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Yahoo Calendar Beta

11:10 am, October 8, 2008 by jason in Politics, Rants, Track & Field

After Yahoo! Mail being updated for a couple of years now, Yahoo Calendar finally gets into the 21st century.  For some time standards have been implemented which allow calendar entries to be created and shared across users of different platforms such as Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes in the corporate world.  Google has supported this standard since the introduction of their calendar, but Yahoo! has lagged behind.

Today the calendar has finally been updated to fit into the new Mail theme and Web 2.0 functionality.  It will support Apple, Microsoft, AOL, Mozilla, and Google calendars making it possible to send reminders and calendar invitations to virtually anyone.  In a quick test I was able to send myself an invite from my Yahoo! calendar and accept into my corporate Lotus Notes calendar.  Unfortunately, I I had to manually provide my reply to Yahoo! via a web-link.  My corporate e-mail sent an .ics file to my Yahoo mailbox, but there was no way to import it.  Hopefully that will change in the future.

Overall, I’m impressed with several of the features including the ability to import photos from Flickr, subscribe to other .ics calendars, calendar sharing, and a ‘zoom’ option to see a single day in greater detail (see image on left) when in the month view and the sharing capabilities.  To join the Beta go to http://switch.calendar.yahoo.com/ to try it out and learn more about the features and limitations of the Beta.

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Shifting Focus

10:50 pm, December 14, 2007 by jason in Cycling, Politics, Rumblings, Track & Field

About ten years ago it was track and field, just recently it was cycling and now, baseball. It seems that the breadth
of performance enhancing drugs will soon affect any sport. While the broad usage of steroids recently detailed in the Mitchell Report is not surprising to me, the lack of recommended steps to clean-up the sport are.

For those of you who are not familiar with the general outcome of this report, let me provide a brief overview:

• Senator George Mitchell investigated and released a report detailing the usage of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs on 13 December 2007
• This report stated that, ” Major League Baseball has ‘a serious drug culture’ in which steroid use is ‘widespread’” - quoted from NPR.org
• The report listed fifty MLB players and evidence showing that they had purchased a performance enhancing drug during their career.
• The report suggested that no action be taken against these fifty players and that the current testing has made a positive impact on the culture of steroid abuse over the last three years.

The last bullet is the one that surprises me the most. I believe no punishment is recommended because the steroid use is so wide spread that it would require punishing the ‘heroes’ of the sport. In my mind, the root cause of this issue is the hero status. Our culture (in my opinion more than any other) elevates sports athletes to the likes of gods - untouchables. Only a god would deserve compensation competitive with the GDP of many poor developing countries. The desire for people to achieve and maintain this status only increases the issue and the urge to achieve this level depsite the cost.

While I think punishment for all players included in this report (retired or not) should carried out, and more strict monitoring should be implemented, is it the answer. As long as our society elevates champions to the likes of gods and the human ego continues to thrive on this elevation cheaters will exist. They exist in school, business and sport - the difference, and the reason for all of this focus, is because our children haven’t memorzied the stats of corrupt CEOs and don’t TIVO their board meetings.

Read more:

The Mitchell Report

NPR.org - Report Exposes Extent of Steroid Use in Baseball

ESPN.com - Mitchell Report - Baseball Slow to React to Steroids

Yahoo Sports - AP Interview: Mitchell says naming names was right decision

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Bamboo Ready for the PV pole picking

10:01 pm, October 17, 2007 by jason in Hawaii 2007, Rumblings, Track & Field, Travel

Bamboo Ready for the PV pole picking

Originally uploaded by GetVerticalPV

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