Prodigal son?

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Near the end of my sabbatical (oops, personal leave), I was convinced I wouldn't return to Amazon. I was ready for the next thing.
Then I returned, and my first week back was slow. I got a few e-mails each day, most being spam (ever since we switched to Microsoft Exchange Server, our inboxes have gone to hell). I was out of the loop and felt like a stranger wandering the halls.
But eventually everyone's schedules freed up, and I started to find out about all sorts of interesting projects. Which brings me to now. I think I am going to end up back at Amazon after all. I'm debating between three very intriguing opportunities, and I'm torn, but in a good way. All three offer chances to work for people I think I'd learn from, and the projects all geek me up. Who knew?

RSS aggregators

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My quest tonight (while cranking the new Liz Phair album which just showed up on my doorstep): find a good RSS aggregator or newsreader. For those who don't know what an RSS aggregator is, it's basically a piece of client software that allows you to quickly pull in posts from websites that syndicate their content in RSS (RDF Site Summary, though some refer to it as Really Simple Syndication). A lot of weblogs and news sites syndicate their content in RSS, and it's a lot more efficient to browse through headlines in an aggregator than it is to click through to every website. I just recently syndicated my weblog. You can easily tell when a site has updated its content, and you can browse through headlines and jump from site to site much more quickly than in a browser. I can't remember the last time another piece of client software had the potential to increase my productivity this much. If you read lots of blogs everday, look into one, and if you currently receive my weblog by e-mail you might consider switching to an RSS newsreader.
Does anyone have any recommended RSS aggregators? I'm working my way through some of the aggregators listed here and here. I haven't found one that grabs me yet. The HTML display capabilities vary widely, and most are fairly bare bones. Where are the options to save articles, to search or filter them, to choose how you want to open hyperlinks? Some of them cost $20 to $30, and considering the limited functionality that seems steep. Of course, you can also use the RSS-to-IMAP service from Blogstreet which I mentioned yesterday. I've loaded it up and have started receiving posts at my work and personal e-mail accounts. Right away I've become annoyed with sites that only syndicate their headlines and part of their descriptions (posts) instead of the entire descriptions.
Speaking of which, I wouldn't be surprised to see Microsoft simply build a free RSS aggregator into Outlook itself. Most of the aggregators look pretty much like Outlook anyway, and the functionality is fairly similar. Of course, I still only use the basic functionality of Outlook, and considering how much time I spend in that application you'd think it'd be worth learning some advanced tools. I blame the bloated and unintuitive interface. [Aside: Someone needs to come along and build a better e-mail application. It's the primary application for so many people in this country, and yet we still use e-mail essentially the same way I used my Pine e-mail program in college.]
FeedDemon looks to be the most promising of the aggregators to date. Can't wait to try it out. I'm fairly certain by year end we'll have a whole suite of free RSS aggregators to choose from. Why'd I wait so long?

GreenCine

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Jonathan Marlow from GreenCine was considerate enough to drop me a line after my recent comments on Netflix and Wal-Mart. He pointed out that GreenCine offers an unlimited 2-DVDs-out-at-a-time rental plan for $15.95 per month. That, combined with their unchallenged selection (they carry Eraserhead, which I tried to order from the David Lynch site but never received, and that in and of itself is a huge plus), make them a worthy competitor in the DVD rental market. I'll give them a whirl, either before or just after my trip to France, to see how they compare.
It's pronounced "green scene." Makes sense to me. I still can't get used to Zagat, though, as "ze gat." Sounds like an American impersonating a French person saying "the cat."

Grrrrr

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Crap day. Couldn't find my credit card this morning. Same one I've used for years, and one I've memorized. Having to cancel it and get a new number would be a royal pain. Lost one of my bike gloves, too. How can things like that just disappear? Got to the office, gave a crappy presentation. Felt stupid. Left the office and walked outside, and my allergies went crazy. My nose has been running like Lola all night.
Whenever I feel stupid, I dive into this downward spirals where I look at more and more things that make me feel more and more stupid. There's this side of me that will always feel like an idiot because my dad will always be smarter than me. I can't understand two words in his doctoral thesis.
This feeling of stupidity is infuriating because it shares space with an ultra-competitive, hyper-impatient maniac, my Hulk alter-ego, if you will. It manifests itself a lot when I'm not around others.
On Saturday I went for a bike ride. I'm woefully underprepared for my trip to France this year because I didn't ride after I hit that stupid dog late last year, and I didn't have a bike with me during my sabbatical. So people were passing me left and right. They'd say hi, those damn tall, skinny people with super long thigh bones to use as levers to turn their cranks. I'd smile and say hi, and then when they were out of earshot I'd start cussing like a sailor. I wanted to pick my bike up and throw it into the Lake. The whole ride was one long, boring suffer-fest. Then Sunday I went to the driving range to try out the new swing that my golf instructor has taught me. I couldn't get a ball in the air. I wanted to take my driver and pound it into the ground until the head flew off. Golf is not a game that forgives anger and frustration and adrenaline. It requires zen.
I'm feeling like Nick Nolte looks here. You'd think I'd mellow out with age. No, it just gets worse because your spirit stays the same but your body degrades rapidly. If my brainpower has peaked I'm going to kill myself.

Gammons about face

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Peter Gammons is citing range factor in every other sentence on Baseball Tonight. Hmmm. He's the one who said all the sabermetric criticism of Derek Jeter's defense was hogwash just a year ago, and now he's lauding players like Orlando Cabrera for having a great range factor.
Well, at least he's a learner, albeit slow. Someone with his visibility (rhymes with senility, often noticeable in his sentence structure) can only help illuminate the masses even if it's reflected wisdom. He has jumped on the OPS bandwagon--perhaps he'll be onto zone rating next.

Impressive day for Apple

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Apple had a huge day. Can anyone think of another company in the tech industry whose products are so anticipated that even a simple announcement generates so much buzz? As many others have noted, Apple creates desire for its products instead of fulfilling needs.
The new Mac G5 is hot. Okay, so it's debatable whether it will have the benchmark lead over Intel-powered machines by the time it streets, but Mac folks have been behind for so long that to even pull even or close in that race is a huge win. I certainly didn't expect such a huge performance improvement.
Even the new iSight webcam is elegantly styled. Sometimes Apple's hardware creates desire for the software (iPod for iTunes), and sometimes the software drives desire for the hardware (Final Cut Pro converted me to the Mac platform). Whether iSight drives a desire for iChat A/V or vice versa, they make a fetching couple.
Of course, none of these is revolutionary in any way. It's been a long time since Apple was a revolutionary company. But they take the plain products we're familiar with and make them sexy. One of the sexiest new features in the next version of Mac OS X (Panther) is named, appropriately, Expos

I just wet my pants

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Every Mac zealot has heard about the temporary leak of the new Mac G5 specs to the Apple store. Dual 2GHz 970's!!! The heavens just opened, rays of light shone down, and a young boys choir chanted.
* 1.6Ghz, 1.8Ghz, or dual 2Ghz PowerPC G5 Processors
* Up to 1 Ghz processor bus (!!)
* Up to 8 GB of DDR SDRAM
* Fast Serial ATA hard drives
* AGP 8X Pro graphics options from NVIDIA or ATI
* Three PCI or PCI-X expansion slots
* Three USB 2.0 ports
* One FireWire 800, two FireWire 400 ports
* Bluetooth & Airport Extreme ready
* Optical and analog audio in and out
Please sir can I have another?

A budding Gordon Gecko

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If you own stock in any company, you probably get that annual piece of mail from the company, shrouded in black plastic, containing an annual report, a proxy voting card, and a white paper booklet describing the various proposals under consideration. Most of the proposals are fairly conventional: approving some new directors, for example. In the past I would have said that stock option grant and auditor appointment proposals were fairly conventional, but in light of recent activity, I've changed my mind. In the past month or two I've voted against the Board of Directors in several cases.
As a shareholder of eBay, I voted against their proposal to increase the number of options they could issue to employees and directors. As a regular old shareholder, some dilution is acceptable if it can help the company hire and reward good employees, driving the share price higher for everyone. However, as the Motley Fool points out, the economy is lousy, and it's an employer's market in terms of hiring. Also, they have already set aside a large % of total shares outstanding for employee compensation. It doesn't feel like it's in my best self-interest to grant more dilution. Given the % of shares in the hands of eBay employees the proposal will probably pass regardless, but opposition, as in the case of the HP-Compaq merger, raises healthy debate.
Second, as a shareholder of Siebel, I voted for a shareholder proposal to expense stock options. I believe in expensing options, and again I was counter to the Board on this issue. My piddly number of votes will have the impact of an ant sneezing on an elephant's butt, but if a billion ants sneezed on that same elephant butt it just might tickle.

Wal-Mart vs. Netflix, round two

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The DVD I shipped back to Wal-Mart on Tuesday. Today, Friday, they received it and sent me an e-mail saying that had shipped my next DVD. Again, the cycle took three business days. Compare that with Netflix. I mailed them back a DVD on Wednesday and they received it today and the next one is in the mail. Two business days. Again, advantage Netflix.
So far, at least for Seattle, Netflix seems to have a one day advantage both in the time to ship a DVD back to them and to receive a DVD in return. It's not a huge difference, but in a monthly subscription model, time is indeed money.
Given my viewing habits--I like to watch obscure movies, and I watch a lot of movies--Netflix is still a better solution than Wal-Mart. If you stick to big, mainstream movies and watch a moderate number of movies on DVD each month (say 3 or fewer), then Wal-Mart lower prices will probably compensate for their slower cycle times and smaller selection.
I still think Netflix needs to hit a lower price point by offering an option for 2 movies out at a time, unlimited rentals. They make more money for now by not offering that option, but hiding a good option from customers is never a way to build a sustainable long-term business when the barriers to entry are low. Their business model is not difficult to replicate. Wal-Mart is coming in here like Microsoft in software--less innovative but better capitalized. They don't need to innovate; they can simply replicate Netflix and them outprice them. They can easily add selection and distribution centers by opening their checkbook.
I'm rooting for Netflix in this competition. I'm not a Wal-Mart fan, and I like to see the little guy win. But they should earn it by innovating and creating more value for their consumers.
Footnote: What of the disposable DVDs offered by Flexplay and adopted by Disney? These are DVDs that, once removed from their packaging, oxidize in 48 hours, rendering them unreadable. It's an ingenious way to rent DVDs without having to build a returns processing infrastructure, and it's cheap and simple. As a consumer, though, the silent ticking clock of oxidization is a hassle, and that deadline of 48 hours is one of the reasons I found physical rentals from stores like Blockbuster so annoying. Instead of late fees the penalty is that I have to buy another Flexplay DVD to watch the movie. My schedule isn't stable enough to guarantee I can watch a complete movie within 48 hours. If the Flexplay discs are cheap enough, though, they'll be a viable alternative that claims a small market share.

Google AdSense

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Google released a new product called AdSense that offers website owners another way besides affiliate programs to monetize their traffic. Its a piece of Javascript you insert into your code that, when your page is served to a reader, examines the text on that page and serves up a couple text ads it thinks are related to that page's content. It's much like what they do to the right of their search results.
I'm always looking for ways to offset the cost of hosting my site, but unfortunately I don't have a good page on my site to use this. It works best with very topically focused pages, not surprising considering it's adapted from their search results technology in which it only needs to interpret one pointed search query to generate results. On a page like a general personal weblog, which covers all sorts of topics, the technology seems to serve up a random mishmash of ads.
Nevertheless, I threw it up on my recommended reading page. If you click on any of the ads I make a couple pennies. The best way to support my site is still to click through on any of my Amazon links and make a purchase. But only if you find my recommendation useful, of course. Make me earn it.

The weather sucks...go see a movie

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It's gray and rainy out in Seattle. Big surprise. Fortunately, this is a great movie weekend here. Opening this weekend:
Le Cercle Rouge (one week only at the Varsity--you will chill)
Capturing the Friedmans (you will cringe)
Winged Migration (you will cry)
Whale Rider (you will cry)
The Hulk (you will turn green and rip off your shirt but your shorts will stay on)
From Justin to Kelly (you will cry)

Wireless competition

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Cellphone plans seem to be going up in price, rather than down. The service levels haven't really improved significantly, either. In two years or so, let's hope that the phone companies get a little competition from the Internet. Wi-Fi is the most promising alternative, but a lot of infrastructure would need to be built out. Still, why not?
Voice over IP was the previous great hope for more competition for the phone companies, never much loved by consumers in the first place. I still have to pay $22 a month for a land line to dial into work, and why doesn't that cost $5? What's new in landline technology that shouldn't be an add-on service? Nothing.
If my desktop wasn't in such bad shape, I'd invest in a webcam so I could make free long distance calls to my family, see video of nephew Ryan crying and pooping, and occasionally see Jeff do his Superman impression. On a cable line or DSL the experience is high quality.

CWS--oh yes

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Stanford couldn't beat Cal-State Fullerton all year (5 losses, I think), but facing elimination in the College World Series, having to beat CS Fullerton twice in a row, they came through. Exciting stuff--I was watching it off Tivo and was jumping up and down in my boxers. Three out of the last four years Stanford's played in the CWS championship. Considering the format, that's quite a feat.
It's easy to lose sight of your alma mater's sports teams a few years past graduation, but Stanford has won the Sears Cup (awarded to the best overall college athletics program) a ridiculous nine years in a row. I of course have nothing to do with any of that, but I'm going to claim some peripheral goodness anyway.