Robert Scoble, famed ex-Microsoftee and pro blogger, has long mandated that one of the best things you can do to deliver a human element on your blog is to make yourself easily contactable - whether through e-mail, or even better, by posting your cell phone number, so readers can contact you any time.

Today, that literally "rang" true for me, as the father of one of the A's players called me, asking for printed copies of The ANtics comics. We talked quite a bit this morning, and again this evening, about their content, and he will soon be receiving a booklet of the last two years' comics, to share with his son.

Our calls today were a big highlight for me. I'm not easily star-struck, but I greatly enjoyed talking with this easy-going, sharp man who loves his son and loves baseball. Had I avoided the transparency, and not posted my cell phone on the blog, we never would have talked.

Rather than hide from personal directories and expect anonymity, I strongly believe we should identify with who we are and what we say on the Web. Use real e-mails that identify with your name. Use URLs that include your name. And post your cell phone number. It makes you real.

(Previously: "Privacy on the Web Is Gone")

What ever happened to letting good television shows run their course until they faded away and the cast could come out beaming to a series of curtain calls? It seems that with the infrequent exceptions of NYPD Blue, Cheers and Seinfeld, any show worth its salt, which has something resembling intellect and sharp dialogue, can't make it past a single season before a dull, drooling, American public finds it too difficult to comprehend, and in a panic, network executives give it the axe.

It happened with The West Wing. It happened to Law and Order: Trial By Jury. It happened to Conviction just as the show was getting some momentum. And now, it sounds like Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is going to be annihilated within weeks. According to Fox News online, cast members of the NBC show featuring Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford have already told friends and family that the show's cancellation is imminent.

In the Gray household, it takes a lot to crack into our TiVo Season Pass list. Given our addictions to the CSI and Law And Order franchise, as well as House, and a variety of late-night comedy shows, we don't have much time to add new shows when they come out, and we absolutely deplore the mindless philandering on reality television and vacuous game shows. Studio 60 immediately made its mark this season and had us looking forward to each episode as it developed.

With many of the characters having become familiar through The West Wing, also run by Aaron Sorkin, the show's give and take and rhythm seemed familiar. The situations were interesting. The dialog was college level, something that looks like a non-starter in today's saccharine world. When Conviction and The West Wing were 2005-06 casualties, I called for a new network to bravely take on these shows to satiate our need for real world conversations and intriguing plots, but the harsh economics of television are too much.

With Studio 60 pulling only half the viewers of the dialog-poor skinfest at CSI Miami, they had no chance of emerging with the #1 position on Monday nights, and will exit a loser, without chance of resuscitation. We're not too happy about it, and we're further disillusioned with the way today's airwaves are going. If it weren't for the serialized cop and lawyer shows, and professional sports, we'd be doing a lot more reading, and even more Web surfing than we do today. But the TV just fell another notch in our eyes. We are not happy with this black box and how it is treating us.

There's a headline I didn't ever think I was going to write. Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser has always been behind on features - ever since the day it launched in beta in an eventually-successful attempt to crush Netscape Navigator. I hate Internet Explorer and everything it stands for - market monopoly shenanigans, inaccurately designed HTML, and the weakest security on this side of the US/Mexican border, plagued with hacking potential and popups. But now, at least on the Windows platform, the new Internet Explorer 7 is pretty darn good. With their copying of tabs from Mozilla Firefox, and the addition of other new tools, it's definitely giving Firefox a run for its money.

As much as I can, I try to stay on the Apple Mac OS X platform. It just flat out works better, and doesn't try to get in my way. The applications seamlessly work together, and in a secure way. Apple's Safari browser has also grown to the point it doesn't have an equal. But in those rare times (mostly at the office) when I am in front of a Dell Windows PC, there is no Safari, leaving me with two real options: Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft IE.

For the last several years, IE has been a ugly stepchild in the Web browser family, the one you hide in the closet and don't introduce to visitors. Firefox has been first to market with tabbed browsing, browser themes and extensions, enabling Web surfers to "roll their own" experience, and has slowly been taking market share back away from Microsoft - the long-time leader in share, if not in innovation.

But with the recent introduction on Internet Explorer 7, I hate to say it, but I actually like it. Rather than changing the default browser settings on the Windows PC to run Firefox, I've tested the new IE 7 and like some of the settings. The browser's tabbed browsing is good, and a feature called "Quick Tabs" shows all open tabs for simplified navigation. And in contrast to Firefox 2.0, IE loads quickly, renders pages just as accurately (as far as I can tell), and comes with integrated popup blockers, which for years would depend on third-party toolbars from Yahoo!, Google and others. As one installs Firefox extensions and themes, the browser actually gets sluggish, while IE remains light. (See "Is Firefox 2.0 a dud?")

If I want to fight the good fight against Microsoft and avoid all things Redmond, using Firefox is fine, but the gap between the two browsers has been closed in a significant way. If you've sworn off IE forever, give IE 7 a spin and see if Microsoft can change your mind.

I don't talk much about religion on the blog, but for introductory purposes, I'm LDS (Mormon), having been born into the church, raised in the church, and an active participant for the better part of my life, with a 4-year self-imposed sabbatical that overlapped my college years being the only exception. While I'm a typical Mormon in some ways, in that I don't drink, use drugs, don't swear often (that I know of), and attend services on Sunday, I'm also somewhat atypical in the way I vote, in that I don't exactly like Utah in any way, I didn't serve a full-time mission, and I don't have kids.

The church has been very impressive in the way that they have utilized new technology and especially the Internet. Unlike many churches, who preach from their meetinghouses and limit their sharing of the gospel with their attending members, the LDS church has a very-thorough Web site, targeting both members and non-members, with a fully searchable Gospel Library, including the scriptures (Bible and Book of Mormon), teaching guides and archived church magazines. While some non-LDS call the church a cult, the religion is in fact, the complete opposite, not hiding secrets within, but promoting openness and welcoming questions.

Beyond the centerpiece LDS.org Web site, the church operates sites for genealogy at www.familysearch.org, and a site for more curious visitors, at www.mormon.org. LDS.org also offers daily e-mails about church members in the news and streams the church's twice-annual general conference talks over the Web in a wide variety of languages. Additionally, the church-affiliated university system, BYU (Brigham Young University) also has adapted the Web, using some of the best streaming video technology I've ever encountered, on the university's BYU TV site, at www.byu.tv.

While for most, the world of online video is one full of stuttering stop-start performance, and inconsistent buffering, or small video windows, BYU TV offers visitors a rich, fast, streaming video experience for any operating system or browser, and lets people select not just from what's on the channel right then, but from a menu of the day's offerings, in addition to special features, including the aforementioned General Conference talks, where the church's leaders, including the prophet and apostles talk to its members. Just this morning, when we were looking at BYU TV, we were entertained to see a "classic" BYU football game against Oklahoma, or we could queue up aerobics videos, scrapbooking how-tos and gardening tips.

While the pedestrian content might not wow you, and trust me, I'm not bowled over by instructional sewing videos and arts and crafts, I was very impressed with the technology, and pleased to see the church and its affiliated university continuing to be on the cutting edge, taking advantage of what the Web has to offer. In an increasingly skeptical world, where many are either turning away from religion, or relying on religion as the basis to blame others or incite hatred, it's good to see a calm, consistent voice available to anybody at any time - and with good quality too.

Listening to ''Surrender'', by Depeche Mode (Play Count: 10)