The Great Stephen Hunter strikes again. This time he helps Washington Nationals baseball fans deal with the losing.
Paragraphs like this are just a pleasure to read.
Baseball is just a toothache. It's a headache that won't dance to the music of Tylenol. It hurts and hurts and hurts. I am something of an expert on baseball hurt. I stayed with the feckless, cheap-o Cubs for years, though thank God I was in the Army and crawling through New Jersey marshes during the big collapse of '69. That would have killed me. I happened to get out of the Army on the first day of the 1970 World Series, and so I watched the Orioles do their thing and was in their thrall just in time -- perfect timing! -- for the big decline. Oh, there were spurts, none of them worth the pain. I remember the last game of the '79 World Series, when Pittsburgh came back from being down, three games to one, to dust off the Birds. I remember being stuck in traffic. I remember being so depressed I could hardly breathe or talk, and there was no big Sunday game to seduce me from the pain. I remember the '83 series, and wish I could say it was swell. As baseball, it was pretty awful: The Birds just wrapped Philly in a large wet blanket of great pitching and squashed them to nothingness in five games, without a single memorable play. Aghhh.
I like Mashable's take on Shelfari being purchased by Amazon.
Mainly,
I’ve looked at Shelfari several times over the course of its existence, and it always seemed like a cute project that’ll never make it big. Sometimes, however, it’s not only about the size of your community; the big players in your corner of the market can make a big difference.
Thus, Shelfari has been acquired by Amazon; probably not because it has a huge community, but because Amazon needed a book-oriented social network and acquiring Shelfari was the easiest, fastest, or least cash intensive way to do it.
A good lesson to be learned for all those running niche social networking sites.
A little over a week ago the design for OrangeCoat's 404 error screen made it to the front page of Digg. Over the last week, the number of diggs has grown to over 2,000. From the initial Digg-frenzy to the steady increase to 2,021, it was a unique experience that helped us to get a better grasp of how Digg effects web traffic, servers and our own internet popularity.
more
If blog posting is lighter than normal the rest of this week it is because I'll be out of the office. If you don't have the good fortune to email me during that time I figured I'd share with you my out of office reply:
I'll be out of the office from Tuesday August 19th until Friday August 22nd visiting my nephew Emmit (adorable, no? http://tinyurl.com/5dkqz4)
I'll try to respond to all emails in a timely manner but will be in and out of email range so please bear with me. (Get it bear and my nickname is Bear... genius)
If you have an immediate support need please contact Jimmy C at...
If you have an immediate project question or are just interested in talking about home brewing please contact Evan at...
If you have a million dollar project you would like to award OrangeCoat please feel free to call my cell at 864 993 8239 and keep on calling until I answer.
Paivi:
I want to be the millionth at the Greenville Drive game
Me:
Yeah, I've seen those billboards, what sort of prize do you get for being the millionth?
Paivi:
No idea, I just want to be the millionth. The marketing got me.
Magic Hat is on the internet ball. I made a simple tweet yesterday afternoon
Handlebar porch, Magic Hat number 9, and laptop workin'
and this morning I get an email notification that Magic Hat is following me on Twitter. Good at 'em for searching their brand out on Twitter. From now on, I can type @magichat when drinking a #9.
Jaiku and JotSpot are examples of a phenomenon I call the Google black hole. Despite Google's reputation for fostering new companies, many services that nestle into Mountain View's welcoming bosom are never heard from again. The pattern: Company gets bought out. Users rejoice. Company lies fallow for months. Users grow impatient. Company's employees get farmed out to other Google projects. Company lies fallow for more months. Users get even more impatient ...
Preach it Farhad. I can't think of a company Google bought and made better. Writely is my go to example. It was possibly the most polished web app I ever used and then Google bought it and dirtied the damn thing up.
That being said, I still use Google Docs, Gmail, GCal....
