With baseball season's arrival, and our family's immersion in the game, it seemed only logical to subscribe to MLB.TV. I knew I would like the service, but the availability of EVERY Major League game* in High Definition on our television was one of those serendipitous moments.
A few clicks and a cable from the laptop to television and we can pick from two feeds (the home and away broadcast station) for every game in the league.
The cost of the service is less than $150. One Cubs ticket can set you back that much. MLB.TV owes much of its success and terrific pictures to the new Flash movie streaming software from Adobe. The hiccups from bandwidth problems are minimal with a broadband connection and the resolution is as good as HD from a local broadcast station.
For the TOTAL baseball junkie, it is possible to stream four games at once via MLB.TV.
*Blackout rules apply for games in your 'home' area. For us, that means Cubs and Sox games are sometimes unavailable, but in those instances, the game is usually available via WGN.
A Google alternative?
Using Google for research can be a frustrating experience. You can usually find the information, but it often requires shifting through many possible links.
A new "search" engine called WolframAlpha.com provides a more statistical and mathematical approach to online research.
Wolfram is the same person who developed the software "Mathematica" and a variety of other education and research programs. His foray into "search" technology won't unseat Google from its top perch, but it provides a fresh alternative for finding answers to those basic information questions: How long is the Mississippi River? How tall is the Empire State Building? What was the increase in the consumer price index over the past 10 years?
'Local' media sites expected to gain ground against Internet-only players
According to Borrell Associates research, ad expenditures in 2009 at local media sites should increase while Internet-only web sites such as Google and Local.com will see a decline in market share.
Borrell says old media companies like yellow page and newspaper sites appear to be recovering market share after a steady decline since 2005.
