* Windley’s tutorial on creating podcasts * Satellite iPod rumors

Rich and I are having a running discussion about the iPod and Apple’s ability to continue to dominate this business. Certainly the development of a community of developers and partners as the above links illustrate is a powerful asset for Apple. As a 4 iPod household, I’ve certainly voted with my feet. But…it is not a very sticky experience, I could move all my media to a competitive player tomorrow and lose very little. A network of related apps and solutions might start to create stickiness.

Kevin says Texas has gained enough points to jump over Cal. Man this sucks, I hate to see the Rose Bowl screwed again out of a Pac10/Big10 matchup.

UPDATE: sigh. Hey I hear this BCS thing sucks. Anyway, I have a hard time cheering for Michigan, but here’s hoping they thrash Texas. The politicking by Mack Brown and Texas supporters drove the BCS to a new low from which it will never recover.

* Nice story via Gizmodo on one of our investments, MobileLime * Rendition Networks acquired by Opsware, congrats! * Andy Sack points to a sarcastic NYTimes piece by friedman – as always a fun read. * Adrian found a nice roundup of wifobs and an incredibly valuable nokia headset adapter. * Johnza has a nice post on how to switch customers away from a competitor. Great lessons in here. Also a good post on PR around funding events. Across both these posts, I draw a great lesson – clear focus on your exact goal can always pay off. But you have to know your goal and you have to focus. * Rich as always has a cornucopia of tech posts – Yahoo Toolbar (I agree, you have to get this for the spyware tool), RockXP for PID recovery, a good set of podcasting links, his recos on must have software, the beginnings of his quest to build a htpc. how does the guy have time for a life and job?

For some reason my site is the top google listing for exclusive resorts, based on a simple old posting I did. Unclear why.

I recently refreshed the posting to have the correct url, after being contacted by one of the co-founders, a nice guy.

I’d really love to be a customer, their sites look great. It just doesn’t work for us now tho because a) we have limited vacation times, driven by conflicting school and scholastic sports schedules, and b) we just love a couple places – kona village resort, canyon ranch tucson – and don’t have the time or motivation to branch out.

But if we could, exclusive looks great.

* Mitch Ratcliffe points to NY Times article on borrowing billions to allow private SS investments. This does just seem nutty, we are already incredibly underfunded on SS commitments, borrowing even more doesn’t seem to be the path to fixing SS. * From gadgetopia, the velocity of wikipedia. Fascinating display of the power of openness and community. Competing against efforts like this must be painful. * Outsourcing to rural america. * How to pitch into the long tail of bloggers * Oprah’s favorite things list. I always find this show fascinating. The mania of the audience, the business behind the placements. Great theater and great business.

* Software I’ve tried – from Scoble, the cleartype tuner, I had no idea I needed this; ID3-TagIt, hugely useful for cleaning up mp3s; Hector Protector – just plain odd, MSFT clearly has too much time on its collective hands. * Software I mean to try – Evernote -- looks nice, will it sync with my bberry or blog?; converting windows movie maker files to DV2; via thoughtsonthinking, a whole list of great software; Sanmelody – a better way to network files at home? * Interesting -- it’s almost 2005 and we are still using the fat filesystem on consumer devices.

Hey at least they had power and hot water at their hotel – Michigan upset at dog sniffing. If this is the worst stunt they had to endure, it was a pretty good welcome I’d say.

Wow I didn’t know the Buckeyes were so dominant…“Ohio State is 26-3-1 against Big 12 teams and 4-0 against the Big 12 in bowl games. OSU defeated Oklahoma in the 1977 Cotton Bowl, Texas A &M in the 1987 Cotton and 1998 Sugar Bowls and Kansas State in the 2004 Fiesta Bowl.”…from the Dispatch (sub reqd).

* “But then they went and wiped out a whole season’s worth of disappointment in one glorious afternoon by spanking the Ugly Hats, 37-21.” * “But there really is only one game on Ohio State’s schedule and that’s the Michigan Game. There are 10 scheduled pre-season games before the actual season starts.”

UPDATE: OSU officially headed to the Alamo Bowl. Possible opponents – Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Oklahoma State, Texas (longshot). Hard to believe that OSU has never played Texas, tho that will be remedied next year with the start of a home and away series.

* Rich is trying to convert WMAs to MP3s… * … when he is not busy synching files… * … or jamming apps onto his new phone… * … or decompressing files. A digital renaissance man. * Andy is appealing us all to eke out a few more MPG while Martin is looking hard at biodiesel cars and starter kits. * The book gets another nice review and he provides another great, simple lesson about marketing – heck it is a general business and design lesson, not just a marketing lesson. * Cloudmark has a new anti-phishing effort and a trade-up program * And finally, stretching the definition of the Ignition family, Jerry has some great counsel for entrepreneurs seeking funding.

Look at my choices for TV watching:

* Akimbo service now available for MCE boxes, and Akimbo itself aggregates a lot of content. * How to stick rss and bittorrent together. Great tutorial to how to bind these together to find the content you want * An example use of bittorrent to find very targetted content of interest * Then I have the DVR/service choice – a comparison chart of many of the options; a claim that people are moving from tivo to comcast/msft. God forbid you have multiple pvr/service variants in your house (as I do), figuring out where Fox Sports Northwest is on any given box is hard. * Then of course there is game content. Xbox and xbox live; pc games on win mce with all their live components; and for extra fun phil has pointed me towards the mameox emulator for the xbox. * And finally DVDs and ripped DVDs.

How do I find what I want to watch or do at any given time? I am tired to hell of learning all the different program guides, search interfaces, etc. And it seems like the complexity is only going to grow for people as video downloads over IP (ala bittorrent) become easier and easier to do.

No answers here, just whining.

Despite my glow from the weekend’s results, I still have deep misgivings about the morality of college football. And I’ve gotten some nice email feedback from people – the hypocrisy in the game is so apparent – adults making nice livings off the back of young men’s efforts, young men who have few alternatives, no voice, and ultimately no power.

I don’t expect the system to change. Certainly not dramatically. But it’d be nice to see some gentle progress:

* I’d start with getting a baseline of data. The NCAA should do a random survey of players 5/10/15/20 years out of school and find out what help these players need or could have used. If we are going to direct more funds to these players we should have an idea about what they need. Absent this data tho… * I’d set up a pension plan for the players so that they and their kids can get a little something later in life. Might be as little today as a tuition plan for their kids. * I’d give a player lifetime tuition credit. The player can come back to the U at any time and take classes towards a bachelor’s degree. The cost is minimal and it could be a huge benefit. * The players need some representation in the decision process about the spending of the proceeds. Not sure how to do this but I don’t think it is right that the players have no voice at all today in how proceeds are spent. The fact that OSU can fund a huge number of varsity sports is nice and maybe that is the right thing, but maybe not – maybe the football players would vote not to fund the fencing, pistol, and riflery teams (real teams). * Certainly they should be allowed to leave school early like NBA players and play pro ball. It is ridiculous to force a young adult to go through the hoops of college if they have no interest or aptitude for college.

And a good point raised by a friend, the NFL should help fund these programs as well. The NFL has been getting a free farm system for years, there is no reason for this.

37-21.

Big 10 standings:

* S5 continues to improve – I love the idea of this, a completely hosted presentation app. I never know which machine I am using has which document, this would solve that for me. * What’s your phishing IQ – I test out a little too paranoid but I guess that is the right way to err. * Detecting digital image manipulation – great article, I am a little surprised that photographic evidence hasn’t come under full scale legal attack given the ease with which it can be manipulated. * DxO optics pro. It will be interesting to see if there is a way to separate image forgery from legitmate optics enhancement like this software.

* Via Furrygoat, a MAME emulator for MCE. Seems like MCE could become an interesting platform. * A review of BeyondTV in case MCE isn’t your cup of tea. My bet is every home ends up with a PC next to their TV. * Siemens sell Skype adapter for their cordless handsets. Once consumers can use mainstream handsets for VOIP calling, this market will explode. * Another way to bridge VOIP and mainstream handsets.

The home is just getting more complex…