Given how I'm not even on the leaderboard for this week's contest (it's early!), I almost regret mentioning it, but through sheer luck and occasional flukiness, I managed to come in first place in Ballhype's Golden Picks contest last week, making it my second win in the four weeks the contest has been running. I also finished third the prior week and, as you recall, I won the first time the contest was held. It's yet again, one of those talents that has just about zero application to the real world. There's no money to be made from random sports outcome guesses on this here Internet.

Meanwhile, Ballhype is growing by leaps and bounds. Rarely does a day go by when I don't find a new feature on the site. Jason and Erin, the husband and wife combo behind the magic, are rapidly building out a solid site that is my go to for breaking sports news and scoreboard watching. ESPN.com and MLB.com are no longer a destination for me, except in those rare opportunities when Ballhype and Sports Blogs Nation let me down.

Of course, as they add features and users, the likelihood that I can extend my winning streak will rapidly go away. There are always more people out there with more free time than me who will take to the site and make me an afterthought. At least we've had fun when the site was getting off the ground!

Recent features are highlighted on the Ballhype blog. Go check it out!

Unless you've been away from the computer for the last 24 hours, you are likely familiar with yesterday's amazing mob-like takeover of the Digg site by its users, angry about the site's removal of a submitted story which offered up a code removing copy protection from HD-DVDs on Linux. While the crack itself was esoteric, and probably didn't mean a hill of beans to the vast majority of the site's users, the ensuing take-down was the effect of yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, spawning hundreds and hundreds of follow-on submissions that swamped the front page, even leading to the eventual, short-term shutdown of the site late yesterday.

Amid the din, Digg tried to explain its stance, saying they had to comply with copyright owners. But that just fanned the flames, and eventually, Digg founder Kevin Rose capitulated, saying "Today was an insane day" and added "We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code..."

The inmates had taken over the asylum.

Response to the melee is a lot like rubbernecking on the freeway. Everybody, jaws agape, had something to say on the subject, from TechCrunch and Mashable!, to parislemon to Digg competitor Slashdot. Many are cheering on the user base. Others are wondering if the takedown notice was even valid in the first place. But to me, as fun as it is to watch the mob, I absolutely see where Digg was coming from, and the response, to give the users what they want, is in dangerous territory.

Yesterday's explosion was around a code most of us would never use. But what is to stop the next round of Digg mobbery from promoting software piracy as Microsoft Windows Vista registration codes are passed around, or the latest TV shows and films are posted to BitTorrent? As Digg had first said yesterday, "We’ve been notified by the owners of this intellectual property that they believe the posting of the encryption key infringes their intellectual property rights." But the sheer volume of users took over, and changed the rules. If enough of the mob decides tomorrow that leaking a DIVX copy of the new Simpsons movie online is the topic du jour of the day, they could again revolt against Digg and make sure that Digg's hands are tied. Now, there's precedent that Digg will walk away from a tough fight, when it threatens to cripple the popular site.

There is a population on the Web all too happy to find new ways to get something for free - whether they be film and TV downloads or MP3 files, software or pornography. Now that Digg has shown it can be used for nefarious methods, another barrier has been taken down between the Internet's dark side and those who have always followed the rules.

One of my biggest pet peeves of Google News search has long been the search engine's inability to recognize if a story had already been tracked, spawning new "alerts" every hour, while the content stayed the same - the only difference being the story registered as having been posted "five hours ago" versus "four hours ago", "three hours ago", et cetera. Now, in a quiet upgrade today, it looks like Google has heard our cries and eliminated the issue once and for all.

As the two below screen shots show, Google News now offers three ways to sort search results:

1. Sorted by relevance
2. Sort by date
3. Sort by date with duplicates included

The second option, without duplicates, replaces the previous version, which showed all duplicates. It, in turn slid over to the right, as the third option.

A quick search for Global Warming, a hot topic at Google these days, easily demonstrates the power of the new filter. Under the old system, it would spawn 34,065 results. With the deduplication filter applied, that number is slashed in half, to 17,247.


Before: Searching for Global Warming Gains 34,000 results


After: The same search yields 17,000 results

And in case you think that's an isolated case, here are some more searches, before and after.

* Apple: 17,568 with the filter, and 30,419 without.
* Intel: 6,411 with the filter, and 12,783 without.
* Microsoft: 20,897 with the filter, and 40,847 without.

Looks like a fairly standard 2 to 1 reduction, across the board. Looking at current events, or "real news", how does the new filter work?

* Virginia Tech: 35,325 with the filter, and 82,270 without.
* Freeway Collapse: 234 with the filter, and 1,640 without.
* Golden State Warriors: 1,959 with the filter, and 8,182 without.

There, the ratio is even more dramatic, anywhere from 3 to 8 times.

As I rely on Google News searches to keep me on top of my company and its competitors, and have imported these news searches into my RSS feeds in Google Reader, the deduplication effort by Google is much anticipated and appreciated. Even if Google wants to find and manage all the world's information, they know the value of reducing the noise.

Cross-posted to Athletics Nation...

After the month of April, a few things are evident about this team. The offensive struggles and pitching strengths have been well chronicled. But amidst this, the A's are relying on some players who didn't expect to play such critical roles on the squad, so soon. Danny Putnam, Dallas Braden and Travis Buck have all contributed - for better or for worse. Others, like Chad Gaudin, have stepped up to fill holes left by injuries. It's not easy...


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