The A's Continue to Not Come Through

Though yesterday's 14-10 loss at the hands of the Mariners was more evenly contested than some of the team's woeful shutout losses that have been all too common this season, the Oakland A's are turning what was once a promising year into an incredibly frustrating season.

Yesterday, I filled in for Athletics Nation's Sunday regular, baseballgirl, and started off the discussion by saying that though it defies logic, I tend to remain optimistic. As a fan, I reserve the right to ignore trends and statistics, and believe my team will come through. But those words stood, mockingly, against me, as the team first rallied back from a 6-0 deficit, only to take a 10-7 lead, and shockingly give it up as fast as possible.

As I noted in yesteday's recap, "2 Innings of Pleasure, 7 of Pain", it just wasn't all that fun for all that long. The short-lived lead was a tease for those fans of us left who really cared. And while I'll no doubt be following along when the A's take the field again, it's really become time to look at this season for what it really is, one to showcase individual players, because as far as playoff chances are concerned, at this point, it would take a miracle for the A's to even be part of the conversation.

New TAB Post: Original Mac Rumors Site Goes Dark

Years ago, the art of forecasting Apple and Macintosh rumors was left to a small number of oddly obsessed people, myself included. Now, with mainstream media, including New York Times, BusinessWeek and Wall Street Journal in on the act, it's hard to remember that dedicated rumor sites like Mac OS Rumors were leading the way almost a full decade ago in near blog-like fashion, reporting the latest whispers from Cupertino.

But now, it looks like Mac OS Rumors has gone dark, after the site's quality eroded, and as of two weeks ago, the site doesn't even come up, replaced with a reminder from Network Solutions for the site to pay its bill. If it were up to me, I'd move on and let it be.

That's the background behind my most recent contribution to The Apple Blog, titled Original Mac Rumors Site Goes Dark. Per agreement with them, I will not be cross-posting the piece, but instead, have provided a link. Enjoy.

Simpsons Movie: Woohoo! D'oh! Woohoo!

Saturday was a day I'd yearned for in excess of a decade and a half. After years and years of speculation and hope, I finally had the chance to enter a movie theater and see The Simpsons Movie. Nearly 90 minutes of The Simpsons in all their yellow, dysfunctional glory, without commercial breaks and much, much larger than ever before. I also was lucky enough to see the show with some of my closest friends and my wife.

As any good diehard will tell you, The Simpsons Movie wasn't perfect. There's no way that a single film can meet all the built-up hopes and expectations we had. There's no way that 87 minutes can provide the show's fans enough time to see all the minor characters we wanted. And for every laugh we had during the film, and there were many, we could find issues we would have improved were we running the show.

The show itself was divided into three parts. Simplified for spoiler avoidance, you had: Crisis, Escape and Resolution. The escape had the Simpsons headed to Alaska, away from Springfield, where all the fun is. The escapade to the great white north took the Simpson family out of their element, away from the hilarity of people who were greatly neglected in the film, like Apu, Patty and Selma, Groundskeeper Willy, and even usually non-funny folks like Principal Skinner, Gil the salesman, and the acne-ridden teenager whose voice is constantly breaking.

What I loved about the movie was that it started immediately and kept going at a quick pace. Without the usual buildup you see, even in the 30-minute weeklies, with delayed on-screen credits, the movie jumped into its element immediately, and one scene led to another. I loved the fact Bart and Homer continued their efforts to be the worst father-son combo of all time, and that the writers could take liberties with the content that aren't available on network television.

What I didn't like about the movie was the introduction of new characters, as in a series so rich as The Simpsons, there's really no need to add more to the mix and introduce their background. This also squeezed out some of the much-desired peripheral people. I also didn't like the utter non-believability of some parts. As dumb as that may sound, The Simpsons are largely funny because their antics could theoretically happen, as they reflect a certain element of our society. When they cross from potential reality to obvious supernatural, I'm annoyed. And the worst part? It was done all too soon. If Pirates of the Carribean and Dances with Wolves can touch the 3 hour mark, The Simpsons on the big screen deserved much more than just under 90 minutes. By the time the credits rolled, I wasn't ready to leave. Maggie's call for a sequel didn't fulfill my needs.

I didn't mind the story elements. Lisa is obviously a preachy environmentalist. Homer is clearly a misguided would-be do-gooder with negative results. The Flanders are still goody two-shoes. There were tips and nods to previous episodes for us die-hards. And trust me, I laughed - not as much as I did during the South Park movie a few years ago, but enough that I was happy I went.

Also - on the way home, Kristine and I stopped by the Kwik-E-Mart in Mountain View, in reality a converted 7-Eleven franchisee. While that was wonderfully amusing, it only struck home how we actually never saw the inside of the Kwik-E-Mart in the film. Seemed like a lost opportunity.

All in all, a great day. Great friends. Good fun. The completion of a much-anticipated dream, but one that left me wanting more. I may never be satisfied.

Google Video Still Peddling Soft-Core Porn Smut

I'm no prude, but I tend to believe that the higher the prominence a service has, combined with its ease of access, the more responsibility that service has to ensure its content is within commonly accepted guidelines. Barring those restrictions, the option should be offered to avoid questionable material. While Google does a good job with the majority of its offerings, the company's Google Video site is out of control - dominated by by soft core pornographic clips and innuendo.

Despite my noting several months ago that the Google Video service's most popular videos are almost universally offerings of a sexual nature, the world's number one information portal has done nothing to stop its direction. If no action is taken, it's likely that the adult portion of Google's video collection will so overwhelm other content that those seeking less titillating topics will head elsewhere.

Nearly a year after Google acquired YouTube, the main page of Google Video promotes videos they believe you would like (Recommended), Popular Videos, and a wide array of featured material. Also included on the front page are "Blog Buzz" items, similar to Technorati's Popularity rankings, Movers & Shakers, and a Top 10 list.

Today's Top Ten List as of midnight Sunday Pacific Time...

1. SEXY HOTTIE BABE DECIDING to SHOW HER BIG BOOBS on YOUTUBE?
2. Barbie Girl :D
3. Woman In SHOWER!!!
4. Girl caught by boyfriend
5. Webcam Girls Go Wild ( full )
6. Guy pwned by girl! www.videowhip.co.uk
7. Ainda te amo
8. sex hardcore xxx
9. Beyonce falls
10. loko da xuxa

It doesn't take a forensic scientist to see what is driving these rankings. In fact, if you click on the Top 100 link, the "brilliance" continues... offering... "Two girls teach one another how to French kiss"... "SEXY FART IN WEBCAM"... "close up half-undressed couple rolling around on bed"... "Hot Bikini Porn or Proud Vet?" ... "Kim Kardashian HUGE A*S AND TITS" and much more.

In Google's search results and image results, one has the option to add SafeSearch filtering to "not to have adult sites included in search results". Yet, even if I set my preferences to the most strict option, these videos don't change. Google's algorithm shows me the top 100 most popular videos, regardless if I'm looking for the PG-rated list or R-rated list.

Google is pervasive. As I mentioned last week, the site delivers me 95% of my blog traffic from search engines. With YouTube and Google Video, Google can dominate the video space as well. People of all ages are turning to this site to learn what's hot and what's not, and if Google Video is to be believed, sex continues to be hot. Very hot. I think the very least the site could do is extend the "SafeSearch" filtering to video, remove adult material from the Top 10 and Top 100 listings, or collapse the Top 10 list so the questionable material is off the front page. We wouldn't accept this ease of access to soft porn from AOL or CNN or Yahoo!, and we shouldn't accept it from Google.

Flash Banner Ads Are Evading My Web Filters

Nobody wants to see ads any more. We skip commercials on our TiVo, mute commercials during live ball games or events, change radio stations during breaks, and can generally ignore ads in magazines or billboards. On the Web, there's also plenty of software out there that can help us ignore crass commercialism, such as plugins for FireFox and Safari Web browsers, and junk mail filters built into most modern e-mail clients, including Apple's Mail. But as advertisers get more hip to the simple "right click and add to filter" practice, it looks like their move is to use Flash in their ads, and so far, those ads are slipping through.

For the last few years, I've used the PithHelmet ad filter program on Safari to weed out DoubleClick, Federated Media and more. But as Apple introduced Safari 3.0 beta on Mac and Windows, PithHelmet hasn't kept up. With the ads back, I downloaded SafariBlock and have been starting over, right clicking on all ads I see, and adding a * asterisk for wildcards so I won't see anything like them again. But if I right click on Flash ads, that option isn't there. I also don't have any way to hide Google's text-based AdSense advertising, which pollutes many blogs and media sites.

I expect there to be a continued war of development between the advertising community and those of us consumers who want to decide for ourselves, without pervasive marketing. Today, Flash and AdSense are the filters' achilles heel, and are driving me a tad nutty. I wonder how long I have to wait until the filters catch up...

No Beer and No TV Make Homer Something Something

I am a Simpsons nut. There, I said it.

I've probably purchased every DVD compilation of the show. I've likely watched every single episode in syndication, and most, several times. I can't help but laugh in advance of the best parts of a show, because I know they're coming. I have a bad habit of telling people, "This is a good episode", or shushing them in advance of a much-anticipated one-liner.

In college, I made sure my classes wouldn't go too late, so that my roommate and I would be in front of our TV to see back to back episodes on local cable in the early evening. At times, in fact, my roommate and I could hold entire conversations, just by utilizing Simpsons quotes. This was also the year he and I discovered the newsgroup alt.tv.simpsons, where fans around the world, starting East and moving West, would voice their jubilation and/or displeasure about the show they had just seen, with many gleefluly announcing, "Worst Episode Ever!"

In fact, that year, it seemed like The Simpsons and Fox were on to us, when Comic Book Guy declared:

"Last night's 'Itchy & Scratchy' was, without a doubt, the worst episode ever. Rest assured that I was on the Internet within minutes, registering my disgust throughout the world."
-- Reference SNPP.com

But my Simpsons fandom was gradual. When the show debuted on Fox, my family lived so far into the boonies, we didn't even get Fox. I had friends at school that would rave about the show, and we didn't have access. Instead, we only got media warnings about how The Simpsons were emblematic of a declining society. But once, when in Sacramento at my maternal grandmother's home, we stayed late and caught our first Simpsons, Life on the Fast Lane, in 1990. I was 13, and hooked.

But the Simpsons didn't make it easy for me to keep watching. The show announced it would go head to head with The Cosby Show, a ratings behemoth, on Thursday nights. My family, with one TV, continued in its conservative ways, supporting the Huxtables. Later, once the Cosby Show had been trumped, The Simpsons moved to Sunday, and again, my family's conservative background decided such fare wasn't appropriate for the Sabbath.

That left ample time for me to catch up. Many seasons worth of shows on syndication were new to me. On a great week, we would catch anywhere from 5 to 8 new episodes, sometimes at the rate of two a day. That meant a serious injection of Itchy and Scratchy, Homer, Bart, Lisa, Maggie, Marge, and dozens of minor characters that would occasionally steal the show, including Cletus the slack-jawed yokel, Willy the school janitor, Comic Book Guy, Ned Flanders, and Ralph Wiggum.

And now... today is a big day. It's huge, in fact. After more than a decade of anticipation, The Simpsons family is hitting the big screen in a full feature-length film. If you thought the level of anticipation around Harry Potter was high, you haven't seen anything like Simpsons fans, who are no doubt going to regale you with tales of their fandom and drop quotes like they are going out of style, now with new lines from the movie.

Will I be in line for the show's premiere? Sadly, no. We're going to be less extreme, but we already have tickets to see the show tomorrow, with friends from high school and college and my wife. The six of us will be converging from our different geographies, each with differing Simpsons knowledge, and take in a little bit of Springfield. And if it's good, maybe I'll be dropping in to the theater a few more times.

If you're not quite the Simpsons afficionado, start here for the definitive resource of all things yellow: SNPP.com

Two Hours Of Apple Stock Plenty Profitable

For all the noise I made a few weeks ago about my eight worst stock trades ever, you might have the impression I'm the worst stock investor of all time. And while I've certainly had my share of bad calls, the occasional wins here and there keep me trying. Today, I bet big on Apple, hoping the company's earnings report would do us well, and it paid off in a big way.

I very publicly dumped my 200 shares of Apple stock in the low 90s per share earlier this year, and with the stock approaching $140 a share today, it's clear that was a mistake. But as the hours ticked down toward Apple's earning announcement this afternoon, I knew I had to give it one more shot to make money off the Cupertino juggernaut. So I did something crazy...

At 12:48 p.m., I put in enough cash to pick up 250 shares of Apple at $137.43 apiece, less than 15 minutes before market closure. As you likely already know, Apple walloped analyst guesstimates and the stock shot up in after-hours trading. My big bet started to look better and better as the stock rose past $140, then $142, $145 and beyond. By the time it peaked above $148, I knew I'd seen enough. At 2:38 p.m., I had sold it all, at $148.48, clearing more than $2,700 for less than two hours "work".

While that doesn't make up for missed potential earnings from my previous trade, I was fairly pleased. In fact, looking at my eTrade account, Apple has been the one stock I've consistently had success with over the years. While I at times feel too much like an Apple fanboy to tie up a good portion of my portfolio in the company, the truth is that it simply makes sense. The company continues to execute on all cylinders, and surpass expectations, and that's the best type of company to put your money on. It's just too bad I have such a short attention span that I can't stick it out.

If, like my colleagues, you see my trades as a contrarian indicator, now would be the best time to get into Apple, because I'm out. For all I know, the stock could be headed to $150, $160, $180 or beyond. Then you'll be hearing whining from me for certain. But for today at least, I'm content.

More coverage on the Apple earnings boom: Webomatica, Parislemon, Engadget

False Alarm: Wii Got Our Wii

It appears the Web can solve all problems, great or small. Shortly after I had noted three local Best Buys and Wal-Mart were fresh out of their Nintendo Wii stock, I took to the Net to bail me out. By 7 p.m. this evening, my wife and I were proud owners of a brand-new Wii, and we've already logged three hours of family fun.

Before leaving the office, I thought I'd give the search one last go, searching for "Nintendo Wii Availability" on Google. That led me to a Wiichat forum, which offered an array of Web links to inventory data for all the major retailers, including Target, Gamestop, Circuit City, and CompUSA.

A few clicks later, I found that Gamestop on Stevens Creek in San Jose had 1-3 units available. I called, expecting the data to be wrong, but after the store clerk first denied having any Wii in stock, he relented, saying I could get it if I showed up right away. Less than 20 minutes later, I found myself purchasing one of the few Wiis around, complete with two new controllers, the included sports pack, and two additional games: Paper Mario, and "The Bigs", a major league baseball game.

It was a little bit of an investment, but after a quick day trading of Apple earlier, I'd already more than made up the cost. (More on that later)

Long story short, the Wii looks right at home next to our plasma TV, aside our TiVo and Apple TV. It's a venerable array of technology entertainment nerddom. In minutes, Kristine and I had our two controllers out and were dueling one another in bowling, tennis, baseball and golf. The fun was enough to make us consider moving our furniture around to dedicate more real estate to gaming. After all, playing on a Wii is quite active, not just mindless staring at a screen.

There's no question this new toy has the potential to consume a great deal of our free time now, eating into "home work", blogging and all things social. But it's given us another dimension of fun competition, as we stretch for every backhand and groan at the sight of a digital 7-10 split.

And we wouldn't have gotten our Wii if not for the combination of Google, and resourceful fandom, which led us the right way.

South Bay Search for Nintendo Wii Comes Up Empty

After openly contemplating the acquisition of Nintendo's incredibly popular Wii game console on this blog a month or so ago, I was surprised last week when my wife said she too had come to the conclusion our home needed one. Typically, I quickly recognize the need to upgrade, whether that be to a new wireless network, a new plasma TV or a new laptop, and she is more conservative, but she's catching up. Unfortunately, thanks to the much-discussed Wii shortages, even if I were ready to spring and buy one today, I'd be completely out of luck, as yesterday's journeys showed.

Yesterday, during lunch, I drove to the nearby Best Buy in Milpitas, and was told they had sold out their shipment of 25 consoles between the previous afternoon and the previous evening. They had no guess as to when the next shipment would arrive, but said they were being distributed on a first come, first serve basis. Microsoft's XBox 360 and Sony's Playstation 3 sat idly by, but I wasn't interested.

Not to be stopped, I drove a block or so further, to Wal-Mart. Yes, Wal-Mart. They too had a similar story. No Wiis were in stock. They get shipments every two weeks or so, but didn't have a clue when the next one would be.

After work, I continued my search, going to the Best Buy in Sunnyvale, near home. Again, no Wii for sale, and no knowledge of the next shipment. While I could buy replacement controllers, video game consoles, and even carrying cases for my non-existent WIi, I couldn't buy the machine itself.

So, I headed down to the Valley Fair mall in San Jose, which just so happened to be next to a Best Buy - my third on the day. I ducked in to the store at 8:57 p.m. (Store hours closed at 9 p.m.), knowing I had three minutes to ask the same questions and get the same results. Sure enough, plenty of advertising, but no Nintendo Wii. This time, I was told they expected shipment this upcoming Sunday, which led to some bickering with the sales staff, who disagreed on whether they get new consoles each week, or each month.

At this point, I'd worked myself into a consumer demand froth, ready to buy one if it were available. It wasn't a situation of trying it out, or watching someone else play. If it were there, my next move would be to grab the Visa card. But none of the stores got my money, and I didn't get my Wii. The question is - will I keep looking and showing up to random Best Buys to chat with annoyed teenagers, or should I let it go? I'm not sure yet. I also don't think I'm desperate enough to go the eBay route. It's a fun idea, but not critical. Yet.

New TAB Post: Solving Software Purchases the iTunes Way

Using iTunes to download movies, music or TV shows is incredibly easy. While logged in, all I have to do is click "Buy Song" and the tunes will be downloaded rapidly from Apple. So this got me thinking, why is it so difficult to find access to good software, and wouldn't it make sense if Apple used that kind of platform to showcase shareware? I have to imagine that small software developers would be ecstatic at the opportunity to use a platform like iTunes to introduce their wares to new customers.

The question is - does Apple, or anybody, want to seek after this type of business? It's one thing to offer links, like many do, and quite another to host and deliver the software and simplify the transaction...

That's the background behind my most recent contribution to The Apple Blog, titled Solving Software Purchases the iTunes Way. Per agreement with them, I will not be cross-posting the piece, but instead, have provided a link. Enjoy.

Low Cost TiVo HD Box Sneaks Online Early

It looks like the Web minions at Tivo.com are ahead of the company's official rollout schedule. While it's not too uncommon for Web site administrators to upload pages and images the night before a press release launch, it's unusual to catch a public company, or a company as closely watched as TiVo, slipping up. Tonight, thanks to the new product's being added to the online store, you can purchase a lower cost high definition DVR before much of the world knows about it.

While Engadget got the story early this afternoon that the Tivo HD was ready, it wasn't clear when the box would debut, as the site said, "Supposedly it's launching this week, possibly as early as tomorrow." But if you're keen to pick up a TiVo that's HD-capable, and won't cost you more than half a grand, even before subscription fees, you can do that tonight.

As for our living room, while we were initially tempted to upgrade our aging Series 1 machine to a Series 2 and retain our lifetime membership, we're sticking with our first model, for now. We don't yet have HD, and aren't going there immediately. But when we do, it's good to know TiVo won't ask us to mortgage our home.

Google Is 95% Of My Search Traffic

My SiteMeter stats have made one thing clear over the last several months - my traffic from Google and Google Images is growing rapidly, and no other search engine, including Yahoo!, MSN, Live.com or AOL, are even making a dent.

There's really no second place. Instead, there's Google, and then there's everybody else.


Google traffic to louisgray.com dwarfs all competitors.

In the last few months, referrals from Google Images have largely taken over the #1 position from Google's standard searches. Over time, the ANtics comics have drawn a tremendous amount of traffic from curious baseball fans, and the occasional odd post on The Simpsons and adult material have delivered the lion's share of the rest.

Using the Summary Web logs analysis application, I reviewed the site logs from January 1 forward, and saw the massive gap between Google and everyone else to be more than I had ever anticipated. It turns out that thanks to Google's unique combination of Google search, Google Blog Search, Google Image Search and Google Reader, the company is delivering almost 96% of all referrals from search engines to my blog. AOL, MSN, Live.com and Yahoo! don't even crack one percent apiece.

A lot of people are concerned that Google's position is a bad thing for consumers and for competition, and it's clear the competition isn't making a good show in this race. But if the other players even had serviceable offerings, this would be a different story. The sad truth is that they don't. If they want to stick around, they should either dramatically enhance their offerings, or forget competing with Google, and stick to other tools they do well - whether it be start pages, instant message tools, news or social media. As it stands today, the verdict is in, Google has won, and they've won big.

Thank You For Smoking: Addicting

Now that we've broken through the "Great Netflix Backlog of 2007", Kristine and I are trying to enjoy her summer off from teaching by catching up on some long-awaited DVDs, some which were shows well recommended by others, and some we instead opted to skip when they were in the theater.

Last week, we enjoyed the topical comedy "Thank You For Smoking", which followed a big tobacco lobbyist and his crusade to creatively promote cigarette consumption, while at the same time, maintaining his sanity and being a good role model as a father. At a time when so many communities are becoming smoke free, and headlines of death and disease are common, the lead actor, a spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studies, had quite a tightrope walk to do, to espouse both the purported positives and minimize the evils of cigarettes.

The movie is amusingly done, such that you find yourself rooting in favor of the tobacco lobbyist, and against the political and cultural machines that swing in action to destroy his work. Unfortunately for him, he becomes too tightly entwined with an investigative reporter, who mixes business with pleasure, and costs him his job. But unmatched in his ability to spin out of the situation, he survives.

Surprisingly, the film isn't preachy. It doesn't try to convince the audience that smoking is evil, or in reverse, that the lead actor's spin is on target. Simply by placing us in the mind of one of America's most likely hated people, we find his daily challenge intriguing. He didn't convince me to start smoking, but I'm definitely glad I saw the film.

E-mail Faux Pas Showcases Old Message

When it comes to e-mail etiquette, I'm quite particular. I tend to roll my eyes and think less of people who don't know the difference between "Reply" and "Reply All", I'm not all that forgiving with typos, and think that the way e-mails are written should be in line with your own capability for writing or communicating. So when I goof up, I'm particularly annoyed. Today, I most certainly goofed.

Late last September, I had tried to send a message at the office via the Microsoft Entourage desktop client, as Webmail was having issues. For some reason, that didn't go through either. After a few hours of struggles, I ended up sending the note from my personal e-mail account, using Apple Mail, and hadn't opened up Entourage since. Until today.

Prompted to revisit Microsoft's sorry excuse cousin to Outlook for the Mac, I fired up Entourage and set it up to synchronize, so each folder would be updated. As the app sluggishly whirred to life, filling my inbox with the latest, a familiar "Sending Mail" sound echoed. Oops. Seconds later, my message from September hit an internal distribution list and I was made to look like a fool, as the note gave a snapshot in time from 10 months prior. In the age of instant receipt and Blackberries, there was no good reason to recall. Instead, I just sighed and apologized to all for the error.

I hate that. The next step is to just make sure I never open Entourage again.

Update: Ars Technica in parallel has posted a note on curing "sender's remorse"...

ANtics Episode 3.21: Heroes to Zeros

Cross-posted to Athletics Nation...

Were you at that game where the A's got shut out? What? You want to know which one?

Trust me, we know how you feel. And it looks like the players are feeling the strain of being a very average team with some quite below-average players. Jettisoning Kendall was a start, but the ANtics show there's much more to go...


Click to See Larger Comic

All Comics | Submit an Idea for ANtics

Must-See Documentary: Who Killed the Electric Car?

While we may be patting ourselves on the back for the small percentage of consumers who have gone out of their way to adopt hybrid vehicles like the Toyota Prius or the Honda Civic Hybrid, the stark truth is that we could be much further along in the process to reduce air pollution and reliance on fossil fuels, were it not for reluctance on the part of the automakers, government and big oil to promote alternatives, like the electric vehicle.

This week, Kristine and I saw a documentary, "Who Killed the Electric Car?", which highlighted the creation, introduction and eventual erasure of GM's EV-1 from the marketplace. Almost single-handedly, the viewing of this film made me realize how much of a step backwards we have taken, just in the last decade. While I had once been vaguely aware of California's mandate to require a certain percentage of cars be electric, I didn't know how that mandate was voided, and how while more and more Americans were being guided toward massive SUVs through tax credits (See: The Hummer), a well-oiled political and PR machine was under way to stop the electric car in its tracks.

Now, having seen the massive potential for electric cars, I am almost unwilling to "settle" for a partial solution like a hybrid, which would only lessen my draw at the pump, not eliminate it. Watching the film, I was furious at how the potential was squandered, and how some early adopters of the EV-1, ecstatic about their cars in the same way Apple fans or Linux loyalists are, were told to go pound sand, and saw their beloved vehicles impounded and crushed in a forgotten desert well away from California's roads.

It's been a long time since a good documentary came around without Michael Moore's name on it that reshaped the way I think about everyday activities like driving. If you are looking to buy a new car, or looking to see what you can do to better the environment, if you are curious about the cold realities of business, or just want to know why we're not surrounded by electric or solar vehicles, be sure to put the video on your Netflix queue. I'm glad we did.

Amber Alert: The 2007 A's Offense Is Missing

Tonight should have been a fun night at the ballpark. The A's were in the 4th game of a six-game homestand, coming off a 6-0 shutout win, followed by a day off, and the weather couldn't have been much better. But instead of the glee felt following a victory, we were once again let down by the team's completely inept offense, which had some in the stands murmuring over the possibility of a no-hitter. While history was not made, another nail in the coffin for the 2007 season was solidly hammered in place.

Seemingly by the time Kristine and I had made it to our seats, the A's were already down 1-0 in the first inning, courtesy of the aggressive Orioles hitters. While Baltimore went on to score in four of the first five innings, the A's hitters continued their cold spell, with the first 16 outs being recorded without an A's player reaching base by way of a hit. And when Mark Ellis clubbed a home run over the left field wall to close the gap somewhat, we were almost dismayed, knowing the A's didn't really stand much chance of competing, any more than they had in the just-concluded nine game losing streak.

As has been well documented, this is not an A's offense capable of taking advantage of opportunities. That the first place Angels had already lost their game had no impact on the moribund squad, missing many regulars due to injuries, and seeing Nick Swisher injure his shoulder midway through the contest, thanks to a fielding mishap.

When the painful three hours were over, the A's were again on the losing end, this time by a 6-1 margin. Though the score may change from day to day, the themes are all too familiar. Strikeouts. Popups. Double plays. And an apparent lack of urgency from the team's regulars, who look like they've already said goodbye to the 2007 pennant race.

I've already started booing some of the A's regulars when they come to the plate. I fear that with time, my "to boo" list will increase, unless massive changes start very soon. I won't be holding my breath.

Did Trackbacks Die, and Who Killed Them?

In early 2006, I was fairly keen on this shiny new toy called the trackback. Rather than simply add a comment to a story I found interesting, I could send a trackback via my blog to the original source, and in most cases, the trackback, with my story's data, would be placed on top of the comment thread. On other occasions, the trackback would be treated on equal with comments, and made part of the thread itself. Regardless, it was a sneaky way to push my links onto more popular sites. But now, I can't remember the last time I sent out a trackback, and I haven't seen them used all that much. Maybe it's time to roll out the gravestone and write up their epitaph.

On March 25, 2006, Guy Kawasaki wrote a great, insightful story on "nine questions to ask a startup" if you were a prospective employee. That day, I posted a trackback to the story, referenced in a post I had, called "Entering a Startup on the Ground Floor", which recalled my first experience entering the Silicon Valley as a potential employee in late 1998, and how unprepared I was.

Surprisingly, my trackback not only got me traffic, but sustained traffic. My Feedburner stats tell me that since I left that link behind, I've had almost 1,200 visits to my Web site as a result.




Visits from Guy Kawaski's Site via the Trackback

While not large, considering it's been 16 months, that number trumps any other RSS feed link I've had to date. In fact, March of 2006 was basically when my trackback usage hit its peak. I'd commonly posted trackbacks to sites like Silicon Valley Sleuth and Internet Outsider, to name a few.

And then... I stopped. Maybe it's because I felt like using trackbacks was a cheap form of link spam, and that I wasn't adding value to the original source's story. But while that was part of it, it seems that integrated tools on most blogging platforms, like Blogger, TypePad or WordPress, automatically track who is saying what about you. Instead of relying on trackbacks to show somebody referenced your material, Meanwhile, sites like Technorati show the number of blog reactions, or "Links to this Item", per se.

Essentially, the shininess of the trackback wore off for me, and I expect it has for many others. Rather than take the effort to determine a post's trackback URL, and send a ping to that URL, I just let Technorati and Google Blog search do the work for me. As with many technologies on the Web, something usually comes along better than the last toy, and we move forward. I just hope the 1,000+ visitors Guy Kawasaki sent my way found what they were looking for.

Not All Links Are Created Equal

There's all sorts of hubbub on the blogosphere in the last few days, over how one ranks authority of bloggers' influence. It is in the aggregate number of links, or the aggregate number of individual sites linking? Should all that be discarded due to the advent of microblogging? Given the current thinking is to throw out total page views in favor of total minutes on a site, as well, it seems the whole concept of how we measure authority is in flux. But while most argue tit for tat on whether a blurb on Twitter counts as much as a link from another blog, there should be no secret that not all links are created equal.

In fact, while one blog could dedicate its story to you, it may not result in 1% of the traffic you can expect from another highly trafficked source, whether it be Digg, or StumbleUpon, TechCrunch, TechMeme, Scoble, etc. Compounding this issue, there is a significant population of Web sites that don't even enter into the radar of statistics aggregators like Technorati, due to the fact they aren't classified as blogs or "the live Web".

A few self-focused examples:

1) Today, my site traffic spiked in the middle of the day to about 8-10x normal traffic. Instead of 100+ visitors per day, my norm, I saw 100+ just between 1 and 2 this afternoon, only to see the one-time spike go away, and traffic return to normal. Was there new content? No. Was there any reason the content got less relevant in the space of an hour? No. So what happened?

A StumbleUpon user found my story from last week on Facebook where I suggested the site would go the way of Friendster and GeoCities before it. Submitted to the popular service, I was seeing 25-40 concurrent visitors on the site, with new ones every minute. Then, as quickly as the spurt arrived, they vanished. Yet, the one link had given me a boost of 100 visitors, not exactly chump change.

2) On July 5th, we saw a similar spike in traffic, to about twice normal, thanks to 100+ visitors coming to the site to see my simple comments that I had gone a full week without filling my need for an iPhone. Again, without any promotion on my part, the visitors came. So what happened?

MacSurfer happened. MacSurfer posted a link to the story, sending all sorts of Apple afficionados my way. Like Digg and StumbleUpon users, those one-time visitors are a cheap date. They show up, don't comment, and move on. But there's no better place to drop a Mac link than MacSurfer, the granddaddy of all Mac link aggregation sites. Of course, MacSurfer doesn't even hit Technorati's radar, so they had no idea the link had occurred.

3) Just two days prior, on July 3rd, we had another spike, thanks to Robert Scoble's mentioning my post on addicting games that can reduce productivity in a story he had written on the Web-based game phenomenon. Interestingly enough, though the Scoble crowd dropped in to the site in strong numbers, not even his A-list credibility could send me as many unique visitors as MacSurfer and StumbleUpon in this round. His crowd was more in the 80-100 range.

It's hard to determine what posts will get traffic, and which ones won't, or which ones will draw comments, and which will be ignored. There's also always going to be interest from people to determine what the most successful, influential, or highly trafficked sites are. It's clear that a link from me to Scoble would drive maybe 1-3% the traffic his way as he could drive mine, so anybody in the business of counting links and assuming they are all equal is absolutely off their rocker. Not all links are equal, and someday, somebody will come up with a great algorithm to show just how much "more equal" one can be versus another.

Eight Things Previously Unknown. No Tagbacks.

On July 6th, Ilona of True Grit posted eight items she assumed we didn't know about her. Common to the meme, she listed five new bloggers to continue the faux chain, and apparently, I was one of those selected. Until last night, I had no idea. Amazing what an overlooked link will do.

So, in order to be a good blogging citizen, here we go.

Eight things you probably didn't know about me, likely in near chronological order, just because.

1) I was born two months early and weighed just over four pounds. The ambulance, on its way to Stanford from Salinas, had to stop mid-trip and I was delivered in San Jose. My poor father, meanwhile, made the trip to Stanford, and missed the birth. He has since made up for it. And lucky for me, modern medicine was just good enough to eventually kick me out of the hospital.

2) In order to display how disappointed my 3rd grade teacher was with my studies, he broke with school tradition and gave me letter grades, instead of the standard Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory marks given my peers. The first quarter, I got two C's. They may have been my first, but unfortunately, they were not even close to my last.

3) I graduated from junior high school twice. After attending a 7-8th grade school, we switched school districts, and attended a 7-9th grade junior high. I got to walk on the stage both years.

4) I was pulled over by the county sheriff during Drivers' Training, when I was 16, allegedly for having my rear right tire pass over an empty parking space as I turned right into an intersection. This greatly amused the other students in the car, and befuddled the instructor.

5) I was stood up on my first date after turning 16. My date's best friend had unbeknownst to her, brought a friend, which preempted me. Instead of enjoying the homecoming dance, I waited out the three-hour drama until my ride came. It later turned out to be a recurring motif through high school.

6) My senior year of high school, I was the station manager, and DJ, for the campus cable radio station, and logged hundreds of on-air hours playing Depeche Mode and Inforrmation Society to earn my A.

7) My original college of choice was UCLA, where I had hoped to be roommates with my best friend. Due to a bureaucratic snafu on the UC's part, and my typical lack of following instructions to a T, I didn't get in to UCLA, but did get into UC Berkeley, which made the seeming crisis a lot easier to handle.

8) I once took a 4-plus year self-imposed sabbatical from church, which overlapped with college, before deciding on my own it was time to go back and follow what I knew to be right. Had I remained stubborn, I never would have found my wife, among other things.

With all that said, the typical next step is to tag five more unexpecting victims.

Those targets:

* Ben Homer
* Jason Kaneshiro
* Earl Moore
* Jeff Narduzzi
* Farrah Walker

YouTube Debut of Ash Steffy: New Tenant

One of my best friends from high school, Ash Steffy, attended UCLA, pursued post-graduate study at the Art Center in Pasadena, and continues to follow his dreams as an aspiring film director in Hollywood. After much prodding by me, his much-anticipated short film debut has hit YouTube, in the form of "New Tenant", which covers a working stiff's efforts to pursue a 9 to 5 living, only to see one morning go hilariously awry. I hope you like it. Be sure to share with those you know would also enjoy it.

Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZg0ErXRMTE

ANtics Gain Praise from Bugs & Cranks

It appears Technorati doesn't have an exclusivity on finding links to the blog. Though I rely on "Blog Reactions" from Technorati for the vast majority of conversations around the blog, I was surprised to find a story that had fallen through the cracks, which I instead came across due to Icerocket, the poor stepsister of Technorati and Google Blog Search.

Looking at the number of blogs which point this way, I found a great writeup covering Athletics Nation, the #1 sports blog covering the Oakland Athletics. Hidden inside the article, posted on Bugs & Cranks, was a fairly positive note on the ANtics comics, our little once a week hobby.

"A few features about AN stand out. First, the ANtics comic strips are a unique contribution that few other sites can boast. While other sites have their photoshop wisecrackers, AN has produced volumes of original strips that look fantastic."

-- Bugs & Cranks >> Moneyblog: Athletics Nation

Not bad, in my heavily-biased opinion. The article goes on to give Athletics Nation (AN) credit for access to A's GM Billy Beane, team players, and offering a forum for A's fans to watch the games together. While the team may not be impressing anybody right now, in the midst of a 7-game losing skid, the site, and the comics, will continue. After all, even if our team can't get it together on the field, we are still dedicated to the craft of fandom.

The iPhone Says My Thumbs Are Too Fat

Saturday morning, we finally swung by the Apple Store at Valley Fair in San Jose for the first time "Post iPhone" to take a look at Apple's new device that has the tech world aflutter. While very thin and chock full of features, the iPhone's virtual on-screen keyboard rejected about half my keystrokes in a quick trial run, making me more comfortable in my decision to stick with the Blackberry, at least for now.

I've used a Blackberry for the better part of five years, through three product generations, and while the keyboard has changed quite a bit over time, it still follows an easy to use format, with the standard QWERTY layout, and tactile response. When i started fiddling with the iPhone, to try and test its e-mail capability, half the letters would end up one away from their intended mark, making the words so badly jumbled that not even the included auto-correct dictionary had a clue as to where to start.

If I would try to type, "Hi there from the iPhone", it was more likely to read "Ho yheer gtom rhe iohome." Making it worse, every time I would delete a mistype, my next keystroke would put the same error right back. It got me thinking one of two things was occurring. Either I was slipping into lazy eye double vision which had my hands not coordinating well with my eyes, or my thumbs were too fat. It had me longing for the simplicity of the stylus on my old Handspring Visor, or the keyboard from the Blackberry line of mobile handhelds. If I did walk away with an iPhone (and I didn't), there's no question there would be some significant practice necessary before I could become as proficient as on the Blackberry.

That's not to say the experience with the iPhone was all bad. The camera was drop-dead simple to use. Squeezing and stretching photos on the screen or scrolling through the faux address book was a breeze, especially after having seen Apple's numerous demo videos. Playing videos from YouTube was quick and crystal-clear. I didn't mess around with Safari, but have no doubts that too was solid. And the iPhone is extremely thin, moreso than I had expected when it was first announced.

If I was looking for a Hallelujah moment that pushed me over the edge from interested observer to proud owner on Saturday, it didn't come. If cost and phone service quality were not an issue, I'd love to have one, but both are, and for now, we're still going to be cheering on the iPhone from the sidelines, and looking into ways for our fat fingers to cut back on the carbs.

ANtics Episode 3.20: Opposite Day

Cross-posted to Athletics Nation...

I never truly saw this coming - the resurgence in offense from Bobby Crosby and Jason Kendall, the quick return to health of Mike Piazza and Rich Harden, and Mike Piazza's race to the Hall of Fame. What an incredible run this team has been on! Have you purchased your postseason tickets yet?


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For Facebook, I Can Already See the Epilogue

Five years from now, Facebook will not be a household brand. Like GeoCities and TheGlobe.com before it, today's hot Web communities are tomorrow's graveyards,