div3rse reality

This past week I was in the bookstore browsing through the technology section mostly waiting on my mother who was looking for some kind of magazine related to interior design when I stumbled across a very interesting book entitled What Would Google Do? by well known blogger Jeff Jarvis.  I skimmed through the description on the inside cover and thought “heck why not” and purchased it.  After a week of getting settled back into classes I finally got the time to start reading this truly fantastic book, and I am shooting myself in the leg for not getting to it quicker.  What Would Google Do? is simply that good.

Now I know what you are thinking, “I’ve already read a hundred books and articles about Google, how can this one be different?” What Would Google Do? is different because as Jarvis states, “… is a book that, in the end, is not about Google.  It’s about you.” Jarvis dissects key elements to Google’s success and then constructs them into simple but powerful rules that you, I, or anyone else for that matter, can use in our lives.  Best yet, they actually work, regardless of your background or experiences.

At the moment I’m not even halfway through the book but if what I have read thus far is excellent.  I’ve been recommending it to a plethora of my fellow college students and I  highly recommend it to anyone who has a genuine interest in a new way of thinking.  As Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist.com stated, “What Would Google Do? is an exceptional book that captures the massive changes the internet is effecting in our culture, in marketing, and in advertising.”

The first semester for most college students is over, the Holidays are almost here, college football bowl week begins this weekend, NFL playoffs are around the corner, the baseball hot stove continues to heat up, and I’m still behind on my to-do list. It’s good to see some things don’t change. As a big fan of the tv show Burn Notice on USA, which returns in January, I decided to spice things up a little, Burn Notice style. Here’s the January preview:

Philles get Doc Halladay
After three days of insane negotiations the Phillies finally got their man, Roy Halladay from the Blue Jays. Unfortunately the Phills had to give up quite a bit to get Halladay which has caused some people I have talked with to be very concerned with the deal. Let me first say this, Halladay is arguably the best pitcher in the Majors. He’s been playing in the toughest division to pitch in, the AL East with the Yankees & Red Sox, and now he’s coming to the NL East. Two other important points to note about Halladay is that he has the most complete games out of any starting pitcher in the majors and he is more of a ground ball pitcher, both of which is good in the smaller Citizens Bank Ballpark.

Now unfortunately accompanying this deal is the loss of Cliff Lee for prospects. The Phillies could have probably traded for Halladay and kept Lee for the final season on his contract, however, at the conclusion of their trade they would have given up 7 of their top 10 prospects in their farm system. No matter how good the Phillies are today or next season, there still has to be some plans for the future. The culture of the Phillies is changing, they are trying to get away from the losing Phillies of the past and reinvent themselves as a championship contender year in and year out, not just for a 2-4 year stretch. Just remember kids, “If you’re looking over your shoulder to see who’s coming after you, you can’t see where you’re going.”

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Good news for all those paying attention, I’ve redesigned again! I’m going to be moving this blog away from its original in-depth total eSports content to encompass mostly topics concerning web design, web interfaces, marketing and other digital media topics. Additionally, I’m also in the process of formatting all my work into a more concise portfolio to make things easier to find. The good news is I think for the most part things are done in the design end and any changes will be mainly functionality upgrades with a few aesthetic altercations now and again. So without further ado I will attempt to give my take on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and no I do not own the game (and I’m not boycotting the game, my computer cannot run it). This is probably the longest eSports related post you will see here in while.

I saw a post on the forums the other day where my good friend Logan “badfish” Newell made a post basically calling out people in the CoD community who went out and bought into the MW2 craze. Interesting to say the least, but ultimately useless. Every competitive CoD player could refuse to buy MW2 and I can guarantee you IW wouldn’t blink twice, heck they probably wouldn’t even blink once. Now maybe if this was 2001 when CoD1 originally came out they would, but not today. The reasoning is simple; the current competitive community provides no return on investment (ROI) for IW. Competitive gaming is a merely a fraction of the shadow it once was, anyone who thinks otherwise is deluding themselves. It was much better when CoD1 originally came out and CPL hosted their winter CoD event. Things were even better when WSVG hosted a CoD2 tournament at their Dallas event.

Today’s community lacks a professional structure and influx of revenue between gamers, sponsors and organizers it once had. Worse yet, IW and other game development studios know it. I saw this video on Jock Yitch’s site BASHandSlash (curtsey of catcher6250) a few days ago and there is a line Robert Bowling says that is absolutely hilarious to anyone in the competitive community.

“…and then if they have criticisms and feedback after that then we’re totally open ears and listening to them…” Jock pointed out how well Robert spins this topic and I’ll point out another: anyone remember all the CoDTV feedback back in 2001? While they might have open ears IW never promises to actually do anything. Furthermore, whenever GaretJax comes up with random news about how close IW is to CoDTV everyone gets all excited and then we don’t hear anything for months. Bottom line is CoDTV does not provide a positive ROI for IW, even if someone else like GaretJax basically hands them the code and explains specifically how to make it happen. The only way IW makes money implementing CoDTV is if CoD was a popular competitive game across multiple professional tournament events that reach the mainstream audience.

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After re-designing my site this past weekend I’m already behind in content and site updates, but what else is new.  Anyway, there are a host of interesting things going on around the world, but this time of year most interesting to me is the TV show renewal debate.   Typically this debate falls into two categories, the Nielsen’s and the Nielsen haters.  Nielsen is the official TV ratings source and for the past million years has been the main criteria for deciding which shows you watch on TV come back for another season or fall by the wayside.  The Nielsen’s are the people that take TV ratings as gospel for dictating which shows come back next season.  The Nielsen haters are usually made up of the fan bases of the shows most likely to be cancelled in the upcoming season.

This year more than ever, however, there has been a lot of chatter over which shows should and should not be renewed with below average ratings.  TVbyTheNumbers has a whole calculation for predicting which shows are in-danger of being canceled based off of ratings, and I usually tend to go with that.  While these numbers point to a very specific group of shows likely to be canceled things just don’t seem so clear cut this year.

Three shows in particular, NBC’s Chuck, and Fox’s Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Dollhouse, all have below average ratings, but have fans up in arms begging for them to be renewed.  While TTSCC has the lowest ratings (.1 below Dollhouse), it’s season finale left off with a major plot twist that have bloggers across the internet claiming what a mistake Fox would make if they didn’t renew Terminator.  Of course this doesn’t stop rumors, as EW reported an inside source said the show was already canceled here.  Interestingly enough these rumors cause more clamor and other “inside” information a day later found here.

While I personally would love to see TTSCC renewed its hard to argue with the numbers and while we would all like to think TV shows are more than just numbers it’s hard to really do so.  Pilot TV shows are expensive and risky, which is probably why CBS has 3 different versions of CSI and announced plans to release an NCIS spin-off next year.  Take what works, rinse, and repeat.  Fox is apparently known for being hard on its shows and I’m not sure about NBC but I would put more money on Chuck being renewed then Terminator or Dollhouse.  I think more than that, however, we can definitely say one of the two, Terminator or Dollhouse, will be canceled.

Even more interesting is this article that makes a case for abandoning television viewing altogether and watching shows only online so that the networks know exactly how many people are watching.  While this probably sounds like a good idea in theory, I doubt it will ever work simply because TV networks can’t make as much money off online viewership, again boiling down to the numbers game.  Terminator and Dollhouse’s actual viewership is quite high counting in their DVR viewers (Terminator is something like #2 or #3 overall), but networks don’t make enough money, if any, off DVR viewers.

Regardless of all the talk circulating around, there is still a plethora of time left before any formal announcements are made as NBC’s official 2009-2010 schedule is set to be announced May 5^th, Fox on May 18^th, ABC on May 19^th, and CBS on May 20^th.  In the meantime, however, I guess we can all continue to troll the internet defending our favorite show.  Even vote in E!Online’s Save one Show poll.  Currently, from what I’ve heard, Terminator is up at 47% and ahead of the pack.  Good news for fans, and if you’re like me, you’ll continue voting for your favorite as well.  Till next time…

Alright, after 3 hours or so I’ve finally finished updating this blog with a new design and a host of other features undernearth.  I have a lot more updates I want to get to, most importntly, re-designing the comments as their current design is too ugly to look at.  Until I fix the comments, I’m just going to leave them disabled so I don’t hurt anyone’s eyes. As you can probably guess by this design change, my blog content will also take a slightly different direction. I’ll still be doing some eSports stuff here and there, but this will not be a sole eSports blog anymore. Don’t like that?  Tough.  Anyway on to some of my thoughts for the weekend:

TTSCC Season (Series) Finale: I don’t know how many of you watch Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles but I do, mainly because I just like the Terminator franchise. Anyway, the season 2 finale aired last night and suffice to say it was probably also the series finale. Terminator’s ratings haven’t been doing so great since the start of season 2 and finally leveled out when Fox moved it to Fridays after a 3 week break. You can head over to TVbyNumbers for a full breakdown of ratings if you’re interested. While I won’t go spoil the finale in case anyone is planning on seeing it, I will say I’m kind of disappointed to see the show go. Yeah, it could possibly get renewed next season, but based on the ratings, the experts and I doubt it will. Luckily, Terminator Salvation (with Christian Bale as John Connor) is scheduled to hit theaters next month and it looks sick, so there is at least some Terminator in our future.

Congress to Investigate Bandwidth Capping: Finally, someone is starting to make some noise concerning bandwidth capping by ISPs which may include congress sniffing around. Wired.com has the story here.  Bandwidth capping is one of those things your ISP started to implement because their customer base kept growing and growing and instead of spending money upgrading their network infrastructure, they decided to cap bandwidth on clients, saving them a ton of money. I have Comcast when I’m home and not in school and I know we have some insanely low cap per month for having 3 college students and my parents home during the summer. I mean come on, it’s not like if Comcast spends a few thousand dollars upgrading their infrastructure they will go bankrupt….

Sprint Commercial: Something about this new Sprint commercial seems really cool. I can’t really put my finger on it, but I like the commercial so here it is: