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Tim Howard is going to be one of the Manchester United goalkeepers. The NYTimes article mentions how Kasey Kellar and Brad Friedel paved the way. Friedel was named the best keeper in the English Premier League for last season. He was a high-school classmate of one of my best friends, and my wife was a goalkeeper, so I have a signed poster from 1995 (thereabouts, anyway) of Friedel in a U.S. team jersey.

Printed text on the poster:
What part of shut out don’t you understand?

Handwritten note, for my wife’s sake:
From one goalie to another, never let ’em score.

Still one of our best wedding gifts…

I must have seen this linked on at least five blogs I read via NNW. So why not add to the fun? BBC: Loss of e-mail ‘worse than divorce’

Not scientific (800 techies), and not accurate (sponsored by Veritas, in an effort to sell more email backup software), but even the BBC knows how to draw the reader in with a bit of blather. My wife might think this line was written for me, though: “Electronic mail is playing such a key role in companies that most people start to get annoyed after just 30 minutes without e-mail access, the study found.” My Blackberry sures comes in handy there. 😉

It must have been amusing to write this CNN/Money story: “Nudity takes off“. My favorite quote?

Cost for a suite: $2,500 per week, including tax but not sun screen.

I shared this plumbing story with two colleagues at work today. I’m glad to read that all’s well that ends well. Not my cup of tea.

OK. Fluff movie, I admit. I saw the first one, and was mildly amused. Rumors were that the second Tomb Raider movie was better than the first. Not exactly high standards, but I needed a break from a Sunday evening at the office. Film was about what I expected, but I did not expect to have to wait through 25 minutes (literally) of advertising and previews before the film. I wanted to stand up and shout “Start the movie!” (I didn’t.) I considered complaining to the folks who run the theater, but felt I had wasted enough time.

Reading the above makes me seem old and crotchedy. I’m at least one of the two. Oh well.

Saw a preview last night for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, a movie coming in November. As far as I know, this is the first Aubrey-Maturin motion picture made, but I’m quite willing (eager, even) to be enlightened. Russell Crowe is starring as Lucky Jack. I don’t recognize the actor playing Maturin, but his name is Paul Bettany. I’m looking forward to this movie already, even though (a) the title makes it sound like they are mixing and matching the plots of more than one novel and (b) it’s going to be hard to match the mental pictures so many readers already have of these characters. I wonder whether or not the same folks have optioned future movies in the series… there are 20 books, after all, so if these are successful, there is a lot more material to mine. I’d welcome any links to info on this movie. I tried AintItCoolNews.com last night, with two slipshod reviews… clearly not written by those who have read the books. I’m sure there are enthusiast sites out there. I’ll have to find them.

For five short days, I’m a bachelor. I’ll try not to waste it all working!

I’ve written briefly about David Gelernter before. Now William Grosso, a “well-known speaker” I’ve never heard of throws out a short article titled “We’re all Gelernter Now“. Grosso doesn’t write much, but he does hit on the key point:

“has anyone else noticed that time-based tagging is becoming more and more important to the way we store and process data?”

Along the lines of Sifry’s interview with Lydon, this brief aside really underlines that we are finally building metadata as a side product of our normal process. It’s that lack of effort which is contributing to its ubiquity… and therefore its importance.

Gelernter hits on many useful concepts, but his academic foresight was, well, academic, in that I don’t believe he’s profiting from his early insights. Recognizing the way people think ahead of others didn’t give him enough of a head-start in envisioning how to take advantage of his ideas. Still, maybe it’s better to be right than rich. On most days, I’d settle for either, even if history cares more about who’s right. [found via Evhead, who noted the surprising non-mention of blogs as an “time-based tagging” example, even though Grosso was writing in his blog?!?]

A few days ago, I cited my limited awareness of MacOS RSS newsreaders. Just found one today, Shrook. While I don’t have a lot of time to explore, this looks like an intelligent application, and I see that the developer is smart enough to build in NNW subscription import… although Brent made the job easier by including an “Export Subscriptions…” menu item. (Shrook is also $10 cheaper.)

I don’t know Brent, nor his intentions, but I appreciate that he didn’t force lock-in via these preferences. Instead, he’s focused on the application and its experience. I see the Shrook uses WebKit already, which Brent has said he’s moving to. Probably harder with an installed base! Let the competition thrive, and the best application win!

I’m listening to the fascinating Christopher Lydon interview of Dave Sifry, founder of Technorati. Sifry defends editors, or says the discussion/debate about editors (as witnessed — and read by both Lydon and Sifry — by Jeff Jarvis) really obsures the point: saving time. Editors save time, and the collaborative filtering does, too. Sifry says that Technorati shows the real promise of collaborative filtering.

Other notes:

• Sifry calls blogging “an incredible lesson in civics for a new generation” — he’s emphasizing the ‘markets are conversations’ theme.
• RSS… he doesn’t care about the format wars, just that there ARE formats
• metadata is “tactical” — Google starts with one piece (the link)… now add when and just those two pieces of metadata create an explosion of applications
• “The one thing that this economy revolves around, this web economy, is an economy of attention. The one thing we don’t have enough of is time.”
• “Votes of attention” is a repeated phrase.
• Go to Sifry’s Alerts and look at my blogroll.

Near the end of the interview, Lydon notes that he is trying to create a “voice-driven analog to this whole blogsphere” in his blog. [Interview is in MP3 format; 30+ minutes long.]