SOMEWHAT FRANK

Little League Needs To Protect Young Arms

I was watching the Little League World Series last night on ESPN as Maitland, Florida battled Davenport, Iowa and I found it upsetting to see Davenport's 12 year old pitcher throwing 137 pitches in 5 and 2/3 innings only to give up the game winning home-run to Dante Bichette, Jr (son of the former major leaguer). Why was a 12 year old throwing 137 pitches? This reminded me of the book I read by Will Carroll titled Saving the Pitcher. I think every baseball coach should be required to read it since it gives excellent advice on how to handle a baseball player's most valuable asset.

Harold Reynold's was one of the ESPN commentator and he was upset to see a pitcher go that many pitches at such a young age and I agree with him. Why waste a potential pitching arm and career by going too hard as a youngster? I think it is time to implement a pitch count for Little League baseball to help protect the arms of young pitchers. I think implementing an 80 to 100 pitch count would take the decision making out of the hands of the coaches similar to the players are doing what it takes to win at any expense. In this case it is at the expense of the future of a young pitcher.

Blogger Adds Anti-Splog Measure

Blogger just released a new feature that could be helpful in the battle against splog and other objectionable content. They launched a "Flag?" link on the top rail of Blogger. This allows others to send feedback to Blogger on blogs that they find to be offensive. I think this is an excellent move in the right direction towards protecting our blogosphere from splog.

To read more on the new feature check out the Blogger Buzz post here. Also visit this post by Mark Wilson, he was the first to point the update out to me since I do not use Blogger.

Spam + Blog = Splog : How Is It Affecting The Blogosphere?

I just read a post by Mark Cuban that explained it simply as spam in the form of a blog. What is splog?

Spam + Blog = Splog

Clever naming convention I know, but splog is creating an astrericks next to the validity of blogging numbers in the blogsphere as decreasing the quality of blog search engine search results.  Mark believes and I agree Google's blogger.com and other free blogging services it make it too easy start a bogus blog or splog. Though I find that offering free blogs is a wonderful thing for the good willed blogger it offers a free tool for nasty sploggers to unleash their garbage. These splogs are clogging the blogsphere and need to be handled in some way. IceRocket hinted at plans to stop indexing free blog offerings to help clean up their search results. I think this is a great idea but unfortunately will hurt the "good willed" blogger thus taking away some of the blogospheres freedom. This lose of freedom is the unfortunate part as these sploggers are really acting as blogosphere terrorists and need to be stopped.

Mark Cuban in closing offered this thought and I am going to take it as a call to arms:

"The intellectual property that is available in the blogosphere is an amazing source of ideas, facts and imagination. Now is the time to do something before the splog overwhelms it and make it difficult to discover new and exciting blogs."

I have a suggestion for Mark and IceRocket and any other blog search engine that will take it and run with it, I think you need a splogger patrol. Ad a link to your search results that allows the "good willed" bloggers of the blogosphere to report any blogs they find to be splogs in nature. Call it splog reporting or the splog patrol. I recently launched beta for a simple website called SplogReporter.com where "good willed" bloggers can report sploggers. Verification will then be made on which submitted items are truly splogs. So please bookmark the Splog Reporter site and report any splogs you come across. The goal is to create a master directory of splog URLs to have removed from the search engines. So "good willed" bloggers of the blogosphere, this is your call to arms to rid the blogosphere of splogs.

Does anyone have any other suggestions on what can be done to take action against splog without having to eliminate free blog offerings from blog search engine results?

Picasa Image Software Impressively Simple

I recently installed Picasa the image management software by Google after years of using Adobe products to crop and adjust my photo images and I have to say, I am extremely impressed by the product. It really does live up to it's tagline and makes image management simpler. I think the most valuable feature is the "I'm Feeling Lucky" image adjustment button. It turned most of my dull images into the perfect image. I know Picasa has been available for sometime but I would recommend checking it out if you haven't already. Read the story of Picasa and creator Lar Perkins the current general manager of Picasa now owned by Google.

Does Your Personality Affect Business and Personal Relationships?

Have you wondered how you are naturally inclined to act based on your personality type? In a business or personal situation you might find yourself questioning why an individual acts in a certain way. While you might what everyone you interact with to take a personality test it probably is only wishful thinking. So you will never really know what personality traits and types you are interacting with and how to maneuver to best interact with them. However, you can better understand your own personality traits and type. In doing so you will be able to play to your strengths and work on your weaknesses to interact more effectively with everyone you come into contact with. I recently did just that and took the Myers-Briggs personality test based on Karl Jung’s research here. I urge you to do the same.

My personality test results were very interesting and appeared very accurate. I came out as an Extroverted Intuitive Feeling Judging or ENFJ. This type is found in only 2 to 3 percent of the population.

I am a:

• Moderately expressed extrovert

• Moderately expressed intuitive personality

• Slightly expressed feeling personality

• Distinctively expressed judging personality

Common traits of an ENFJ include the following:

• Abstract in their thought and speech.

• Cooperative in their style of achieving goals and directive and extraverted in their interpersonal relations.

• Extraordinary charisma.

• Like to have things settled and arranged.

• Phenomenal interpersonal skills and unique salesmanship.

• Generally believe in their dreams and see themselves as helpers and enablers which they usually are.

• Are global leaders.

• See the big picture.

• Focus is expansive.

• Can juggle an amazing number of responsibilities or projects simultaneously

• Have tremendous entrepreneurial ability.

• Know and appreciate people.

Notable ENFJ’s include:

Abraham Lincoln
Ronald Reagan
David, King of Israel
Abraham Maslow
Michael Jordan
Johnny Deep
Oprah Winfrey
Dick Van Dyke
Ross Perot
James Garner
Ben Stiller
Peyton Manning
Matthew McConaughey
John Cusack
Ben Affleck
Lauren Graham
Pete Sampras
William Cullen Bryant
Dennis Hopper
Sean Connery
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Kyle from South Park (cartoon)

Take the test in an effort to better interact in business and personal relationships since it is ridiculous to assume you will be able to persuade everyone you come into contact with to take a personality test and then manuever around their personality results. You can take control of your own life though by taking the test and understanding your own personality. Upon taking the test let me know what personality type did your results displace? Did the test results appear to be accurate?

Somewhat Frank A Pluck Featured Friend

Somewhat Frank is presently listed as one of the "Featured Friends" on the Current Friends section of the Pluck website. Check it out here. Also Tech Crunch and RSS Blog are on the list and happen to be blogs I frequently visit.

Odeo Receives VC Funding

As I stated in my previous post titled, Odeo Bringing Some Noise, "Odeo will be an exciting company to watch as podcasting comes of age" and it appears to be true as this week Charles River Ventures and a slew of smaller VC's just gave the podcasting distribution and tools company funding. To read more about the details of the granted funding check out this post on the Odeo website site...oh and they are hiring too!

Is Free Wi-fi Available In Your Area?

Rome recently joined New York and Philadelphia as cities that offer free public wireless or wi-fi networks. Robin Good details Rome's network specifics in this report. As a Chicago resident I wondered if I had free city run wi-fi networks available in my area. The City of Chicago does not currently offer free wi-fi hotspots. I did a little more digging and found that there is a movement by the City of Chicago to run its own Wi-fi network and you can read more about it here.

The Chicago plan which is still in the developmental phase was based off of the wi-fi networks being installed in Philadelphia and other cities nationwide. Wireless transmitters placed in streetlights or other places throughout the city could make it possible to get high-speed Internet anywhere in the city.

Aside from public movements toward free wireless connections there are already a number of private companies offering free wireless Internet. I found that Chicago ranked second only to San Francisco in the top 25 free wireless hotspots offered by private venues. You can find networks in your area by going to Metrofreefi.com and selecting a U.S. location. If you are not in the U.S. you could us Google Local and search for Wi-fi. Wi-Fi Freespot and Wifinder list a number of Wi-fi hotspots across the globe.

Is Technorati Really For Sale?

Rumors have been swirling that Technorati is about to be sold to a large search engine company. I tried to trace these rumors to their source and all roads lead to BL Ochman. Her recent post titled Technorati About To Be Sold stated that a deal will occur within a week or so. She guesses Yahoo is the large search engine company doing the purchasing. However, I started to play the "what if" game and thought, what if Technorati is sold to the team of Mark Cuban and Blake Rhodes at IceRocket, or MSN decides to play hardball in the blog search arena or Google decides to flex its muscle for that matter? Would they create a blog search called Goognorati?

This could help us to find answers to the question: Who Will Be #1 In Blog Search?
What do you think is in store for Technorati?

UPDATE: I emailed Technorati Community Manager Naill Kennedy to try to get his insight on these rumors and he pointed me to a post on his personal blog here.

Aura Group And Tremor Launch First Online Video Ad Network

With The Aura Group teaming up with The Tremor Network to create the first ever online video ad network the video advertising bar will start to become more standardized. This standardization will only help online publishers to better utilize video ad units on their sites. Check out this recent article on Clickz News and the Aura Group press release here.

Are Mapping Software's Putting Armed Forces At Risk?

With the recent releases of the mapping software's  Google Earth and MSN Virtual Earth users have been empowered to explore places they have never seen before. Many users are uncovering some interesting aerial shots of high security locations. This makes me wonder if the proper security measures were taken into account when producing these satellite images and converting them to an easy to access mapping software. For example, many of the United States armed forces air fields are shown with fighter jets in plain view. Check out this link which is an aggregation of all the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird plane locations in the United States. It uses the Google API to plot all of the locations. While the Blackbird has been out of service since 1990,  it still makes me wonder if there are other planes and top secret weapons that are in plain view. When you take into account our current war on terror I wonder, is this software putting the armed forces at risk of attack? Is this a national security breach? What do you think?

Text Messaging Services and Resources

A number of mobile products have recently emerged and are currently available for use with SMS text messaging. Engadet recently highlighted some of the major mobile search providers. Somewhat Frank has also offered up information on Google SMS. However, I wanted to take it a step further and mention a few other SMS services that could be useful to you.

MSN Traffic Reports
http://autos.msn.com/everyday/trafficreport.aspx
This free service allows you to sign up with your .NET passport account and send traffic alerts directly to your cell phone.

FeedBeep
http://www.feedbeep.com
This paid subscription service allows you to receive RSS feeds to your cell phone.

Smarter SMS
http://www.smarter.com/sms
This free service allows you to enter the SKU or model number of any product and Smarter.com will quickly reply with the lowest online price for that item.

UPOC
http://www.upoc.com
This free social networking service connects people via SMS.

411SMS
http://www.411sms.com
This free directory service could save you from dialing 411 for information.

Check out the services I mentioned and let me know what you think of them. Also if there is a favorite SMS text messaging service that I failed to mention please let me know.

Pingoat Offers Online Google Sitemap Generator

Pingoat has done it again, not only is it offering the largest all-in-one ping site but it is also trying to help you generate a Google sitemap with it's new Google sitemap generator. I just tried it out and it seemed to work like a charm. My only hesitation was in assigning a priority to my posts, since it is all in the eyes of the beholder and it seems to set the same priority for every folder and post. Nevertheless, I think this generator will save me time in creating Google sitemaps, that is the bottom-line. You can read more about Pingoat from the creator himself here. If you want to read about a few other online sitemap generator options check out this post on Website Content Management System (CMS).

Pluck Offers Integrated RSS Reader

Pluck has released a new RSS reader technology that integrates with Firefox or IE and makes reading RSS feeds a breeze. This new reader plug-in allows you to create folders and organize your RSS feeds any way that you want to. Another feature I found very helpful was the "Feedfinder" which lists the top 100 feeds as well as Pluck's recommended feeds. I downloaded the Firefox version and installed it this morning and began to populate it with all of my favorite feeds. Here are a few other Pluck user perspectives, in the post titled All Plucked Up, General from Gagan Kaul's Blog and Pluck.com RSS Software. I would strongly recommend checking Pluck out here.
 

Blog Open Source Algorithm Community Proposed

With my recent post calling for the formation of a committee to help manage the state of the blogosphere spurred by the Syntagma theory, I read this post on Napsterization calling for similar action in create an "open source algorithm" community to figure out how to handle blog page rank questions.  It is a wordy post but it provides thorough analysis and is worth reading if you are interested in improvement upon the current blog assessment and ranking standards.