Category Archives: bloggers

Mark Cuban. MLB Savior?



Mark Cuban is among many who are bidding to buy the Chicago Cubs. Whether you like this guy or not it would be fantastic for Major League Baseball, not to mention the Cubs. MLB has had all kinds of troubles over the past decade or so from steroids to player strikes to an incompetent commissioner in Bud Selig. While these things have hurt “America’s Pastime”, it is the refusal to do new things & let the status quo go unchecked that bothers me most. Mark Cuban is one of the brightest people on the planet so I’d be more apt to make him commissioner than just an owner of a single team. As owner of the Cubs he could affect change by changing how his team does things so others will follow suit. I think Mark would have better ideas than turning a blind eye to steroid use just to get attendance numbers back up. He might actually institute some new technology and ideas.

The first thing he could do is make baseball players more accessible to fans. Nascar blew up because the average fan could talk to the drivers and team members in the pit area. His personal blog often covers his NBA team so instantly the average fan will get thoughts on their favorite team from the top guy. The next thing he would do would likely get the Cubs on HDNET as well as their local WGN channel. That would expand the viewership which is already huge for the Cubs. Another improvement he could make is push for better technology for the strike zone which is subjective to which human umpire is on the job. Also he could try to improve the game by speeding it up with a pitch clock that keeps the action going instead of wasting time between pitches. No one has time for four hour baseball games anymore. The biggest thing Cuban could do for baseball is just be different than all the ancient owners that are currently there. These guys likely don’t care about high def, the internet, and have never heard of a blog. Even if you disagree with Cuban’s position on online videos and other issues relating to the web, at least he understands what is going on. He is not stuck in the 80’s or 90’s. As an owner he would have a voice in overall baseball policies. When Cuban bought the Dallas Mavericks that team was a joke but he turned them into a perpetual winner with great attendance. Think about what he could do with a team that already has a great fan base.

Likely the powers that be in Major League Baseball won’t allow Cuban to get into their elitist club because they like things the way they are currently. People don’t like change especially when it threatens their powerful positions. It is similar to how old media is holding on for dear life resisting change that is already here. The current leaders in baseball would rather keep things “the way we have always done it” than make a change for the better.


Bloggers as journalists



I posted a few days ago about old media trying to change to look more like new media, and how this opened a gap for new media to take over the role of true journalism. A post in Gizmodo about the management disagreements within Motorola show that at least in some areas this metamorphosis is quite advanced.

The article shows a copy of a letter from a disgruntled senior manager to the new CEO Greg Brown. It is not a new thing for a disgruntled employee to release information about the company they are unhappy with. In this case the employee was unhappy with the actions in the executive that were driving the company he was dedicated to under. He turned out to be at least partially right.

What would have happened in the past is this would have been sent to a newspaper or TV, and it is a sign that things are changing that this went to a blog instead. What is disappointing is that even though Gizmodo had this before the trouble Motorola was in became public knowledge, it wasn’t until they announced their restructure that Gozmodo realised what they had. This is probably an experience thing though, Gizmodo is used to distributing the news rather than breaking it.


Some PayPerPost Bloggers Punished by Google Tough Luck!



DunceAll I can say, is that if the bloggers that were punished by Google are in the group of people who did not disclose in their articles that they were paid to post “tough luck”. If you have been disclosing in your post then tough luck for being associated with a company, that many of us thought was highly unethical.

If your pagerank was lowered because of sheer association with PayPerPost, then maybe next time you will pick an advertising partner that will not get your pagerank removed.

Google should go after SEO people like Neil Patel next, and punish bloggers that work under his model of paying for links within bloggers articles and not disclosing that they are paid links and whatever other schemes he and people like him have going. 

The thing that is going to be tough for Google to figure out is that people like him work under the radar as much as possible, and he and others like him are part of a very disgusting bottom feeder group that only want to line their pockets with money from companies desperate to be found at the top of the Google search result without having earned that search rank.

The more I here about these Ponzi schemes one thing for sure is that if I read a article on the net today and I don’t 100% trust the source I will treat the article and the links within the article as suspect. IZEA Also Known as PayPerPost

 


Microsoft gives Laptops to Bloggers with Vista Loaded!



The first question I have for those that got Laptops from Microsoft is this. Have you ever been critical of the company? My guess is that just like Santa Clause checking his list to see who has been naughty and nice, my guess is that those bloggers that got laptops have been pretty nice to Microsoft.

Don’t get me wrong I think companies sending out software and hardware is a terrific idea but usually when I get gear like that their is a 30 day time limit and I have to send it back. I hope that these bloggers all disclose the gift and manage to stay objective in the opinions they write.

The question is do these bloggers now have to disclose the gift on every article they write about Vista? It will be a interesting experiment to track the blogs and see how they report on Vista thats for sure. [Wired]


SpeciaL Live event at TechPodcasts.com!



I think the gang over at techpodcasts.com have really outdone themselves working through the agenda today we are going to have a really awesome event. If you are available on Saturday Sept 24th at 1:30 pm Pacific you will want to join us and our 3 guest for this live event.

This will be a comprehensive 90 minute event covering Podcast Hosting, Advanced BitTorrent, Weblog Setup for podcasting using Drupal, Movabletype, WordPress and Radio Userland we will also discuss Coral and Dijer.

Signup Today

Guest include Peter York from downloadradio.org, Dave Chekan from libsyn.com and Stephan Uebelhor who will be showing us how to get Drupal podcast ready!