Death Wishes via Twitter

As a Giants fan, yesterday was a good day. The 49ers played a great game, but in the end, a few mistakes by a player pushed in to an unfamiliar role did them in.

The last time the Giants and 49ers faced each other in the playoffs (2003) the same sort of thing happened. A player named Trey Junkin was signed out of retirement to snap the ball for field goal attempts. He messed up a snap earlier in the game, and at the end of the game, he messed up another field goal snap and the Giants lost the game. Junkin faded away in to relative anonymity, though he had to read about the Giants in the newspapers.

In last night's game, a young player named Kyle Williams was pushed in to the role of punt returner because of an injury to the player who regularly filled that role, Ted Ginn Jr. Williams had only returned two punts this season. In the early part of the game, Williams made a mistake and the Giants got the ball. In overtime, he fumbled the ball, which led to the Giants kicking the winning field goal.

Trey Junkin was 41 years old at the time of his mistake, while Williams is 23 and a part of the 49ers team plans. The thing I want to highlight, however, is how the Web changed the reaction.

A number of fans of the 49ers went to Twitter, and Kyle Williams had his account listed and available for fans. Fans rushed to Twitter and starting sending him death wishes. Though a number of news outlets have called them "death threats", I haven't seen any evidence of that online. As opposed to threatening to kill him, they have sent messages saying they hope he, his wife, kids and family die, or that they hope he gets AIDS and dies. (Read some of the quotes here). Of course, if they were really extreme, they may have been deleted or reported to Twitter.

It is a shame how Web 2.0 technologies can lead to things like this.

"I Will Smash Your Face In"

I've been reading a book called God Save the Fan, by Will Leitch, founder of Deadspin. Deadspin, of course, is an independent sports Web site Leitch started because he felt the people who should be reporting sports news (i.e. ESPN) wouldn't report things in an unbiased manner for fear of damaging their relationship with different sports leagues.

Anyway, in his book, one of the chapters talked about how people idolize players that, if they met them in person, they would not really like. For example, it's easy for me to say Derek Jeter and David Wright and Eli Manning seem like nice people, but I've never met them, and can't know for sure. I'd assume they are similar to most of us, in that they have bad days, make bad decisions sometimes, and have their own insecurities. In the past, the only way players and the masses generally communicated was through press conferences with local reporters who wouldn't always publish everything a player said, for fear of damaging their relationship with the player and team. If I work for the local NBC affiliate and made a certain player angry, the player (and perhaps his teammates) might just give important news to the CBS affiliate, damaging my ability to do my job.

Enter Twitter.

As I have discussed in the past (here, here, here, and here), leagues have tried to crack down on Twitter use, in part to protect the league and in to protect the players from themselves.

The NFL is at a crossroads at the moment. The collective bargaining agreement has run out, and no one is quite sure if the NFL will exist in the fall. Some players are not happy with that idea, and Antonio Cromartie (cornerback, for the NY Jets) called out the union leadership. A player from the Seahawks, Matt Hasselback tweeted (and then deleted) a comment saying someone should ask Cromartie if he knew what CBA stood for. Of course, this could have been a joke, but you can't hear the tone of a message over the Internet. Hasselback apparently decided to delete the message, but once you publish, people see it!

Of course, Cromartie took offense to this, and instead of calling Hasselback and talking with him, tweeted that he will smash Hasselback's face in. Really.

Just because you are a professional athlete doesn't mean you are professional (see: Rae Carruth, Lawrence Phillips, etc.).

So, who knows if Hasselback is a jerk, or if Cromartie really wouldn't smash someone's face in over a comment. Either way, the way news is reported is changing.

Twitter and Poor NBA Etiquette v2.0

Charlie Villanueva, an NBA player, recently played against Kevin Garnett. During the game, Villanueva claims Garnett called him a cancer patient. Garnett, for what it is worth, said he called Villanueva "a cancer", which isn't as far fetched as it sounds. According to urbandictionary, the term cancer "[is] often used as an insult when referring to someone who is a pathelogical [sic] source of trouble and discord within a group."

Now, who knows what happened and what did not, but I can see someone exaggerating because they are annoyed. Either way, the point is he came out and put it out there, and as we know about Twitter, there is no undo button.

If this guy's name sounds familiar, it is because he is the same guy who was benched for tweeting during halftime of a game in 2009. I blogged about that here. I would think the guy would have learned his lesson about Twitter, but nope. If it is getting in the way of your professional life, perhaps it is time to let someone else serve as your filter.

10 for 2010 (Technology Predictions)

I was thinking about what we are going to see in 2010, and here are some things that came to mind.

1. Standard DVD Format Gets Phased Out - Blu-Ray will become the dominant DVD media, and as a result prices will fall on these devices.  I wouldn't be surprised to see some low end Blu-Ray players going for $100 this Black Friday.  Since Blu-Ray players can play your old DVDs, people will be less resistant than they were when VHS was replaced by DVD players.
   
2. Standard Internet Sales Tax - Some smart politician somewhere will author a bill that will come up with a solution to the whole Internet sales tax issue.  Too many states (Rhode Island, North Carolina) are fighting legal battles with vendors (Amazon) over laws that were originally written in 1887 (really), and e-commerce has become so large that someone is going to fight this battle.
   
3. Office 2010 Will Disappoint - If one looks at the specifications, Office 2010 seems to do some clever things.  Microsoft Works is being phased out and there will be new tools "Word Starter" and "Excel Starter".  These will be the cheaper versions of the tools, and this is great because no one seems to be able to differentiate between "Works" and "Word".  The Ribbon interface will find its way in to Publisher, Visio, and the rest of the tools that it wasn't integrated into previously.  Microsoft will also introduce Web-based versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint that will allow people to use the tools online for free, much like Google Docs.  With all that said, I just wonder if Microsoft may be overly ambitious, and cut some corners with the release of Office 2010.  I also feel like the operating system release followed by the Office release will split the focus of the company, and they are more likely to pour resources in to any Windows 7 problems that arise, following the debacle that was Windows Vista.  This would obviously take away from other projects in the company (such as Office 2010).
   
4. eBooks Take Off - eBook readers (such as the Amazon Kindle) will become more popular.  As demand goes up, prices will fall, and this will make these devices available to many people.  College students will be driven by lower prices (for example, my Internet/E-Commerce class textbook goes for $113 new, but the eBook version is $57 for a 6 month subscription), and the ability to electronically mark up your book without having to worry about ruining the resale value.
5. Netbooks Emerge - Netbooks will take off and become a popular alternative to a laptop for people that just want a basic portable machine.  As we see with cell phones, people don't always want all the stuff you get with a PC, they just want something to do the basics on, and Netbooks will fill that void. 
   
6. eNews - More newspapers and magazines will work towards making a digital model work.  According to an article linked from Magazine Death Pool, 367 magazines ceased printing in 2009 (and another 64 went online only).  This industry HAS to adapt, because times are changing.  To be quite honest, the only reason I get my paper is for the Sunday coupons, and the rest of the paper is immediately recycled.  If advertisers decide that online is where the money is, print media will have to follow.  They are also competing for advertising dollars with radio stations (both local stations like 1010 Wins and national stations like NPR) and with TV stations (again, both local news outlets like News 12 and global stations such as CNN). 
   
7. New Careers - Careers with titles like "Medical Informatics" will start to arise.  There is a need for people who have knowledge of both medical and technological concepts, and this seems like an area that will start to grow.  For example, insurance companies may not want to pay for a full-time nurse for someone, but instead have someone monitor remotely.  That person would need to interpret the results and know things like blood pressure and O2 saturation...but also be able to troubleshoot the technology if there are problems.  NJIT is one local institution that has already created a degree program for this.
8. Bing Takes Off - Bing will start to do what Microsoft Live Search didn't do: take away market share from Google.  Not a huge percentage, mind you, but it will start to make headway that other search engines could not.
   
9. Skype Makes a Comeback - Free from eBay's control, Skype will find direction and challenge VoIP providers.  Technology like a Wireless Bluetooth Headset for the PC (i.e. this one: AmbiCom SKYHS-KIT) will attract people who want the freedom to roam their apartment while making calls. 
10. The Mets Win! - The Mets will win the World Series.  (Hey, a guy can dream, right?)  I doubt even the guys at metsblog.com will be predicting this one.
    

I hope you are enjoying your 2010.

Photoshop Trickery

Image editing is not something new.  The Soviet Union did this back in the 1920's and 1930's, famously editing people out of photos who had become enemies of the government.

This has been made a lot easier nowadays with the invention of tools like Photoshop, and has been used in a lot of situations.  For example, Time Magazine darkened a picture of O.J. Simpson in 1994, which Newsweek ran without changes.  Many people felt that Time Magazine's portrayal was in poor taste, if not racist.

In a more amusing twist, the Buffalo Bills recently fired their head coach, Dick Jauron.  They gave out team photos to fans at a recent game, and edited the former coach out, even as they left players there who had been cut from the team.  Viewing the high-resolution version of the picture, you can see a lot of things that aren't quite right, for example, look at the size of #31 Jairus Byrd's right arm.  There is a complete discussion of this on a Bills message board, and this also appeared on ESPN's Web site.

From Trotsy to O.J. to Jauron, image editing has many forms, and you can see why a simple photograph isn't evidence enough nowadays.

Twitter and the NFL

...Twitter strikes again!

Jets wide receiver David Clowney (and come on, that's an awesome name for a football player) was benched after tweeting ("Twittering") something about being unhappy with his playing time.

It's a fascinating thing to see this develop. In the past we've seen a soccer player fined for Twitter comments, a NBA player benched for it, and the NFL create rules to try and proactively prevent problems (my past thoughts appear here). It is certainly a change in the way we communicate. Now we can post our thoughts and have hundreds or thousands of people see the thoughts immediately. There are consequences to this, as people are learning, and you will likely see problems like this continue to arise as these social networks evolve. There is no filter if you are just upset, or drunk, or whatever, and that's going to lead to some issues in the next few years for some celebrities, I imagine.

Link to story

NFL bans use of Twitter on Game Days

The NFL has become the first league to really take a stand on social networking. News has broken today that the NFL is banning players from Twittering (and Facebooking, etc) for communications purposes on game days. This ban starts 90 minutes before the first game, and ends after the post-game interviews. This idea makes sense. This way, you avoid people getting upset and saying something they later regret. The league will likely back this up with fines or something like that.

It's rather amusing to me that we literally JUST talked about Twitter and sports two days ago in my Internet/E-Commerce Technologies class, and our discussion already is somewhat out of date.

Link to Article

Twitter in the NBA and poor netiquette

Twitter is one of the social networking applications for the Internet - you have the ability to post status updates from mobile devices, etc. Before Facebook and Myspace had mobile applications, this was THE mobile social network. According to Wikipedia, it's still the third most common social networking application, ahead of sites like Friendster and HI5, and behind only Facebook and Myspace.

One of the issues I find in the classroom sometimes is poor etiquette. For example, there are times I am in the middle of teaching a lesson, and I see a student texting or doing something on their phone. It becomes distracting, and it is a little frustrating to deal with. As such, it causes me to lose focus, and therefore, affects the learning environment for the entire class.

I (and many professors) feel like it is rude when students do that ... and that the class isn't important to them. This is why this article was something I can relate to:
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=3990853

Basically, a player from the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team, Charlie Villanueva, updated his status on Twitter during halftime of a game. His coach, Scott Skiles, got pretty upset about it, and, much like some students may think, he didn't think it was a big deal. The coach, on the other hand, felt like it showed a lack of focus on the game by the forward.

On some level I can relate with Coach Skiles.