7.2.05
Linky Monday
- Iowa rest stops will now offer free wireless. This is good, but would've been a whole lot more frickin' useful for yours truly had this happened, say, 18 months ago. Also note the super-cool WiFi hotspot tool that WiFiNetNews (source of the above link) offers.
- Dan Gilmor with an excellent post on what newspapers should be, but mostly aren't, doing, in terms of building deeper and more interactive relationships with readers via online tools and methods.
- King Kaufman gets the Patriots' win just about right: "spectacularly unspectacular." In an age of glitz, glamour and hotdogging in pro sports, this is yet another championship for a boring, workmanlike team. The Patriots, the Spurs, the Pistons, the Patriots again. Even the Lakers of the late '90s and early '00s were pretty boring - give it to Shaq, foul, give it to Shaq, 4-footer. Save for the glorious and all-too-brief run of the Rams (I'm not a Rams fan, per se, but damn, it was fun to watch), the NBA and NFL the last several years have produced real frickin' boring champions. The notable exceptions are the last several World Series winners - workmanlike teams that were actually exciting, whereas the glamorous Yankees were always boring. Of course, this is mostly because baseball is a better sport, but moving on, I know there's a lesson here about how especially in today's me-first sports culture, teams that stress fundamentals blah blah blah. I even make that argument sometimes. People forget, however, that it's possible to have both - teams that stress fundamentals and are exciting. The 1980s "Showtime" Lakers were both one of the best teams ever AND one of the most fun tickets a man could get. What I'm really saying here is damn do I hope the Mavs can play some better defense.
- Joel Achenbach's and Gene Weingarten's columns from the WaPoMag this past weekend. Read.
perma-linky posted by jkd : 12:19
