Posts from — March 2005

Merrin's out of town and…it's really quiet around here. The good news is she'll be back tomorrow and then it's off to Mexico on Monday morning.

If you think the blogging has been sparse around here lately, you ain't seen nothing yet!

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Google is celebrating Van Gogh's birthday today with a very special Van Google logo. It's linked to a search for Vincent, including an image search. Cool.

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• Aeron Chair by Herman Miller®

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A new bill has been introduced in the Texas Senate that would ban Texas teams from participating in the BCS. More at Fanblogs.

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Every so often, the larger websites will break down their traffic to report on browser stats and newsreader stats. (Arts Technica has such an analysis today.) Most of the time, these are done by - let's be honest - sites that would be considered on the geekier side of Mom & Pop America.

So, I thought I'd help by taking the college football blog and breaking down the traffic & newsreader stats. Why? The Fanblogs target audience is (generally) non-geeks - it is dyed-in-the-wool football fans. (You know, guys who are infected with spy ware, but getting a new pc because their's is running slow.

Fanblogs College Football Blog - www.fanblogs.com

OS (as reported by AWStats for 2005 YTD)
Not surprisingly, MS Windows accounts for 96+% of college football fans. The remainder is mostly Mac (2.7%) and Linux (0.4%).

Browsers (as reported by AWStats for 2005 YTD)

MS Internet Explorer 81.1%
Firefox 8.7%
Netscape 5.6%
Mozilla 2.4%
Safari 1.2%
Opera 0.2%
and the rest

From my perspective, I would combine Firefox, Netscape, and Mozilla into one component and call that a 16.7% share. Not too shabby. For comparison, that same grouping had a 8.0% share for Jan-Dec 2004.

RSS Newsreaders (as reported by Feedburner)
Since Fanblogs has over 100 college football feeds, I took the top conference feeds, combined, and got the averages below. This may not be the best method, but I think it's a fair representation.

My Yahoo 64.8%
FeedDemon 16.2%
Bloglines 14.8%
SharpReader 3.1%
Firefox Live Bookmarks 0.8%
and the rest

Again, I'm not surprised that My Yahoo is the leader here. Again, Fanblogs users are (IMHO) Joe American. The audience is tilted towards the non-geek. My Yahoo is winning with that set. I wasn't really surprised to see FeedDemon so well, either. It's easy to use, priced right, and works. (Nick, looks like Fanblogs should be a default listing, huh? )

So, there you have it. Now, back to the college football.

UPDATE: There have been some questions about the impact of the MyYahoo stickers on the Fanblogs feeds page. Those were adding this month (March 2005) when we noticed the huge tilt towards MyYahoo. From April 2003 - March 2005, Fanblogs only had the feed name and an orange "XML" button.

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• TivoToGo on your PSP
  (tags: tivo psp)
• Arlington Pediatric Center (Arlington, VA)
  a truly unfortunate choice of logo design

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Cindy linked to the outstanding post on using clock skew fingerprints to track any single computer anywhere on the internet. Such an amazingly simple, yet effective technique. [Insansely technical whitepaper here (pdf)]

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I'm still giving thought to buying a plasma screen. I wonder what a 50 ton, 79 foot by 71 foot screen would go for. I'd have to rearrange some things around the house, but it would be worth it.

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Nextel and Mapquest have teamed up to bring Nextel users location based info when you want it by locking in on a Nextel GPS-enabled phone. The new service allows you to share your location (via the web) with trusted parties, get maps of your location, and find local area info like restaurants and shops. The new service is called MapQuest Find Me.

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I'm 100% certain that Easter (much like Christmas) has gotten way, way, way too commercial. Case in point:

Jesus scented candles. Not scented candles with images of Jesus - no. These are "the fragrance of Christ", taken from "the formula…spelled out in Psalm 45", now yours for only $18.

I guess if you forgot to take the trash out and need some relief, you can turn to Jesus for help. And, when you have to take Jesus with you, the perfume fragrance is coming soon.

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Need XM satellite radio standard in your next ride? Swing by your Hyundai dealer and pick up a 2006 model. From our perspective, no one has every been more satisfied with a car purchase than Merrin is with her Santa Fe. Looks like her next car will have XM radio standard, huh?

Update:
Since it's mentioned in the link above, but in the text (ie. you have to read the linked page), let me clarify here: Hyundai is the only brand to offer standard XM satellite radio in every model.

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Damn. Ultimate Electronics is pulling out of Texas. The good news is that they may have some big sales coming up - right before my birthday! Now I'm glad I didn't rush into that plasma screen purchase!

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Stop saying "ATM machine". It's an ATM, not an Automatic Teller Machine machine. OK?!

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Pete blogged the details on the new alarm clock MIT created to make sure you get out of bed. After you snooze, it moves from the bedside table to another part of the room (!) and goes off again. It could use some work from a presentation standpoint (it's a tad too function over form), but definitely a great idea.

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The entire city of Addison is about to become a wifi hotspot. According to the DMN, rates have not been set yet, but 1Mbit speed is probably going to be $30/month.

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