HellaFrank

Now that I live in New York, I am much more exposed to the fiasco that is the New York Yankees on a regular basis and it has become very clear that Hank Steinbrenner is not smart or tactful.

The Yankees stink right now, they’ve had some key injuries this year and now star pitcher Chien Ming Wang is out for ten weeks because he hurt himself running the bases, something AL pitchers rarely do, during interleague play. So what does Hank Steinbrenner do? He blames interleague play, the national league, and the fact that major league baseball still uses a rule “from the 1800s.” As told to the Associated Press:

“My only message is simple. The National League needs to join the 21st century,” Steinbrenner said in Tampa, Fla. “They need to grow up and join the 21st century.

“Am I (mad) about it? Yes,” Steinbrenner added. “I’ve got my pitchers running the bases, and one of them gets hurt. He’s going to be out. I don’t like that, and it’s about time they address it. That was a rule from the 1800s.”

Wang is an elite professional athlete, a baseball player, and if he’s capable of making contact with a 90 mile per hour fastball (and throwing a ball that fast), then I hope he knows how to run correctly — apparently not. I see teams of 40-year-old obese smokers in Central Park playing softball on a weekly basis that can run the bases better than that.

And what’s this stuff about the 1800s? As far as I know, the DH wasn’t instituted until 1973. Maybe the rule was created in the 1800s, but then again, so was that rule about three strikes and you’re out. Maybe we should get rid of that one too Hank, then you’re players may actually have a chance to get a hit every now and then?

Alright, I’m done… HellaFrank promises to be in a better mood next time!

At one point, the idea of free municipal wireless Internet across the country seemed like the new frontier for Internet access. Everyone would have access and people would no longer be tied down to accessing from certain locations. Philadelphia was one of the first to blanket their city with Internet, but that project, just like those of San Francisco and many other cities and towns ended when Earthlink unexpectedly shut down it’s municipal wireless organization. Big and powerful telecoms like Verizon weren’t happy about these plans either and undoubtedly affected the success of them as well. From a really great article in Slate:

Verizon spent more than $3 million to lobby the [Pennsylvania] state government to pass a bill preventing cities and townships in Pennsylvania from offering broadband or wireless services unless the phone company has refused to do so. More than a dozen states have similar statutes on the books that make it difficult for government to get into the wireless broadband business. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush signed a law in June that prevents municipalities from offering broadband if there are competing private services. Nevada bans most cities and counties from offering telecommunications services. Texas flatly prohibits it.

Fast forward a couple of years and a company called Meraki is now breathing life back into municipal wireless. How? By taking an open-source, community powered approach that bypasses telecoms and the government. Meraki sells and gives away their tiny piece of hardware, called a repeater, that allows anyone within a one-block radius to receive a 1-megabit wireless signal — three times faster than anything Earthlink promised. Eventually these repeaters will be networked across all of San Francisco, creating a seamless and open wireless network. The best part? It’s individuals powering the network with hardware provided by an independent company — the government and big telecoms can do nothing about it, though San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom and the board of supervisors fully support it anyway (and seem to be taking credit for it too).

It’s a great example of how the power of the masses is far stronger than any telecom or government agency. Meraki has created a simple piece of technology, yet with widespread usage, it becomes so much more than that. For example, the company is starting by offering free repeaters for low-income housing developments in San Francisco so people who struggle to afford Internet can have it in their homes.

And don’t feel bad for Meraki, while they are probably not making much money right now, providing such a core service, much like Google does with search, opens up endless possibilities for business development in the future.

Open-source, community and the power of the crowd is not just the future of the Internet, it’s the future of Internet access.

Steve Jobs is kind of a modern day Pablo Escobar for technology. Employing a huge workforce to work undercover on secretive projects, then smuggle the product to be sold to serious addicts at high prices. Everyone knows he’s doing it but no one can infiltrate or take him down.

But, despite all of this secrecy, these days we pretty much know the big announcements we’re going to hear at Steve Jobs’ keynotes before they hapen. It’s always nice to hear the confirmations, but it’s the little things, the unexpected news, that gets me excited.

This time around, for me, it wasn’t even a product from Apple, but from MLB.com who historically likes to tempt baseball fans with awesome sounding products that end up sucking because of poor technology (i.e. Windows Media Player) or lack of ridiculous amounts of bandwidth.

But at the Apple keynote, they announced MLB At Bat, an iPhone application that not only lets you track baseball games live with detailed updates, but delivers video to your iPhone of the game’s highlights minutes after they happen.

What did you say? Derrek Lee just went yard in the bottom of the ninth to beat the Cardinals? Let’s have a look-see.

And even though MLB.com does not have a great history with providing good video, this year’s overhaul of Gameday (see my earlier post) gives me hope that this will actually work. Dan Frommer at Silicon Alley Insider is right-on when he says that video on mobile phones needs to be delivers in “snacks” not huge meals. Let’s be honest, not many people want to watch full feature programming on a tiny screen, especially something as slow as baseball. So MLB At Bat is definitely taking the right approach.

So yes, thank you Steve for the new and improved iPhone, I’ll be purchasing one soon, but thank you even more MLB.com for ensuring I will never miss a Cubs highlight on this year’s epic road to the World Series.

Last week was the first ever Internet Week in New York (and maybe anywhere?). Everyday had a slew of events from EconAds to the Applied Cryptography and Network Security Conference. It was a celebration of the Internet for the New York tech community in a sort of open-source, create-your-own-events format.

This event made it clear that New York is serious about becoming the “global technology hub” that mayor Bloomberg suggests. In fact, in a press conference to kick off Internet Week, Bloomberg announced NYC Seed, a $2 million fund for early stage technology companies. Granted, that’s not a lot of money, especially with the cost of operating a business in New York, but it’s a start and companies also receive advice and guidance from the fund’s members as they build their company. Any buy-in from the city is a good thing, and if that $2 million goes to good use, NYC Seed would definitely see a re-up in the near future.

Taking a seed-funding approach is appropriate for the state of the New York tech industry since many of the companies based here seem to be in much earlier stages than their counterparts on the West Coast. Also, I’d imagine that quite a few talented developers and less-experienced entrepreneurs may not have the relationships with wealthy individuals and VCs to raise a first round of funding they need to get their businesses off the ground. NYC Seed should give them easier and less relationship-based access to that kind of money and knowledge.

Overall it was a great week of events, and even culminated in an Internet Week “old media vs. new media” feud that made it onto Page Six! I guess Amy Winehouse took the week off.

Also posted on LaunchSquad’s Exclamation Blog

Ok folks, this time it’s for real. HellaFrank is back.

I’ve changed HellaFrank to a self-hosted Wordpress blog that I can have far more control (like the lovely new design and the the Google ads to your right that I know you’ll all be clicking on!). I’m excited, have some good posts in the pipe and apologize in advance for the many posts I will be writing about Nintendo Wii — I just got one and am smitten by it. Ok, no, I’m not sorry about the Wii posts, I just happen to be in love with a video game console, that’s it.