"The League"

     Are you in a fantasy league? I constantly hear this during football season and wondered how many people actually get involved with fantasy football. From first hand experience I can tell you it helps your overall perspective of the game and is a great tool that everyone should utilize if possible. This is my second year involved in fantasy football and this year is looking prosperous compared to my rookie season, finishing 7^th out of 10.

Fantasy football is simple; you gather at least 10 of your friends who want to organize a league where you can create your own fantasy football teams by conducting an online draft where you choose your players. You want to try and pick big name players who will produce the most on the NFL field, providing your fantasy team with points. Games during the NFL season are your teams schedule and you randomly play each person in a head to head battle of points.

I’m wondering how many people are involved in a fantasy league of some sort. It really is great b/c it allows you to open your mind. You may have players who you hate on your team but they are great players, forcing you to watch their NFL games. It becomes very completive and almost becomes a job. You have to research the week’s tops players, look at injury reports, account for game matchups etc. It really turns you into your own NFL manager. 
- Scott Marsicano

Pandora's box

 Pandora radio! The best thing since the mp3 was first discovered. Now I know Pandora has been around for a good amount of time already, but I never really knew much about it until I downloaded the Pandora Radio app. for my Blackberry Curve. This awesome FREE app. has now replaced my IPod in the car. It allows me to have some variety and not just keep listening to the same songs until the next time I update my IPod. The app. is very straightforward and although I would like to see some improvement in the buffering speed I’m really not complaining. All you have to do is simply open up the app. and type in what kind of station you would like to hear, the search engine it has finds perfect fit for the type of song, artist or category that you are looking for. Pandora can be compared to other apps. Such as Slacker radio, but I am telling you there is no comparison, Pandora has it won, simply because it can pick songs better. Now if you want to hear a specific song right away it may be a bit until Pandora comes around to playing it, and the fact that you can only skip through six songs per station slows down this process a little as well. But if you are looking to shake it up a bit and add some variety of noise you must download the Pandora app. for your Smartphone today.  

 -Jason Cuzzupe

On the Horizon Disaster

      Shortly after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster former British Petroleum CEO Tony Hayward told the Today Show that, “There’s no one who wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back.” News flash, so do a good many other people.

     My sister-in-law and her military husband used to live a few miles off of Pensacola, Florida. I often heard her talk about the amazingly beautiful clear water of the gulf.  They stayed with us a few days while running from Hurricane Katrina. We watched them as they watched, live on TV, the storm destroy their home and most everything they had to leave behind. For two years they lived in a shell of a home and neighborhood. This, however, turned out to be a temporary set-back for them.

     Her real anguish is now voiced in the more permanent man-made environmental damage to the gulf. The once beautiful water is now grimy and dirty. Millions of little black pellets and dead ocean life have washed up on the beaches. The result of shoddy construction and the subsequent use of poisonous dispersants called Corexit and its continued over use by the oil giant.

     Clint Guidry of the Louisiana Shrimpers Association calls it a, “Kill the Ocean, Save the Beaches” campaign perpetrated by BP and sanctioned by our government even after numerous groups have expressed concerns about harmful affects it may have on the marine life and ultimately human life.

     BP’s vessels of opportunity program or (VOO) claimed success as they used fishers and charter boat operators to spot oil on the water as BP would then spray more dispersants onto the surface. To use one of their own key words for many of their public claims, it was an “unprecedented” amount. Also, does BP think that allowing these seasoned men of the sea to do their dirty work is compensation and comparable to earning a real living?

     Although BP has agreed to a $20 billion escrow account to cover obligations from the spill it seems like this too may be falling apart.

     Mayor Tony Kennon of Orange Beach Alabama pulled equipment usage and emergency services from BP site areas because of insufficient funding. He said he was fed up with BP excuses for nonpayment. Does this mean that the areas involved will ultimately be footing the bill and man power in this clean-up?

     After the capping of the well, a government released report announced most of the oil was gone or dispersed. This is scary and sounds more like PR image control. Are they counting on the short memory span of the public and media for political and financial gain? 

     The question is where did the oil go? If it’s not still washing up on the ever expanding beaches, it’s lying at the bottom of the ocean causing dead zones.

     BP announced awhile back that they hope to have beaches cleaned up by the end of February and the start of spring break.

     On September 20 hundreds of workers were dismissed from clean-up efforts in North East Florida as it was announced that the oil is gone and BP needs to cut back.

-Julie Post

Don’t Laugh: iTunes 10’s icon is offended

     When Apple unveiled iTunes 10, and along with it the new icon, I was disturbed (to say the least). I wondered what in the (warning: expletive!) hell Apple’s designers had been doing: did they make that icon ten minutes (perhaps ten is too much) before the keynote? I quiver at the thought of how ugly that iTunes 10 icon is - eww. It looks like something an acolyte of photoshop (or photoshappz) could have put together. Some will disagree, of course, but I don’t think those persons know much about icon design anyway. And yes, Apple wanted to get rid of the CD illustration since CDs are on the way out, but couldn’t they have at least tried a little harder?

     Surprisingly we shouldn’t laugh or scoff at iTunes 10’s new icon; it is offended. And how do I know? Well, the new iTunes 10 icon created a twitter account and it doesn’t like all the hate it is receiving. On its twitter bio we are told, “[sic] Don't hate me cuz I'm new. I have feelings too!” I’m rather pleased Twitter is being put to such good use. Mr. Jobs doesn’t like the hate his poor icon is receiving either. In response to an email expressing discontentment with the new icon (and Steve Jobs loves to respond to emails), Steve simply wrote, “We disagree.” 

     Of course, I won’t stop using iTunes 10 because of this disastrous design work. Instead, I’ll do as I have always: I’ll change the icon. A number of really awesome iTunes 10 icon replacements have been made, and these put Apple’s to shame (it wasn’t that hard). My favorite iTunes replacement icon was made by Pedja Rusic of The IconBlock, but there are troves of high quality iTunes icon replacements. Should we expect anything else considering how ugly the new one is? 

-Basil Polivka

YouTube Instant

           Last week Stanford University Student, Feross Aboukhadijeh, built something that will forever be known as his first brain child. It started as a bet by his roommate, but in three hours Feross had built YouTube instant. What that means is Feross created a Youtube search engine that sifts through all of Youtubes Millions and Millions of videos in Real-Time. It’s more advanced than Youtube’s current search engine, and works on more effective search parameters. When Aboukhadijeh came up with the idea he was a summer intern for Facebook. Within several hours of his sites publishing, he had mail boxes stuffed with email’s, a twitter that couldn’t keep up with itself, flooded servers, and a very real job offer from Youtube CEO Chad Hurley. Yesterday, September 13, he sat down at Google’s headquarters in San Bruno, California to discuss his future. “I’d like to finish college” Aboukhadijeh was quoted on CNN.com. "It's not as useful as Google Instant if you know exactly what you're looking for, since you're shown distracting YouTube videos on the way to your destination," Aboukhadijeh also said.

            This site has done more than revolutionize how we will search Youtube. It has led to a number of other “instant” web sites by other computer programmers. Google maps instant allows users to search quickly for an address, or find new locations with vaguer searches by area. The creator Michael Hart also later posted on his blog an all encompassing “Instanise” where you can access multiple web portals from one site, all of which are instant sites. This trend seems to be driving the internet’s search engines in a new direction, where a focus on finding specific pages fast is the primary focus.

- Matt Tilley

The NCAA wont let me play!

             I have always loved and excelled in the game of lacrosse. So when I was contacted by several universities and given the opportunity to play at the collegiate level I was thrilled. Being from Canada I was not aware of those options. But after packing up and moving across the continent the NCAA tells me that a high school math course, which I passed, is not a credible course. They have told me that the standards are not up to par with what they require in their student athletes. My family and I were crushed. The NCAA does not understand that not everyone in the world knows about there requirements. In a telephone conversation I had with someone at there offices they asked me “ well didn’t someone at your high school go over the requirements” Now I don’t want to sound like I live in the middle of no where but I would be damned if my high school counselor even knew what the NCAA is. And I know for a fact that no one from the NCAA told me about this problem until I was in North Carolina. It would have been nice to know after I submitted my transcripts to them in January. Where I stand now is in a paper work battle with the NCAA. Now I understand that they deal with a lot of this kind of stuff, but it would have been nice to have been sent an email or phone call, not show up to my first college practice and be chewed out by my coach for not being cleared.

--Ross Radcliffe

The Attacks of September 11th

         With the discussion about 9/11 in our previous class, it made me think about the immediate impact it had on my family and I.  That day I can say has been the worst day in my life.  Just knowing the amount of family I had in New York City and their direct relevance to the World Trade Center, it makes me sick to think about it still. As soon as the news began to poor into my 6^th grade classroom over a telecom system and they wheeled in a television I began to feel as though this was serious.  Once I saw the smoke billowing out from the towers my stomach sank.  As I sat there staring into one of the most terrifying sights I will ever witness, I was removed from class by our principle.  With a quick hop in his step, he walked with me down to his office where he had my mom on a speakerphone waiting.  There she said that my dad was in that part of the city and they were frantically trying to get a hold of him.  But as you may not know, most of the cell phone towers rest atop the twin towers.  That was the absolute worst feeling I have ever felt.  My mother rushed over to the school and picked me up, and we went home where my aunt and grandparents were all sitting around with their eyes glued to the television.  That is when we received a call from my fathers co-workers cell phone saying that he was safe and fine.  Every year this day brings chills to my body when I think about what might have been. 

            The reason I chose to write about this is because with this historical date quickly approaching, there are many specials on television that show different views of what happened that day.  The one thing that truly bothers me, are the specials that suggest foul play was involved.  I know that this was not the case, because I refuse to believe that our nation would purposely destroy the lives of so many people just to have a right to go to war.  All in all this day will remain a day of great grief among not only New Yorkers, but Americans as a whole. 

--Miles Kerbien

 

The War is Over....not.

        USA Today reports that NATO and the top U.S. commander are asking for 2,000 more troops to help join forces with the over 140,000 troops already in Afghanistan. Didn’t Obama say something about the war being over? Now I know most of these troops are there to train the local army in tactics and what not, but isn’t the idea of ending a war to start bringing troops home? His speech last Tuesday sounded very convincing that we were going to bring troops home to their families. Yes, I know we can not just pull the troops out right away, when Obama says its time “to turn the page” allowing more troops to go over to Afghanistan not even a week later is not my idea of turning a page, well maybe backwards. I just don’t get why the most powerful man in our country is so dumb. He has the power to tell NATO that he will not send any troops, and let the 28 countries that are also apart of NATO send their own troops. But apparently if we don’t send our troops then we are the bad guys. This is ridiculous, if you want to bring your troops home start by not sending more! U.S. tax payers have already spent more then 1 trillion dollars funding this war and sending more troops could cost us even more. But hey what’s another million and half-dollars to us? Maybe we can use our taxes to buy a “How to stop a war” book for our beloved president. Just say no to NATO, I know we will have forces there for years to come but please Mr.Obama please just make good on your promise to end the war and just start doing it.

-Jason Cuzzupe

Are You a Supporter

          Sports.  They either directly or indirectly affect a large majority of our American population.  Whether you consider yourself a die hard sports fan, or if you’re supporting your niece or nephew at a sporting event, you most likely link to some type of sports ties.  As supporters of any particular sport, we choose to follow our team’s progress and “cheer them on,” expectantly through the team’s ups and down.  However, seldom do we ever see 100% support on both ends of the spectrum.  I used sports as a medium because many people can relate , however, playing the role of supporter can be applied to countless other topics such as parenting, teaching, mentoring, etc, though I will discuss the act of supporting in the context of sports. 
           Last week, I attended my sister’s volleyball game.  As the game progressed, one of the most important members failed the team.  Surprisingly, the mentioned member was the coach.  As the game went on, the players made countless mistakes.  Despite the girl’s honest efforts to make him proud and to exhibit an amazing comeback, he refused to call a timeout.  At one point, three whole minutes went by in the game without him even lifting his head to mentor the girls once.  The tensions rose, and tears began to stream down the girls’ flushed cheeks.  At once, they realized that they had lost their number one supporter. Once the lively coach who rooted them on during their winning streak, he now failed them when they needed his support and encouragement the most.
           Support goes both ways.  Don’t just cheer your team on when they’re doing well and
yell crude things at them when they struggle.  Learning to support during the bad as well as the good times may just offer that extra needed boost of confidence that can make all the difference.


-Brittani Hunter

Google Authenticator

       Google announced the other day that they are offering an optional Google Application that will send your mobile Smartphone a security code that will allow you to login to their services. The two-step verification feature will be available to Google Apps premier, education, and government customers on Monday, and to the hundreds of millions of individual Google users in coming months, as a built-in part of the free service, a Google product manager told CNET. This new service will make it harder for online criminals to be able to hack a users account. The six-digit code will be sent to the user after they have entered their password. This type of two-factor authentication--something you know (password) and something you have (Smartphone with code)--is similar to smart cards and tokens, except that the code is accessed on a piece of hardware you most likely already carry. If some users find this service a hassle, you can check a box on Google "remember verification for this computer" so that they won't be asked for a code on that computer for a month. Google is offering this service as open-source so big companies can do their own customization and bring the application to their corporate platforms. I think it is a great feature especially if you have valuable information on your account that you want to add an extra layer of security to.

-Clay Chapman