This Bud’s for my in-laws: My children’s grandparents have car tags (in two states) that express their University of Florida pride. My mother-in-law (Getum) has one of the most impressive wardrobes of orange and blue outfits ever worn in Gainesville. My father-in-law is a Florida graduate, class of ‘52 (or so), who has little patience with any technology unless watching gator football is involved. For that reason, he knows more about satellite TV than any person I know. My brother-in-law, also a Florida graduate, class of ‘79 (or so), is right this very moment jumping up-and-down in the RCA Dome in Indianapolis. For all you you folks, congratulations on a most incredible NCAA national championship — in basketball!

Gabe steps up to the plate with Ballbug: Gabe Rivera uses his memeorandum blog-conversation-tracking engine to power up Ballbug. (His blog post announcing it.) This comes a few weeks after the launch of Gabe’s “dirt-digging” celebrity gossip grabber, WeSmirch.com. Congratulations, Gabe. I hope you knock this one out of the park.

This (and the start of baseball season) remind me that a few months ago, I met Doug Drinen, the St. Joseph’s University (Philadelphia) math and computer science professor who runs Baseball-Reference.com, including one of the most incredible wiki projects I’ve seen that doesn’t have the -opedia suffix: The BR Bullpen.

Sites like Ballbug, Baseball-Reference.com and the BR Bullpen make for an impressive array of sports media from the bleacher seats.

(Sidenote: Yes, I know it’s ironic that I’m sitting here watching the finals of the NCAA basketball tournament while blogging about baseball.)

Technorati Tags: memeorandum, baseball

The NYTimes.com stays old-school when it comes to RSS feed orange thingee: This afternoon, I finally got around to looking at the NYTimes.com redesign all the way to the bottom of the page. Interesting to observe they didn’t “evolve” their orange syndication button to the “new standard” one — they didn’t even “evolve” it to “RSS,” but stuck with the XML icon. Is this some kind of not-tipping point?

Is it about news or is it about paper? (From AP) “Newspapers’ online audiences are growing rapidly, according to a new industry study, highlighting a key growth area that newspapers are seeking to exploit as print circulation continues to be challenged.”

(via: Tom Biro)

Technorati Tags: media

Dumenco dancing on Cargo’s grave: Simon Dumenco is rejoicing that CondeNast’s Cargo (which he calls, “the insipid men’s shopping magazine”) has failed.

Here’s a snippet:

“Advertisers figured out the limitations of a magazine that existed mostly to suck up to them. In the end, it’s embarrassing to be seen hanging out with a suck-up.”

Don’t hold back, Simon. Tell us what you really think.

(via: Jason Calacanis)

Technorati Tags: magazines

Small business Katrina help — from Yahoo!: This has much mojo. Yahoo! employees from around the country will be in New Orleans this Friday to help small businesses get online. Small businesses in the area will be eligible for up to $1500 worth of free online services. The Yahoo employees will help create websites, build e-commerce offerings, and launch search advertising programs.

(via: John Jantsch)

Technorati Tags: katrina, smallbusiness, yahoo

Barry Bingham Jr., RIP: When I was very young, for several months I worked in an obscure and lowly (but tremendously fun) job at a great newspaper then run by Barry Bingham Jr., who died this morning. Sadly, the Bingham family, which had a series of Kennedyesque family tragedies, ended up imploding their family media empire and one of the nation’s great newspapers became just another Gannett property.

Getting Real: Self-published ‘e-book’ case-study: No way is Jason Fried just anybody. He’s got a small-business philosophy and point-of-view that he can articulate as well as anyone I know. Rather than be a side-line theorist who wastes time attacking what others attempt or believe, he spends his energies creating things and has a track record of developing online products that matter to many passionate users (I am one: I live in Basecamp.) Jason and his crew at 37signals run seminars about the way they manage projects and recently spent time collecting their approach into a book form called Getting Real, the book, and decided to self-publish it as a PDF.

The Jason & Co. viral marketing team responded like any cult would (again, I’m a self-confessing member of this cult) and now, a few weeks later, Jason reports that total revenue for the book has already reached $120,000. And since that is $120,000 in self-publishing, digital production dollars, that’s saying something. This is a story to follow, however, I wouldn’t encourage folks to merely focus on the self-publishing PDF aspects of the story. Jason and Co. have a great story and message to present. They have something worth saying and listening to. Those elements are the key to this publishing success.

Technorati Tags: smallbusiness

Khoi Vinh on the NYTimes.com redesign: “The awesome redesign I didn’t do.“ Khoi is the new design director at the NYTimes.

Quote:

“I think it’s a sterling piece of work, a great example of how to evolve a user experience rather than reinvent it: the best reaction it could receive from readers (those not among that vanishingly small subset of the general populace who can be called ‘design savvy’) would be something along the lines of “The new design looks just like the old design.— That would suit me fine, because it would signal a continuity that I think is completely appropriate for such a closely watched site like The New York Times’, and besides, I know for a fact that it’s more elegant and more useful than it was before.”

I’m a big fan of Khoi’s structured, minimal design (and his blog) and look forward to his leadership in evolving the NYTimes.com design.

Technorati Tags: design, publishing