The presidential primaries are more like baseball's regular season than like March Madness. For the front-runners, every single game (or state) counts. And while at times it seems the broadcast networks are engaging in a rush to judgement, to claim themselves as the first to call a state for a candidate, whether through exit polling, projections or early precinct reporting, it's worth sitting in the seats until the last out to ind out who truly has won. And we're watching, metaphorically ignoring the occasional boo-birds and obnoxious drunks who are in the stands, trying to enjoy the game and root for our favored team.

Tonight, even as the most noisy of tech geeks are loudly cheering on Barak Obama, and seizing upon any glimpse of positive news in his column to show momentum, there's no chance he'll be crowned the nominee tonight. Similarly, Hillary Clinton, who I was happy to vote for this morning, won't have a lock on the Democratic party nomination tonight either. While a few weeks ago, Clinton looked to have a sizable lead in most Super Tuesday states, Obama's had the momentum, and chewed into that deficit.

Some expected this momentum would turn into significant victories for Obama tonight, and while he's certainly been competitive, Hillary has won the big states she was expected to win, and I believe, without having the results, that she will win California. However, despite this, the Democratic party distributes delegates by Congressional district in the primaries, not in winner-take-all fashion, as the Republicans do. This means that even if Hillary has the majority of wins, even the biggest wins, Obama will get a significant number of delegates, which will guarantee the race will go on.

Considering we're still nine months away from Election Day, the debates should go forward. The world could change dramatically in the next nine months, and it will benefit us all to have the discussions continue, just as I had said following the Iowa Caucuses last month.

And in case you were curious to my voting preferences today, I see the Democratic Party has an embarrassment of riches right now. Obama, Clinton and John Edwards were all strong candidates, any of whom I would be happy to see in office, especially considering the disaster we've endured the last seven years.

But to be honest, the more I know about HIllary, the more I support her. I read both volumes of Bill Clinton's biography, My Life,, and came away extremely impressed with Hillary, her upbringing, her focus and her intelligence. In the last few years, I've seen Hillary show incredible poise and something largely lacking in politics, serious intelligence. Hillary is really, really sharp. I've seen her take tough questions, and not only deliver a quick response, but one backed up with real data that is justifiable. I see her developing real plans for the economy, real plans for healthcare, and real knowledge about foreign policy and international relations, which I don't believe Obama can match today.

I enjoy hearing Obama speak. He is energetic and very likable. But when he calls for change, it reminds me especially that the change we are looking for is a change away from the Bush/Cheney/Rove years, not a change away from Bush and Clinton, as some have tried to say. While I recognize we're not giving Bill Clinton a third term, the years under Clinton's leadership were good - for the economy, for education, for the budget, and in our reputation around the world, a far cry from how they are today. If it's simply change you are looking for, then anybody on the Democratic side, or even Ron Paul, would be a good option. But if it's leadership, intelligence, and a plan for real action you're seeking, I believe HIllary is the best option. She would have the fastest ramp-up to turn our momentum around, and would have the deepest bench and resources from which to draw.

I hope that she does very well tonight, and that if she does achieve the nomination for her party, that those who support Obama today can see the unquestioned need to put a Democrat in the White House, and not give the Republicans another four years to degrade our reputation, our economy and our intelligence. Regardless of how this shakes out, we will be watching closely.

Also See:
Jan. 2008: The 2008 Elections Are Not Over After One Measly Vote
Jan. 2008: My Political Focus Started 20 Years Ago
Jan. 2007: Don't Blame Me, I'm Rooting for Hillary

With two Tivos in the house and a pair of Mac laptops being on almost 24 by 7, you'd think we'd be earlier to the game as far as getting the devices to talk to one another was concerned. But, despite my occasional protestations, we've sometimes taken the slow adopter route, and not forced ourselves to be exactly cutting edge. That's why, more than a year after Roxio first announced Toast Titanium 8, with full Tivo2Go support for Mac OS X, I'm only now enjoying the benefits of taking my TiVo'd shows anywhere I like.

I couldn't ask for the process to be much more simple than Roxio has devised. Their Toast Titanium suite comes with multiple applications, focused on CD burning, and a TiVo Transfer application. After entering in my TiVo's DVR ID, and connecting the TiVo to our wireless network with a simple USB adapter, Roxio scanned the TiVo's disk and showed me the TiVo's contents, including show name, description, duration and how much space it would take up on my hard drive to download it.


The TiVo Transfer Interface (Click to Enlarge)

To grab a show, all I have to do is click it, and hit "Start Transfer". I can even choose "Create Auto Transfer" for a specific show, so that every time my Mac is connected to the network, it'll download it directly to my hard drive. Now, if my wife is monopolizing the TV, or if the house needs to be quiet for whatever reason, I can take the show directly to my Mac, plug in my headphones, and watch on my laptop instead, with quality no worse than on my set.


Downloading from TiVo Transfer (Click to Enlarge)

TiVo changed the game on television networks by shifting when we watched shows, or how we consumed advertising. The option to take the shows with me on my laptop changes the location where I watch my entertainment. While the downloaded TiVo content isn't set up to play on my iPod Touch, or at least without file conversions I haven't tried yet, I appreciate having this new, fun, feature. Now, I intend to slink off and catch up on a few Daily Shows with Jon Stewart.

On Saturday night, my wife and I had the opportunity to put together a birthday party for my mother-in-law, who just marked her 80th birthday. As part of that celebration, I had prepared a slideshow, using Apple's Keynote software, showing more than 90 photos from her life. Lugging the laptop and connecting to projector, I set the slideshow on loop as background for the party, as we could see her start as a baby, gradually grow older, and then, start again.

Even this relatively simple use of technology drew awe from the group, who despite seeing the majority live in Silicon Valley, from Menlo Park, Mountain View, Palo Alto and the surrounding areas, were separated from the Internet generation by a good number of years. As many of them came to praise the slideshow, and asked me how I had done it... were the photos on CD?... I had to but grimace when I knew I hadn't started it until Saturday afternoon, and that the heavy lifting had in fact been done through Apple's software, and the application of an Antique-style theme, not instead, due to some wizardry on my part.

This real-life realization of the gap between how I grasp technology and gravitate toward new services, versus the slower road taken by those just a generation or further ahead, got me thinking. How aware were they of the latest in technology news, and what relevance did my cutting-edge dabblings have for them?

Taking place just a day after Microsoft's proposed take-over of Yahoo!, a pair talked to me about the possibility, and asked what I thought would happen. In that conversation, it was clear one knew what YouTube was, and they vaguely knew Google had purchased the company, but when I said it was for $1.65 billion, they were surprised to the level of detail. I didn't dare ask anybody if they used Twitter, or Facebook, or were familiar with RSS feeds. It's possible they might have TiVo, but more likely they had just moved to DVD, in addition to their VCR.

At one point, I was surprised when I mentioned storage, that one of them not only had a vague idea as to how big her hard drive was, but said that as a digital photographer, she wanted advice on the best external hard drives to get. I tried to help. But this incident was the exception. It's often hard enough to explain to people what I do for a living, or where I work, or what makes us different. It's quite another to explain how I've taken a interest in technology and extended to include blogging (which my guess is that some knew about), RSS feeds, startups, social networking and news aggregators.

The goal of getting my mother-in-law off AOL, and her ancient Dell besides, is now almost 5 years in the running. In that time, she's purchased two Mac laptops, including a MacBook Pro, yet that month-old machine is still in its box, unopened. And while we've given her wireless through Airport Express, she's not moving around the house on her laptop. Not yet. I've now been told the plan to move off Windows and to her Mac is after she gets her bedroom re-designed. Moving slowly and serially is the plan, and just maybe it'll happen this time.

But in a world when the days behind you far outnumber the days in front of you, the need to multi-task and remain cutting-edge just isn't there. While I'm more likely to share an RSS feed or e-mail you a link, I instead might get clips from this week's Mercury News. Even when the older generation is trying to keep up, they're falling further behind. And maybe that's okay. I just hope that as my decades increase, and I move from 30 to 40 to 50 and beyond, I don't also slow down and fall behind, but can remain relevant and aware of the world of tech. Otherwise, please tell my system to Shut Down.

By now, it's no secret, even to the least sports-affiliated of you, that the New York Giants beat the previously-undefeated New England Patriots to claim Super Bowl XLII. Just a week after many were arguing whether the Patriots team was among the best ever in the history of the NFL, it turned out they weren't even dominant enough to beat the Giants in the one game that would have truly made history. Now, instead, the Patriots were just on the downside of one of the bigger upsets in recent memory. And we loved it. As I watched, I loudly clapped my hands and shouted when Eli Manning made his touchdown pass to Plaxico Burress with 35 seconds left, making the win a near-certainty.

While I'm not really a huge fan of any specific NFL team, having left the stable of the 49ers faithful more than a decade ago, there was no question I was rooting for the Giants tonight, as well as against the Patriots, as much as anything. As a Bay Area fan, I've grown tired of the antics of the Boston teams, and especially their fans, who see it as their God-given right to go out and gather championships. Since 2004 (and earlier), when the Red Sox finally garnered their first World Series trophy in nearly a century, their fans have been among the most vocal and most annoying, rivaling only Yankees fans in their ridiculousness. As their own team's salaries spiral ever higher, they can't be seen as fighting against a Goliath, being a Goliath themselves. And in a rare twist, tonight, I was rooting for a New York team who hadn't been given much chance by the national media to win it all.

Over my life, I've grown accustomed to rooting for the underdog, not only in sports, but in technology, business and even politics. I don't tend to gravitate toward that which is most popular or most purchased because I see others doing it. Instead, I tend to make my own choices, market share be darned. That's why even in the face of intense competition from other vendors, I've made my choices in Apple and TiVo, and am not a big fan of Microsoft. I continue to root hard for my small-market teams, the Oakland A's and the Sacramento Kings. I continue to find flaws in the big companies' offerings and laud the efforts of small start-ups, even when their own offerings have holes. I see the potential in the little guy as they work hard to become the big guy, and hope they remain humble.

And when the little guy I have always rooting for may become the big guy on the block, their newfound power has me sometimes questioning if they've lost that innovative focus, and just what made them great in the first place. Google is slowly making that transition, adding on new focuses, when the ink isn't yet dry on the last product announcement, and they aren't always going to receive the benefit of the doubt from me the way they once did. And Apple, a one-time blip in most markets, is now owning the leadership position in digital entertainment and devices, and should be expected to do the right thing in terms of product prioritization and pricing.

Unfortunately for me, and others like me, teams and companies and technologies are often the underdog for good reason. Sometimes the competition has bigger stars, a bigger cash hoard, and more resources. Sometimes, they have a few years' head-start, or a customer base so strong that its difficult to push for conversion. So, I often find myself disappointed when I see the little guys give up, stay small, or in the world of sports, lose and go home, only to re-open my hopes the following year. But tonight, at least for 24 hours, we're happy that the big beast from Boston was thwarted, and the underdogs went home victorious. If only that always happened.