course, not only his quest for love, but that of his colleagues. While not as side-splittingly funny as some of the show's classic episodes, the office special, which we rented from NetFlix, definitely had some amusing moments and is a must-see for any fan of the Office, who may not have seen the show to its conclusion.

Listening to ''No Fate'', by Scooter (Play Count: 4)

Survey USA Poll Shows Bush Unliked Nationwide

From Survey USA:



So, as long as you stay out of Utah, Alabama and Wyoming, you could go coast to coast in the US and not run into a state where Bush's popularity rating is above fifty percent. It's not about red state vs. blue state any more. The whole country is blue - we're practically suffocating.

More here: Daily Kos: GOP Starts to Sour on Bush

Listening to ''Thomas Trouble'', by Echoes (Play Count: 7)

Time Travel Through E-mail Archival

As far as my e-mail is concerned, the "Delete" key is a last resort - at least when it comes to messages with friends, family, colleagues or business transactions. Of course, the junk messages are incinerated, but my tendency is to hold onto e-mail forever, and I've taken great steps to ensure my e-mail archive stays intact, even as I change e-mail addresses, upgrade computers or migrate from one e-mail program to another. All told, I am fairly confident that more than 90 percent of my e-mail with known contacts since 1996 has been retained in an easily-accessible, searchable database on my laptop, and is backed up daily online through Apple's .Mac Backup service.

For me, it's not just the ease of finding data or people when needed, but there is something both funny and embarrassing about dredging up messages I sent years ago to people I haven't spoken to in years, now seeing the event in 20/20 hindsight, or simply noticing the way I have adapted my writing style from then until now. As time passes by, people do change, yet I have point-in-time snapshots of myself, friends, family and colleagues that will not be changed or edited for history. With the right keyword searches, I can cringe at my struggles with finances in college, wince at attempts to gain somebody's attention, or root myself on as I look back at challenges and changes in their infancy. I can also run a quick search to remind somebody of what they've said or use an old conversation to make a point.

What I have, using Apple Mail and the Mac's built-in Spotlight functionality, combined with a pack-rat like attention to e-mail storage, is what Google is hoping the world will move to with its integration of GMail and Google Desktop. You should never have to delete an e-mail, and you should be able to find any message with a well-defined search and parameters. While this is the future for some, for me, we're already there, and in case you were curious, the few times I need the data, its interesting, but not revolutionary. Fully 90% of all my archived e-mail will never be seen again. The good news is that it doesn't take up any physical space - only theoretical bytes from a hard drive with plenty of headroom.

Listening to ''Tribe & Trance (Voyager Remix)'', by John Digweed (Play Count: 5)

Giving Microsoft a Human Face

I'm unapologetic in my dislike for almost all things Microsoft (MSFT). With the exception of their Webmail version of Outlook, I am generally unimpressed with their product line - from their Operating System to their office suite, Web browser, E-mail clients, online communities and whatever else they choose to cook up. I don't know when my dislike for Microsoft started, or if I was raised to think this way by a horde of Apple (AAPL) bigots, but in my decades of impressionability, the software behemoth/monopolist hasn't done much to make me change my mind, and their leadership doesn't exactly inspire good will and warm feelings.

It's easy to think all these things as universal - and ignore the fact that the global company employs thousands of intelligent, hard-working individuals who truthfully want their products to be top-notch and care about the consumer (or most do anyway). Of late, I've enjoyed reading the unsupported, non-sponsored "Mini-Microsoft" blog, which has become a sounding board for the company's employees on recent management trends, memos and news. In the site's most recent post, titled "Passionate Microsofties", the anonymous author shows that the company's army of coders and marketers cares about the company - the way we've always expected Apple and Google (GOOG) (among others) to have their own monopoly. Instead, we get a clear view into the struggles and triumphs and wishes that are true in any corporation - small or immense. People want to be proud of what they do and be recognized for it. It's that simple.

Listening to ''Europop'', by Eiffel 65 (Play Count: 27)

Google Blog Accidentally Deleted

Tonight, the official Google blog was temporarily off-line, and while many speculated that the site had been hacked into, it turns out, according to the Blogger Product Manager, that the official blog had accidentally been deleted. "D'oh!" was the official quote given. Now... let's give this a second of thought. These are the guys with the biggest search archive on the planet, the company with the largest available online e-mail boxes, and they seek to store 100% of all the world's information on Google GDrives with your local desktop becoming the backup or cache instead of the main storage option? I should let that sink in... I'm supposed to give all of my data to a company who "D'oh!"... accidentally deletes their own blog? That's not reassuring.

Listening to ''H.H.C. - We're Not Alone'', by Paul Oakenfold (Play Count: 4)

401k Matchup Closer Than Expected

On March 7th, we started tracking how well our own individual investments were producing, in comparison to those selected by a "professional" running our 401k, through Fidelity. What we've seen is that while my peaks have been higher than those of the fund, the valleys are of course, lower, and with the 401k slowly trending flat to slightly up, a true measure of my progress vs. the 401k is instead just how many up days I have versus down days. If I'm up, I'm up higher than the 401k, and if I'm down, I'm down more than the 401k. It's that simple. It's rare that I would go one direction and the market another. So... a few weeks into our little unqualified, unsanctioned, nobody wins anything contest, the current standings are eight to seven, with my pulling ahead today at the end of market close. We'll keep watching.

Listening to ''Blue Fear'', by Sasha (Play Count: 7)

TV Matchup: West Wing vs. 24

Three weeks ago, we matched up two television drams: "24" against "CSI Miami", and 24 came out on top - significantly. In fact, just last week, we took CSI Miami off our season pass list on TiVo - it was just THAT BAD. So, tonight, our our TiVo lineup, we watched yesterday's episode of West Wing, followed by tonight's episode of 24. Now, with 24 following, it didn't exactly dominate. In fact, at least for tonight, West Wing won out.

West Wing, now following the last weeks of the presidential election between Matthew Santos and Arnold Vinnick, continues to be great television, and we're not looking forward to having the series die at the end of the season. The characters are believable. The stress is real. The fatigue from a lack of sleep and even the marital tension shown by the candidates can be believed. And at least on this show, the president is flocked by staffers and administration, congressmen, lobbyists and ambassadors.

In stark contrast, 24 shows the bumbling president in an empty home, with only his first lady and at maximum, two or three folks willing to push him around - because he has no clue. And on 24, while the drama is very intriguing, the good guys shoot better than the bad guys, the technology mavens are intellectual giants, and somehow they still manage to get around Los Angeles in minutes. You'd smirk at the silliness if it wasn't such good TV.

Jack Bauer is a one man killing machine who is one step ahead of every ally and foe - be they the director of CTU, the president of the United States, or an accent-challenged Russian terrorist kingpin. He's very good, but too good - and today's episode saw him running, silhouetted out of a burning building in a scene better found in Terminator than in the Department of Homeland Security. Good television, but imminently forgettable.

Meanwhile, West Wing is having a sensational ending to what's been a great show. They are peaking in confronting the very real issues in today's elections and presidential politics - leaks and special prosecutors and the possibility of winning the election in the courts. Next week is election day, and we aren't that much closer in learning who will be the eventual winner. In 24, I think we already know who's going to win. West Wing wins here.

Listening to ''Forever Waiting'', by DJ Tiesto (Play Count: 5)

iTunes: Old Music Is New Again

When you're a music junkie like me, there comes a time in your life when you simply can't get to all your music as much as the tunes deserve. Right now, I have 17 days worth of music - a full 28.16 GB worth, according to iTunes, which means that even if I devoted 8 hours a day to listening, it would be more than seven weeks before I got through every song at least once. Problem.

So, utilizing one of Apple's tools, Smart Playlists, a while back, I designed a playlist called "The Neglected", which, appropriately enough, contains songs that haven't been listened to all the way through for the last 12 months, and populates based on iTunes' metadata information. When I first created the list, there were several days worth of songs that hadn't gotten attention for a full year, and after much dedication and focus, I'm pleased to say I've whittled the to-do list down to about an hour. Following a handful of Orbital tracks, we'll be down to zero - only to see all those songs I last listened to on March 28, 2005 be added to the pile tomorrow.

Listening to ''Lost'', by Orbital (Play Count: 7)

Reactionary Tech Media Doesn't Add to Conversation

On March 21st, I posted a piece discussing how technology companies need to adjust their pitches in a world of near-instant analysis, when it seems both the blogosphere and the mainstream media are in a race to announce their take on an announcement even before the ink is dry or before the product has reached its intended audience. Interestingly, Business 2.0 reporter Om Malik and I had a discussion about this on Sunday, in regards to a piece called "Trigger Happy", where he acknowledged that often the race to be first means that more research should be required.

Om's piece in turn led us to a parallel post from Robert Scoble, by far the most popular Microsoftee blogger, who argued that journalists who were not credible were incredibly irritating, and suggested that in retaliation for a publication's continually getting the facts wrong, Web users should not link to the site, or even mention it, and that in a vacuum, it would die. This piece, of course, quite controversial, came at a time when big companies including Microsoft (MSFT) and Apple (AAPL) were both being raked over the coals for exaggerations and untruths widely disseminated - including one that Vista would require a 60% code rewrite, and that Steve Jobs was jettisoning nearly one half of his Apple stock holdings.

In fact, more than a week after the stock transaction took place, only now are the wire services catching up to this would-be controversy. Though they are all now getting the story right, saying Jobs sold his shares for tax purposes, in the fast-moving world of tech media, the time to have made your mark has already come and gone. Those who followed the stock closely had already reviewed the news, analyzed it and moved on, and now we have to sit and watch as the Walmart (WMT) of news sources catches up. If you're going to lead the pack in tech news, be sure to get the facts right, and don't be afraid to let some stories go by. If you're a week late, move on.

ANtics Episode 2.5: Scutaro Skills

The A's roster seems to be fairly solidified, with more cuts being made today. But with Mark Ellis healthy and coming off a strong 2005 season, and the acquisition of Antonio Perez, what does this mean for fan favorite Marco Scutaro, especially in light of Freddy Bynum's status? Some are seeing Scutaro, or Ginter, or Bynum, as being the last options to reduce roster spots in what's become a crowded infield. Today, we look closer at Marco Scutaro, in "Scutaro Skills!"


Click to See Larger Comic

ANtics Archive: 2005/06 ANtics | Extras | Giveaway | PDF

Entering a Startup On the Ground Floor

I've never not worked for "a startup". Since the beginning of my senior year at UC Berkeley, I have been toiling away in the Silicon Valley working for private companies with amazing ideas and strong technology. But I know I made some of the worst career mistakes at the very beginning, when I went into the initial interview with the company's founder, not having known what I should ask for on the salary side, expecting him to make the first offer, and having less than zero clue as to what to expect in terms of stock options for this "Pre-IPO" company.

Back then, in the fall of 1998, everybody was either public, or Pre-IPO. By 1999, some companies were filing to go public on the same day they were announced, even if they didn't yet have a shipping product, or customers - so I knew that getting in as the third or fourth employee at this company was a big deal, especially as I hadn't yet completed my degree. This inexperience led to my floundering through the interview and completely low-balling my salary request. I left knowing I'd possibly earned myself the position, but likely on the basis of how little I had asked for as much as how well I had represented my talents.

As I wrote in an e-mail to my parents at 2 a.m. that night (October 14, 1998):

"I also had to say how much money I expected to pull. Gulp -- I had no idea. I tried to have him tell me what I should say, asking where the money was coming from, and if the company was profitable yet. The answers -- primary investors and no. The eventual plan is to put together a working product, find secondary investors as a result of the product, and then go public. He threw words at me like "stock holdings", "venture stock and capital", "initial public offering" and said that I was early enough to be on "the ground floor" although obviously not a co-founder, therefore as every Silicon Valley startup dreams of, we could "go Netscape", and there is already an established product."

Long story short, I was offered the position at the low-low price of $1,200 a month for what was expected to be 20 hours a week in Silicon Valley and 15 hours a week or so from home in Berkeley, where I was wrapping up my degree in Political Science, having completed the degree in Mass Communications my junior year. And there was no stock. Another colleague and I were told we would be given shares of the founder's stock in time - whenever that would be. Needless to say, the company didn't take off. I worked hard, and put in the hours, and eventually, the company saw it was time to raise my pay to match the effort I had been putting in - to $2000 a month and then to $2333 and maybe up to $2500 a month by the time it folded the next year. I wasn't getting rich, but felt a lot better about things than many of my starving student friends.

But how could I have known what to ask for, being as naive as I was? In another insightful piece, Guy Kawasaki says there are "Nine Questions To Ask a Startup". By my third job in the Valley, I felt I had a better handle on the salary side, but still was on the low-end to start, my past underpayments still having impact years later. Had I had Guy's instructions in my back pocket, not only would I possibly have been paid better, I may have selected more successful companies from 1998 to 2001 and made some cash rather than watching so many other people get rich when all I got was tired.

SportsBlogs Phenomenon Profiled in Sports Illustrated

Ten days ago, in an article titled "Sports + Blogs = Goodness", I discussed a rising star in the blogosphere: SportsBlogs Nation, particularly focused on one of our favorite and most-visited sites, Athletics Nation, run by its founder Tyler Bleszinski. The rapidly-expanding network is rivaling even the largest sports franchises for breaking news and team coverage - so much so that even the mainstream media can't ignore its momentum.

In this week's Sports Illustrated, a feature titled "Writing up a Storm" says "The Internet is changing sports coverage. Columnists who seldom leave their couches hold forth." Profiling a litany of blogs - some from fans, some from journalists and others from the athletes themselves, the article features Tyler's work, and includes a photo (staged) of him reclining in the McAfee Coliseum parking lot, laptop en tow, hat turned backwards, and barefoot. I've yet to see him without shoes myself, so the photographers took liberties in their idea.

The SportsBlogs Nation train is chugging along, and you're welcome aboard. Find your favorite team's site, register and go.

For the full story, click here. For a photo of Tyler used in the story, click here.

Nickel A Point

This Saturday, my wife and I had the opportunity to visit with her father for the first time in several weeks, and as we tend to do when we see him, we broke out the playing cards and did battle at both hearts and cribbage. He, like us, enjoys a little friendly competition, and he especially enjoys it when there's a little wager on the side - a buck a game, a nickel a point, and so on. Enough to say that there's a bet involved, but not enough to hurt anybody. In fact, I think the most we ever put on a game with him was $20 for a cribbage match. He won, of course.

Since marrying my wife in 2003, I've really enjoyed my father-in-law, and from what I can tell, I think he likes me too - for he's somebody I can call up and talk about sports to, discuss the expectations for this year's A's, who he has penned to win the AL MVP this year, or how his bracket is shaping up for the Final Four. If there's a big game on, he's watching it, and he at least expects me to know the score - even if I'm not glued to the set. Today was no different. Joining him in the mid afternoon, we saw the end of LSU vs. Texas (which went to overtime) and the start of UCLA vs. Memphis, as two of the four teams were set to head to Indianapolis for the Final Four. Meanwhile, we pulled up a card table, and played our own game in parallel.

Maybe in past years I might not have played aggressively, possibly being shy to tweak my new in-law's nerves (or that's my excuse), but today, we made sure to exact as much pain as possible at the card table. Playing to 100 in Hearts, I shot the moon twice in a row, and at the end of the game, he was left at 109 when I had only 40. At five cents a point, the planned side bet, that meant he owed me all of $3.45, while the other players owed me about $2.60 and $1.50 or so. That meant I had the massive haul of $7 - possibly enough to buy lunch this week, but of course, worth much more in bragging rights. Taking the scorecard, I asked him if he wanted to keep it and frame it for posterity. Politely, he said no. Big surprise.

With him being born in 1927, and having recently spent time in the hospital, I know we may not have my father-in-law around as long as we wish, and we will have to treasure these lazy afternoons of friendly competition before they fade to memory. I hope that we continue to make time and value his company and the friendly jousting that occurs, as we fight tooth and nail for every nickel, and recognize the experience is priceless.

Albright: Good vs. Evil Isn't Policy

For the last five-plus years, we've gotten used to Bush's platitudes of "good vs. evil" and how the "evil-doers" hate freedom. For those of us with a higher education beyond the sixth-grade level, which excludes pretty much anybody who voted for Bush in November of 2004, the oversimplification and labeling of whole groups of people as black vs. white, good vs. bad, has been insulting - both to them, and to those of us expected to swallow the tripe.

Today, in a scathing contribution to the LA Times, former secretary of state Madeline Albright takes the conversation up a few pegs by intelligently outlining that "Good vs. Evil Isn't a Strategy" at all. As she writes, "It is sometimes convenient, for purposes of rhetorical effect, for national leaders to talk of a globe neatly divided into good and bad. It is quite another, however, to base the policies of the world's most powerful nation upon that fiction." In all seriousness, this isn't like Star Wars with a Rebel Alliance facing "The Dark Side". International politics, globalization and how it intermixes with religion, cannot be simplified by a black vs. white, us vs. them, good vs. evil mentality.

As we've learned, President Bush and his cronies are not interested in learning the truths that may conflict with their elementary conclusions. It wasn't until 2005 that Bush even realized that Sunnis and Shiites were different sects in Iraq, after all, and that the two groups might occasionally disagree. (Big understatement) In fact, even if some of Bush's goals are well-intended, his oversimplification and saber-rattling has served to turn the global forces against us, making it more and more unlikely that our wishes will be enacted. Albright spells this out, saying, "In today's warped political environment, nothing strengthens a radical government more than Washington's overt antagonism."

It's a shame that it has turned out like this. Bush's predecessors in the Republican party, including his father and Reagan, always commanded some level of respect when it came to foreign policy, and while they too may have had shady dealings, they didn't try to simplify the enemy so much so that talks were impossible. Even the Soviet Union's "Evil Empire" came to the table to reduce the nuclear arms race. With this group of dunderheads making policy, there's no chance we would see Iraq, Iran, or North Korea offer similar compromise.

Universal Movie Downloads Extremely Expensive

Apple has led the way in legal music and television show downloads, offering a standard of 99 cents per song, $1.99 for a video or show. The logical next step that everyone expects the company to take is to jump to full-length feature films, and in what appears to be a trial run, Apple has offered a TV movie for the price of $9.99. While that may have seemed steep in comparison to the per song price, it still makes sense, especially if you factor in time to download, time to watch, etc. In comparison, what makes no sense whatsoever is Universal's recently proposed "download to own" service. While one of the earlier announcements, Universal is requesting customers pay $17.50 for older films, and $35 apiece for new downloads. Wow. That is a serious cost, one I can't see paying at all! Barring the company offering new films with major actors on the Web before they hit the theaters, I just don't see the country's movie fanatics embracing this service. The charges will leave your wallet wishing you hit the theater and got a large popcorn, movie nachos and a drink for you and a date. Even that would cost less.

Microsoft Extends Delay Tactics

I stayed off of the bandwagon dumping on Microsoft for their recent announcements that their "next generation" operating system, Vista, would be delayed through 2007, because kicking Microsoft when they have issues is just too easy. But tonight, we see that they simply don't have their act together at all - announcing a similar delay in their planned Office 2007 software suite, also until 2007.

With revenue from the Windows operating system and Office suite being Microsoft's two primary cash cows for the better part of two decades, any delays for the software monopoly behemoth impact the technology industry as a whole - from consumers and businesses timing upgrades to the OEM partners of the Redmond giant, who cannot count on a spike in this year's holiday season where they were before.

You know where my allegiances lie - Apple has made a superior operating system and user experience for a long time now, and continues to extend the lead. With delays on Microsoft's end, Apple's feature differentiation will be even more significant, and now they run on Intel, eliminating yet another barrier for some to the Macintosh platform. While I don't want to express too much schaudenfreude in Microsoft's plight, I can't argue that I'm surprised or disappointed.

Top Ten Books I'm Not Reading

Whatever my excuses are - whether it's being at the office too long, or letting TiVo and the Internet (this site included) take over my available hours, I'm simply not reading books and magazines as much as I should and have historically. As a result, some very good books are piling up, in my "to do" pile, and there's not been much movement.

1. Crashing the Gate by Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas
2. The Truth (With Jokes) by Al Franken
3. The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman
4. 2006 Oakland Athletics Media Guide (picked this up at Spring Training)
5. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins
6. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
7. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
8. The Colorado Kid by Stephen King
9. Trump - The Art of the Deal by Donald Trump (duh)
10. Sharing Good Times by Jimmy Carter

Voyeuristic A's Fans

It's been said one of the key elements to any successful product is to know your market and to tailor your offerings in such a way that the market will respond. Contributing factors can be a number of things, ranging from a first-mover advantage, an enhanced feature set or simply better packaging.

Such was the case with yesterday's announcement that I had received my A's 2006 season tickets. While that yearly rite of passage may seem uneventful, especially given that I paid good money for those tickets, and should expect to get them anyway, it was something I had been looking forward to, and for some reason, I just so happened to receive my shipment a day or more before anybody else I know has. With some quick camera work, I summarized this year's seasonal ticket book, and posted the photos to the site - using yet another untapped feature of RapidWeaver - the software behind this blog.

As mentioned yesterday, I posted the images and a quick intro to the Athletics Nation site, but the response has been more than ridiculous. Prior to this week, site traffic to louisgray.com had plugged along around 20 visits a day - topped by Monday's 130 or so spike. While today's traffic so far has seen "only" 120 unique visits, the number of pages viewed by each visitor has increased significantly, with some viewing 16 to 18 pages, literally clicking through every photo to see every picture in slideshow mode. As such, we've seen 315 page views from midnight through 8:00 p.m., with the previous record being Monday with just over 130.

Meanwhile, over at Athletics Nation, my post turned into a sounding board for all those looking to receive their tickets, some with real-time updates on where their FedEx shipments were. 82 comments later, the post has far outstripped any level of attention the ANtics comics regularly receive. Now that's comical...

Bush: Iraq War May Outlast His Presidency

I'll shy away from stating the obvious, where I make the point that George W's presidency should have ended before it began, but as his bumbling and avoidance of reality has become so commonplace, I almost feel like we should present him with a medal on those rare occasions where he is asked a direct question, and answers correctly, stating the obvious.

Following month after month, year after year, of continued violence in Iraq, and continued denials from the administration that the insurgents (as they are called) are making headway, Bush told reporters today that it's highly possible the Iraq War will be ongoing even after he leaves the White House. On the flip side, he continues to say that Iraq is not in a civil war, and taunts Democrats who have said he broke the law through the domestic spying program, but haven't called for its dismissal.

What Democrats have done all year is call attention to the lies that got us into this mess, the illegalities at home and abroad, the bumbling, lying, cluelessness that seems to be the accepted status quo in the administration and through the Republican party. Yet, when some of the more outspoken congressmen, including John Murtha, have asked us to investigate reducing our presence in Iraq, he and others are called cowards, who are said to "cut and run". Those who have questioned the administration's lies have been thrown under the bus and mocked for their questioning, but now, even our misleader in chief is recognizing we are not being welcomed as liberators - that instead, his legacy of death will have long-term implications far beyond what anyone in Washington D.C. ever imagined.

A's Season Tickets Arrived (With Photos)

I hadn't yet seen anybody on Athletics Nation announce the receipt of their 2006 Oakland A's season tickets, but in our house, they have been eagerly awaited. Today, we were pleased to have a visit from FedEx, and the friendly FedEx crew offered us forty chances at happiness - eighty if you count that I purchased two partial season ticket plans.

For your voyeuristic pleasure, I posted a gallery of the season ticket book, including front and back covers, full page shots, and individual ticket close-ups. Is it perfect? No. But that's because I can't make the big bucks as a photographer. I'm an amateur in everything I do, or so I'm told.


Click to Start Your Tour

More Samples:



Now, we're the humble church-goin' types, so for us to get a Friday/Saturday/Sunday package means there are 2 Field Level tickets available in section 114, row 28 for virtually every Sunday game at the Coliseum this year!

Sound interesting to you? Let's strike up a conversation...

The TrackBack Effect

The Web was built for linking. One page is not the final destination, and should always provide multiple links for pages on the site itself, and if relevant, links to third-party sites. But with recent advancements in the blogging world, this has been taken a step further, with a feature called TrackBacks, which, simply put, add a link and summary of your comments to a third-party site, if you link to them. It's a modern quid-pro-quo.

On Monday, two things of interest happened here at louisgray.com. I wrote a piece called "Newspapers a Dying Breed", discussing the potential fate of the San Jose Mercury News, now up for sale, and later that morning, the very same Mercury News scooped the technology media world by announcing Microsoft's work on a next generation game and music handheld, which I covered in "Microsoft Not Giving Up Despite Failures". In both cases, the links I provided issued TrackBacks to the original site.

Later that day, while at the office, I received a Google News alert saying that the blog had been quoted on media watchdog Editor & Publisher, in a piece covering CNET's blog site Blogma, and titled "CNet Forum: Web Guru Gilmor Wants Yahoo to Buy 'Mercury News'", a comment I had made was included. This happened thanks to TrackBacks, as CNet had found my post and included it in their morning news roundup. Additionally, in parallel, the link I had made to the Mercury News itself started driving significant traffic to the site, as the Microsoft rumor grew legs and got incredible exposure. The traffic swarm to Mercury News led some to click through and see my reaction, leading to six times the normal site volume Monday, and significant traffic from Redmond, Washington, home of Microsoft.

TrackBacks provide news seekers an opportunity to gain access to third-party commentary instantly, even if they may never have visited the site otherwise, and as the technology gains in adoption, you may see it further impact the process you take to gain information - as you rely less on established media and more on gaining the full picture from multiple viewpoints.

Launching Products in the Age of Instant Analysis

In politics, the president-elect has historically been given their first hundred days to set policy without extreme analysis from the press, in what's also referred to as a honeymoon period, where they have the opportunity to name their staff, introduce planned legislation and define the goals of their time in office. In the market, product announcements have followed a shorter cycle, where first impressions and media reviews are eagerly awaited - to see if the product experience approaches the levels promised by the company, or if its feature set is found lacking. But now, in an age where professional media and amateur commentators alike are seeing an increasing demand for instant analysis and feedback, those introducing new products to the market may have their wares filleted before a single customer has gotten their hands on a working device - their product launches dissected for praise or scorn, for the presentation itself, even if those writing and talking haven't given the news a chance to sink in.

Take a look at some of the most recent and most widely discussed product announcements for how this instant news cycle has taken hold.

Yesterday, Google introduced its Google Finance feature in direct competition to Yahoo! Finance, and the entire blogosphere was aflutter with the news. But rather than pass the links along with objectivity, there was a great rush to judgment. Business 2.0 reporter Om Malik, on his site, GigaOM, wrote in a big headline, "Google Finance Disappoints". How long did he use it? A week? A few days, before his dramatic conclusion? No. He writes, "After playing around with it for about 15 minutes, it is obvious that it will be a long time, and I mean long time in Internet years that is, before Google Finance really catches up to Yahoo Finance, which in fact is the gold standard." That's right. 15 minutes. After 15 minutes of intense evaluation, he was ready to declare it a failure, and his rush to judgment was parlayed into an appearance on CNBC today. But his strenuous evaluation didn't stop other sites from expressing quite the opposite response. TechCrunch wrote, "This is a great looking product overall. And they’ve taken things at least a step further than Yahoo Finance in its current form."

People are entitled to their opinion for sure. I've expressed mine occasionally here on this very site. But can instant analysis be as foolproof as say, Consumer Reports?

One amusing result is that instant commentary leads to retractions. Just look how Henry Blodget first starts his review as "Google Finance: Yawn" and ends with "Wow". Quite the 180, and one that comes with actual effort to investigate.

At the end of February, you may recall Apple held a special media event to announce the new iPod HiFi, the Intel Mac Mini and some other smaller announcements. Before a single consumer had access to the items, again, the instant analysis crowd issued a decree of disappointment. CNET's Blogma site summed up the mood of some would-be critics with the headline "Bloggers underwhelmed by Apple announcements". The site's story says "While Jobs had promised some "fun" new products, bloggers, many of whom gave up-to-the-minute accounts of his keynote, were largely underwhelmed by what they heard".

Up to the minute accounts and instant disappointment before a single unit had hit the Apple store. Maybe Apple should just avoid shipping the systems altogether now that they know it was a failure, right?

And earlier this month, as mentioned previously on this site, Microsoft unveiled its Origami ultramobile PC platform at the Intel Developers' Conference, and feedback across the Web was negative. You can see the headlines... "Microsoft's Origami UMPC: What Were They Thinking?", and "Will 2006 be the Year of High-Profile Technology Busts?" It's as if the instant Web news cycle is so excited to be the first to declare the disaster that nobody has taken into consideration the fact the devices haven't even gotten the opportunity to fail in the market.

The technology market is not alone in this instant analysis. It's seen everywhere, from sports to politics to American Idol. But those tasked with creating innovation and selling it to the masses need to learn how to capture that energy available and harness it to their own benefit, before they too are swallowed up in a wave of discontent.

Google Finance Set to Debut

Google once claimed its stakes in the search wars as the site with the clean, uncluttered interface that challenged you to "Feel Lucky". With expansion into paid for search ads, a host of desktop software tools including Google Desktop and Google Earth, and new Web features like GMail, Blogger, the Google Toolbar, Google News, Froogle, Google Pages and more, one has the option to find nearly as much data on Google as one associates with more established portal sites - namely Yahoo!.

Yet another wall falls down today with the debut of Google Finance. Rather than forge their own way with a "Moneygle" site or some other such nonsense, this page is ripped right from the Yahoo! playbook. With Yahoo! Finance having a significant headstart, Google Finance aims to offer stock charts, financial news, chat rooms and many of the familiar items we've come to expect from Yahoo! Finance and other similar sites on the Web.

I've used many of Yahoo!'s stock sites and functions with near-exclusivity for years, especially with the quasi-demise of the Excite@Home franchise. (I started with my.excite.com rather than my.yahoo.com) It should be interesting to see if Google can offer a superior service - one strong enough to push me to move over - but it better be worth the recreation of all my custom stock portfolios and news sources...

More reports on this announcement:
CNET: Google To Roll Out Its Own Finance Site
Forbes: Google Rolls Out Financial Site
San Jose Mercury News: Google Launches Financial Web Site
SearchEngineWatch: Google Launches Google Finance
Silicon Beat: Google Unleashes Google Finance

The Simpsons: Two More Years

Already with 17 full seasons under its belt, The Simpsons is the longest-running entertainment series on television, and according to The Hollywood Reporter, Fox just signed on for two more seasons, the show's 18th and 19th, which extends the contract through the 2007-2008 season. A Simpsons junkie myself, it's incredible to realize that there are children driving on the roads today who have never known a world without the wacky antics of Marge, Homer, Bart, Lisa and Maggie, not to mention the hundreds of other characters who have made the show unique. By the end of the two new seasons, these Simpsons era teens should be graduating from high school. (Unless they opted to instead watch the full DVD sets from the first seven seasons released so far instead of doing their homework.)

When the show first debuted, I was too young for my parents to be comfortable with my watching, especially on Sunday nights. It was too irreverent. Now, owning all seven DVD sets, and having imbibed reruns to my full content, I'm a quote-spewing, analogy reciting, Conan O'Brien worshiping fool. While it seems the show has lost its way over the last five or eight years, there are still precious few comedies that can compete with the ridiculousness the town of Springfield offers. The amusement for me lies in the fact there are countless references to sophisticated books, arts, and film - double entendres and wise cracks clearly not aimed for the pre-teen set. I stress to others how intellectual the show is and I usually get blank stares in return, but it's quite hilarious on all levels. I just hope I'm not embarrassed by whatever watered-down plot lines the newest generation of writers comes up with.

Microsoft Not Giving Up Despite Failures

By all measures, the launch of Microsoft's (MSFT) Ultra Mobile PC, Origami, was a dud. People are seeing it as yet another attempt for the software giant to force the world to adopt tablet computers, when that market may simply not exist. While Origami was largely expected to compete with everything from the iPod to Sony's Playstation Portable, it's recognized as being just yet another subnotebook - too large to put in your pocket, and too small to replace your laptop. Quite the niche, eh? (See: CoolTechNews: Another Failure for Microsoft)

But the company's not done. Dean Takahashi of the beleaguered Mercury News is claiming that in a separate project, Microsoft is planning a device that primarily acts as a video game player, and also plays music. It's suggested the machine is being championed by the group behind the XBox 360, and it too will compete with - you guessed it - Apple's (AAPL) iPod and Sony's Playstation Portable. The machine's debut, much like Windows next generation operating system, Vista, is not expected for more than a year. Undoubtedly, we will continue to hear rumors about this constantly until then, and when it too fails, Microsoft will go after the iPod ... again.

Newspapers a Dying Breed

From the age of 10 or so, I read the local paper every day - whether that was the Appeal-Democrat, which served the Marysville/Yuba City metropolis in Northern California, the Chico Enterprise Record in Chico, or the San Francisco Chronicle when I started attending UC Berkeley in college. For a long time, I knew that I wanted to make a career out of news reporting for newspapers. I held an internship at the 35,000 circulation Chico Enterprise Record, and wrote as a staff reporter for the 23,000 circulation Daily Californian in Berkeley, covering the crime beat, and dabbling in city council news or the UC regents.

Even in college, one of my two majors was Mass Communications, and I entertained thoughts of an internship at places like the Sacramento Bee, when offered it by a visiting speaker to one of my upper division journalism courses.

But by the time I was a junior, the Web had struck full-force, and as the Online Editor for the Daily Cal, I was keenly aware that the Web was the future, and the newspapers, as we knew them, represented the past. With access to the Web, I could gain sports scores and stock quotes instantly that were seriously outdated by the time they reached the next day's paper. I could even read editorial positions on papers across the country or the world, well beyond the local smokeshop or newsstand. And when it was clear that there was much more opportunity to focus on my Web efforts than as a journalist, I followed that route into Silicon Valley.

Which leads us to today's topic. Newspaper circulations are falling across the country, and in those areas where Web access is most rampant, the decline was most steep. According to a report in November of 2005, the San Francisco Chronicle's circulation fell more than 16% in a six-month period. Now, with major transitions at Knight Ridder's newspapers, the Silicon Valley's last great paper, the San Jose Mercury News, is up for sale to the highest bidder, and people are concerned that its high journalistic ideals may fall by the wayside. However, the Merc, as it's known, has long been a Web pioneer, and I would assume its tech-rich reader base can put up with the idea of them skinnying down a few reporters and possibly going Web-only. With access becoming ubiquitous, and news on the Web being more timely, maybe it's a bunch of noise about nothing.

We stopped receiving the Chronicle by sophomore year of college, and have never resigned up for the Mercury News, San Mateo Times or a host of other available papers. Their time, like the telegraph before it, is over and done. It's time to grow and move on.

Sunday Night News: Big and Small

Believe it or not, there's a lot more going on this weekend than the NCAA tournament, the World Baseball Classic, and continued spring training. I hate to admit that at times, there's a lot more to life than sports.

As widely reported, today marked the third anniversary of the Iraq War (II). The Bush Administration took the occasion to celebrate the progress they've seen, and again argue that the insurgents are losing and that the US will be remembered well in the history books. On the other side of the aisle, people are questioning the reasons behind a recent air offensive there, and continue in their frustrations as we see the many trillions of dollars and thousands of lives that have been erased in this conflict.

In the blogosphere, Guy Kawasaki emphasizes how important it is to be nice to those who can best help you, the little people, while the Redeye VC warns that as with other investment cycles, the bubble may soon burst on Web 2.0 companies, just as they got started. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley Sleuth updates us by saying the Google/Sun rumormonger is now backtracking. By the way, those three sites? Bookmark them all.

ANtics Episode 2.4: Spring Training Pins and Needles

Spring Training is about a lot more than just winning or losing. It's about AAA players trying to make their way to the big club, about veterans improving their skills, improving teammate camaraderie and for some, recovering from injury or avoiding hurting others (I'm looking at you, Bobby!). But there's no doubt that the Cactus League is full of "pins and needles" for all. Some of this year's themes are explored in this week's ANtics!

BTW - On my trip to spring training, I gave away printed copies of last year's ANtics to Barry Zito, Eric Chavez, Billy Beane, and the radio team of Ken Korach and Ray Fosse. You can download your copy of the handout in PDF.


Click to See Larger Comic

ANtics Archive: 2005/06 ANtics | Extras | Giveaway | PDF

iPod: Not Just Entertainment

When you think of Apple's iPod, you probably have some images in your head - the white earbuds connecting to the device, or the neon silhouette ads prominent in their commercials and billboards. You may think of "1,000 songs in your pocket", or the newly introduced iPods that play video, including TV shows from the networks and select cable shows. But for me, my iPod is boring. I get it out when I need to get work done, and when I connect it to the home laptop, my wife knows I'm focused on work from the office.

The reason for this is that ever since acquiring my first iPod (a mere 12 hours after they were announced), I've used the iPod as the go-between portable hard drive between the home computer and that of the office. The iPod functions as backup storage for the company Web site, and the primary repository for day to day tasks, and archived activity. With 60 Gigabytes available and an ultra-fast Firewire connection, it's just as good as the local disk drive, and work stays in the same state from one machine to another. While it's true that nearly 30 Gigabytes of music is stored on the iPod, as well as my address book and a small handful of personal files, it's definitely a work device.

I've grown reliant on the iPod being available, which has only caused me grief in two instances - once when I left the device at home on a day of a presentation, and zipped back home to get it, missing an hour of office productivity, and the second, much more alarming, incident, when I left a previous iPod, with 20 Gigabytes of data on it, in the seat cover of a flight from Chicago to Baltimore. While I had done periodic backups of the data, it's sure that some data was irrecoverably lost, and whoever took the seat on the flight immediately following had a nice surprise in store - and they certainly weren't interested in letting me know they found it, for after repeated calls to the BWI airport, none was ever reported found. I ended up having to purchase the latest iPod the following weekend from the Apple store and started the arduous tasks of restoring the data from backups, e-mail attachments and whatever I could find - and have been much more diligent about backing up since.

Because I think of the device as my work iPod, it's plugged into the computer at the office first thing every morning Monday through Friday, rendering all its stored music unavailable to me. I've even considered getting a second iPod, a smaller one, just for listening to music at the office, without disturbing my coworkers. Truth is I don't know if I could do that, and still look professional enough while getting everything I need to done, so that idea hasn't manifested itself, but it may some time. It also would seem funny to lug in two iPods to go with the two computers I've already got in the cubicle (one Mac and one Dell), making things just a bit crowded.

My iPod is essential, but not for what most people think. It's a serious work device. A portable hard drive, backup device and yes, it does fit in my pocket.

Are Blog Rumors Impacting Stocks?

In the late 1990's, rumors on stock boards from Yahoo!, Silicon Investor, The Motley Fool and Raging Bull would often have impact on the financial markets, whether through bumping up penny stocks in a quick pump and dump scheme, or suggesting rumors of mergers, take overs, new product shipments or product delays. While some of these people were caught, others made a lot of money in gaming the system.

Now, with community-generated media growing by leaps and bounds through personal blogs, and aggregation sites like Slashdot and Digg wielding a great deal of power in the blogosphere, some are trying to game the system through promotion of their own company's products, or through purchasing stock cheap, hyping a rumor, and selling when the stock goes up - migrating away from discussion boards, and to more legitimate, yet still unsourced sites.

One of these recent activities is described by Silicon Valley Sleuth, who charts a series of posts by a no-name blogger to Digg.com about the possibility of Google (GOOG) acquiring Sun Microsystems (SUNW). The blogger made multiple attempts to have his rumor picked up by Digg, and Sun stock, coincidentally or not, is up fractionally since he started. Should this be illegal, or has this person simply found a loophole, and enough suckers to help him make a profit?

Given the wide opportunities offered through freedom of speech, this individual and others like him, certainly have that right - but the responsibility is on site owners for Slashdot and Digg to reign in their algorithms or editors, to offer their readers the highest accuracy. Only though accuracy and consistency will readers continue to trust the sites, for Web users are fickle and can move along.

Watch When I Listen

Last.fm has an interesting service, which tracks what you listen to, and posts your stats to their site. Now, you can display what you listen to on your blog, as I have done, above. Now, should you choose to do so, you can get an idea as to what's running through my laptop speakers any time.

Cal Eliminated In NCAA Tournament

And that was that. One and done. As I had mentioned last week, I had the ominous suspicion that Cal's involvement with the NCAA Tournament would be fleeting. The team hadn't exactly coasted through the Pac Ten season and tournament, and hadn't exactly played the most dominant of non-conference schedules, while not exactly featuring a full five-man squad and a deep bench. As the team was single player centric, it was not out of realm to expect they would lose to North Carolina State. Sports Illustrated and Yahoo! Sports had picked Cal to lose as well, even though they had the higher seed. While I may be a true Cal fan and wish the team well, it wasn't a big surprise to see them go down so fast, and fall they did, 58-52. Though the team led at halftime, and kept it close, even to the last final minutes, it wasn't enough to advance to the round of 32.

Click and Mortar: Safeway.com

We all remember the dramatic rise and steep descent of WebVan during the first Web bubble. The online grocery chain spent too lavishly, expanded too quickly, and never built out the customer infrastructure needed to sport the capital expenditures required for serious food warehousing in a variety of metropolitan areas. With that company now only a distant memory, it wouldn't be too hard to think of the whole online grocery space in the past tense - but that would be wrong. Grocery outlets including Safeway are very quietly capitalizing on their brand and doing some good business in bringing groceries right to your door after you pre-order online.

Earlier this week, I received a promotional flyer from Safeway that offered my next delivery for free. I had last purchased from Safeway.com a few years ago, and I'm sure I was on their direct mail hit list for inactive customers. It worked. Yesterday, I went back to the site, and aisle by aisle (sort of), I added bread and lunch meats, and cereal, tortilla chips, and whatever else made sense. I could specify what I wanted by brand, by size and by quantity. The site promised me a two hour window the next day when it would be delivered, and sure enough, this evening a man came to our door with our entire grocery list. All I had to do was sign to receive it, and of course, put the groceries away. That probably would have been extra. The process was extremely simple, and in those evenings when I would just rather get home after work, it just might actually be worth the $9.95 charge to have someone else go shopping for me.

US Baseball Team Eliminated by Mexico

It was one thing for a "Dream Team" US squad to lose to Puerto Rico in the 2004 Olympics, but today, the United States fell to Mexico in the "World Baseball Classic" and found itself eliminated from competition, while Japan, Korea and others continue forward, further embarrassing the country credited with bringing both sports to life. Despite having sure first-ballot hall of famer Roger Clemens on the mound, and a line-up loaded with All-Stars, the U.S. team couldn't muster more than a single run in a 2-1 defeat.

The World Baseball Classic seemed like a foolish endeavor to begin with, with players opting out of the event, the New York Yankees protesting its existence, and hapless commissioner Bud Selig trying to tell everyone what a wonderful opportunity it was, all while ignoring the rising tumult around Barry Bonds and the steroids issue. Now, with the United States out, the players can return to their spring training squads, and all five people who cared about the final results can go back to watching re-runs of Law and Order or The View.

Download All ANtics Comics in PDF

Now you can download the same file that was printed out and handed to the A's players last week at spring training in Arizona. The PDF, which contains all ANtics episodes to date, in full color, is 1.5 Megabytes.

Google Stretching for Announcements

Google has had a rough time of it lately - seeing next generation applications debut before their time through leaked screenshots or PowerPoint notes inadvertently left behind on analyst day. Meanwhile, their stock has dropped by $150 from its peak only a few months ago. In the interim, the company is trying to continue positive press and interest through announcements on the company blog - ranging from Google Mars (similar to Google Earth - only with green skin and UFOs), tiny updates to their Desktop program, pictures of their pug, and today's announcement - real-time scores through SMS if you send your favorite team's name to their number. Color me unimpressed.

These aren't the announcements we would expect from a $100 billion valuation company. For years, we've been able to get sports scores by calling a toll-free number, or those toting Blackberry devices can just tap-click their way into ESPN. We've got no need for yet another service to get us this data! And if you're anywhere near a TV, ESPN and ESPN2 and FoxSports and CNN and CNN Headline News and Fox News... do I have to go on... have scrolling tickers with sports news and scores. The feature is so lame that Google had to manufacture 10 scenarios where you would use the service, which includes "that you have a restraining order filed against you by multiple sports professionals". I bet most of you can come up with a top ten better than theirs. They're just not trying any more!

Also - It seems Google's not focused on fixing the very real problems of click fraud. Internet Outsider has more.

Netscape.com to be Useful Again?

If you started out on the Mosaic and Netscape browsers through the rise of the Web like we did, you can probably recall how Netscape had a tremendous opportunity to capitalize on its being the default homepage for 90+% of the browsers out there, but hemmed and hawed its way into obscurity. Instead of becoming a portal for news, e-mail, sports and more, until much too late, the site instead implored you to download the latest point upgrade or RC (release candidate).

Now, with FireFox, Safari, the dreaded IE and others having taken over the browser space, Netscape and Netscape.com are a mere shell of their former selves. As Valleywag writes today, the only people using Netscape.com as their homepage are the decreasing number of Netscape employees, their family and partners, or the technology challenged, who don't know how to make changes to their browser.

But rumors on the Web are saying that with the recent promotion of Jason Calacanis, Netscape.com may soon mirror Digg.com and become a useful content source once again. (Paid Content: Netscape.com to be Relaunched as Digg-Like Site) Calacanis won't confirm anything, but says he'll tell us if changes are coming.

Mac vs. PC Price War: System Shootouts

Ever since Apple's introduction of the Macintosh in 1984, the company's computers have been accepted as being "more expensive" than their Windows/Intel counterparts. While at times that may have been true, Apple's move to Intel, as well as the introduction of the Mac Mini, have introduced new, lower price-points to bring the systems in line with Windows competition, and the company's success with the iPod music player has brought the Apple experience to a swath of new customers who wouldn't otherwise have considered the Macintosh.

That's all well and good, you say? Well, lucky for us, others have done the hard work of comparing like systems between the Macintosh world and the Windows world, feature by feature and part by part - putting the systems in easy to understand buckets, such as midrange laptops and desktops. By far the best and most consistent offering is Charles Gaba's "Mac vs. PC System Shootouts". It's worth taking a look at System Shootouts before you make a decision on your next computer. Make sure you know what you need, and what your budget is, and the site will find a solution that meets your requirements. Apple doesn't always win, but you'd be surprised how often it does.

Sports + Blogs = Goodness

Where do communities built around strong opinions and discussion make sense? Politics? Check. Religion? Check - mostly. Technology? Check. Sports? Absolutely. While the major sports media is bumbling through the move from article-based journalism and columns to online video, some smaller companies and groups are leading the way in capturing true fan community through the blogosphere, and none are doing it better than SportsBlogs Nation - headed by Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, and propelled through A's blog pioneer Tyler Bleszinski. The group - originally focused on major league baseball communities, is rapidly branching out to the other major sports such as the NFL and NBA and is seeing interest from the college realm - an area of sure growth in the future. Though starting out quietly, SportsBlogs Nation is seeing more than 100,000 individual page views a day, and is gaining the respect of fans and players alike - as site editors have scored interviews with team owners, GMs, players and coaches, once the exclusive realm of the major media.

One of the more annoying trends with all media - not just sports, is the trick of taking short articles or columns and rebranding the pieces as "blogs". Look - it's not really a true blog unless viewers are at the very least given the option to provide comment. It's not just posting content with a timestamp. And the vast majority of sites - including ESPN - don't do that. In dramatic contrast, every single one of SportsBlogs Nation's sites is designed with the users in mind - not only can visitors make comments, but they can create their own diaries, and should a site grow popular, there can be multiple user admins available to produce front-page stories. ESPN, CBS Sportsline, CNNSI and the rest of those sites aren't even close. Meanwhile, SportsBlogs Nation continues to sign up new teams and bloggers to provide real-time fan-generated content.

I've mentioned Athletics Nation here before, but I've also signed up with accounts on other SBNation sites like SacTown Royalty for the Sacramento Kings, Beyond the Boxscore for heavy-duty baseball stats, and Minor League Ball to cover those who haven't yet hit the majors. SBNation is so diverse, it's dramatically limited my need to consume the popular media. Anything relevant is already posted to my favorite sites. I've seen the future of sports. The revolution will not be televised. It will be blogged, on SBNation.

Journalism These Days... Seriously

In today's rapid-fire world of scoops and exclusives, it's always a race to get ahead of the next guy - so much so that the historical efforts to fact-check and edit simple grammar or story sources just need to go by the wayside, in exchange for being the first to announce something - anything - whether it's true or not.

While we can routinely see the news and media skewered on Comedy Central, through The Colbert Report and The Daily Show, or analyzed for fairness by Media Matters for America, and discussed at Editor and Publisher, one of the more amusing sites on this beat is "Regret the Error", which focuses on the niche market of newspaper corrections and retractions.

According to Regret the Error, one site published a story that actor/comedian Will Ferrell had plunged to his death in a paragliding accident after a "freak wind gush". This set off rumors throughout the Web that it was true, despite the release being chock full of errors and misspellings. Turns out the release was initiated from a free online press release submission service - one likely that will now look a lot deeper at those that come across its desk in the future.

Nasdaq Market Rally Continues

While not as strong as Monday's rise, technology stocks continued upwards today, and given my complete lack of diversification - as I stick to the companies and stocks I know, reducing my need to look around and research, this put me in a good spot today. Apple (AAPL) and Salesforce.com (CRM) were both up more than 2 percent, while Rackable (RACK) continued its gains, increasing more than one percent on the day. In fact, Rackable's increase of 1.15% was the lowest of the three, while that increase was actually the highest jump (if you can call it that) of any of the mutual funds featured by the 401k.

Given the above, this means that for the fourth session out of six, I outplayed the 401k mavens. It still seems that through reducing risk, we reduce reward, and the market is all about reward. Get what you can as fast as you can and get out before it's too late.

My Poor TiVo Needs Attention

While we were away in Arizona, following the noblest of pursuits - A's baseball and feigning an early summer burn/tan, our homebound, landlocked, TiVo continued to slave away in our absence, doing just as we had asked it to do, without any fuss, muss or compensation. Though we had abandoned it to the quiet of an unheated home for the space of four days, it didn't quit or turn in early hours, or sleep in, missing any of its programming.

Which leaves us with serious issues. while in Phoenix, TiVo stored the most recent copies of 24, The West Wing, ER, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Crossing Jordan, and Late Night With Conan O'Brien's much-anticipated journey to Finland. So how do we catch up, barring putting away the laptops, our books, and breaking out the caffeine? Could be a real conundrum, should I choose to give it priority. Do I need to come home earlier for work, or stay up later, or wake up early and show up to work late? All are very tempting possibilities to bring our home up to speed in TV-land. On the other hand, I could be giving this way too much thought. Good thing the TiVo didn't overthink it, and just did as it was told.

Great Day on the Stock Market

You might as well ignore me every time I say I'm out of one stock or another, because the bug keeps biting, and I can't stay out of a small handful. So long as I can keep my focus small and ride the ebbs and spikes of a number I know, I can maintain the growth and avoid losses. Or at least that's my excuse.

Monday's market activity made a fan out of me. Apple (AAPL) was upgraded, and rose nearly 4%. Salesforce.com (CRM) similarly grew nearly 3%, and Rackable (RACK) continued its strong run, jumping more than 7% Monday alone. Of course, that kind of action helped me continue to outpace the 401k, which saw gains of .2 to 1.1 percent in each of the top four funds. That makes the up-to-date score in the Louis vs. 401k challenge 3 to 2 in my favor so far. We'll keep you posted on how that continues to progress.

Back Home In California

We weren't gone long enough, but after one rainy day and two sunny ones in Arizona, we flew back to San Jose this evening and found our house much as we left it. Much to our chagrin, the elves didn't tidy up, or turn on the heater just before we arrived, and it's my guess they won't unpack for us either - unfortunately.

Today's game between the A's and White Sox was very interesting. The good guys started out ahead early 2-0 in the first, and tacked on 5 runs in the second, against a woeful Sox pitcher, on the backs of yet another home run by Eric Chavez, who is having a strong spring. Then... they coasted. The regulars eventually were replaced by the subs, and the subs managed to give the game back to the White Sox, who took an 8-7 lead by the 8th inning. Could it be the A's would lose both games I attended!? Turns out... no. The A's mounted a comeback in the bottom of the ninth, topped off with a 2 run single chopped through the infield by Charles Thomas, to win the game 9-8. The A's fans stood and cheered, while the White Sox fans (those who were left) slumped and slunk away.

Tomorrow's work schedule looks very full. Interviews start at 8 a.m. and there looks to be hour after hour of training in the mid-day. I fear I may need yet another vacation very shortly.

ANtics Giveaway to A's Players Today in Phoenix

On Friday, before leaving for Phoenix, I created a PDF file that contained all 14 ANtics comments to date, and had them printed on "good" color paper at Kinko's, and then had them sealed in a clear plastic cover. I made 10 copies of the 15 page document, at no small charge, and set out to see if I could hand-deliver the comics to the Oakland A's players who played the characters in the comic itself.

Today, before the game between the A's and the Anaheim Angels, I took my 10 copies and aggressively set out to find players who had been featured and might have time to read them. We found pitcher Barry Zito and handed him 3 copies, one for him and two more for him to hopefully pass around the clubhouse. I told him that in contrast to everyone else there who was angling for his autograph, that I wanted nothing and actually had something to give him. I said it was the comic strip from Athletics Nation that I worked on, and he said that he and the team was way into Athletics Nation.

3 down, 7 to go.

I then went up to the broadcast booth and found Ken Korach, who had spoken at last year's AN Day at Oakland Coliseum, and said we appreciated it, and gave him his copy. He said, "Is this mine to keep?" it was, and I left it.

4 down, 6 to go.

We headed back down to the bullpen, and left one in the bucket of balls where the A's relievers would wait. Somebody would get it.

5 down, 5 to go.

Then, walking back toward home plate, I spotted a man I thought to be A's general manager Billy Beane, but wasn't sure. This man had an FSN shirt on. So I took out an ANtics comic where Billy Beane was featured, and compared it to this gentleman. Now I was sure it was him. I walked up and opened the comic where he was featured, introduced the series, thanking him for his work and efforts in helping the site, and passed him his copy.

6 down, 4 to go.

Then we went over the A's dugout and saw the players warming up, hitting flyballs, playing catch, and getting ready for the game. A's star third baseman Eric Chavez came out to sign autographs. I got aggressive and made my way down there with the kids, and while helping the smallest kids pass their baseballs to the front, I introduced the ANtics to Eric and passed him 3 copies - again, one for him and two to share. He said that was cool, and kept signing.

9 down, 1 to go.

With the last ANtics book, we headed back up to the broadcast booth to announcer Ray Fosse, who was conducting an on-air interview. We waited for his interview to end, and they cut to commercial. At that point, I thanked him for reading the first ANtics episode on the air last year, and passed him his copy. He stood up and shook my hand and said thanks. I said thanks for his good work and wished him luck.

10 down. None left.

So, was it mission accomplished? I don't know. I really was hoping to get one for Joe Blanton, but he wasn't easy to get. And Ken Macha, another target, was at the team's other game. But I think we did well. We talked with Chavez, Zito, Beane, Fosse and Korach - all kingpins on the 2006 Oakland A's. And I hope the ANtics don't end up in the trash. But I feel it's not fair for just me to enjoy them, for if it weren't for the players, we'd have nothing to make up after all.

Cal #7 Seed In NCAA Tournament

Despite a lackadaisical performance against Pac-10 Conference champions UCLA, the Cal Bears mens basketball squad was invited to the field of 64 in the NCAA tournament this afternoon, and was rewarded with a #7 seed against North Carolina State of the ACC conference. Although Cal had been on-again off-again in regards to their potential to join the tourney, a late two-game surge in the Pac-10 conference tournament, combined with their 20 win record, and a third place finish in the overall conference rankings, provided them enough strength to make the tournament, though it's unclear how far they will go in a talented field that would see them playing the winner of Texas/Penn in the second round should they advance. Of course, with Texas being a #2 seed to Penn's #15, you can put good money on Texas coming out ahead there.

Overall, the Pac-10 Conference was awarded four spots in the tournament, with UCLA gaining a #2 seed, the Washington Huskies gaining the #5 seed, and Arizona pulling up with a #8 seed. This year's Cal team reminds me a lot of the 1995-1996 squad when I was a freshman, where one player (Shareef Abdur-Rahim then and Leon Powe now) was a single force that outshone the rest of the team. In that contest, Cal got waxed in the first game, and we can only hope the same doesn't happen again, should the Wolfpack choose to neutralize him.

A's Split Squads Provide Split Results

The gray clouds parted over Phoenix this morning, allowing for Spring Training to resume as originally planned. The AN contingent amassed at Papago Park and saw a tale of two games - with the A's regulars winning over the Angels 3-2, only to see the subs outscored 3-1 the rest of the way for a final tally of 5-4, erasing memories of a strong outing by Haren, and home runs by Eric Chavez and John Baker, who went 2 for 3 in his role as the A's DH.

In "the other game", the A's downed the Rockies 9-5 on the back of a 2 hit, 4 RBI game from Dan Johnson that also featured home runs by Mark Ellis and Adam Melhuse. Though Jason Kendall was rumored to try and start both games, the space/time continuum came into effect and blocked that plan cold.

One consistency in both games was the A's continued struggles on defense. The first play against the Angels was an error by Keith Ginter, which eventually allowed Chone Figgins to score. In fact, of the five Angel runs, only two were earned. In Colorado, two errors led to an unearned run in the 9th off of Matt Roney. Through our biased eyes, the infield at Papago Park left much to be desired, and likely contributed to some of the sloppiness.

Also of note - Crosby started his first game at shortstop, without injuries to himself or nearby teammates, while clubbing a double, and Haren pitched four solid innings, while Kurt Suzuki and Mac Suzuki were the featured battery for the A's in the fateful 8th inning. It was unknown at press time whether Ichiro was aware of the proceedings.

A's vs. Giants Rained Out In Phoenix

So much for the plans of mice and men, as they say. On the day of the first Spring Training game my wife and I could attend, torrential rain (for Phoenix anyway) has washed away any chances of the game being held. We showed up to the A's park, optimistically, a little after ten, for the noon game, and ended up being turned around. The A's official phone line said the game had been canceled by 11:30, so we are 0 for 1 so far in our 3-game plan.

Amusingly, this is the first spat of rain that the Phoenix area has seen in approximately five months (143 days), in a drought that's raised national headlines, and on the front page, banner headline, the Arizona Republic said "It's Gonna Rain Today - Honest". I didn't know "gonna" was approved AP style, but you learn something new every day. I'm gonna look that up, by golly. Though the rain is certainly inconvenient for us, it's probably much-desired by the millions of others in the area who needed it more than we didn't.

Oddly enough, even the rainout made headlines, but in our view, for the wrong reasons. The A's vs. Giants matchup was much anticipated due to the teams' rivalry, but the national media made it sound like the A's fans, who had a sellout, had come to see Barry. Wrong! We came to see the A's kick Barry's butt. But that didn't stop ESPN from running a headline that said "Sellout A's Crowd Misses Bonds Because of Rainout", and in the story, saying "a sellout crowd hoping to see Barry Bonds play arrived to a soggy stadium...". Whatever. I guess, factually, I had hoped to see the game, and as Bonds would have been there, I would have hoped to see him play. But that's a little down the list.

Is Cal On the Tournament Bubble?

In my four years at Cal (UC Berkeley), we only made one serious run through the NCAA Basketball tournament, when, led by coach Ben Braun, we made to the Sweet Sixteen, only to lose to the much-revered North Carolina Tarheels. That we made it that far was a surprise, as the team's leading scorer, Ed Gray, was out for the tournament with an injury. Since then, Cal hasn't done much in the tournament at all - in fact, in 1999, they even won the NIT championship, not that anybody noticed.

Flash forward to 2006, and we have an interesting story. Cal, with a double overtime defeat of Oregon yesterday, is now 20 and 9, and faces UCLA tonight in the Pac 10 Championship tourney final. The winner is a guaranteed lock for the NCAA tournament, and if UCLA loses, they will very likely still get in, thanks to a top 20 ranking. But if Cal loses? Who knows? The team will have 20 wins, which is a great start, but 10 losses, and only a small handful of meaningful wins. In ESPN's last "Bracketology" column, the author said Cal still had work to do to make it into the tournament rather than sit on the sidelines. And for Cal, it at times has seemed like a one man team. Last night, that one man, Leon Powe, scored 41 points, and the previous game, he literally outrebounded USC all by himself, 20 to 18.

After today's A's game, I'll do whatever I can to find out the Cal/UCLA matchup and be cheering on the Bears to claw their way to the NCAA tournament, but I don't trust the selection committee to do the right thing should they not win tonight. Cal has to pull it off.

Bay Area Baseball Rivals to Match Up In Arizona

We made it down to Arizona safe and sound, and in just hours, we will see the Oakland A's take on Barry Bonds and the hated San Francisco Giants in a game that should no doubt see quite a bit of media attention, due to Bonds' alleged dabbling in steroids, and should also see some strong fan reaction to his announcement, especially at a "home" ballpark for the A's, the team's cross-Bay rival.

Yesterday, with the day off from work, I took all fifteen ANtics comics, converted them to a single unified PDF file, and printed out 10 copies at Kinkos, with the intent of distributing copies to the players who have been covered for the last year. I don't have any idea how that will happen, but if the intimacy of Spring Training is close to what I've heard, then hopefully we will get that chance.

Yesterday, the A's played two split squad games, and as is common with split squad games, the A's well... split. They walloped the division rival Angels 16-4, but lost to the perennial basement dwelling Royals. That happens. So now the team has a record of 3-7 in the Cactus League campaign, which we keep being told has no bearing on reality. We shall see.

Top Ten Sites for NextGen Tech Info

It used to be easy to find the latest information on technology, and it used to be that the big media press was the place to get it. But now, CNET, ZDNet, eWeek and Wired are more recaps than news-breakers, while more focused rags like MacWeek (once called MacLeak because they always had scoops) are flat-out gone. Here's where I have enjoyed getting new data... fast.

1. GigaOM
2. TechCrunch
3. SiliconBeat
4. SearchBlog
5. Scobleizer
6. Engadget
7. GearLive
8. MacRumors
9. ValleyWag
10. Slashdot

Headed to Arizona for Spring Training

For the first time ever, and what hopefully won't be the last time, my wife and I are headed off to the Cactus League in Arizona to see the Oakland A's at their pre-season best, catching three games, against the Anaheim Angels, Chicago White Sox and San Francisco Giants. You can never get enough baseball, and we are just happy to get away from the house and our respective offices for a few days - as the vacation days are few and far between.

Of course, with our luck, the weather is threatening to diminish our fun. After nearly five months without rain, it's forecast that Phoenix may see showers on both Saturday and Sunday - two of the three days we've planned to be at the ballpark. That won't be good at all. After having it rain on our wedding day, and our honeymoon (in spots), it seems we're doomed. Maybe we're not meant to enjoy ourselves...

I haven't exactly learned how to fully break away, so on the trip, we'll be dragging along the Blackberry, and the laptop, and I practically demanded that our hotel feature high-speed wireless Internet, so we won't be too removed from the real world. So long as we have air, water and high-speed Internet, things will work themselves out.

While in Phoenix, we'll be sure to bring the camera. I'm hoping to take lots of photos of A's players for future ANtics, and possibly may share the ANtics themselves with those who've been featured. Given the relaxed atmosphere of the spring season, it could happen. We'll keep you posted.

Morning Notes: March 9, 2006

More in an irregularly occurring series...

This morning, TiVo shares jumped more than 4 percent, so I'm done with that play. In 7 days of holding the stock, it was up more than 7%, so that's all I was really looking for. I've made bigger money on TiVo before, but don't see that the bump from earnings (err... losses) is going to be sustained. I had purchased at 5.68 and sold at 5.99 - small potatoes, but I don't want to get greedy.

In other news, Apple looks more and more like they are going to mimic TiVo and offer season passes of TV shows through the iTunes Music Store. On their iTunes Video site, they say you can "buy the entire season of a TV show at a discount". Given that their full seasons for shows are running in the $35 to $40 range, I'm hoping we see some decrease. For me, this would only be interesting for a premium channel show, like HBO and Showtime, as we don't subscribe. Everything else, we'll let the TiVo run with. Additionally, Apple's added Law and Order: SVU to their lineup, and if Rush Limbaugh is to be believed, the company will soon be offering paid podcasts - his excellency included.

Also - Google can't seem to stay out of the news this week. They settled a case on click fraud yesterday by paying out $90 million. Not backbreaking for the search giant, but still a dent. Henry Blodget can't believe Google announced this on their blog of all places, saying "Google needs some new PR people and it needs them now." Also, Google is prepping a calendar service to work with GMail. TechCrunch has the screenshots. Rumor has it that Yahoo! employees leaked the screenshots to TechCrunch.

TiVo Canceling Lifetime Service Plan

Here's one way to ensure that we'll never upgrade to the latest TiVo DVR boxes - change the service plan so that we'd be contractually bound to pay the company about $20 a month just to continue watching the TV we already pay for on the cable, while gaining TiVo's standard functions (pause, slo-mo, skip and store). When my wife and I got our Series 1 recorder, I paid for the lifetime service fee, and won't ever have to give TiVo another check, should I choose to do so. But with the lifetime service plan only being assigned to the lifetime of the DVR, and not the lifetime of the customer (small difference there), if I were to upgrade, I would have to pay up again. And now, following this afternoon's announcement, the lifetime service plan is gone - as TiVo has opted to move all plans to include monthly fees.

TiVo has struggled to find a consistent, growing revenue stream. I can see how they would want to get more money from new customers, but what this has done is eliminate my plan to upgrade to a series 2 when it comes down the hand-me-down line, should a friend go to a series 3 following their introduction. Were I able to upgrade and buy another lifetime service plan, I would do so, but now that option has been taken away. Were I to accept the second box and move the Series 1 recorder to a second room, I'd still need to pay monthly service fees on the second TiVo, and that's just not interesting.

Technology Annoyances Back

Technology should just work. And given my focus on technology at home and at the office, it should work very well for me - right? So, then why do I have to deal with issues like cable modem outages and power adapters that simply don't work? I've mentioned both of those issue on the blog before, and yet, we're here again.

Apple's power adapters are still horrible. For some reason, my PowerBook G4 simply stopped liking Apple's power adapters, which, even if connected, would only have a fifty-fifty chance of actually charging the laptop. I'd have to adjust the wire or the connecting port at all sorts of odd angles to see the battery percentage go up at all. So, after dealing with this for weeks, I bit the bullet and ordered a Macally power adapter, which not only works with the PowerBook G4, but also costs half the price of Apple's. So now, at least that's working, and now, we get to throw away yet another Apple power adapter - the absolute worst hardware they make, period.

Oh yeah... and did I mention our cable modem is back on the blink? Literally. The darn thing's blinking, and we have no access. I didn't pay monthly fees in order to use it less than 31 days a month... and I expect it to work. If it wants to take time off for maintenance, then why doesn't that happen when I'm at the office, and nobody is using it at home? As far as I know, the beagle has yet to learn how to do much more than eat and sleep and rearrange our furniture. So, we're stuck. And now we get to remember what use computers were... before the Internet.

It shouldn't be this way. Anything less than 24 by 7 uptime is simply not acceptable.

Steroids: I Wish I Didn't Believe

Growing up in the late 1980s/early 1990s, I started my sports fan experience as a dedicated follower of the Oakland A's, led primarily by Bash Brothers Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire. From 1988 through 1990, the A's reached the World Series every year, and followed up in 1992 by winning the American League Western Division title. Throughout this time, Jose Canseco was my favorite player - nobody could hit the ball as far as he could, or walked with such a swagger. While at times the talk of steroids came up, or fans at opposing cities chanted "Steroids, Steroids!" at him, it was largely dismissed as rumor.

Soon, Canseco wore out his welcome in Oakland, and McGwire rose up to eclipse Canseco's place in the power echelon, overcoming injuries to post multiple seasons of more than 50 home runs, something Canseco had never accomplished, and topping it all with a record 70 home runs as a member of the St. Louis Cardinals in the epic 1998 race against Sammy Sosa. During these years, McGwire's body took on dramatic changes, as he grew thicker, broader, and talk of steroids again rose up - highlighted by the charges of his using androstenedione after a bottle of the drug was found in his locker. But as baseball had no testing program in place, neither he nor Canseco or others of their era were ever charged with breaking the rules. There were no rules - unless you were known to use cocaine or other illegal drugs - and even then, it would mean a short-term suspension. Yankees reliever Steve Howe, after all, had been suspended seven times altogether and kept getting another chance.

All this leads us to today's topic du jour - San Francisco Giants outfielder and home run champion Barry Bonds. Barry, like McGwire, started out a lanky player with home run power, who saw his offensive output explode after hitting his prime. In fact, after age 35, Barry had by far his best ever season, when in 2001, he broke McGwire's single season home run record, knocking out 73. But after federal agents raided a Burlingame lab and uncovered the BALCO case, linking Barry, Jason Giambi and other stars to the use of performance-enhancing drugs, Barry has been unable to shake allegations he knowingly used steroids, despite multiple denials on his part - in court and on the field. With the announcement yesterday that two San Francisco Chronicle reporters have issued a book called Game of Shadows, dedicated to Barry's steroid use, with more details than ever before, any doubts that Barry is dirty are now gone.

As a fan, I wanted badly to believe that Barry was clean. He may play for the Giants, but he is a phenomenal athlete to watch, and has done things that nobody has been able to do - things based on a talent he was born with beyond other players, even the greatest of stars. Similarly, I wanted to also believe that McGwire and Canseco were clean, and as an A's fan, I saw Jason Giambi join the ranks of the tainted, as the entire steroids scandal seemed to rotate around the Bay Area. That's part of being a fan - believing in the unbelievable, and hoping that these humans can be without fault or error. It's part of hoping that the sport (and other sports) is untarnished, clean itself, and that you can believe in the product you've paid good money to see and that the statistics being hit are true - without enhancements. I have been in significant denial, even when showered with mountains of evidence. I want to believe that those who are cheaters are found and eliminated. I wanted to believe Barry was not one of them, because his name, at the end of his career, will be all over the record books and I want to believe in those records. I want to revere those statistics the way we always have those of the past. 714, 373, 61, 755, 511, 660, and 586 all mean something to me. I only wish the new numbers could be remembered with the same fondness.

Morning Notes: March 8, 2006

More in an irregularly occurring series when there's news to discuss and not the time to do it.

This morning, Apple added Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" to the iTunes Music Store, and in a unique twist, set up a subscription process, where customers can pay $9.99 now, and not only receive the most recent show, but the next fifteen, as they air and become available. Effectively, that brings each episode to you for the low, low price of 66 cents each - contrasted with $1.99 being the typical fare for a 30-minute or 60-minute broadcast. It sets the stage for additional subscription-based services, a break from its buy and own model.

Yesterday, Microsoft revamped its search engine... again... in an attempt to take on Google for the world's most thorough Internet archive and index. Moving from MSN.com to its new Live.com, quasi-Web 2.0 site, the new search engine closely mimics Google's personal homepage service for customization and saved searches. However, in my attempts to use the site on Mac OS X, with both Safari and Firefox, results have been less than outstanding.

Additionally, Google's premature announcement of GDrive also included some presentation notes discussing forward looking financials, which forced the company to further disclose the data, according to SEC regulations. Due to their mistakes, their stock is getting hammered to the tune of $10 a share, and the media says after a series of financial missteps, "this one takes the cake" for the young, fast-moving company.

Don't Believe The Hype

After all the hype around Microsoft's Origami, prototypes of the devices were displayed at Intel's Developer Forum today, and according the News.com, the response has been a resounding thud. After weeks of bloggers hyping what could have been an iPod-killer, a PSP-killer, Palm-killer all in one, the device looks a lot like a tablet, too large for a handheld and too small for a laptop - so yet another entry in this elusive market that is hard to define and even harder to serve.

Interestingly, Microsoft's PR execution followed by an understated product introduction follows a very similar experience from TiVo last week, and Apple earlier. In all three cases, the companies elusively spread tidbits of information, and in the vacuum, bloggers and media hopefuls filled in the gaps - almost to a fault, as in every case more was expected than what was delivered, satisfying none who were watching. In this era of instant analysis, product debuts can be crowned successes or defeats even before a single device has shipped and reached customers. It's a far cry from the mantra of "underpromise and overdeliver". Through time, companies that elicit such a strong following will have to learn to temper expectations - whether through improved secrecy or in its opposite, increased openness.

Me vs. the 401k - Who Wins?

For years, I delayed signing up for the company's 401k plan, for a few reasons - first, the company didn't offer matching funds, limiting the potential benefits, and second, I always felt that I could react more quickly to market changes and be more likely to select potential winners, while mutual funds selected by a third party would be far too diversified to do any good. Years of being an amateur stock picker (always in tech and without diversification) showed me I could routinely outrun the market, and though there were always risks, I tended to come out on top.

However, I gave in at the end of 2004, and have watched the 401k slowly increase. And I do mean slowly... as even if I put as much as I can into the "high growth" funds, we're lucky to see anything more than 1% increase on a good month. Meanwhile, the money left in eTrade is a lot more flexible, but, as is cautioned, has the ability to be withdrawn and spent at any time, while the 401k is hidden away where I can't reach it.

So, the stock market in 2006 has definitely been up and down, as it seems for every winner I've picked, another tried and true favorite has been letting me down. That brings us to today. The three largest stocks I own on eTrade were each up today - at rates of 1.3%, 2.5% and 4%. I didn't mind. Slow and steady wins the race after all. But at market close, when I expected the 401k to chip in with similar gains, instead, all four funds were down... between .9% and 1.4% apiece. Seems they aren't picking the right horses.

So - today, I win. Louis 1, 401k 0. I'll watch this space and keep you posted.

Feedblitz Running Slow

For those of you who have opted into receive updates by e-mail, I apologize for some of the content's delay. It seems that Feedblitz is configured before 9 p.m. Pacific Time, so any of the previous evening's posts after 9 p.m. aren't shared until the following day's message - effectively delivering the news anywhere from 27 to 30 hours later. So, if you're looking to have the latest more quickly, the easiest way to get the data is to add the site's RSS feed to your friendly RSS reader of choice. Feedblitz is a great tool to passively receive updates, but I've not been wholly impressed with its speed.

TV Matchup: 24 vs. CSI Miami

Monday is a big day for the Tivo in our house, usually running with its red recording light on from 9 through 11:30, picking up 24, CSI Miami and wrapping up with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show. Usually, we don't get through all the shows on the same night, and cherry-pick the episodes as available through the week, but with both my wife and I home and not moving around (but somehow getting work done with the TV on in the background), we took in a special 2-hour episode of 24, followed by CSI Miami - in what should be three gripping hours of television drama, but instead only exposed CSI Miami for the half-baked, poorly written, half-acting tripe it is.

After a double feature of the non-stop intensity of 24, which has scene after scene of action, surprise, and intrigue, the laidback, wait-around, ridiculous attitude of CSI Miami is simply nauseating. While 24 can at times be less than credible (somehow the bad guys never kill Jack Bauer?), David Caruso's transparent, shallow pandering to the camera is flat-out ridiculous, and each time we suffer through it, I swear it will be the last time, and that this time, we'll take it off our Season Pass once and for all. Watching 24 and CSI Miami back to back just makes the choice that much more clear.

When David Caruso was on NYPD Blue, his character was very good, and he rivaled Dennis Franz for our attention. But we all know how that ended - with his being written out of the show and forced into what was long considered the most dramatic example of career suicide known in the TV acting business. That he got a second chance with CSI Miami was fine, but the man is a disaster, and his colleagues aren't that much better. In fact, the show is so formulaic and foolish, there are drinking games set to the characters' odd behaviors. It's one thing to try and support the CSI franchise. CSI: Las Vegas is still pretty good. But Miami and New York leave much to be desired. Jack could probably take them all out in one action-packed episode... of 24.

GDrive: Google to Search and Store World's Info

Google is on quite the ride, and with the company's wealth of engineering talent, capital and a rapidly-expanding technology infrastructure, the sky seems to be the limit for what's by far the world's most successful, most popular search engine. Beyond this, the company has been adding new Web services to its portfolio, including GMail and Blogger, and software services including Google Earth, the Google Toolbar, and most significantly, Google Desktop, which for those running Windows, lets users index their computer files and search them all with the same ease as they can the Web today. With the latest iteration of Google Desktop, the company introduced a new feature enabling customers to search their files from multiple computers, with the data being stored on site at Google. While this has raised privacy fears in some crowds, it may soon be accepted practice, as most technology advancements are after time has passed.

Now it's clear that Google isn't done there. In a presentation shown at the company's recent analyst day, some of the slides made reference to a service to "GDrive", which aims to store all the world's files - whether they be "emails, Web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc." The optimistic hope is that Google's GDrive would eventually grow to be the master drive, with local drives acting as cache or backup, not the other way around. While the idea is similar to Apple's iDisk and a variety of online services, Google may be aiming to take it to another level. Initial reaction has been mixed, whether it's labeled as the "wild fantasies of engineers with too much caffeine" or instead making yet another vault of data for unscrupulous feds to access should privacy rights be further deteriorated. Time will tell, as Google has not yet announced GDrive publicly , and it may be months before we know the truth.

Related Links:
Wall Street Journal: Google Has Plan to Act as Hard Drive for Users' Files
Geeking With Greg: In a World With Infinite Storage, Bandwidth and CPU Power

TiVo Mobile - Partnership and Nothing More?

News is leaking out that TiVo has planned a partnership with Verizon Wireless for their subscribers to schedule TiVo recording by cellphones, in a new service called TiVo Mobile. Not to be confused with a service that would offer TV viewing on Verizon phones, or viewing of TiVo hard drives remotely by the phone, it's only "yet another way" to schedule your TiVo when you're not home - on top of using the Tivo.com Web site or through Yahoo!'s online TV listings.

Hardly seems worth the bother. How often do you find yourself wishing you could reschedule your TiVo when you're both not at home and outside of reach of the Web by computer? And if you think about it, this only impacts those customers who already have a TiVo Series 2 (online scheduling isn't available on Series 1 DVRs) and who have Verizon Wireless. Sorry Cingular, T-Mobile, AT&T and other customers...

Of course, there's always the chance that either the news is wrong or I simply am too dense to get it. I really want TiVo to succeed, and wish there were more substantive news, but the company isn't exactly blowing me away lately.

(Update: Tivo issued a press release this morning)

ZoomClouds - blog content analysis

Is This Microsoft's Origami?

Click the image to see larger graphic.

Microsoft's stealth PR campaign on what should be one of the first handheld devices to run full-blown Windows XP is continuing, with more leaked imagery, to match the video and additional source code seen on the Origami project site.

Definitely looks like the goal of the project is to impact Apple's lead with their combined iTunes and iPod combo. You better believe that Microsoft is hoping their Origami will leapfrog the iPod and leverage the installed base using Windows Media Player. Earlier news reports said that Origami is not intended as a gaming machine to act as a portable Xbox.

(Image originally found here: http://dpud.primarydesigns.net/a/origamibig.jpg)

White House Focus: Intimidate the Media

Those in power and those who report on those that hold the power have never had the best of relationships. From Nixon's Watergate details being unveiled through the Washington Post to the innumerable quasi-scandals that dogged Clinton during his eight years in office, the press has often considered itself the fourth branch of government (the other three being executive, legislative and judicial of course). Armed with some stories of success and the need to drive ratings through sensationalism, skepticism or controversy, a hostile press can be very damaging to an administration.

Under the Bush White House, the administration's focus on PR tactics gained them a considerable amount of leeway - as following the terrorist attacks on Washington and New York, with Bush's approval ratings through the roof (odd how letting that happen helped others opinions of him), the administration marched into Afghanistan and Iraq on a glimpse of reason, while at the same time limiting privacy at home, and engaging in secret activities. While this "honeymoon" lasted the better part of a year or two, the culmination of bad news and bad publicity around the continued War in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, the continued lack of finding Osama Bin Laden, and a series of unqualified nominations for every public position from the Supreme Court on down, eventually turned the press to be more inquisitive, and this is driving the Bush White House nuts.

In the last year, the press has gotten ahold of and aired imagery on Abu Ghraib, uncovered secret international prisons run by the CIA, and discussed secret wiretapping of US citizens. Had it not been for the tenacity of the press in these cases, we could likely still be in the dark, as the administration has not exactly displayed a historic level of openness. Now, according to a story in the Washington Post today, the Bush administration has launched initiatives targeting journalists and their potential sources. This inquisition has extended beyond the federal realm in Washington DC, reaching to places including the Sacramento Bee, who has seen FBI agents from Los Angeles target the paper following a story on a terrorism case in Lodi.

The first amendment to the US Constitution protects freedom of the press to disseminate information - and for those leaders in office who make the laws and are expected to be truthful to be attempting to undermine this relationship and go after those who may have inconveniently revealed data they had wanted sealed only makes the situation worse - not that we would expect anything more from the Bush White House who has made bad decisions and idiocy an art unto itself.

ANtics Episode 2.3: A's Teammates Show the Love

The third ANtics comic of 2006 will be posted to Athletics Nation this afternoon, following the conclusion of their spring training game against the hated Angels of wherever they are from these days. In recent years, critics from far and wide have chastised the team for their focus on statistics and trends, and have instead credited grit, determination, camaraderie and leadership as being the true essentials for a winning team. In that vein, the A's players - in true Hallmark fashion - show the love.


Click to See Larger Comic

ANtics Archive: 2005/06 ANtics | ANtics Extras

A's Spring Training Losing Streak Hits Three

Spring training games don't matter - or so they say. But it's always easier to say that when your favorite team has won the first three contests than if they've lost their first three, which is where the Oakland A's sit right now, after a 9-7 setback to the Milwaukee (we don't recall which league we belong to) Brewers this afternoon.

Of note, today was the first radio broadcast on the A's new flagship radio station - KYCY 1550 AM, as well as the debut of Vince Controneo, who picks up where Bill King left off as the radio broadcast partner of Ken Korach and Ray Fosse. After a touching tribute to the late Bill King, who passed away in the off-season, the A's new radio squad performed well and sounded at ease with each other, as the A's, once up 2-0 early in the game, watched Zito allow some early runs and subsequent pitchers let the game slip away.

My wife and I will be in Arizona from March 11 through 13, to see the A's take on Anaheim, the Chicago White Sox and the SF Giants. We're hoping by that point, the A's squad will have learned how to win consistently rather than continue on their current trend.

(For those looking for good news, the A's DID beat South Africa by a score of 13-1 in an exhibition game. From what I understand, the game actually wasn't that close.)

Silicon Valley Gossip: Valleywag

For those of us who toil full time in the Silicon Valley, it's obvious we take ourselves too seriously - holding our long work hours and lack of social lives as a badge of honor (or at least that's my excuse). But some are looking to add the same levels of gossip and intrigue so common in entertainment and politics to our technology-focused lifestyle, giving Page Six a run for their money.

Valleywag is rising to the top of the Silicon Valley's rumor rags, ranging its coverage on which Web 2.0 company News Corp. is looking to acquire next to polls on who the most beautiful women at Google are. In true Matt Drudge fashion, Valleywag doesn't argue to have all the scoops, so if you have news and tips for Valleywag, it's just a click away, and you could see your rumors take hold in Silicon Valley consciousness.

Blackberry Avoids Shutdown

As mentioned previously, business executives, road warriors and government officials alike were fearing the possibility of Research In Motion's Blackberry service coming to a premature closure, due to patent litigation with NTP. While the suit's judge had chastised both parties for failing to come to a settlement earlier in the process, RIM and NTP came to agreement today on a settlement that saw RIM pay NTP more than $600 million to avoid a shutdown.

And there was much rejoicing. Analyst firm Gartner and others had previously suggested corporations hold off on extending service contracts with the handheld e-mail device maker until legal issues were concluded, as many feared they would be cut off from constant communication. Not surprisingly, this too was impacting RIM's sales data - as in parallel to the settlement agreement, the company announced what would be a significant earnings shortfall of between $40 and $60 million.

With that nuisance out of the way, RIM shareholders applauded the move, sending the stock up nearly 20% after market close today, even with the earnings miss. But the millions of Blackberry users around the world are even happier, while Palm executives, hoping for some "Schadenfreude" themselves, wishing to benefit from their competition's downfall, will have to grow market share through product innovation instead.

Schadenfreude

Courtesy of the Simpsons: "When Flanders Failed"

Lisa: Dad, do you know what Schadenfreude is?
Homer: (sarcastically) No, I do not know what Schadenfreude is. Please tell me, because I'm dying to know!
Lisa: It's a German term for 'shameful joy', taking pleasure in the suffering of others.
Homer: Oh, come on Lisa. I'm just glad to see him fall flat on his butt!

There's something about reading of the misfortunes and failures of others that is so enjoyable and amusing - and the media seems to eat this up. Two of my favorite recurring features in the business press are dedicated to the mistakes made by public figures and company executives.

The first is TheStreet.com's "The Five Dumbest Things on Wall Street This Week", which looks at the week's headlines, picks five blunders, and assigns them a numerical score on the "Dumb-O-Meter" from 1 to 100. This week, Google chimes in with a 93 over their CFO's reports of slowing growth, while CBS and Cisco also make the list.

The second is Business 2.0's annual feature "101 Dumbest Moments In Business", which does TheStreet.com 20 times better, and always astounds me with how they quickly find amusing screw-ups and summarize them in a paragraph apiece. If you haven't read through this year's list, make sure you do. After all, if the best part of reading others' mistakes is to avoid your own, there are more than 100 things you can learn NOT to do.

Top Ten Technology Magazines I Read

(Today we go old media. Once again, presented without any context or reasoning.)

1. Business 2.0
2. eWeek
3. InfoWorld
4. Storage Magazine
5. Computerworld
6. Network Computing
7. Network World
8. InformationWeek
9. Wired
10.Macworld

Is TiVo Becoming Irrelevant?

Since 2003, we've featured a TiVo digital video recorder (DVR) in the center of our entertainment hub - and if you've ever had access to a TiVo, and then been forced to fumble with standard television, you'll know there really is no going back. And similar to Apple fans, TiVo subscribers are fiercely loyal about their machines - eagerly awaiting feature enhancements, and often pow-wowing with one another on how they can "hack" their box to gain additional storage capacity or hidden surprises. But as much as they enjoy the company's product, there is a growing sense that the company is no longer on the leading technology edge - and has seen competition eclipse the lead it once had, reducing the company's actual and perceived value.

This week, TiVo stirred up interest by coyly hinting at a major product announcement that was to take place this morning. Cloaked in the type of secrecy that followed Apple's announcements earlier in the week, the Web began to buzz again about what TiVo would possibly have up their sleeves - the roll-out of their Series 3 recorders? More news into their partnership with NetFlix? Who knew?

Instead, the reports started to trickle in, from TiVo fan blogs to the Wall Street Journal, that all the company was readying was an enhancement aimed at children, called KidZone, which would help parents work with their children to avoid the potential evils of television, in cooperation with the Parents Television Council. And that was it. TiVo tried to trumpet the announcement as being groundbreaking, issuing a lofty release, titled "TV and Kids: Finally the Right Solution", but I don't think subscribers are buying it, and Wall Street didn't care - at all. In fact, TiVo stock didn't change a single penny on what should have been a rather important day for the company - and that really sums up the TiVo story - Unchanged.

Play Ball! First Spring Training Games Under Way

Just days after the conclusion of the Winter Olympics, a new sport has thrown off the shackles of an extended sabbatical and is prepared to return to fans' consciousness with a vengeance. Around Arizona and Florida today, teams got their first look at real nine inning games against major league opponents, and had the opportunity to not only showcase their star players, but try out some of the younger prospects.

The Oakland A's faced the Chicago Cubs in a mid-day game, and despite falling behind early 5-0, they rallied against one of the team's series of pitchers, scoring seven runs in the fifth inning, including a grand slam by second baseman Mark Ellis, only to eventually fall by a score of 8 to 7. While some might tell you spring training games and scores don't count, to the diehards, every game counts. Now, with the A's winless on the very early season, some are already calling for managerial changes and a lineup shakeup. But... maybe they're just kidding. Right guys?

New Month, New Bookmarks

Every minute I'm not on the Internet looking for new data, I'm falling further behind - or so it seems, and with every new site visited, I find content that it seems the masses have had access to for quite some time, information that I've been lacking and they had kept to themselves. Rather than do the same, I thought I'd display the most recent bookmarks I've taken down and will be following over the coming months, so that you too can be fulfilled.

AdWeek's AdFreak: AdWeek features a blog that summarizes interesting trends in the advertising world with quick two paragraph clips and summaries. Penned by multiple authors, each gets the chance to analyze branding highs and lows, new commercials and campaigns. Somehow, in two paragraphs, AdFreak captures the key elements and stays amusing at the same time.

TechCrunch: Quite possibly the top authority on Web 2.0, TechCrunch profiles and reviews new Web 2.0 products and companies. Many a service has debuted its wares through the site. TechCrunch has already introduced me to some interesting companies I may never have heard of without their quick hits.

GigaOm: Authored by Om Malik, a senior Business 2.0 reporter, GigaOm similarly tracks next generation technology, with a focus on networking and Internet trends and innovation. If you're even a bit curious about the world of VoIP, cable, and DSL, this is one to stow away.

Stereo Types

Apple's big day came and went yesterday, and after all the hype and speculation, they introduced a few anticipated items - the iPod Hi-Fi, effectively an Apple-designed stereo that interoperates with iPod, a souped up Mac Mini with Intel at the core, and oddly enough, a $99 leather case for the iPod, with even fewer options than much cheaper alternatives from third party vendors. Across the blogosphere, and in the analyst and media community came a resounding, "that was it?"

It's amusing to see the transition of the Apple faithful's antics to the mainstream. For those who often frequent AppleInsider or Think Secret, hoping for the latest rumor morsels to spill out of Cupertino, what's actually presented never measures up to expectations, and Apple fans always leave wanting more, and begin speculation anew for new dates to match their hoped releases. It's always been this way, and anybody watching Apple knows that Apple's stock always goes down on the day of announcements - in a cycle best known as "buy on the rumor, sell on the news". Yesterday, of course, was no different.

Examining the iPod Hi-Fi as a potential consumer - and I have to take that role with every announcement, I'm not very impressed. The iPod Hi-Fi is a very clean stereo system for integrating with the iPod, but that's where it begins and ends. As mentioned earlier on this site, I picked up the iHome iH5 for Christmas this last year, and not only does it already do everything Apple's new iPod Hi-Fi does, but it also features an alarm clock and AM/FM radio. If I were really expected to get rid of my home stereo as Steve Jobs suggested yesterday, then where is my solution for listening to A's baseball games on AM radio? Is he anticipating that as I have all my music at my fingertips, I may never need AM/FM again? Is it expected that I will instead resort to streaming radio online - beamed to the iPod Hi-Fi through my Airport Express, or simultaneously run the iPod Hi-Fi with Apple's $49 FM tuner for the iPod? It's not going to happen. I'm not so silly as to demand a cassette deck or CD changer - for iPod covers that, but if I'm expected to toss out my 50-disc CD changer with Dual cassette, clock and AM/FM radio in exchange for the iPod Hi-Fi, there's a lot more left to include.

BBC: Simpsons Trivia Trumps US Govt. Knowledge

Can you name the five main Simpsons characters? (You knew it was Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie, right?) Well, the BBC thinks that you probably can't recite the five rights guaranteed you by the first amendment to the US Constitution quite so easily. In fact, if you could recite those five rights, you would be a small minority - numbering one in every thousand.

(And to be honest, I didn't get them all either. I said "right to bear arms" before my wife, a social studies teacher, shot me a withering look from across the room... Right... second amendment, I knew that.)

But civics lessons aside, I think knowledge of the Simpsons may actually have more applicability to today's modern life than does the Constitution's first amendment. We're said to have freedom of the press, but the press is almost exclusively owned by massive conglomerates, and our taxpayer dollars have been known to fund administration pay-outs for positive stories... and our freedom of assembly is threatened when we've learned that there are government employees infiltrating peaceful organizations under the guise of Homeland Security or the Patriot Act.

What the BBC missed is not that we can name the Simpsons' main characters - big deal. It is more impressive if you can remember who shot Mr. Burns (Maggie), who Bart sold his soul to (Milhouse) and for how much ($5.00). Now into the show's 17th season, it is increasingly difficult for even the most ardent Simpsons historians to remember the characters, their plot twists, punch lines, and many capers. Luckily for us, we can study up by using a myriad of online resources and fan sites - or even better, go to the source. With the first seven seasons of the Simpsons on DVD, you can watch every episode commercial-free, and gain insight through included commentary.

It's practically your civic duty.