Getting the scoop is a big deal for any self-respecting journalist, as in the competitive media landscape, any edge you can get through find out a news nugget or covering a story for your readers and viewers can drive up your sales, ratings, etc. Scoops lead to awards, and recognition, improved pay, and prestige.

On the Internet, the number of blogs out there is conservatively estimated to be in the tens of millions. While some aim to be personal journals or shout-outs to friends and family, others act as media augmentation or substitutes, covering general news, or specific focuses, in sports, technology, politics, etc. But as there are so many people talking and creating noise, some of the elements of offline media have themselves moved to the blogosphere, including the idea of scoops, sometimes good, and sometimes... not so much.

With the simplicity of posting entries to blogs, an idea or a rumor can go from thought to live in mere minutes. Now, instead of doing fact-checking, double sourcing and even proof-reading, blogs are rife with getting news out first, all in a plan to gain readership, get the most comments, or have their own story posted to Digg, Slashdot, or any other one of the popular news aggregators. It's something clearly feeding on itself.

You can even take it down another level. With Athletics Nation being a great test case, you see posters who are calling for the team's beheading after one bad game, a bad play, bad at bat, or a bad pitch. The idea behind being the first to make an outlandish claim, no matter how foolish, is that in the possibility you are right, people can look back at you and bask in your aura that you were right, and the first to do so. You're a friggin' prophet. And if you're wrong, make the same prediction the following day, and you just might get right the next time. By then, you are a hero who lives on the edge - albeit in the face of reality.

But whether you're a disgruntled A's fan, an Apple rumormonger, or a stock aficionado sure that your penny stock is going to make us millions, blogging has given us all new tools to decrease the news cycle - and some are doing so regardless of the consequences. I believe that as with most media, the cream will eventually rise to the top - those sites that dominate in credibility as well as speed will triumph over those sites and those individuals who crave speed over accuracy. You can only try to fool us too many times.

Listening to ''Pole Folder & CP - Apollo Vibe'', by Bedrock (Play Count: 5)

Another day, another rumor for the Cupertino computer and gadget company. While predicting Apple's latest move is a household hobby across greater geekdom, occasionally the prognosticators get it right. Today, Engadget is saying that Apple is moving to expand the iTunes Music Store's reach beyond music and TV shows, to add electronic books. Presumably, these eBooks could also be displayed on their iPod lineup, especially when the next generation debuts, with more screen space, which would allow for book reading.

Engadget writes that "According to a source at a major publishing house, they were just ordered to archive all their manuscripts -- every single one -- and send them over to Apple's Cupertino HQ." That's interesting. Now, I don't know if I'd sit in front of my iPod and try to read the latest Stephen King novel, but given I'll surf the Web with the Blackberry, and used to read eBooks on my Handspring Visor, there just may be a market for this. The question is, do the youth of today want to read books any more in the first place?
Listening to ''Live 4 Music (Original Edit)'', by DJ Shog (Play Count: 5)

Growing up in "extreme Northern California", it wasn't too uncommon to see the thermometer break triple digits in the summer. Chico and Redding especially offered up 110 degree days a few times a year. But since starting school at Berkeley in 1995, I've had 11 years to get used to a much more temperate climate in the Bay Area, one that makes you feel that 55 is chilly, and 85 is absurdly warm.

Our condo tends to exacerbate that problem. On the fourth and top floor of our complex, with high ceilings, our home easily traps the heat, and the sun's movement through the sky parallels our glass windows, cooking everything inside. Just yesterday, after coming home from the office, our stand-alone air conditioner reported the inside heat was a blistering 87, making us just that much more sluggish. Our beagle, though cute, pants all day with her pink tongue hanging out. And when possible, she lays directly in front of the fan (where she is now).

After a night of hoping everything would cool off, we were already at 79 indoors by 10 this morning, and it should continue to rise, regardless of our efforts, and will stay hot for days afterwards, if weather forecasts are to be believed. The Chronicle reports "no relief is in sight", while wire services show that California utilized a record amount of electricity, without fear of rolling blackouts, thanks to an avoidance of manipulation, commonly seen in the time of Enron.

We're not moving, and maybe someday we'll have a better solution to staying cool inside, but the next few weeks should be steamy.

Previous posts on this topic: 2006 Is Hottest Year on Record in the US, The Climate Crisis

Listening to ''Dido'', by DJ Tiesto (Play Count: 6)

Microsoft is a poor, confused, shell of the company it once was. Recent months have seen the company's founder, Bill Gates, step down as CEO, the company continues to be under fire from anti-trust regulators in Europe, fined several hundred million Euros, and earlier this week, the company went out of its way to try and convince the world that not only was it not a monopoly, but it was actually very friendly to competition - through a pair of press releases that outlined the company's new rules of order, so to speak.
(Microsoft.com: Tenets of Competition)

If that weren't enough, sitting on a mountain of cash, the company finally bowed to pressure from investors, opting to repurchase $20 billion in stock, to reduce the number of shares outstanding. If you're a company the size of Microsoft, and you can't find an array of small to medium sized companies to purchase with that cash, then you just could be very lost. And with the company's online ventures fading, momentum has moved towards truly innovative companies like Apple, Google and a host of Web 2.0 players.

With that as a backdrop, Microsoft proved Apple right by announcing it would indeed try and rattle Apple's dominance of the music world - by introducing a new hard-disk player and music store called Zune. With Apple announcing a blowout quarter this week, and the iTunes/iPod combo owning that space, even in light of competition from MP3-playing cell phones, Microsoft is for once the persnickety upstart. And though data on the new Zune is limited, some of the specs look downright familiar - the device is rectangular, at least one model will be white, with rounded corners, it will feature a video screen for photos, videos and music, and even the buttons mimic that of the third-generation iPods from Apple. But Microsoft is rumored to have upped the ante by introducing WiFI, and will aggressively go after iTunes Music Store customers by opting to pay for their song libraries to be replaced with their own service.

Microsoft started out life as a software company, doing programming languages, before migrating to desktop applications and operating systems. Now, with the XBox and soon to debut, Zune, the baby chick has strayed far from the nest. By going it alone, analysts are already saying that Microsoft stands to alienate partners moreso than gain new friends. And that just might make Apple that much stronger - not that I anticipate them looking forward to the media hype and advertising onslaught sure to befall us this fall.

Additional coverage on Zune... practically everywhere. (Engadget, BetaNews, TechCrunch)

Listening to ''Fahrenheit 3D3'', by Orbital (Play Count: 5)