Tretakoff Musings

Yet another bizarre turn of a phrase by a sports journalist. Today's example focuses on an article on the upcoming NFL draft and the New England Patriots . You remember them, right? The team that, only two seasons ago, posted only the second undefeated regular season...ever. Yes, they lost the Super Bowl to the Giants on the backs of an aging defense and a fluke play, but they won more games than any other team in 2008. The quote (and first line of the article): "Bill Belichick has a shot at his second straight solid draft after two years of mediocrity." The definition of "mediocre:" not very high quality; average or second rate Um...help me out here. In 2008, they had an undefeated regular season, and won more games than any other team in the league. Last year, they overcame the loss of their superstar QB, turned a player who had never started a game in college or the pros into a bona fide sensation, and missed the playoffs with a better record than 2 other te...

If you didn't catch last week's episode of the seemingly unstoppable CSI , you missed the best show on TV. Thanks to TV.com. CBS' answer to Hulu (and my old co-worker's pet project), you can still take advantage. The episode is a perfect send-up of the original Star Trek , mixed with the fanaticism of the true believers. The recreation of the psuedo episodes is dead-on, and the actors are, without question, fabulous. It also manages to hilariously and powerfully mix in the folks from the new version of Battlestar Galactica , as well as the key players from it playing parts in the episode. Don't miss the cameo of Ron Moore, Galactica 2.0's creative force, standing up and screaming "You suck!" At the unveiling of the new imagining of the series in this episode. And Ellen Tigh as a guest star? Wow...well done, CSI folk.

Social Media Marketing is all the rage: companies try to dive in, and proclaim how cool and hip they are with fan pages on Facebook and Twittering specials. What they fail to realize is that social media is not e-mail 2.0; it requires participation and feedback, and, most of all, responsiveness. When they fair to recognize this, the damage they do to their brand is far worse than if they simply had not waded in, uninformed, to begin with. Case in point: Quizno's. They established a Twitter account for their commercial mascot, the Quizno's Toaster Oven. They send me an e-mail, ostensibly from the Toaster, offering me a deal: a free Torpedo sub when I buy the combo. That's a $4 savings. Ok, good, entices me to come in to my local shop, and walk past the 6 (I kid you not) other lunch sandwich options between my office and it. I bring the coupon, get to the shop...and the shop refuses to honor it, instead offering me $1 off. Ok, with franchised businesses, I get that these thin...

OK, we know the JesusPhone can do almost anything, but can it solve the age-old problem of finding a parking spot? Well, at least in NYC, it may be able to: PrimoSpot is a new service/app for the iPhone that tells you, based on where you are, what kind of parking is around you. While it's not for every space on the street (like San Francisco's upcoming system ), it does have the major advantage of showing you all nearby parking options, and if they will be free or reduced prices, and how long until that happens. They also show recommendation types for short stays, and more. Right now, just in some parts of NYC, but PrimoSpot is set to expand to Boston and...Hoboken?...soon.

I've made no secret of this summer's epic phone battle for my 3 Franklins: it's going to be either the new version of the iPhone that I have truly loved since purchasing it, or the potentially game-changing Palm Pre, with it's revolutionary OS and nearly psychic assistance. But the word comes today of the latest skirmish: Hulu is coming to the iPhone. Forget the Slingbox, with it's high price to watch my DVR. Forget the lame and buggy Joost app for the iPhone. This makes yet another major reason to stick with the Apple supremacy. Watching streaming episodes of almost all networks, with the service remembering my place? It's like having the world's largest DVR, in the palm of my hand. Now, the counterpunch is up to the Pre: it support Flash, so theoretically, I could watch Hulu right on its browser. Hard to tell for sure, but the secrecy around the Pre is wearing thin: no firm launch date, still no details on how it handles video and music management, and no ...

I hate Daylight Savings Time. It's an outmoded, antiquated way of dealing with natural effects, and it simply has no place in the modern world. Worse, when it does come, we have to go through this bizarre process of making sure all the clocks times are changed. Ridiculous. It appears there is at least one clock that will make dealing with this pain a simple chore. The Ora iLegale clock takes an elegant approach: the clock has no numbers on the face, and when it's time to adjust for daylight savings time changes, give it a nudge. The body of the clock pivots just enough to make the face reflect the hour adjustment. Brilliant.

Amy's a big Kindle reader, and with the iPhone app, I can share her library. A book we both were interested in, Good Book , by Slate 's David Plotz, was a prime candidate to add to the library. Shockingly, when she went to get it, it was priced nearly 30% higher than almost all other Kindle books! What's up with that? Looks like Kindle users have found a plethora of examples, and a bunch are now banding together to protest this . Using the Amazon tagging function, they are tagging all of these overprices books with a "9.99 Boycott" tag. Viva la virtual revolucion!