At the Titans game today, the 16-year-old made it onto the jumbotron when a guy in front of us participated in a time-out contest. The 16-year-old is the guy in the red poncho. The last time he was on a jumbotron, he was in elementary school and we were attending a Vanderbilt basketball game. I was talking to the person next to me when I glanced up at the jumbotron and thought, “That half-naked kid waving his shirt over his head sure looks like my son…and that guy sitting next to him looking up at the jumbotron sure looks like me.” When asked what the X!~$## he was doing, he told me he was trying to win a pizza. Fortunately, he won. For weeks, I ran into people who would ask me if that was my son at the basketball game.

I’m sure the Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier didn’t have NFL football in mind when he wrote them, but tonight these words of his ring true:

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: “It might have been!”

Even though I have blogged how staggering the odds were against the Titans making it into the playoffs, I must admit that I never thought that it would turn out this way: That every team that was supposed to win, would EXCEPT the Titans. Reminder: Here’s what had to happen, with a strike-though of those that actually did happen:

1. Titans must beat Patriots
2. Steelers must beat Bengals
3. 49ers must beat Broncos
4. Chiefs must beat Jaguars

Today’s game against the Patriots was much closer than the ending score, 40-23, indicates (it was 26-23 in the fourth quarter), however, it was one of the most disappointing losses ever. The Titans had the chance of reversing an NFL record statistic: that no team in history has ever started 0-5 and made it into the playoffs — that record still stands. The odds were 60-1 against all the right things happening today. Except for the Titans losing, everything else fell into place. Unfortunately, that’s the way the probability gods work.

There are many things for Titans fans to cheer, however. Their final record was 8-8 — the best-case scenario even the most optimistic pundits predicted, is amazing, after being 0-5. They are an extremely young NFL team with superstars that are just beginning their careers (Vince Young and Pacman Jones). They have lots of salary cap room. They have all of the major players under contract for next season. Their coach is also signed for the coming season. Another bit of historical data: The Titans/Oilers went 8-8 for three seasons straight before the 1999 season when they finished 12-4 in the regular season and made it to the Superbowl.

One more positive thing for Titans fans. We still have someone to cheer for in the playoffs: Steve McNair who, today, added his name in the NFL annals by becoming the third quarterback in league history to top 30,000 yards passing (30,191) and 3,000 yards rushing (3,558), joining Hall of Famers Steve Young and Fran Tarkenton.

Later: One of the best things about having a blog is that sometimes, when I am searching for some past information, I run across a post like this one I wrote on November 12. That was the Sunday the Titans lost to the Ravens, 27-26. After that loss, their record was 2-7. I wrote this:

“On a positive note, the team now wearing Titans uniforms remind me of the three straight 8-8 years the team was last called the Oilers. The quarterback who is now leading the Titans reminds me of the quarterback of that team. I’m optimistic about the future of this team and its quarterback (it’s the “fan” in me). One day soon, the breaks and calls will start falling the right way.”

After that day’s loss, the Titans won six straight and finished the season 8-8.

Technorati Tags: nfl, titans

This New York Post year-end review of media-related “statistics” mashes up so much random and un-related chatter into a garbled trend-story that it’s hard to know where to start refuting it, so I won’t. Rather, I’m going to watch some football. (Okay, I’ll do one fisking quiz before leaving: What is wrong with the following sentence from the article: “Magazines continued to fail at a dizzying rate. The graveyard includes Elle Girl, Teen People, Celebrity Living, Budget Living, For You, Shock, Cargo and Officepirates.com?”)

In Scotland, the big celebration of the season starts on December 31-January 1. The last day of the year is called Hogmanay (hog-muh-NAY) and Ne’erday is the contraction of ‘New Years Day’ in Scots dialect. For 300 years — up until about 40 years ago — all the gift-giving, European and English-influenced traditions related to Christmas were discouraged by the Presbyterian church — the national Church of Scotland. Up until the 1960s, December 25 was a normal working day in Scotland (apparently, Charles Dickens didn’t really catch on in the northern reaches of the UK). The big winter festival gift-giving, feasting, etc., occurred (and still does in a major way) on Hogmanay/Ne’erday.

Most of the more-colorful Hogmanay customs haven’t spread to the U.S. — fireball swinging, for example — however, one has: the singing of Auld Lang Syne.

I’ve never quite learned the lyrics of the song, a poem by Robert Burns, and after seeing the lyrics in various versions around the web, I can now see why. They go something like this:

“Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and (days of) auld lang syne?

CHORUS:

For (days of) auld lang syne, my dear,
for (days of) auld lang syne,
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
for (days of) auld lang syne,”

Or something like that.

From Nashville (and Austin) — via a FREE download on iTunes — here is a Jack Ingram twangy version of Auld Lang Syne you can enjoy wherever you’re celebrating Hogmanay today, tonight and, well, whenever it ends for you.

Technorati Tags: hogmanay, scotland

1. In late 2007, a major wire service will run a feature story calling RSS “the coolest thing you’ve never heard of.”

2. In the magazine world, David Carey will be a name we hear a lot. The launch of CondeNast Portfolio (premiere issue in April, goes monthly in September) will be the most talked-about magazine launch in a long time (unless, that is, you combine all of the talk about the multiple launches of Radar). Unlike Radar, CondeNast Portfolio will be a huge success.

3. Speaking of Radar, it will launch and close again in 2007, setting up another relaunch in 2008.

4. Chris Anderson will write a cover story in Wired magazine about “Radical Transparency” in February. It will become a book published in April, 2009.

5. Wikis will be the “must-have” feature on magazine websites, however, they will frustrate publishers and editors when no “users” generate any content.

6. The buzzword “user generated content” will be replaced by the term “self-expression.” (Actually, that was just wishful thinking. The more likely replacement terms: “personal publishing,” “conversational media,” and the ever-popular “social media.”)

7. Time Inc. will lay off employees and sell off properties and reorganize. They will issue lots of statements about synergy.

8. The Titans will go 12-4 and win the AFC South with a home-field advantage for the entire playoffs. (As next season’s Superbowl takes place in 2008, I’ll wait 12 months before making the prediction that the Titans will win it.)

9. I will mark off at least four entries from my list of “All the Apple rumors you’ll ever need.”

10. Jimmy Guterman will start blogging again. (Okay, I cheated.)

Technorati Tags: 2007predictions

On Wednesday, the 16-year-old and I used the back of the envelop (actually, it was a 3 x 5 card) to calculate the odds of the Titans making it into the playoffs. As I said then, our prediction was 3.4% based on the “coin-flipping” method along with consensus match-up data from a popular sports odds-aggregation website.

Quote from my earlier post:

“If the coin-tossing odds formula is applicable…and the bookmakers’ consensus odds are correct, the chances of the Titans getting into the playoffs is 3.4% (.419 x .356 x .575 x .400 = .034)”

This morning, the Tennessean’s Jim Wyatt wrote a column titled, “Titans’ playoff puzzle has 60-1 odds.” It includes the following quote:

Frank Harrell, chairman of the department of biostatistics at Vanderbilt University, said the chances of four things happening independent of one another, like flipping a coin four times in a row and getting heads each time, is 6.25 percent. But in that case, it’s a 50-50 chance each time. The chances of the 49ers and Steelers winning is far less than 50-50 because both are underdogs. That means the overall chances of the Titans getting into the playoffs decrease significantly. ‘My guesstimate is somewhere between 2 percent and 7 percent chances for the Titans,’ Harrell said.

Despite the Google juice the rexblog has around key phrases associated with titans playoff chances, I estimate the odds of Professor Harrell seeing my post before talking with Jim Wyatt far exceed those related to getting struck by lightening but are somewhat less than those related to winning Power Ball. However, for the record, I’m extremely happy the rationale used by the 16-year-old and me has been peer-reviewed by an academic expert and deemed guesstimate-worthy.

Also worth remembering: I recently heard the odds of a college football player getting a starting slot on an NFL team are about 100-1. So, every player on the Titans team has already beaten a lot longer odds than 60-1 just to be playing in tomorrows game.

• Moms pick magazines over wine, massages and soothing hot baths | Media Buyer Planner
  From the suspect surveys department: A parenting magazine’s survey shows that magazines are moms’ most trusted sources of information and that moms choose magazines as the best way to relax.
  (tags: magazines)

I guess it must be some cool search-engine-optimization trick to release a newsworthy interview on a Friday night before a holiday weekend because search guru Danny Sullivan has just posted a Q&A With Jimmy Wales on Search Engine Land about the new wiki-powered search engine Wales (founder of Wikipedia) has announced. Wales says, once again, he didn’t tell the New York Times he was not out to “kill Google”:

Quote:

It’s just the development starting. We’re not producing a Google killing search engine in three months.”

Underscoring his commitment not to kill Google, Wales says the search engine is being built with open-source software Nutch and Lucene. (Wait, that came out wrong.)

Technorati Tags: google, search, wiki

Last night, I recorded Blog Wars on the Sundance Channel. Tonight, I am recording 20/20 because Jeff Jarvis says he was interviewed for two-and-a-half-hours for it, so I figure he’ll be on for at least 30 or so seconds.

Update: A shout-out to Jeff Jarvis, who actually had lots of air time and did a great job, however, about 90 minutes into the show, real-news broke in with the announcement of Saddam Hussein being executed. That is not a small TV story — unless, that is, the government decides to post video of the execution on YouTube.

Sidenote: ABC should immediately post the unaired portions 20/20 episode on their website and on YouTube. Indeed, it would be ironic if they don’t.

Quote of the day from Scott Karp: “It feels like we’ve reached the point where good old fashioned, in-your-face, BUY THIS advertising is starting to look a whole lot more authentic than all of the fake ‘authenticity’ that the hyping of authenticity has engendered.”

Technorati Tags: cluetrain, web2.0

I’ll admit. I know absolutely nothing about the business of Major League Baseball (however, rumor has it that at least one person who is a professional on the topic sometimes monitors this blog’s RSS feed). Yet I do know that whenever a story appears about some outlandish-sounding investment in a new Web 2.0 startup, it results in lots of blog posts and financial-media commentary suggesting the inflated investment is a signal of some form of coming “bust” related to new online ventures. For that reason, I feel it’s only appropriate for me (who knows nothing about the business of MLB) to make the unsubstantiated, misinformed, but highly obvious observation that a $126 million contract for a left-handed pitcher who lives in the Bay-area and has the Web 2.0-sounding name, Zito, surely indicates that some type of baseball bubble is about to bust.

(Note: For drive-by readers of this post, it is a refrain of many earlier posts that suggest when rich guys [be they baseball team owners or investors in venture funds that place bets on companies with no revenues] are the only ones writing the checks, any “bust” in Web 2.0 or MLB is going to have little effect on those of us who are limited to booing or cheering from the bleachers — or who provide color commentary from the anchor booth.)

Technorati Tags: mlb, web2.0

• Amazon’s ‘best ever’ press release | Jeff Matthews
  Every year on the day after Christmas, Amazon.com issues a press release touting its “best ever” holiday sales season.
  (tags: pr)
• Top 100 domain sales charts | Domain Name Journal
  Top: Diamond.com for $7.5 million. Weirdest: #23 mortage.com is a typo but sold for $242,400. Amusing aside: The headline (when I linked) touts that “Three Sold for Six Figures Each” — I think “7″ is what they meant.
  (tags: domain+names web+culture)
• Top ten Apple rumours of all time | Crave at CNET.co.uk
  Sort of like my ‘All the Apple rumors you’ll ever need’ — from a historic perspective. My personal favorite: #8.
  (tags: apple)

I apologize for “outing” my magazine colleagues, but whenever you see something that looks like “a top 35 list” on a website maintained by a magazine, what you’ll likely find when you click through won’t be a list, but will be a “slide show” designed to generate 35 page views instead of one. Here’s just one example on CNNMoney.com (”35 most outrageous fees [and how to avoid them]“) — although, in this case, the list of 35 is compressed to a mere 22 page slide show. I’m not picking on Money — the “list as page-view booster hack” is very common among magazine-related websites. Perhaps this is a carry-over practice from “the jump” — the way print publications use second (and if it’s the LA Times, third and fourth) pages to complete a story that runs too long for the first page. However, I’ve yet to see a magazine (except, perhaps the New Yorker) that would make its readers jump through 22 hoops of jumps.

Observation #1: I don’t believe there is a person on the planet who will ever get to #35 on a list of “how to save money” that requires the user to click through 22 times. However, if such a person does exist, I feel certain they won’t be the type of consumer most advertisers “target.”

Observation #2: These slide-show lists may generate more page views, but they generate fewer in-bound links.

Observation #3: Steve Rubel predicts the imminent demise of the “page view” metric due to the technical reality that websites using certain “Web 2.0″ technology don’t require the re-loading of a page to accomplish such things as a slide show. While I agree with Steve, I also think that practices such as slide-show list page-view booster hacks are such an assault on the user, they are probably hastening the metric’s demise.

According to the New York City Department of Health, among dogs registered in the city during 2006, the year’s top ten names for dogs are:

1. Max
2. Lucky
3. Princess
4. Rocky
5. Buddy
6. Coco
7. Daisy
8. Lucy
9. Lady
10. Shadow

(via: Freakonomics)

I’ll join with others who have given a thumbs up to BusinessWeek’s RSS Generator that allows you to subscribe to an RSS feed of stories that contain the search term or ticker symbol you supply. If you don’t use an RSS newsreader, you can use the feeds on a wide variety of “personal portal” pages like MyYahoo (click on the ‘+ Add Content tab and add the RSS’ URL) or the Google personal start page (click ‘add stuff’ and choose the option to ‘add by RSS URL’). Or, try a few on a Google Reader page that takes a few moments to set up but could save you hours and hours in 2007.

Here’s a rexblog bonus: How to create something like the BusinessWeek RSS generator for any news site or blog you follow. There are lots of hacks to do this, but I’ll keep it simple for you:

1. Go to the advanced search option on Topix.net and set up a search using your preferred parameters of time, location, URL, etc.

2. At the bottom of the search results page, click on the orange RSS feed icon and you’ll go to a results page that may look very weird to you. However, all you need to do is copy and past the URL from that page into the “add stuff” place on the customizable Google page or MyYahoo or an RSS newsreader.

(Later: I am going to do a screencast of this a bit later as it will make more sense to see it being done that to read how to do it. )

Technorati Tags: rss