Big League Athletes Get Behind Youth Sports Social Site

Weplay.com is a social networking site for kids who play sports, parents, and coaches. According to the New York Times, "Young athletes will be able to set up a profile, post pictures, communicate with friends and share videos of games. Parents will be able to get practice schedules, coordinate car pools and find out which equipment to purchase. Coaches will be able to communicate with their players and parents, as well as learn about strategy and other skills." Big leaguers such as NBA stars Tony Parker and LeBron James, NFLer Payton Manning, and New York Yankee Derek Jeter are taking part. Jeter, in fact, has put some of his own money into the venture and will receive equity in the company in exchange for his participation, saying the equity position is “very important, because you can really feel good about something if you help build it.”

This is a site that should have been built long ago, parents, coaches, and athletes have been using a patch work of sites and tools to communicate schedules and coordinate travel for years. I take an abundance of photos during the hockey and baseball seasons and have recently found the file sharing site drop.io to be invaluable in distributing photos to parents and players alike. The real question is, will the athletes like being in the same social network as their parents? A central location for sharing information amongst team mates sounds like winner, at least for the parents.

Yahoo Supports OpenSocial

In a press release today, Yahoo! Inc. announced they have agreed with MySpace, and Google to form the OpenSocial Foundation "to ensure the neutrality and longevity of OpenSocial as an open, community-governed specification for building social applications across the web." "Yahoo! believes in supporting community-driven industry specifications and expects that OpenSocial will fuel innovation and make the web more relevant and more enjoyable to millions of users," said Wade Chambers, Vice President - Platforms, Yahoo!. The move is a bit surprising since the OpenSocial initiative was a Google brainchild, and the two are arch rivals. The press release quotes both MySpace and Google representatives but the real question is what does Microsoft think?

Robotic Play Fetch Machine - Ingenius!

For those who are skeptical of this whole robotics movement, this should lay all of your doubts to rest! I'll let the machine do the talking...

On the home front, I got a Roomba! More on that in a subsequent post...

Sirius Gets DOJ Nod On XM Purchase

The U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) has approved Sirius Satellite Radio Inc.'s proposed $5-billion (U.S.) buyout of XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. but the purchase will still require the approval of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to close the deal. “The likely evolution of technology in the future, including the expected introduction in the next several years of mobile broadband Internet devices, made it even more unlikely that the transaction would harm consumers in the longer term,” the Justice Department said. The Globe and Mail has more details here.

Pimp My Scion - Toyota's Do-It-Yourself Custom Logo's

Toyota and New York based StrawberryFrog advertising and marketing agency have come up with a unique way to promote the trendy Scion, the boxy economy car aimed at younger, stylish drivers. A website called Scion Speak has been developed that gives Scion owners, and everyone else, the tools to create their own customized crest or coat of arms that can then be downloaded and turned into a window decal or custom paint job, at your own expense of course. “These guys love to personalize their cars, and we give them a tool to do that,” said Kevin McKeon, the executive creative director of StrawberryFrog in New York. I've tried the site and it works beautifully, it's obviously not geared towards my generation (and it hurts to say that) but I can appreciate the art just the same. My crest is an alley cat over a two tone shield, with a circuit board for wings, and a power button! More at the New York Times.

Atlanta Bar Owner Builds Robot To Disperse Homeless

The Bum Bot 2000 is a remote controlled security "robot" made by Rufus Terrill, owner of O'Terrill's bar in downtown Atlanta. The robot is pieced together with things found around the home but the menacing looking little guy has become an effective means of dispersing the homeless, drug dealers, and prostitutes who frequently bother the bars patrons. The robot is equipped with An infrared camera, a 2-million-candlepower spotlight, a homemade cannon, which squirts jets of cold water at up to 200 pounds per square inch and a microphone and speakers. Terrill warns the unwanted loiterers that they had better move along or they'll get wet. The video is relayed back to his bar where his patrons get a first hand view of the whole thing on the big screen. Perhaps Fox will pick up the feed, "bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do... tonight on Robo Cops..." This is a pretty proactive way of cleaning up the neighborhood, where nobody apparently gets hurt. Then again, the unwanted street element just moves on to another block... better to leave this kind of thing to the police? Terrill doesn't seem to think that's an alternative as he's busy building Bum Bot 3000 with an air canon capable of launching nets, oh my!

LA Times article here.

Dextre Has Shoulder Problems

The $200 million robot, Dextre, developed by the Canadian Space Agency has experiencing a problem with one of it's shoulder joints since being moved in preparation for a Thursday night spacewalk. The shoulder is apparently returning an "unknown position" message, prompting engineers to consider a software patch. This setback comes after a faulty cable threatened the robot earlier in the mission. Dextre is designed to perform regular maintenance tasks outside the International Space Station, things like replacing batteries and wires. The aim is to reduce the number of dangerous space walks that astronauts must now perform. CTV has more here.

NASA's Goo Test - Looking Good

The lead spacewalk planner for the Johnson Space Center, Zebulon C. Scoville called an Orbital Putty test during the most recent space walk “a huge success,” saying “We’re just thrilled with the way it turned out.” The putty was dispensed using a “goo gun” formally known as a tile repair ablator dispenser. The substance has been under development in an effort to give shuttle crews a means of repairing damaged heat resistant tiles before re-entry. The test results will have to be examined further on earth once the crew returns, but the tile repair kit seems to have preformed as well as it did during trials back on earth. The NY Times points out that the Columbia crew would not have been saved by such advances as the hole that proved to be the cause of the tragic re-entry disaster was too large to be fixed in such a fashion. NASA has however, been working hard to limit the amount of foam and ice that contacts the delicate shuttle tiles and the combination of that work and the new repair kit could save future flights. This is a great step, and I love that name... Zebulon! It's fitting that he works for NASA.

Geeky Humor From The Onion

The Onion pokes a little fun at our future with this ONN video segment.

I wonder who else was on the ticket with President Executron? Is he a Democrat or a Republican?

Greenpeace Rates Tech Manufacturers Eco-friendly Practices

Nintendo has been given a 0.3 out of 10 by Greenpeace in its March Guide to Greener Electronics. Remarkably this is an increase over the December ranking in which Nintendo scored a 0.0! Other electronics companies fared better with Microsoft coming in at 4.7, Sony at 7.3, and Samsung and Toshiba tied for the top spot at 7.7! Perhaps Mario and Luigi should be paying more careful attention to what is being flushed down those pipes! Wired blog post here.