• Seth’s Blog: Thinking about Bizdev
• Seth’s Blog: Business development
• Soocial • Hassle-free contacts
  Address book/contact management

• How to Get Piles of Links, Subscribers and Comments
• Front Page of The Press of Atlantic City
  The front page of my hometown newspaper, refreshed daily.

• New analysis: California in for a devastating quake within 30 years
  Scientists are calculating that the probability of a magnitude 6.7+ earthquake hitting somewhere in CA in the next 30 years is now more than 99 percent. And 2-1 odds that a quake of this magnitude hits LA. Yikes.

• Amazon Mechanical Turk
  Online market place for work. Gives businesses and developers access to an on-demand scalable workforce.

Joel Comm just released a free ’secrets to Shopzilla’ ebook about getting the most out of the Shopzilla Publisher Program.

If you’re thinking about using Shopzilla Publisher to monetize your site, this is a good introduction. Contrary to the title, I wouldn’t say it has any ’secrets’, but it does have some insight.

Also, one correction: Joel mentions that the program is “contextual.” Though the ads are relevant (and as targeted as the webmaster chooses), they are not automatically drawn from the context of the page.

I’ve always been a terrible ball player. I played baseball from my tee-ball years through 8th grade, and I can unequivocally say that I sucked. (Ultimately, I’d later realize that I was not really good at any sports that involved much coordination and I stuck to swim team).

Beyond all of this, I’m not a sports fan either. I never get into following a leagues and teams the way I get into going to the gym, hiking, reading, or hanging on the computer. If you bump into me on the street, I don’t know the score and I don’t know who won last night.

That being said, last week I was at a Dodger’s game and I must give credit where credit is due: Going to baseball games is an awesome thing and it is the best of all games.

I like the individual nature of being at bat, combined with the team nature of being in the field. But mostly, for me, the whole affair is just good watching. Football, basketball, et al are okay, but the best watching (and reading - definitely read Moneyball) is baseball.

So it was prescient that after going to the game the other day I would stumble upon this letter from the late philosopher John Rauls recalling a conversation with Harry Kalven about why baseball is “the best of all games.”  Here are the main points made:

First: the rules of the game are in equilibrium: that is, from the start, the diamond was made just the right size, the pitcher’s mound just the right distance from home plate, etc., and this makes possible the marvelous plays, such as the double play. The physical layout of the game is perfectly adjusted to the human skills it is meant to display and to call into graceful exercise. Whereas, basketball, e.g., is constantly (or was then) adjusting its rules to get them in balance.

Second: the game does not give unusua1 preference or advantage to special physical types, e.g., to tall men as in basketball. All sorts of abilities can find a place somewhere, the tall and the short etc. can enjoy the game together in different positions.

Third: the game uses all parts of the body: the arms to throw, the legs to run, and to swing the bat, etc.; per contra soccer where you can’t touch the ball. It calls upon speed, accuracy of throw, gifts of sight for batting, shrewdness for pitchers and catchers, etc. And there are all kinds of strategies.

Fourth: all plays of the game are open to view: the spectators and the players can see what is going on. Per contra football where it is hard to know what is happening in the battlefront along the line. Even the umpires can’t see it all, so there is lots of cheating etc. And in basketball, it is hard to know when to call a foul. There are close calls in baseball too, but the umps do very well on the whole, and these close calls arise from the marvelous timing built into the game and not from trying to police cheaters etc.

Fifth: baseball is the only game where scoring is not done with the ball, and this has the remarkable effect of concentrating the excitement of plays at different points of the field at the same time. Will the runner cross the plate before the fielder gets to the ball and throws it to home plate, and so on.

Finally, there is the factor of time, the use of which is a central part of any game. Baseball shares with tennis the idea that time never runs out, as it does in basketball and football and soccer. This means that there is always time for the losing side to make a comeback. The last of the ninth inning becomes one of the most potentially exciting parts of the game. And while the same sometimes happens in tennis also, it seems to happen less often. Cricket, much like baseball (and indeed I must correct my remark above that baseball is the only game where scoring is not done with the ball), does not have a time limit.

Sure, this was all written before steroid scandals.  And cricket fans refuted some of the points in the original post on the Boston Review.  But for my money, I’m saying take me out to the ball game.

Via Preston Blog, the National Retail Association is forecasting 17% growth in 2008 for the Internet sector - with sales ranking in at $204 billion.  While the rest of the retail industry is expecting flat sales, it makes sense that growth will continue online.  As the economy depresses, more people will look to the web for the best deals, particularly on big-ticket items.  That said, 17% might be a stretch if the economy is hit worse than expected.

• mybabytree.org
  Through the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), you can pay a $5.50 to have a baby tree planted in the Indonesian rainforest. Then you can use Google Earth and watch it grow over the years.
• Meat flavored water
  Jacob Barber and I not only invented this idea in the 8th grade (1995), but we also made a marketing video for it.
• Biomimetics: Design by Nature
  National Geographic article on biomimicry - engineering with an eye towards copying nature.
• TimeMachiner
  TimeMachiner is a new mini-app that lets you email people in the future. Use it to remind yourself to do something that you’ll more than likely forget, keep your future self on the straight and narrow, even wish your friends happy birthday…
• UncommonGoods
  Online marketplace combining the treasures of a specialty boutique, the great finds of a craft show, discoveries from a faraway bazaar, along with some enduring classics.

“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”
-Randy Pausch

Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch, who is dying from pancreatic cancer, gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007. He speaks about achieving your childhood dreams and enabling the dreams of others.

I’ll tell you what: he really nailed this lecture. If you haven’t already watched this, you should (and make your kids watch, too). What a great human being Professor Pausch is - my deepest sympathies to him and his family.

For more information on Randy Pausch, you can visit http://www.cmu.edu/randyslecture.

By the way, in this lecture, he jokingly mentions his two childhood dreams were playing in the NFL and being Captain Kirk on Star Trek. These dreams have since come true: He recently scrimmaged with the Pittsburgh Steelers and got to say a line in a new Star Trek film.

I wish you all the best, Professor Pausch.

A few years ago I bought a headlamp for hiking, camping, night bicycle riding, and other rough-and-tumble activities. What I never expected was that it would become an invaluable tool that I’d rely on nearly every day in modern life.

You see, my girlfriend generally likes to go to sleep at a time that is a little too early for me (she also wakes up a little earlier)… I’d like to keep reading for another hour or so. So what’s a guy to do? I have a few options:

1. Turn the lights off in the bedroom and go read in another room
2. Keep the lights on and ask her to put something over her eyes
3. Turn the lights off, and use a freakin’ a headlamp

I’ve exercised all of these options countless times… but the first two are not optimal. Using the headlamp is the best way to go in most situations. I know what you’re thinking: Wow, what a dork. Well, you’re right. But it’s also pretty fun(ny), and I have no shame.

If you’re thinking of telling me I should use one of those crappy book lights, let me save you the time. I’ve tried a few of them and they are awful. They only really work on a few types of books (nothing too old, no small paperbacks), and they definitely don’t work on most magazines.

The headlamp is the way to go - a powerful, highly-focused spotlight shining only on the section you’re reading…. and compatible with all paper-media formats.

I recommend the Princeton Tec EOS, but really, any headlamp should do the trick. Happy night reading!

• Remember The Milk
  Online to do list and task management

Yan Bezugliy at ProBargainHunter.com created a Shopzilla Wordpress Plugin that makes price comparison integration within a blog post insanely easy. Users just need to provide their own Publisher ID and API key to use it (those can be attained by registering for the Shopzilla Publisher Program).

Here’s an example of the plugin in action, comparing the prices on Robert Fagles’ translation of Virgil’s Aeneid: