Yahoo

That’s What I Like: Fantasy Baseball

April 20, 2007 by Jim Connelly

So, I was reading this King Kaufman column in Salon last Monday. He was talking about ESPN’s broadcast on Jackie Robinson Day, and was relating a story that Henry Aaron was telling a story about playing second base against Robinson and — wait a second, Hank Aaron played second base?

That was Kaufman’s reaction, and mine as well, but for totally different reasons. He was just interested in it as a baseball historian, and so looked it up. And sure enough, Aaron played games as a second-bagger for the Braves as late as the mid-1960’s.

Me, all I can think is this: Hank Aaron had fantasy eligibility at 2B! How cool would that have been for my fantasy baseball team!

Television As A Hunter-Gatherer Experience

April 24, 2006 by Kirk Biglione

Now that iTunes and last month’s NCAA tournament have proven that there’s a market for television programming online, the networks are racing to put as much programming as possible (within the limitations of their affiliate agreements) on the web.

Given the fact that television has always been a mass medium you would expect network executives would be lining up get their programming on the big portals like Yahoo. As it turns out, that’s not necessarily the case. In fact, some network executives are starting to have second thoughts about sharing their programming with technology companies.

The Return of the Mix Tape

March 3, 2006 by Kassia Krozser

Whether you like it or not, you’re going to be hearing a lot about social networking this year. For a supposedly lonely place, the Web has a lot of ways to bring humans together. With very little effort, you can find a like-minded soul. . .or at least someone who shares your feelings and took the time to create a playlist to reflect them.

As noted in the Washington Post, song-sharing (not to be confused with file sharing) is poised to change the music industry:

IMixes — as well as playlists on other services such as Rhapsody, Musicstrands and Soundflavor — are the online cousins of amateur cassette-tape and CD mixes created over the years by countless music collectors as soundtracks for parties and road trips. Many of the playlists focus on a theme — and many of those on a personal one, whether the subject is a lost love, a class reunion, a nasty breakup, duty in Iraq or a new romance.

Consumers don’t trust radio programmers. Not enough variety, not enough information. Station playlists are too limited and decisions about what gets played and what doesn’t get played is subjected to a pseudo-science that seems almost random (for a great example of this, check out Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink for a story about an artist named Kenna).