After an extended weekend earlier this month to enjoy the A's at Spring Training, last night offered the first chance to see our team playing something resembling a real game, in the final exhibition warmup series, against the San Francisco Giants at AT&T Park.

Though my father-in-law laughed at me on my ride up to San Francisco, saying "I would freeze my butt off", we had come prepared, with A's jacket and cap, not just to show our colors, but to protect us from The City's elements. Not as bad as Candlestick Park, AT&T Park also presents the option to sit in cool temperatures for three or so hours with the occasional wind gust whipping through. It was clear that the food vendors weren't going to move many chocolate malts or ice cream sandwiches on the night, but they certainly tried.

The A's presented a solid lineup with Eric Chavez, Jason Kendall, Mark Ellis, Bobby Crosby, Mike Piazza, and Nick Swisher making the start, and Rich Harden throwing heat from the mound. Only injuries to Milton Bradley, Dan Johnson and others kept the team from looking fully intact. We were pleased to see A's newcomer Shannon Stewart, and hot rookie prospect Travis Buck (see ANtics below) also playing. The Giants countered with their veteran-filled lineup, including Barry Bonds, Omar Visquel, Ray Durham, Pedro Feliz, and Matt Cain pitching. The game promised to be a solid pitching matchup and didn't disappoint.

The Giants posted a quick run on the board in the first, as Harden gave up a leadoff triple to Dave Roberts, and a double to the next hitter, putting the Giants up 1-0. The A's fought back in the next inning, in their own "special" way, driving in a run with a double play. I told my seatmates next to me that was exactly what they had planned. It stayed 1-1 for 4 full innings, until the sixth, when both teams scored again, making it 2-2. But no team seemed to really have the edge, and offense was scarce. The A's only managed five hits on the night, and the Giants scattered nine. The night's cool temperatures denied any balls leaving the yard, though the Giants tried to win the game in the 9th, hitting three fly balls hard off Brad Halsey, who pitched the final three innings.

Tied in the 9th, the game went to an extra frame, where both teams didn't score, and it was called. A 2-2 tie. In baseball. Those fans, including us, who had stayed the more than three hours at AT&T Park to watch the game in its entirety, stood up and walked out without a loss and without a victory. Empty. But in Spring Training, these things are not unexpected. Both teams want to be in good shape before the season, and don't see the value of hitting each other for 17 full, like the A's did against the Dodgers last season.

Still, it was great to be back at a major league ballpark to see major league teams play. We're only a little over a week away from starting to use our A's season tickets, and I'm ready for the season to start. Now.

In February, I stated one of my biggest tech wishes is to find a wireless power solution for my laptop or other devices. While we've grown accustomed to wireless Internet in most major locations (home, work, airport, hotels, etc.), we're still required to lug around power supplies which present issues themselves, as cords fray and connectors get bent or misaligned.

I've suggested the first company to make wireless power simple and affordable will have a major hit on their hands. GeekWhat's Tony Chung agreed.

Now, it appears others are waking up to the potential for wireless power to become a reality. A company called Powercast has developed a way to power low-voltage devices wirelessly, and Philips will be bringing it to market, according to Mathew Ingram.. Chris Pirillo is similarly excited, saying "Finally, a piece of technology that nobody will be able to live without."

Powercast has a major write-up in the upcoming April issue of Business 2.0, which any good geek should be subscribed to, BTW. Business 2.0 says the technology isn't any more sophisticated than AM or FM radio, as it converts radio waves into DC electricity.

The biggest drawback I could find in this early access product? It only charges to distances of 3 feet, for now. So it won't power large devices, and it won't power them over the distance of a room or a house, so there's still a lot more work to do, but I really like the direction this is going. I can't wait to ditch the power cord.

Earlier this week, Yahoo! made headlines for eliminating any restrictions on its Yahoo! Mail users. (Coverage: GigaOM, Richard McManus, Jeremy Zadowny)

Previously capped at 1 gigabyte of storage apiece, trailing Google's GMail offering, which queued up 2.8 gigabytes of e-mail space, Yahoo! took the plunge by moving to an unlimited model, in a hope of capitalizing on its strong user base, and possibly to start getting attention away from Google, who has been the assumed technology leader since the company's debut.

The move away from limited to unlimited has been seen time and again in the technology space. After all, it wasn't all that long ago that AOL and other dial-up ISPs charged by the hour you were logged on.

When AOL did switch away from offering hundreds of hours a month on widely distributed CD-ROMs, and moved to unlimited, it was a major change. You may remember that AOL in the first days of the promotion went almost completely inaccessible as the most hard-core users would dial in and never hang up, or set up autoscripts that would artificially keep them logged in after periods of inactivity.

The move from metered to unlimited is also taking hold in traditionally penny-tight industries like cellular phone service. While most plans offer several hundred minutes a month, others, including MetroPCS, are moving to basic monthly fees, regardless of usage. The business model there assumes that most won't exceed a certain threshold, effectively overpaying for the minutes they actually used, while the busiest of users won't bankrupt their provider.

On the Web, unlimited makes sense. Web hosting providers typically limit their customers to a standard amount of capacity space, and megabytes of data transmitted per month. But on the most popular of days, sites may be brought down because they had unforeseen traffic. That's like punishing your most successful customers. (See: Tom Foremski of Silicon Valley Watcher)

I expect that the Web providers who will win will offer unlimited accesses and capacity, and those offering limits will only be limiting their own potential growth. That Yahoo! saw this trend, and wanted to be part of it, is smart. It doesn't mean I'll ditch my .Mac e-mail address for Yahoo! Mail any more than I did for GMail, but some might.

On Friday, the Apple TV showed up, much to my delight. By Friday night, we had the box up and running, and by Saturday morning, more than 30 gigabytes of video and audio had been synchronized from my PowerBook to the Apple TV device. Now, I can watch TV shows and listen to my music through the TV set that were previously "trapped" in my computer or iPod.

To see pictures of the setup, take a look at the post I made to The Apple Blog this morning, covering my first 48 hours with Apple TV. (See: Life With Apple TV: The First 48 Hours) In addition, the ease of use of the Apple TV really got me thinking about where else Apple could go to take the technology. With a little tweaking, and a much bigger hard drive, Apple could be a serious player for home network storage. (See: Will Apple Ship Wireless Network Storage?)

Per agreement with The Apple Blog, I will not be cross-posting the piece, but instead, have provided links. Enjoy.