Sports writers knock UFL as ‘Unseen Football League’; Opening attendance sparse

The United Football League kicked off its debut season last night and sports writers had a field day making light of the sparse crowd at the first game.
With the lack of interest in the new league, the UFL should stand for the “Unseen Football League,” said CBS Sports online columnist Mike Freeman. He wrote:

The United Football League had its debut on Thursday night and in its infinite brilliance went against college football and the baseball playoffs. In other words, someone threw the UFL a shovel and told it to start digging its own grave.

The Las Vegas Locomotives beat the California Redwoods 30-17 at Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas.
“UFL officials were hoping for a crowd of 15,000, but the actual draw wasn't even a third of that,” the Las Vegas Review Journal reported. However, the official attendance was announced as 14,209.
The four UFL teams will each play six games in the regular season. (The two other teams are the New York Sentinels and the Florida Tuskers.) The championship game is set for Nov. 27 in Las Vegas, the Associated Press says.
The UFL might have a better chance for success in the spring when football fans are starving for gridiron action. As it stands, the odds are stacked against the UFL succeeding.
It’s hard enough for fringe sports turning pro, much less upstart leagues in established sports trying to make a go of it.

Living in the age of consumer self-service

We’re living in the age of consumer self-service. What started with ATMs, pay-at-the-pump gas and Internet e-commerce has spread into many areas of American life. That includes self-checkout at grocery stores, automated DVD rental machines, and restaurant self-ordering kiosks.
For more information on this fascinating trend, check out my package of stories and photos in the Oct. 9, 2009, issue of Investor’s Business Daily or online at Investors.com.
In the package, I cover the overall trend of consumer self-service technology, take a look at the fast-growing market for food-ordering kiosks, and provide a timeline of major milestones for the industry.

Cultural implications of consumer self-service

On a lighter note, the age of consumer self-service technology will have some interesting cultural ramifications.
For instance, young men can buy condoms without feeling embarrassed handing the box to a store clerk. Instead they can go to a self-checkout register to pay for them. This video by CollegeHumor on the subject came out last month.
How far will consumer self-service go? On the sitcom “Seinfeld,” Kramer had an idea for a make-your-own-pizza restaurant. Will this happen? Probably not. But robotic pizza machines that make custom pizzas on the spot? Maybe.
Speaking of food, one long-time area of self-service tech has been vending machines.
MooBella, a company based in Taunton, Mass., is marketing a “make-your-own” ice cream machine, according to the Boston Globe. The vending machines will offer 12 ice cream flavors as well as add-ons such as M&Ms. (See photo of machine above.)
Japan is way ahead of the U.S. in terms of using vending machines to sell stuff. The country has vending machines for beer, eggs, umbrellas, neckties, batteries, you name it. See list and photos of Cool Japanese Vending Machines here.
The Wikipedia entry on vending machines also has a lot of interesting examples. My favorite is the machine that makes fresh French fries in Australia. Sounds yummy.

DJ Tiësto rocks Microsoft party in New York

World-renowned electronic dance music producer DJ Tiësto provided the entertainment Tuesday night for the inaugural Microsoft Open House at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City.
Tiësto put on a great show for the small crowd of about 100 guests at an evening reception. The Microsoft event was set up to show the media what products the tech company has planned for the holiday shopping season. Smart phones, Xbox video games, Zune HD media players, Windows 7, computer peripherals and other products were on display and available to demo.
It must have been an interesting experience for Tiësto, who is used to playing packed nightclubs. In Europe, the Dutch DJ entertains thousands of fans at big venues.
Still, Tiësto worked the mixing table with zest and appeared to enjoy playing for the assembled VIPs. Certainly the ladies in attendance appreciated his music (and perhaps his good looks) and danced along.
Tiësto is in the middle of a North American tour. His fourth studio album, “Kaleidoscope,” was just released this month. Check out his Web site.

Photos:
DJ Tiësto at the Microsoft Open House event in New York City on Oct. 6, 2009 (top)
Two lovely ladies dance to Tiësto’s grooves at the Microsoft Open House
For comparison’s sake, the bottom photo shows Tiësto playing at Creamfields in Daresbury, U.K., on Aug. 24, 2008. Note the huge crowd at the music festival.

Microsoft Surface computer entertains young library patrons in Darien, Conn.

Recently I visited the public library in Darien, Conn., and discovered it had one of Microsoft’s first Surface touch-screen tabletop computers.
A librarian told me the Surface computer was donated to the library and has been available for patrons to use since January. Getting applications for the tabletop computer was a challenge because most of the apps for Surface computers are for casinos and hotels, she said.
The kids I observed playing with the Surface computer really enjoyed it. They manipulated photos and played video games like Pong.
Microsoft debuted its Surface computers in May 2007. The table-top computers with 30-inch displays and multi-touch interfaces were deployed commercially in 2008 in Sheraton hotels, AT&T retail stores and Harrah’s Rio hotel and casino in Las Vegas.

The Surface computer in the Darien Library is either a sign that the devices are becoming more widely available or that a commercial market for the devices never developed and units are being redeployed for end of life. We'll see.

Photo: Two girls play with a Microsoft Surface computer at the Darien Library in Darien, Conn., on Sept. 20, 2009.

Embarrassing videos and photos – the only things that last forever on the Internet

The failed promise of digital content – Part 6: Embarrassing videos and photos

There’s an exception to the rule that nothing lasts, or can be guaranteed to last, on the Internet.
And that’s embarrassing videos and photos that go viral and entertain millions.
While content from established media companies and the general public might be on the Web one day and gone the next, you can be sure some videos and photos will always be available. Those are the videos of average Joes and Janes making colossal fools of themselves.
In this category, I’d include the “Star Wars kid,” the college sportscaster who coined “Boom goes the dynamite,” and Miss South Carolina 2007 talking about geography. The list goes on.
These are videos that they’ll be regretting and resenting for the rest of their lives. When their obituaries are written, they will mention the embarrassing videos that made them famous.
CollegeHumor.com has collected the stories behind these Internet viral videos. Check them out here at CollegeHumor’s Web Celeb Hall of Fame.
A similar phenomenon occurs with celebrity sex tapes and nude photos. Once released into the wilds of the Internet, they can never be brought under control. They’re out there for good.
The Associated Press recently posted an article titled “Photos of mullets, leotards return to haunt online.” It discussed how embarrassing photos of family members and friends are turning up online. Web sites like AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com and LaserPortraits.net specialize in exposing such embarrassments.

Fail Blog is another Web site that celebrates mistakes caught on video or photos.

Photos:
The “Star Wars kid” (top)
“Boom Goes the Dynamite” sportscaster
Miss South Carolina 2007

See previous articles in the series “The Failed Promise of Digital Content.”

Here today, gone tomorrow – Web content

The failed promise of digital content – Part 5: Content on the Web

Nothing’s permanent on the Web. I’ve said it many times.
Unlike physical books, CDs or DVDs, there is no assurance that content on the Web is going to be there from one year to the next.
If you bookmark a news article that interests you, often times it isn’t there weeks later. This happens with Associated Press and Reuters articles on Web portal Yahoo, for instance.
Many newspapers put older stories in archives where you have to pay to view each article or can access only as a subscriber. But sometimes the content just disappears without explanation. All you get is a dead Web link.
Other times, especially with user-generated content, writings and images vanish because the Web service hosting them shuts down.
Yahoo is preparing to erase many thousands of personal Web pages later this month when it shuts down its GeoCities service.
I have to transfer or download my GeoCities pages by Oct. 26 or they’ll be gone forever. Among my personal Web pages are those devoted to my engagement, my honeymoon, the birth of my two children, and my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary.
GeoCities is by no means the first such Web service to shut down and it won’t be the last.
Since the World Wide Web burst on to the scene in a big way in 1994 with the launch of Netscape’s Navigator browser, countless articles, documents, photos, videos and other records have been lost to the ether. Deleted. No longer available. Gone.
One popular Web blog “Queen of Sky: Diary of a Dysfunctional Flight Attendant” by Ellen Simonetti was deleted in December 2008 when the host of her blog suffered a massive technical failure. She did not have a backup for her blog, according to Wikipedia.
A Web site called YouTomb tracks videos that have been pulled after getting takedown notices for alleged copyright infringement. YouTomb is a research project of MIT Free Culture.
There have been some efforts to preserve Web history, such as Internet Archive. But the task is enormous.
By contrast, consider the treasure trove of information preserved in old newspapers. In addition to the articles and photos, you have display advertisements, classified ads, obituaries, birth notices, wedding announcements and other minutiae.
You won’t find details about what was being sold on eBay, Craigslist and other services years from now.
Or how about Web logs or blogs? Letter writing and handwritten diaries have gone the way of the VHS tape. But what about those personal journals compiled as blogs? Will they be around years from now when historians try to document what people were thinking at the dawn of the Internet age?
Certainly most blogs from failed blogging services are gone. But what about blogs from ones currently operating, such as Google’s Blogger, which just celebrated its 10th anniversary.
A quick check of Blogger’s Blogs of Note from its inaugural year in 2001 shows that many of those featured blogs are no longer available.
That doesn’t bode well for Web historians.

Previous articles in the series “The Failed Promise of Digital Content.”
Part 1: Music
Part 2: Video
Part 3: Newspapers and magazines
Part 4: Books

Chicago’s Olympic failure cheered by many Chicagoans; Chalk up a victory for Chalkie

As a native Chicagoan, I was disappointed that Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics was rejected. But it was probably for the best.
Family members who live in the city’s north suburbs were against the idea of Chicago hosting the Olympics. They argued that construction of the Olympic venues would be marred by graft and sweetheart deals in a city known for corruption.
They also figured that the city, and ultimately taxpayers, would end up footing the bill for cost-overruns.
Then there were concerns about traffic gridlock associated with the games themselves.
Needless to say, they were pretty relieved when the International Olympic Committee knocked out Chicago’s bid in the first round of voting Friday. Rio de Janiero ultimately won the honor.
Now Chicago will have to focus on its problems: aging transportation infrastructure, schools in need of aid, and the city’s crime rate, to name a few.
One wag sold T-shirts suggesting that Chicago’s Olympic mascot be a chalk outline of a murder victim holding a torch. Chalkie became the unofficial mascot of the city’s anti-Olympic movement. Check out the “Chalkie 2016” Web site here.
Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass proposed a T-shirt that said “Chicago 2016” on the front and “Terre Haute 2020” on the back.

As every Chicago politician knows, Terre Haute, Ind., is home to a federal prison. That's where a few would be tossed after boodling their way to Olympic fortunes. And why 2020? That’s how long it would take for grand juries to do their work.

Most Chicago news coverage about the Olympics was supportive of the city’s bid. But there were many opponents. The Chicago Sun-Times wrote that anti-Olympics activists cheered as the rest of the crowd at Daley Center Plaza mourned the voting that sent the 2016 games to Brazil. For more coverage of Chicago’s Olympic bid, check out the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune.