After watching the Huskies beat UCLA today at the Bank of America Arena I hope that, no matter how popular and successful the Huskies become, they keep this arena just the way it is today: small and fan-friendly. There’s something about watching a basketball game in tight quarters where you can hear the players jaw at each other and the refs. I like the near ear-splitting sounds the fans can generate is a smaller space. At today’s game I could even hear when certain fouls took place such as bodies colliding under the basket and hands slapping arms during shot attempts. The larger arena gain butts in seats but lose much of the excitement that’s generated by sitting close to the action. It’s hard to imagine that UCLA players weren’t distracted at least one or twice due to the noise and proximity of the wild Husky fans.

Garr Reynolds has a hilarious post about the evils of Powerpoint comparing Darth’s slide to Yoda’s slide.

Wouldn’t a Bose SoundDock on a nightstand do the trick at a fraction of the cost? It does look really hip.

Source: Om Malik 

At a company meeting yesterday our CEO mentioned Zillow.com. This is the easiest way I’ve found to compare your home’s value with those in your neighborhood. I’ve tested a few addresses and found that value of our former homes in the Seattle area sound about right but those in Utah are 2 to 3 times as high as they should be. A few kinks to work out but very cool idea.

Link to Seattle Times article on Zillow.

Many bloggers are pointing to the release of Songbird today. I downloaded it tonight to compare it to iTunes and, in short, it doesn’t. I didn’t expect a polished product but without any player support, it’s just a media player that looks like a skinned iTunes knockoff. Songbird does show a lot of potential and I plan to test it out when it includes player support and cleans up the UI a bit.

According to Seth Godin, it should and he provides tips on how to make it happen in his new eBook (PDF).

I’ve been looking for a convenient way to share photos, files, and music between our computers at home and I finally stumbled upon a solution: Maxtor Shared Storage. It looks just like a normal external USB drive but connects to your network. It costs a bit more than a typical USB drive but, so far, the benefits are well worth the extra cost. I used to share out folders on my machine, but it would bog down my machine and I’d always seem to reboot at the worst time. It took a few minutes to setup folder permissions on the Maxtor but I can already see the benefits of having my own personal NAS. I believe this little device has become a mainstay on my network going forward.

I finished reading the book, Naked Conversations, by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. I found the book to be very well written and interesting. I learned a few things that I didn’t know before like where the name ‘Channel 9‘ came from and how English Cut got started. The book is filled with unique examples and interesting characters who found success (or infamy) through blogging. I’m not going to review the book here since that’s been done already by far more capable writers than myself.  But I will say that I don’t believe I am the target demographic for the book which surprised me a bit. I thought it was going to be a “book about bloggers for bloggers” but it’s really more a “book for people interested in blogging the right way”

My suggestion would be to purchase the book even if you already blog. But once you’re finished, take the book and hand it to someone at your company who could really benefit from it. Give it to a person at your company who doesn’t blog but should.

If you’re a fan of 24 you may like Dave Barry’s hilarious blog that details each episode. He hasn’t blogged as much this season but I expect him to be in mid-season form very soon.

I found this good free registry cleaner from Abexo a few months ago and have been very happy with how easy it is to use. It’s never caused any problems by deleted entries that it shouldn’t and I highly recommend it.