Author Archives: Steve Mays

“Your boy is straight, and he can ball”

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Learfield (where I work) CEO and Chief Blogger Clyde Lear points us to a really good article about our new president. The piece (for Time’s Man of the Year issue) was written by Craig Robinson, the head basketball coach at Oregon State. His sister, Michelle, will soon be the First Lady. Robinson knows basketball and what the game can tell about a man. My favorite graph from the article:

“What does Barack’s game say about the man, about the way he’s going to lead this country through these very trying times? Well, he’s competitive yet inclusive. He’s unselfish, which, where I come from, is the greatest compliment you can give both a player and a leader. And he’s consistent. You’ve got a guy at the top who ran a campaign — and who is going to run a government — in a classy, efficient and considerate manner. That’s the same guy I got to know playing hoops when he was dating my sister.”

Basketball was my game. I rode the bench in high school but loved playground pick-up ball. The person you are on court is the real you. Ask anyone who ever played.

Slumdog Millionaire at the RagTag Cinema

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Slumdog Millionaire is the story of how an impoverished Indian teen became a contestant on the Hindi version of “Who Wants to be A Millionaire?” This is a love story and a good one. But that description sells it short. It’s just a great story, well-told. It’s based on the novel Q and A by Vikas Swarup. [Trailer]

We saw the film at the RagTag Cinema in Columbia. Our first time there. The “theater” had about 80 or 90 seats, most of which were unmatched office chairs (not the swivel kind). I’m guessing the screen was about 10 by 25 feet.

Before the film, a young man came out and made a few announcements about upcoming films. All very casual. Some folks were drinking wine, others had a beer. There’s a bar in the lobby.  [Quote from their website: “A theater without beer is just a museum.” – Bertolt Brecht]

And I didn’t see/hear one screaming child. This was a much better movie experience than we’re used to. I’m sure we’ll go again.

21st Century Dating

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My friend could hear his college-aged daughter talking in another room. He assumed she was on the phone to her boy friend who lives in another city. After she had been talking long enough to cause concern for the family’s shared mobile minutes, he went in to shut down the marathon call.

Only to discover his daughter video chatting with her beau as they both watched the same movie on TV.

I’m not a father but this would seem to be a good news/bad news situation. The good news is dad doesn’t have to worry about what’s going on in the next room. The bad news is the little punk is always virtually present.

This phenomenon has already made it into our media and advertising.

Flip HD

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If you’d like to see/hear a side-by-side comparison, I’ve put both videos on this page. The first thing that jumps out at me is how much better the audio is on the Casio, even though it’s using a built-in mic like the Flip. And I think the quality of the video is a little better but that could be a function of how the two device encode for YouTube.

If you want to see the original, uncompressed video from the Flip, you can download the first 30 seconds (35 MB!). It’s not bad. NYT tech columnist David Pogue likes it, too. According to Pure Digital, (the makers of the Flip?) the little camera has 30% of the camcorder market.

ABC News iPhone app

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From LifeHacker: “The latest entry into news-based iPhone apps, ABC News offers top stories, location-specific news alerts, and videos from shows like Good Morning America and 20/20.”

What does this mean for local ABC affiliates? Why won’t every news organization offer an app like this? Will I still turn on the ABC World News when I get home in the evening, or will I already have seen the news?

Scott Adams: Future of your phone

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This post by Scott Adams illustrates why I think owning a smart phone is important. He makes some predictions about future applications:

WHATS-HIS-FACE: This application would let you discreetly take an iPhone photo of an acquaintance whose name you can’t remember then it uses face recognition to search for the name online. Someday everyone will have a Facebook-like web page, so searching for faces will be feasible.

DOCTOR-IN-A-BOX: Someday you’ll be able to take an iPhone picture of your suspicious moles, abrasions, fungus, or whatever and get an instant automated diagnosis and suggested treatment.

WHAT’S-IT-LIKE-THERE? Imagine wondering how long the line is to an event, or what a particular forest fire looks like, for example.  You send a query through your iPhone for anyone who is in that area, according to GPS tracking, and ask for a look. A kind stranger takes your query, sets his phone to stream video, and gives you the view from his perspective. You would have eyes anywhere there are people.

BRAIN-EXTENDER: Google and Wikipedia are already brain extenders. You can find almost any information you want and quickly. But imagine how much cooler it would be if your iPhone headset was continuously monitoring your conversations and answering your questions as they arise, or whispering suggestions in your ear. That application seems likely to me.

Before dismissing these, think about how unlikely it would have sounded if someone had told you it was possible to have have your phone “listen” to a song and tell you the name and artist.

As I get more familiar with the iPhone, I find myself thinking more about my use of –and relationship with– The Web. More and more of my time is spent in “the cloud.” Typepad, Gmail, Flickr, YouTube. My laptop, desktop and phone have become a means to “get to” and interact with my stuff out there.

The iPhone makes you aware of how much time you were not connected. Even with the MacBook at my side.

I overheard some of the regulars at the Towne Grill trying to come up with the name of some actor in a TV show. I couldn’t remember either but looked down at the iPhone and thought how easy it would be to google the answer. But that wouldn’t have been in the spirit of the discussion.

Putting aside the warnings of the The Matrix, Terminator and countless other movies and books… I find myself thinking of the web as one big old computer that we all use. And when it becomes smarter than we are (and self-aware) I want to be connected. All the time.

“a stats geek behind the scenes tweeting interesting stuff”

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I’ve been beating the Twitter drum ever since that digital light bulb came on for me. I did my best to offer some practical applications for our various businesses. But none were as spot-on as StatTweets. From the StatTweet website:

“Most sports-related media outlets that have a Twitter account simply blast everything through a single account. I don’t know about you, but I don’t find this very useful. I prefer Twitter updates targeted at just the teams I’m interested in. And I’m not talking about just a news feed. It needs to be as if each sports team had a twitter account and a stats geek behind the scenes tweeting interesting stuff.

That’s exactly what the StatTweets accounts are intended to do (but it is all automated). Not only can you follow just the teams you are interested in, but you can interact with each account to retrieve team and player stats dynamically.”