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Radical New Innovation at Outside.in: Search!

Forgot to mention that we finally restored search to outside.in. We had a pretty lame search function in the original iteration of the site, which we decided to just kill off because it wasn't very useful (and, perhaps because it wasn't useful, no one was using it.) But we decided a few weeks ago to do a little mod of Google site search, which turns out to work very well. It still doesn't do all the fancy things that it will do down the line (like restricting your query to a fixed geographic area, or listing places by category in the results), but it's a pretty great resource already. We've got over half a million pages of content from around the web that have been geo-located in some fashion, so if you're trying to find out what people are saying about a place in your community, searching outside.in's a good place to start.

Speaking of outside.in, there have been some cool articles/posts in the last few weeks that really get what we're trying to do with the service. I think there's a natural tendency to imagine outside.in as a kind of neighborhood newspaper stitched together from various sources online, but in reality, it's a much more ambitious project than that (though it's hard enough to do the neighborhood news thing!) The real goal is to build out a geographically-aware system for tracking everything that's related to location on the web, so you can do all sorts of things with the service -- get an alert anytime there's news about a crime in your area, or target advertising to fifteen demographically similar zip codes around the country, or keep up with all the news about organic food in your city. As we've built out more of the site, it seems like people are starting to see the ultimate vision more clearly -- as in this great post from Matt McAlister, "Why Outside.In May Have The Local Solution." and this post from Jillian Burt at PopMatters, triggered by our search announcement, "The Search For Meaning Begins at Outside.in."

Then there are the questions that are best left unanswered, like this post from the TimesOnline in the UK: "Is this the new Facebook?" If you figure that it took us about a year to get a working search function, then I'd say we're on target to be the next Facebook sometime around 2018. I hope the Web still exists then!

The Times Tears Down The Wall

So the Times finally killed off TimesSelect. (My pal Jeff Jarvis pens the definitive obit.) It's good news for everyone, including the Times, but particularly for the Times' op-ed columnists, who are back in the Google/Blogosphere game where they belong. I had lunch a few months ago with a group of editorial and business people from the Times, and one of the questions they asked me was what my experience was like writing for Times Select. I said that one of the bizarre things about it was that if I was purely interested in getting feedback for something I'd written -- via email, or blog links, or comments -- I was much better off posting something to this blog than writing an op-ed for the New York Times. Obviously the readership of the piece itself would be a thousand times bigger in the Times, but because the web version was walled off, the blog ended up being a more efficient means of generating responses.

Anyhow now you can enjoy the fun little series on city life that I wrote for TimesSelect last year, Urban Planet. Just be sure you click on the ads to reward the Times for their decision to drop the paywall.

Clear Evidence That Apple Reads This Blog Religiously

Today on Daring Fireball:

The screenshots that show you how to check your iPhone’s serial number are based on the as-yet-unreleased 1.1.1 version of the OS. (The current release version is 1.0.2; no idea what happened to 1.1.0.) One change is an additional setting under General for “Home Button”; my guess is that it’ll let you select an action for double-clicking. The iPod Touch uses a double-click of the Home button to bring up music player controls.

Me, a few days after the iPhone came out:

So here's my solution: double clicking the home button automatically takes you to the phone favorites screen.

Thanks, Apple.

Gearing Up

Those of you who read the first pages of Everything Bad Is Good For You know that I was freakishly obsessed with baseball, and particularly baseball statistics, when I was a young kid. In the last few months, our just-turned-six-year-old has gotten equally obsessed with baseball, which of course is why I had children in the first place -- so I could shag fly balls and talk about the Yankees with someone. (I kid, but only slightly.)

But there's a twist here, and the twist is that while our son is definitely intrigued by the stats side of baseball, the fact that he can only read about thirty words (among them, naturally: Jeter, A-Rod, Red Sox) has limited his stats obsession, though he devours the sports pages every morning. His big obsession right now turns out to be gear. It started innocently enough when we got him a glove and uniform for his Pee-Wee baseball team this spring.

Five months later, things have gotten somewhat out of control. Every time we head out to Prospect Park for a quick game of catch before dinner, this is what we absolutely, positively MUST bring or else the whole trip is off:

1. Three gloves (one extra for his little brother)

2. Three bases and home plate.

3. Pitcher's rubber. (God forbid whoever is pitching should just stand in between first and third base without actually standing on the rubber.)

4. One batter's helmet. (I talked him down from two, arguing that with three players, no one was ever on deck, and besides we're playing with a soft baseball so we don't even need helmets at all.)

5. Shin-guards for whoever is catching.

6. Soft baseball hats for all players.

7. Baseball.

8. Two differently weighted bats.

He also insists on wearing his green and white baseball socks from his Pee-Wee uniform, pulled all the way up to his knees, which, when combined with normal clothes, has a distinctly lederhosen kind of look.

I should say, though, that yesterday we got into a pickup game on the Meadow, and one of the other kids was not only in full uniform, but was also wearing batting gloves and cleats. What a freak, right?

September

I had such incredibly fun experiences at college (and to a lesser extent grad school) that even now that I've been out of school for almost fifteen years, I still have this vestigial sense of excitement every year right about now -- the sense that a new semester's about to start with all its possibilities....

We did manage to have a great summer with the kids this year, despite the fact that I had more of a day job (at outside.in) than I've had since the FEED years. My wife and I have this nice feeling of accomplishment right now that we managed to do as much as we did, given that we have three young kids now, including a one-year-old. We took trips to the Vineyard, and Shelter Island, and an epic trip out for my sister's wedding in California. The little boy learned to walk, the middle one learned to swim, the older one got completely baseball obsessed, demanding to read the papers every morning for the scores and standings, despite the fact that he doesn't, you know, actually know how to read. The boys got to see some of California's great landmarks -- Carmel, Point Lobos, Muir Woods -- and I shot a 78 at Pebble Beach.

All in all, a great summer, but man, am I excited it's over. I'm ready to settle in and get some serious work done, and for the older boys to be back in school. How was everyone else's summer?