Adam Carolla + Danny Bonaduce = problems

There's a great op-ed piece in the LA Times by Meghan Daum today about Adam Carolla. He's the guy who hosted Love Line with Dr. Drew for many years, then moved on to The Man Show with Jimmy Kimmel and now has his own morning radio show in LA. To say that Meghan Daum thinks Adam Carolla is a great host is an understatement, but she does make some really interesting points in her piece. I have listened to Love Line many times when he was hosting and he really does have some good analogies which are pretty insightful. His junior college riff is usually pretty funny. I feel sorry for him now that he has been paired with train wreck Danny Bonaduce. What did that guy ever do besides the Partridge Family anyway?

What happened to the weather?

All the weather forecasts around here said heavy rain on Thursday and Friday with snow as low as 1500 feet. It never even rained! There were some very dark clouds this morning and it was cold, but no precipitation. I'd like to see it warm up a little bit but otherwise it has been pretty nice for January.

What happened to my page rank?

Google has been updating page rank this week. I don't know if it's done yet or not, but my other site went from 1 to 3 and this site hasn't moved off zero. When I checked with that PR predictor site, this one was supposed to be higher - 5 -- than the other one, which was also a 5, but slightly lower before rounding up. This site gets more traffic although the other one has a few more links coming in, but not many. I will wait and see but I hope this one gets up from zero.

Bad weather coming

There is a big storm headed this way, I think. At least some thunderstorms and cold weather and possibly snow at pretty low elevations. Tomorrow will be a good day to work from home and avoid the crazy accidents that always happen when it rains. I drove home at the speed limit today and everybody passed me. It will be the same tomorrow

Curriki

I didn't know that Scott McNealy, the CEO of Sun, was so interested in education and in helping teachers. He set up Curriki, a site for exchanging lesson plans and other educational material. It sounds good. I need to get back and look at it more.

ScreenSteps

I took a brief look at ScreenSteps today and watched one of the tutorials on the website. It looks like an interesting way to streamline the production of step by step tutorials. It's also an alternative to screencasting. What's not clear is how much it's going to cost -- right now it's a beta which expires in less than two weeks. It might save some time since it integrates screen capture with a template for presenting the tutorial. The template I saw isn't a format I would normally use, but it might be flexible enough to work. Works on Windows and Mac.

MacWorld Discounts

Dealmac has around 50 deals on Mac software and hardware you can get even if you aren't going to MacWorld. Most are only good through tomorrow, though. One I liked is 30% off Profcast, an application which helps you convert a presentation into a podcast. It's a good deal at $21. I bought it myself.

Beckham coming to LA

I was reading in the LA Times today about how David Beckham would probably end up staying in Europe because the quality of play in MLS isn't high enough. That seemed odd, since he's not playing much for Real Madrid and he got booted off the English team. So I clicked onto CNNsi.com and the headline was Beckham coming to LA Galaxy. I guess $250 million is enough to make you not worry too much about the level of competition.

Apple, Inc.

The Apple iPhone is a very big deal, but changing the name of the company is pretty big, too. With the iPod, AppleTV, and iPhone, the company is doing more than computers. Reminds me of the VP who cancelled my video project because Apple "is a computer company." Good luck to Apple! I think I'll have to wait and see what the phone contract includes as far as paying for Internet access before I buy one of those phones.

Bring on Boise State

I know it's not going to happen, but it would be nice if Boise State had a shot at the national championship. They haven't lost and if there was a real playoff system for college football, they might have a chance to play their way to the title. Even though I'm a Gator fan, it still doesn't feel right that the championship isn't really decided on the field. Sure, they beat #1, but now you've got two teams with 1 loss and Boise State, which may end up #3 or #4, who knows, with no losses.

Gators looking good

I wouldn't call myself a huge Florida football fan, but when they have a good team, I like to mention that I'm a graduate of UF. I was hoping for the best against Ohio State, but never imagined that the Gators would just run them out of the building, as they have in the first half. Florida's offense hasn't been stopped much at all and they get the ball to start the second half, so things are looking good. Urban Meyer has called some excellent plays and the defense has been incredible.

MacWorld Keynote tomorrow

Less than 24 hours to go on the MacWorld Keynote. I'm expecting a few new items from Apple -- probably the new iPod, maybe the phone and maybe a TV and the media streaming device, plus a few software updates. That might be too much to expect, but we'll see what happens. The last few of these have not lived up to expectations, which tend to be very high because of how closed Apple is about new products.

Student Awards

One of my sons got an academic award at school today. He's been working pretty hard and does well in school, so that's great for him. I thought it was ironic that the two students who got the citizenship awards were the only two in his class who he'd had trouble with over the past couple of months. He had come home complaining about what each of them had done on different days. Both were incidents which had to do with honesty. Hmmm...

xPad

Odd timing but xPad was yesterday's Mac freeware application of the day at FreeMacWare.com. At least it didn't show up on MacZot again. I'm not sure that such a small program has generated this level of news and commentary before. The developer, Garrett Murray, wrote a bad contract, the purchaser, Brian Ball, exploited it, and now everyone is talking about an application that had been dormant for 2 years. I don't think the developer had much interest in updating the software -- I read his own statement to that effect on his site not long after version 1.0 of xPad came along. So it seems to me he got an offer that was probably a little inflated and took it without thinking that the way he'd written the contract, he might not get what he was expecting. Brian Ball may or may not have ever intended to fulfill the contract, but the way it was written worked out perfectly for a speculative venture. He could find out whether or not he could sell it and bail out if he wanted to, limiting his risk. He did that, but the way he did it -- not answering emails, continuing to sell the application beyond the time he'd paid for it -- is the crux of why most people are not happy with him. In the end, it's the same story you see again and again. The initial problem wasn't huge, but the failure to communicate honestly about it blows things up into something much worse. It will be interesting to see if MacZot can attract other developers who are willing to sell their software at a discount after this. It's already pretty clear that many customers won't be going back to MacZot.

Raiders fire Art Shell, again

Art Shell only lasted one year with the Raiders this time. He's probably better off without all the headaches that go with trying to coach the Raiders. His big mistake was hiring that guy from the bed and breakfast to run the offense. Things have changed in 12 years and it didn't make sense to hire a guy who had been out of football that long.

Who wants this job anyway? Until Al Davis steps aside, whenever that might happen, the Raiders aren't going to come back. They've got too many malcontents on their roster and they keep adding more of them. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if they went after Terrell Owens for next season.

LSU - Notre Dame blowout

JaMarcus Russell, the LSU quarterback, looked like a guy who belonged in a better league with larger players. I don't think I've ever seen someone throw the ball as easily as he does and have it go so far or so fast. He just flipped his wrist and the ball zoomed across the field 30 yards and when he was stationary, 40-50 yards was no problem. I believe the story that he can throw it 85 yards. I wonder if he won the Punt, Pass and Kick competition.

MacWorld Expo

I went to MacWorld Expo for 13 years in a row and then decided to stop going a couple of years ago when it had gotten pretty small. Things are going better now for Apple, but I'll be staying home again this year. One time I flew to Oakland, took BART to San Francisco, spent the day at MacWorld and then flew back home, but that is pretty exhausting -- about 7-8 hours of travel plus all the walking around. If the keynote is online, I'll probably watch that and look for some discounts from the vendors. Maybe I'll be able to go back next year.

Boise State wins

That Boise State game was incredible. It looked liked they were going to fall apart in the last few minutes and blow it, and when Oklahoma ran back the interception for a touchdown with a little bit more than a minute left, it seemed like the game was over. I almost turned it off at that point. The 4th down hook and ladder play for the tying touchdown was a great call, but when Oklahoma scored so easily in the first OT, again I figured it was over. Boise State didn't look good on their possession and had to scratch for a first down. Eventually they scored and the two point conversion was an amazing play. I hope Boise State breaks into the top 5 after that win. There really does need to be a playoff system because a team like Boise State doesn't have much of a chance the way things work now.

Bowl games

I remember when I was a kid, you had to watch all the major college bowl games on the same day, New Year's Day. There were other bowls that came before January 1, but the important ones were all on that day, starting in the morning and ending pretty late at night on the east coast. Now, they have all kinds of bowl games and the important ones seem to be played one per day. I guess there are three more games this week, starting at 5 PM on weekdays for the first two anyway. I think I'd rather see a playoff system so that you wouldn't have all these teams sitting around for 4-6 weeks waiting to play the bowl game.

Apple's phone

I was listening to The Tech Guy with Leo Laporte this morning when some guy called in with all kinds of details on the upcoming Apple phone. You never know how solid this kind of information is, but Leo seemed to find it credible. The guy said the phone will come in 4 GB and 8GB versions at $275 and $335 and will include Bluetooth 2 and some kind of accelerated data transfer technology. He also said it would be made out of zirconium. The caller said he had a friend who works at Apple -- don't all these guys with the rumors? There were more details but I am not much of a phone person so I didn't write anything down. I listen to Leo's show once in a while and I've never heard a call like that before, so maybe it had some real inside information. We should know in 9 days.