Week 5 poll up.  For me the top 4 were easy – SC, Texas, Va Tech all look great and are undefeated, and OSU has the best D I’ve seen and an emerging offense.  I have deep questions about the rest of the poll – some teams have gaudy records but haven’t been tested, others have been tested but haven’t looked impressive.   Still a long season ahead of us.

The Jobster team launched their revised site this week…now the service is usable by job seekers…way to go guys! (Ignition is an investor).

* Phil thinks it would be great to listen to podcasts on his cellphone. Totally agree. I would listen to like 10x as many if I could use the cell. * Phil talks about Jobster’s culture and how they encourage innovation – lifting the 20% idea from Google. * Phil on the latest features in Berry411. I fyou have a blackberry and don’t have berry411, get going!

Maybe this entry should just be called “keeping up with phil”. Oh wait, Rich on online sites for trading in mileage points. Good stuff, I have a lot of idle miles.

* Subvert from within – great tips on how to remain focused on the customer, even within a large org. Totally relevant to team members in orgs of all sizes. (from geekman.com) * Google’s use of prediction markets internally. I wonder how many participants you need to make this work well. * NetworthIQ. If this was done in depth, allowing users to compare investment strategies and particular investments, that’d be pretty powerful. * A VC’s view of web2.0 investing. Good points. Like the observation that these services can be built and trialed very inexpensively. That seems like the right first step to me – no point in investing huge gobs of time and dollars if no one cares about an initial quick implementation. * Same guy on games investing – “Despite the incredible market size numbers, gaming, as a category, hasn’t produced many significant wins for venture investors. I think this will change as the underlying technology continues to improve and as people–not just kids–spend an increasing amount of time and dollars playing games.”

Per the NCAA stats site, OSU is #1 in rushing defense. And against good quality opposition. Definitely having a national championship year on defense, and the offense is perking up. A fun team to watch right now.

At fanblogs. I felt compelled to push the Buckeyes down a little, they had their troubles against SDSU. Still a lot of uncertainty in the poll – LSU, Georgia, Purdue all seem completely untested.

Nice commentary on collegefootballnews.com:

Coaches can go from one team to another without having to sit out a year. Students can transfer from one college to another without any sort of a penalty. It’s time the repressive NCAA realizes how unfair it is to its employees, er, student-athletes and allow them to transfer as well if they choose to. If a player doesn’t like the school he’s at, he should be able to leave at any time without penalty. Go ahead, raid away. If a coach doesn’t like this idea, then he should make sure his school and program are good enough to keep the players. As far as the coaches of the “Katrina schools”, if you really care about your players, you’ll let them do what’s in their best interest, not yours. And to the NCAA, it is possible to make exceptions to the rules and use some actual judgment when it’s time to do the decent thing.

The hypocrisy of the adults involved with college sports sickens me. Love the games, love the kids, but some of the adults, well…

Dipped into the nonfiction pool recently:

* “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”:amazon. OK I don’t doubt parts of the premise here – the developed nations of the western world use economics to influence and control happenings in the less developed countries. And when economics fail, they sometimes use other means. Duh. This is the way the world has worked approximately forever. I am not sure what he is blowing the whistle on. But Perkins is a blowhard. Puts himself in the middle of all the major happenings of the 20th century. Uses the word “I” all the time. Not much acknowledgement to any teams. It seems almost pathological, and the author drops hints about problems in his personal life, you get the sense he has a real pathology here. And he did this job he hates – extending the western world’s economic dominance over the rest of the world – for years and let himself be bought at every turn. Even when he showed signs of a conscience, he jumped back into the job with both arms, at one point claiming “if I didn’t do it, someone else would.” Wow now that is a standup guy. You get the sense he wrote this book now for fame or money or both, not out of some real sense of altruism.

* “The New Normal”:amazon. Here I thought this was a business book, given the author. But really it is a self help book (I haven’t dipped into this genre since Wayne Dyer burst on the market in the 70s). A lot of economic observations but really this is all about taking control of your life. Roger articulates pretty well how technology is giving us even more control, and how your government/employer safety nets are decaying even more (largely out of their control). And how you can and should take the opportunity to grab control of your own life. Great stuff, young people should read this book or something like it. Hat tip to chris for the book.

First a non-Ignition blog, but one that ought to be in all our aggregators:

* Mini Microsoft. A constant fountain of great stuff. Don’t just read the posts, dip into the comments too. Important to read not because of any MSFT obsession or any joy taken in MSFT gossip, but because we face Microsoft daily on the recruiting front and it is smart to know what people are talking about there.

Around ignition blogs, the jobster guys clearly are outposting everyone else:

* Jason with a job for someone affected by Katrina. The jobster guys have done a lot for Katrina victims, this is just one example. Here Phil talks about all the things they are doing. * Phil on the Jobster technology stack. I wonder how decisions at other companies differ. * Phil on hiring innovators and nurturing innovation. * Phil on finding relevant blogs. He is right here – it is easy to find posts today but hard to find blogs on particular topics. * Rich on tracking ferries via GPS. Love the ferry system.

May have posted this before but here’s the doc on the numatics site that has decoding info for their part numbers…oh and the mark8 line here which seems to be more prevalent on ebay these days

Door to Door delivered my two containers over the weekend. I’m about 75% unpacked – props and gear tucked away all around the house and yard. I’m waiting for the year that my storage containers are broken into and the would-be thieves stumble across a pile of skeletons – I am sure the police will show up looking for a serial killer.

Door to Door has provided reliable service over the last 3 years but delivery was kind of squirelly this time. They didn’t show on the scheduled day, were very very hard to get on the phone, and claimed that they had left messages at home and on my cell because they needed to confirm the delivery address (they never called my cell, they called home once and didn’t leave a message). We finally got it worked out but I may try shurguard this year.

OK this is the most boring weekend of big 10 football in recent history. The Big 10 itself says:

With eight unbeaten teams and a non-conference record of 18-3, the Big Ten is off to its best start in the last decade.

But boy I beg to differ. With the Iowa, Michigan, and OSU losses last week, the blush is off this rose. And look at some of these stunning matchups this weekend:

* Eastern Michigan at Michigan * Northern Iowa at Iowa * San Diego State at Ohio State * Central Michigan at Penn State * Florida Atlantic at Minnesota

And then there is the that classic: Kentucky at Indiana. Do these states even know what a football looks like? and just no buzz at all around Illinois at Cal and Wisconsin at North Carolina.

The only stories at all this weekend are:

* Purdue’s first real game with a visit to Arizona. A terrible letdown for Purdue if they can’t win this. * Michigan State at ND. Can ND continue to show up strong?

Pretty thin gruel.

* On the writely beta – love it…wish that office was delivered and worked this way…i don’t want to deal with installs and with docs being stuck on a particular machine. * Wish I could get an invite to Flock * Need to try Atlas * Also Mint * Trying to decide if I like memeorandom or not * Need to try last.fm

* Would love to deploy digital door locks but they just don’t match any of our hardware. My car has keyless entry now, so I am frustrated that the house does not. * This hard-fi thing seems like vaporware but could be cool. I definitely would buy something that shortcuts the path from CD to ipod. * Netgear’s home nas – i used to have a little snap nas – it didn’t last long and had perf issues. but maybe worth trying again. * Wonder how the slingbox is selling. * Picked up these altec lansing speakers last month and have been happy * not a product but hackaday is a fun site for hardware projects

J pointed me towards Cyberpower, gets a great review in one of the gaming mags this month. So I’ll add them to the list of gaming pc assemblers i’m considering.