12/06/2010

- Google Books launched today, which is yet another book library website. For some reason I am still interested, simply because it’s Google. Am I a fanboy? It sure seems that way. Almost all of the content on this website exists because of Google...

- Boise State should really be 10 in the BCS! Kind of interesting that we put our trust into a system that’s capable of such errors. Also kind of interesting that it’s even newsworthy at all.

- AT&T scored the lowest on a customer satisfaction survey of 58,000 people. They did have a good third quarter, as their spokespeople won’t let you forget, but I can’t help but wonder what’ll happen when the iPhone moves to Verizon...

- espnW launched today, with what looks like a mid-90s themed website design. To my women readers out there: will you use the new site?

- Gingerbread is here! I really shouldn’t get giddy with excitement. It took Droid X a couple months longer than most other Verizon platforms to get 2.2. Who knows how long it will take for 2.3 to actually roll out to the Droid family?

12/03/2010

- This post links to an excellent Economist article and discusses a bigger picture behind the WikiLeaks and entertainment industry.

- A creationism theme park is expected to open in northern Kentucky in 2014.

- Maybe I’ll re-post Deadspin's Great Moments in Drunken Hookup Failure weekly, maybe I won’t. It depends on whether you guys like it or not.

- Here are some pictures of Qatar’s plans for soccer stadiums for the 2022 World Cup. This might be a good link to refer back to in 12 years to see just how accurate the pictures are.

- If you have some time, maybe you’ll be interested in learning why Google Maps’ labels are easier to read than Bing’s and Yahoo!’s.

12/02/2010

- The Heat head to Cleveland tonight, where LeBron James will visit his old team for the first time since leaving. I would be impressed if the Cavs fans decided to politely cheer for LeBron, but after the way they cried when he left, I think everyone knows that won’t happen. Seriously, Cleveland, get over it.

- If you’re into the whole donating thing, this seems like a pretty unique cause.

- This story just fascinates me: Dale Earnhardt Jr. won NASCAR’s most popular driver award for the eighth straight year. Something doesn’t seem right about that. Even more surprising, Bill Elliott holds the record at 10 straight from 1991-2000. I know most of you don’t care about NASCAR (including me...), but Bill Elliott? Come on.

- Google Chrome 8 is out after an unusually quiet release. TechCrunch seems to think that’s how it will be for Chrome from now on.

- The White Sox signed Adam Dunn to a 4-year, $56 million contract. Hooray for strikeouts. This deal is only OK with me if he is strictly DH; I don’t want Konerko to leave.

12/01/2010

- By defeating Boise State, Nevada actually lost money - and quite a bit of it.

- The net neutrality issue is continuing to heat up. I still have trouble understanding what exactly is going on, but Giz does a decent job at helping out. The issue regarding tiered data plans isn’t a big concern of mine, as I would probably fall into a lower tier - at least from a mobile perspective.

- 55 years ago, Rosa Parks refused to move.

- WikiLeaks continues to dominate the news, and I officially caught up on all of it today. Whether or not you support what Julian Assange is doing, you have to admit that it is quite entertaining.

- A co-pilot nearly crashed a plane when he reclined his seat. Yikes.

Email Forwarding and Multiple Accounts

After talking with some of you, I've realized that it may be helpful to share a few tips and tricks. I'll start with email forwarding.

I realize that all of you have other Gmail accounts that you use more frequently than your new rezmanbrown email. This is completely fine. In fact, you can actually forward all of your rezmanbrown emails to your Gmail address. Here's how you do it:

- Click Settings at the top of any Gmail page, and open the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab. From the first drop-down menu in the Forwarding section, select 'Add new email address.'

- Enter the email address to which you'd like your messages forwarded.
- For your security, Gmail will send a verification to that email address.
- Open your forwarding email account, and find the confirmation message from the Gmail team.
- Click the verification link in that email.
- Back in your Gmail account, select the 'Forward a copy of incoming mail to...' option and select your forwarding address from the drop-down menu.
- Select the action you'd like your messages to take from the drop-down menu. You can choose to keep Gmail's copy of the message in your inbox, or you can send it automatically to All Mail or Trash.

- Click Save Changes.

And just like that, you're done.

Another tip I think you might find useful is being able to log into multiple accounts at once. To do so, just visit google.com/accounts and click the link next to "Multiple sign-in." After you sign into your first account, you can sign in with up to two additional accounts from the new accounts menu in the upper right hand corner of Gmail, then easily toggle back and forth between them. You can even open multiple Gmail tabs — one for each of your accounts.

I hope you guys can find these tips useful; in particular the first one. And, as always, let me know if you have any trouble.

Welcome to Rezmanbrown Industries

This is the official blog of Rezmanbrown Industries - <insert slogan here>. This blog will include updates to the rezmanbrown.com website and any additional features that get added. The purpose of this post is to highlight the changes that have been and will continue to be made regarding Google Apps integration.

Rezmanbrown Industries has teamed up with Google to create email addresses for all of its employees. I imagine that most of you who are reading this have already been given an official @rezmanbrown.com email address. If you haven't and would like one, please let me know. Yes, this is how you get "hired" at Rezmanbrown Industries. As you can tell, we have quite a rigorous interview process.

We have encountered an issue with email forwarding from your RMB address to another email address. That issue is currently being investigated, and I will make a post here when it is resolved. Otherwise, the email accounts should be fully functioning, so please feel free to use them as you wish.

I will be sending all official RMB emails to those addresses instead of personal addresses from now on. Hopefully this won't be much of an inconvenience, especially once the email forwarding issue is resolved.

If you have any questions, please use the comment section to ask them. Otherwise, welcome to Rezmanbrown Industries!

UPDATE: The forwarding issue has been fixed. Everything should work now.

I would like to take the next few minutes to rant about ESPN.

I understand that the NBA is more popular than the NHL, but do we really need to see highlights of preseason NBA games instead of regular season NHL games? It's infuriating that one of the four major sports gets almost no coverage (barring the random Barry Melrose segments where he breaks down random games played by the Penguins, the only team that ESPN decided people should follow). I really don't get it. I am not sure if people at ESPN realize what an influence they have on their viewers. Perhaps people are only talking about LeBron James so much because they see him being talked about on ESPN so frequently. I don't think people were demanding to see a Miami Heat Index, much like they probably didn't care about the Tebow Tracker, which hasn't seen an update in ages. There's a good chance I'm wrong in all of this, and that people were demanding more LeBron coverage. But ESPN still has a choice, and I would love to see them attempt to revive the NHL's popularity instead of embracing coverage of truly meaningless NBA games.

If only ESPN aired NHL games like they did in the past. Then they'd have more incentive to popularize the sport.

I'm going to miss baseball when it's gone.

I have decided that people often enjoy looking forward to vacations/breaks more than the actual vacations/breaks themselves. This isn't always the case, but I think it is a significant amount of the time. Looking forward to something involves a countdown to a desired time, whereas being on a break involves a countdown to a dreaded time. Which would you rather have?

Obviously this is inspired by my long-awaited, yet fast-approaching first day of work.

The debate over instant-replay - and technology in general - in sports is getting quite repetitive and boring. So it makes sense that I'll now give my opinion. Haven't we reached a point where almost all officiating can be replaced by machines/robots? Sure, there are the calls that may require interpretation, such as fouls in some sports, but I can't think of much else that couldn't be covered by robots. I think. I would love to see some of the leagues explore the possibility of severely limiting the roles of officials. Of course, realistically, this won't happen.

Why?

I can think of a few reasons. I believe one of the biggest ones is that people don't like change. Using what must be similar logic in fighting to preserve dated ballparks, some people desire to keep the old, inferior refs instead of considering switching to something significantly better. I think these people are wrong. I'm guessing they're the ones who love the "human element" of officiating. God I am sick of that term. When sports were created, was the human element of reffing even considered? I'm confident that sports were created with the human element of players in mind, not officials. Why would we ever want to accept errors if we don't have to?

Maybe people love being able to complain about sports. If there were no officials, and every call was always correct, fans would have to accept that their teams sometimes just suck. So, in a way, perhaps officials are scapegoats.

Those are two of the reasons why I think technology is lacking in sports. I'm sure there are more. Are any legitimate?

Yesterday I thought about how all of these relatives are taking time out of their lives to fly/drive in to see Emily's wedding. I then thought about how I would be somewhat uncomfortable having so many people give up time to come see me get married. I suppose I just don't think anything that I do is important enough for dozens of people to sacrifice a day or two to witness. This is especially true because I think many of the people who would come to my wedding wouldn't really want to be going in the first place. This seems like a strange situation where you're encouraged to throw a party that will cost a fortune that you know many people invited won't want to attend.

One of the reasons I enjoy watching soccer so much is the few commercial breaks. A 90-minute soccer match almost always ends more quickly than a 48-minute basketball game, a 60-minute football game, and a 60-minute hockey game.

Why can soccer get away with so few commercials? Is there anything that the other sports can take from it? I can't imagine not having to sacrifice almost half my day to watch a football game.

I am watching MLB Tonight even though there are only four games today.