MTV has released an online video site that houses all the videos that have ever run on the network (we won’t talk about its name – MTV Music or Music Television Music – or the fact that these days MTV is anything but Music Television).

Check out the very first video ever played on MTV, The Buggles’ Video Killed The Radio Star or this Internet classic or Devo’s Whip It or one of my favorites, the Dead Milkmen’s “Punk Rock Girl”.

The Most Popular area, which as of today looks like a retro 1980’s top video list with video “classics” like Dire Straits Money for Nothing, aHa’s Take on Me, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, or – wait for it – Toto’s Africa.

Big hair is back, kids.

Great article about how the Tampa Bay Rays had to scramble to find hotel rooms because the World Series has been put on hold due to the terrible weather in the Philadelphia area

The puddles did it. As soon as Jeff Ziegler, the director of team travel for the Tampa Bay Rays, saw water covering the infield at Citizens Bank Park on Monday night, he realized Game 5 of the World Series might be suspended. Instantaneously, Ziegler also realized he needed to locate hotel rooms for 170 waterlogged people.

Ziegler called hotels near downtown Philadelphia, but he had as much success as someone selling $600 doorknobs. Not only did he discover that finding the 87 rooms the Rays needed was impossible, but hotel manager after hotel manager also said there was barely a spare cot. The puddles were growing bigger.

On the day the NY Times endorses Barak Obama, they also posted an interesting interactive display of their Presidential endorsements through the ages. What were they thinking endorsing Wendell Willkie over FDR back in 1940? Also interesting, but not at all surprising, that they have not endorsed a Republican since 1956.

If you are a little befuddled about what caused this economic mess we are currently in and will continue to be in for at least the next 18-24 months, take a few hours and listen to This American Life’s Giant Pool of Money and Another Frightening Show About the Economy. They are two amazingly clear and informative podcasts about what caused this mess and how the “geniuses” on Wall Street brought the modern economic system to its knees.

I originally wrote this post last Thursday at around the bottom of the 6th inning of Game 5 between the Sox and the Rays. As we all know, the Sox staged a comeback for the ages in that game but, alas, just prolonged the inevitable as they lost in Game 7 to the Rays. So the post below was delayed, but the story remains the same (to quote Led Zepplin):

In the end, the Red Sox missed Manny more than they thought. But it was more than that. The Rays “dropkicked murphyed” the Red Sox all over Fenway Park, then once they were done kicking, they shipped them off to the off-season.

In the three games at Fenway Park (stats below through 6th inning of Game 5 [editor's note]), the Rays outscored the Redsox 29-5 and outhit the Sox 34-20. Collectively, David Ortiz, Jason Varitek and Jacoby Ellsbury went a combined 3 for 43, or an .070 batting average for those of you keeping score at home. And I won’t even go near the pitching stats. That is not a formula for winning games. But more than anything, the Rays made the Red Sox look like a very slow, plodding and old team.

The stats above were through the 6th inning of Game 5. Since the series went 7 games, the numbers changed a bit by the end of the series, but the story is still the same. Papi, the Captain, and Jacoby did not show. The off season should be interesting. And with that, I will keep my Red Sox posts to a minimum until next summer.

Oh my lord. TBS is having major technical difficulties and they can’t broadcast Game 6 of the ALCS as of this post. They have been showing Dick Clark Bloopers and Practical Jokes and Cedric the Entertainer. Could this go down as the Cedric the Entertainer Game? Similar to the Heidi game from the 1970’s.

TBS’s tagline is “TBS: Very Funny” Dripping with irony.

Someone is getting fired tonight.

Red Sox – 8
Tampa Bay – 7

Wow, what a comeback win. Seven runs down in the 7th inning. No expectations here. We still have to win two games down in the Trop. Not going to be easy, even with Beckett and Lester.

Update: Great article by Bill Simmons on last night’s game and the emotional roller coaster that it was. The following exchange was exactly how I was feeling:

We [Simmons and his Dad] were having the funeral for the 2008 Red Sox. Heck, I even gave one of the eulogies. Called my dad during the seventh inning for the requisite, “Yup, we just didn’t have it this year,” conversation and everything. I remember uttering the words, “I wanted us to win tonight if only because it would have been another two days where I didn’t have to think about Matt Cassel.” I remember Dad admitting, “I turned it off 20 minutes ago; I’m watching ‘ER.’” I couldn’t even blame him. We hung up.And yet …I didn’t turn off Game 5. I did the old “half-watching it, going through e-mails and not getting totally invested even though I totally was” thing.

I had a blog post ready to go, extolling the season and the fact that the “Ghost of Manny Ramirez” was haunting them. But somehow, they lived to see another day. Yes, the upcoming sports weekend did get a hell of a lot better last night.

There is an effort in Cleveland to save the childhood home of the man who created Superman. Currently, the house is in great disrepair. Fans of the Man of Steel are rallying support from fellow fans and big whigs from the Comic industry to raise money and ensure that the house does not get razed.

You Tube is testing out some long form video. Its added several episodes of Star Trek, Beverly Hils 90210, and MacGyver in a very “tech-geek” influence choice of programming. Similar to other online streaming video, the episodes will have pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll ads.

Now I’m not terribly surprised by this move, you knew they could never make a decent dollar on user generated content. Advertisers avoid this like the plague. I do find this interesting for several reasons:

• Google has been testing out digital TV advertising and reporting via Dish Network. Obviously, this is the next extension of that
• The obvious popularity of watching video online and the digital convergence of over the air and digital TV. The fairly strong debut of Hulu, the joint venture from NBC and 20th Century Fox Studios, along with Joost is proving this out.
• The challenges they have had in finding a viable revenue stream for YouTube.

If this ends up working, then the implications of this are wide and deep. Google has been dabbling in original content partnerhsips and I am sure this may give them some leverage in dealing with the studios.

Believe it or not, even in today’s world, not everyone can have broadband access. Some very rural areas of this country still do not have broadband access because they are not wired for cable or DSL. In taking steps to address this, Dubya signed into law the broadband data collection bill so that the government can determine who does and does not have broadband access.

The bill requires the commission to redefine broadband. In April, the commission voted to consider 768Kbps, which is the entry-level speed offered by major DSL providers like Verizon, the low end of “basic broadband,” a range that extends to under 1.5Mbps. For years, the commission had considered 200Kbps service to be “high speed.”

Internet service provider reports to the FCC would also have to be adjusted under the bill, so the FCC can identify the actual numbers of broadband connections by customer type and geographic area. The commission would also be required to identify tiers of broadband service in which most connections can transmit high-definition video, as well as collect demographic data for geographical areas not served by any advanced telecommunications provider. The bill also requires other government offices to collect information, such as whether Internet subscribers use dial-up or broadband.

Maybe this will then set the stage for the next inevitable step, a country wide Wi-Max network?

So I’ve finally gotten around to “officially” updating the Mini Slide Navigation mashup that I did two and a half years ago. When I created the mash up back then, I was just hacking around and was completely un-prepared for the attention and positive accolades that this idea received. What was really cool was that two people – Rob Glazebrook and Brian McAllister – built on the work I did and made the navigation even better by making the page locator “snap back” to the page you are currently on.

So this time, I’ve taken what Rob and Brian did, and built on top of that. With my new version, I’ve incorporated some PHP into the mix, to enable the navigation be an used as a “virtual include” on your site, so you to centrally manage the navigation and have one change/addition cascade throughout the whole site. Through PHP, I’ve also enabled the navigation to indicate the proper area of the site two directories deep, and realistically, it could handle more if needed.

So go on over to the demo page and check it out. One note: I’m still learning PHP, so if the method that I used is way too novice or considered a pseudo-hack, please be gentle with me.

Interesting article by Jim Cramer in NY Magazine this week about the sorry state of the economy today and what could possibly happen a year from now:

What will New York look like a year from now? The answer: bad and probably worse, and perhaps downright catastrophic. Three degrees of awful. The first step was passing the bank-bailout legislation. Now that it’s done—and if it didn’t get done we would have been looking at a guaranteed economic collapse—the critical issue will be presidential leadership. And while any president will be an improvement over the current one, there is a growing belief on Wall Street that Barack Obama has the capacity to lead us out of this wilderness while John McCain does not. I’ll go a step further: Obama is a recession. McCain is a depression.

No matter how we cut it, things are just screwed up.

If you are a little bored heading into tonight’s critical VP debate, consider spicing things up with the Official Vice Presidential Debate Drinking Game. This is just laugh out loud funny, against both candidates. Several more can be found here.