Google Codes for Microsoft
It appears that the bright folks at Google may be a bit challenged when it comes to writing standards based interfaces.
Marketing
Baseball Blogging
Every baseball team owner in the country should jump on the idea of adding WiFi access to their stadiums like the Giants:
SBC asked what technology initiatives we were looking at, and a natural confluence was the Wi-Fi. It was a no-brainer, because the ROI issue went out the window — our major sponsor wanted to install this for us.
Yea, their sponsor paid for it but it seems like this would provide great marketing opportunities and reinvigorate the weekday afternoon game.
If you are a wired worker who spends most of your time writing, researching and exchanging email just maybe a connected afternoon at the ballpark will bring you back to the game. I’d certainly be more likely to go to more games though I’d have to give up the 2-3 magazines I usually read in the course of a baseball game (the 1/year I currently go to).
This probably won’t catch on at football games as there are so few of them at a particular venue though there are plenty of breaks in the action. The idea probably wouldn’t work that well for soccer or basketball where the action is fairly constant. Well, except for the televised basketball games (especially the NCAAs) that are ruined by the repeated long commercial time outs.
Via Ernie the Attorney.
Getting that next Position
Tyler Cowan recommends these job hunting suggestions to people wanting to be an economics professor.
While the list is focused on finding a tenure track job there are a lot of good tips for anyone looking for any job or admission to a graduate school.
Pricing Gas
Via Scott here is a map of gasoline prices populated with blogger provided info. I note that the price recently posted for Houston is only $1.60/gallon.
I often use gasbuddy to find a low price. Their Houston page shows someone paying 1.55/Gal as recently as last night.
Last week in Canada I paid $0.855(Can)/Liter which works out to about $2.36(US)/gal at the then current exchange rate. I made sure I arrived back in the states with a near empty tank so I could pay $1.989(US)/gal and was quite happy.
Misleading Headlines Trolling for Readers
I am often annoyed by the stretched attemps of journalists and their editors (and your current host) to tempt readers with stupid puns, alliterations and the like. For some reason, yet to be explored, this does not bother me so much when bloggers are the perps.
I am doubly annoyed when they lie at the same time. Today C/net published an article with this headline:
‘Phishing’ scams luring more users
I have a few samples of Phishing scam emails locked away in a folder and, yes, the headline lured me to the article to see if there was new info. Especially the bit about the apparent growing success of these scams.
But it turns out they have no clue. Here is the meat:
…said Monday that in September 2003 the company encountered just 279 phishing e-mails. In January 2004, this figure reached 337,050 and then dropped back to 215,643 by March. The company said it is impossible to estimate exactly how many people have been fooled by the phishers.
You read it right. The rate is down and there is nothing to substantiate the headline’s allegation that these scams “‘are luring more users.” Argggghhhh….
All this aside you might want to make antiphishing.org a regular stop for the latest scam updates.