But all negativity aside, I think February presents an opportunity for sports. Between the Superbowl and March Madness is more than a full month. That’s the perfect amount of time for a tournament, much like March Madness — fast paced, single elimination, every game counts. Pull sports fans out of their boredom and give them what they want: excitement! The World Baseball Classic is a great example of a tournament that lasts a short time and keeps people (somewhat) gripped to their television. But that starts in March just as March Madness is ramping up.

Ok, ok, I’m presenting a problem, but no solution. Well here it is: soccer. We all know Americans have not taken very well to domestic soccer leagues, but this is not a indication of a lack of interest in the sport. In fact, every time the World Cup rolls around, all of a sudden everyone is a soccer fan. So I suggest a tournament on American soil with 16 of the top international teams (USA obviously included) competing for the title. Put a decent marketing budget behind it and I think we have ourselves a thrilling February sporting event, and a way to increase American interest in a sport that just can’t seem to catch on.

It’s the answer to our February sports woes, a way for us to relate to the rest of the world again, and an awesome excuse to get out of the cold and into our favorite local bar and scream USA!

Why Innovation Will Bite Back: An Interview With Andrew Razeghi

Yes, there are expensive set top boxes and add-ons to televisions that can get some of that content onto your TV, but that’s not the solution. Why has this convergence not happened? I don’t know, but in a week filled with inaugural hope and progress, let’s forget about the past and look into the future – because something happened in the beginning of 2009 that hopefully signified change …

At this year’s CES, LG unveiled televisions that allowed an Internet connection to be plugged directly into the TV. This was coupled with a partnership announcement with Netflix that lets people to watch streaming movies via that connection. A great first step, and proof-of-concept, with a widely adopted service like Netflix.

What’s next? Yahoo also announced their “Widget Channel” with Intel, which makes it easier for people to get Internet content through their TV. They are going to be announcing consumer electronics partners soon. Maybe this will be the service that takes off, maybe it won’t, but it’s getting us closer to an iPhone-like approach to television.

Imagine your TV is like an iPhone and you can download applications, using your remote, from YouTube, Hulu, broadcast networks and even publishers like The New York Times. A simple click on each one brings up their online video content in an easy-to-use user-interface, and it can all be watched on demand. Sounds simple doesn’t it? This seems like the most logical and lucrative approach to Internet and TV convergence. The content is already there, it’s just a matter of building a simple application to search and access it.

The difficulty would most likely come in getting TV manufacturers to build affordable Internet-ready TVs and enabling a platform that can host these applications. But if big media companies make a push in this direction, you would think the manufacturers would be quick to follow.

Internet and TV convergence seems like a lofty goal, but is it? The pieces of the puzzle are there and we’re not talking about anything too complex from a technology perspective. The number of people who watch television shows on their computers has tripled over the past few years according to Genevieve Bell at Intel (see this WSJ story), but I’d have to imagine that these viewers would abandon their small laptop screen in a hurry if they could watch the same content on a TV. I know I would.

I don’t really know what exactly Girl Talk does. Mashup artist? No. DJ? Not really. I do know, however, that it’s great stuff. What he does isn’t really all that special, it’s more how he does it – serious, heavy-duty mixing using a dizzying amount and variety of songs, and doing it really, really well.

There you go. His MySpace page has some music if you want to really hear what he does - I recommend “Still Here” as a starter.

Anyways, back to the original reason for this post. Girl Talk’s album is a complex mix of more than 250 recognizable songs from the past and present, none of which are original work by Mr. Girl Talk himself. With the way the RIAA has been treating unlawful use of their music, you would think they’d be all over this guy, but so far they aren’t, and they shouldn’t be.

Since I started listening to Girl Talk, who offers a “pay what you want” pricing of his album, I have rediscovered songs I have forgotten about, picked out specific beats or guitar riffs I liked, and ultimately figured out what the songs were and bought them. I can safely say that I’ve bought somewhere around five to seven songs because of Girl Talk.

Girl Talk is a marketing machine, doing something that music labels haven’t figured out. His album is an hour-long advertisement for hundreds of songs delivered in ten to twenty second long bits that are mixed together to bring out the best in each one.

This man is a goldmine for the record industry, and hopefully they’ll let him stick around long enough to keep it up. I know I need a new album from him, I think I’ve listened to it every day on my walk to and from work for the past two months.

And I highly recommend going to his concert if you ever have a chance. Probably one of the best I’ve ever been to.

In the near future, processor speeds in phones will undoubtedly improve dramatically, hard-disk space is already skyrocketing, and as more and more of our data lives online (Gmail, Facebook, Picasa, etc…) we won’t even need to store it on a computer anymore, we’ll just need internet to access it.

Wherever you go, the phone can be hooked up to a monitor and you will be able to do work, listen to music, watch YouTube — pretty much anything you can do today on a computer. Want to leave work and finish up at home? Just put the phone in your pocket and you’re all set.

And I’m now trying to figure out why I’m calling it a phone. It’s not.

I remember when I was younger and we would learn in school about the first computers — they were the “size of a house” and people put punch cards through them to make them work. We would laugh and try to imagine what kind of mouse went with a computer that big. A few years from now, kids will be doing the same thing, but they’ll be laughing at those 2 or 3 foot tall towers we hooked up to monitors as they plug their playing-card-deck-sized computer into the flatscreen to watch some TV.

This reminded me of the Argentina vs. Paraguay soccer game I attended in Argentina a few weeks ago. While there were screens and a Jumbotron in the River Plate stadium,  none were turned on, and nowhere in the stadium was there any indication of time elapsed during the game, let alone replays or that game where you have to follow the hat with the ball under it.

No clock or replays was hard to get used to, but as the game went on, it was obvious that this lack of technology restored a purity to the game — the experience was all about the game and the players on the field, and this focus showed among the spectators.

There’s a certain charm in stripping a sporting event down to its core elements. The NHL has had several very successful outdoor hockey games, the next occurring at Wrigley Field, that likely reminds people of their youth, playing hockey on a frozen pond.

While technology undoubtedly enhances certain aspects of sports, sometimes it’s refreshing to see superhuman, high-paid, over-hyped athletes in a setting reminiscent of elementary school recess football, or summers playing baseball the neighbors in the street.

So far things seems to be running smoothly — not being used too much, confirming the right call, and even reversing a call on Friday. Whether instant replay is a success is up for debate. Overall I think the long term success of instant replay will come down to how “instant” the replay actually is.

One of the main knocks on instant replay in football and baseball is that it stalls the game and takes way too long to get a final answer. It’s hard to tell if it will always take 4 minutes, as it did in the recent reversal, or if that’s just growing pains of MLB instant replay, but one would think that in the off-season, the process would be streamlined a bit (why they implemented it mid-season doesn’t make a ton of sense.) The Bleacher Report says it’s taking way too long and is being used for insignificant calls, but is any call in baseball insignificant? That’s the beauty of the game — there’s no clock, no mercy rule… Anything can happen.

The value of instant replay may be debated for a while, and getting it to be instant is key to its success, but once a double off the wall is changed to a walk off home-run in a big game, I think everyone will be believers.

Click on the map below and it will take you to an interactive map where you can click on each state to get its breakdown by county. Aaaand, let me know in the comments what you say to refer to carbonated drinks and where you’re from. HellaFrank is from San Francisco and says “soda.”

Map created by PopvsSoda

CARLOS ZAMBRANO IS ONE OF THE BEST HITTERS IN BASEBALL

(YEAH, I SAID HITTER)

We all know Carlos Zambrano is an awesome pitcher. This year so far he has 12 wins, an ERA of 2.76 and almost 100 strikeouts. But it’s his batting that may even be more impressive. Below is a chart that has Carlos’ current statistics for this season so far (65 at-bats) and the projected stats if he were to get 600 at-bats like an everyday heart-of-the-lineup player that doesn’t get hurt (correct me if I’m wrong, but 600 seemed like a nice round average number, maybe a tiny bit on the high side, but not by much).

WARNING: These numbers will blow your mind…

So, let’s analyze…

Batting Average: .354??? Are you kidding me? Simply amazing, even if it’s just 65 at-bats. I’d imagine luck runs out after about 3 at-bats in the major leagues, so this .354 is legit. It might come down a bit if he were to bat more often, but .354 can handle coming down a little. He would have finished second in batting behind Magglio Ordonez last year. ‘Nuff said.

Slugging%: He’s currently .009% higher than Manny Ramirez. Moving on…

Runs: Ok, this is the weak point but still respectable and moving up in the batting order might help.

Hits: Last year Ichiro Suzuki lead the league with 238 hits. Behind him were Magglio Ordonez and Matt Holliday with 216. Carlos Zambrano would have been tied for 4th in all of Major League Baseball.

Home Runs: 18 home runs in the “post-steroid” era? I’ll take it. Speaking of steroids, last year he would have tied Miguel Tejada.

RBI: 92 runs batted in last year would have had him tied for 49th in the Majors. Not bad, but if you consider that all his at-bats are in the 9th spot, this number would definitely go up if he batted elsewhere.

Strikeouts: I put this in because he does strike out a lot, but no more than some other sluggers like Adam Dunn or Ryan Howard.

So there you have it folks, one of the best hitters in all of Major League Baseball.

World Series. Game 7. Two outs. 9th inning. Runner on 2nd. Tie game. Pull Big Z or let him hit? Put on a helmet Carlos and bring that World Series trophy back to Chicago…

Shaquille O’Neal was traded to the Miami heat from the Los Angeles Lakers in 2004 and soon after his departure, took out a full page ad in the LA Times to thank the fans and the city (probably not Kobe though).

So if this becomes a trend, if athletes that are traded, or retire, start taking out full page print ads in the local newspapers, could this somehow save the reeling print industry? Maybe it’s time for ad sales to shift their efforts to something that the economy has very little effect on, apparently — professional athlete’s salaries.

Math is not my strong suit, but if we take CC’s $11,000,000 salary this year and and assume he starts about 30 games and throws around 100 pitches per game, he only had to throw 3.5 pitches to pay for the $12,870 ad he bought. Yeah, he didn’t even have to actually fully-throw that fourth pitch…