rising from the ashes: crazy silverdome plan is perfect for MLS

From MLive.com

To achieve a reasonable stadium size, the Apostolopoulos family plans to remove the dome and divide the stadium into three sections. At the stadium’s ground level, will be a concert hall and a multi-purpose arena, capable of hosting hockey, basketball, and other indoor sports.

Resting on top of those two indoor facilities, will be a roughly 30,000-seat soccer stadium with natural grass. The current upper deck will essentially act as a lower bowl for the outdoor stadium.

At first blush, this sounds absolutely daffy — and maybe it is, I not an architect. But if it’s workable, here’s why MLS should take this plan seriously:

• One family owns the Silverdome and they can do whatever the hell they want with it and no one can say boo.
• That family loves soccer and wants to have an MLS team.
• That family is rich, rich, rich!
• MLS can get an innovative soccer-specific stadium without any city, county, state approval/funding/bullshit.
• MLS can play a part in reviving a city and stadium area that desperately needs help.

To me, this plan makes a lot more sense than, say, putting a second team in the New York City area. In fact, it’s kind of hard to see a downside for MLS brass. If I were the Don, I would tell Apostolopoulos to do his stadium renovations, pay the going rate for the franchise fees and welcome to the league.

at-at day afternoon, by Patrick Boivin

AT-AT day afternoon from Patrick Boivin on Vimeo.

I recently dug out my old At-At from the attic to give to my four-year-old son. Recognizing I love that thing as much as my kid does, my wife’s cousin thought I might like this video. She was right.

If you’re into this stuff, you can see the “making of” video here. I like how the creator, Patrick Boivin, uses every-day items as his blue screens and what not. It almost makes it seem like anyone can do this, or course we cannot:

Making of AT-AT day afternoon from Patrick Boivin on Vimeo.

the champagne of beers

via underconsideration.com

Brand New breaks down the Miller High Life rebranding effort and makes me want to drink the champagne of beers.

read of the day: times (of london) paywall experiment tanking

via The Guardian:

The Times has lost almost 90% of its online readership compared to February since making registration mandatory in June, calculations by the Guardian show. Unregistered users of thetimes.co.uk are now “bounced” to a Times+ membership page where they have to register if they want to view Times content. Data from the web metrics company Experian Hitwise shows that only 25.6% of such users sign up and proceed to a Times web page; based on custom categories (created at the Guardian) that have been used to track the performance of major UK press titles online, visits to the Times site have fallen to 4.16% of UK quality press online traffic, compared with 15% before it made registration compulsory on 15 June.

There’s no question in my mind that newspapers and magazines need to find a way to monetize some of their content online. But they need to do it in a way that is neither a brick wall, nor ham-fisted. The strategy needs to be to give readers a taste of free — and complete content — then make them pay for something. And you need to make the payment options seamless, something they don’t even think about. The way iTunes charges for apps. 

The Times scheme fulfills none of these requirements: The Times gives users nothing for free, and their payment options are arduous, expensive and confusing.

read of the day: triple-bottom line businesses

Leila Janah, the CEO of the nonprofit outsourced services firm Samasource writes in TechCrunch:

… A new trend is emerging to counter Delaware’s influence on American corporate policy, and it’s pretty thrilling for those of us in the social enterprise sector. In April, Maryland became the first state to allow entrepreneurs to form Benefit Corporations. Also known as “triple-bottom line” businesses (so named for their consideration of people, planet, and profit), B Corps now include over 300 companies representing $1.1B in revenue, including Amazon competitor Better World Books and GoodGuide, a site that rates consumer products for safety, environmental impact, and social responsibility. B Corporation, the nonprofit behind the legislation, is growing in influence — in the organization’s hometown of Philadelphia, B Corps now receive tax incentives.

The idea is enticing — certainly better than the single-bottom line that currently rules business — but I do wonder how much good these types of businesses can do. In what order will CEOs and boards consider these bottom line? Certainly, there will be a temptation to put profits first, people second and the environment third. With traditional non-profits, the cause always comes first — that’s what makes them so valuable.  

As Janah points out later in the post, “Optimizing for multiple variables is notoriously challenging.” 

my song of the summer: tarkio's "keeping me awake"

Download now or listen on posterous

This song popped up on my radar a couple a weeks through Pandora and I’ve been in love with it ever since. Tarkio had a three-year run out of Montana from 1996  through 1999. That distinctive, and perhaps familiar, voice you hear is the current Decemberist frontman Colin Meloy and indeed this album feels a bit like the Decemberists meet Uncle Tupelo.

“Keeping Me Awake” evokes the sunshine, romance and fleeting nature of summer that I always feel in late July and early August and it makes me ache for the Outer Banks vacation I’ll be taking here soon. If you like it, i highly recommend picking up Omnibus, which collects Tarkio’s recorded material during their short-lived  existence.

If your like me and appreciate the Decemberists in small doses, but really dig bands like the afore-mentioned Uncle Tupelo, Ryan Adams, Gillian Welch and Conor Oberst this is collections will find a permanent home in your preferred MP3 player and/or smart phone. you can pick up the album through your local iTunes store.

Here are the lyrics:

Summer, it came
like a light across the highlands
and we laid it down.
You wore a dress
made of light from the islands
and we sent postcards home.

In dying light
this was not to be forgotten
‘cause we are the chosen few.
Into the sea with the touch of softest cotton
Beneath this angel moon
Its been keeping me awake

Leaving this behind was my first mistake
and I’m not so strong
to be satisfied by all the things I’ve done
and the things it threw away.

You wrote your name
as we lay among the heather.
What you left behind
Following paths that would lead us both together
Let us lose our minds
Its been keeping me awake

Leaving this behind was my first mistake
and I’m not so strong
to be satisfied by all the things I’ve done
by the things it threw away.

Summer, it fell
and it coursed across the highlands
and so quickly gone.
Your faded dress for years now tied away and silent
and the night’s late lullaby
has been keeping me awake.

Leaving this behind was my first mistake
and I’m not so strong
to be satisfied by all the things I’ve done
by all the things it threw away.
By all the things it threw away
By all the things it threw away
By all the things it threw away

read of the day: why alcoholics anonymous works

To begin with, there is evidence that a big part of AA’s effectiveness may have nothing to do with the actual steps. It may derive from something more fundamental: the power of the group. Psychologists have long known that one of the best ways to change human behavior is to gather people with similar problems into groups, rather than treat them individually. The first to note this phenomenon was Joseph Pratt, a Boston physician who started organizing weekly meetings of tubercular patients in 1905. These groups were intended to teach members better health habits, but Pratt quickly realized they were also effective at lifting emotional spirits, by giving patients the chance to share their tales of hardship. (“In a common disease, they have a bond,” he would later observe.) More than 70 years later, after a review of nearly 200 articles on group therapy, a pair of Stanford University researchers pinpointed why the approach works so well: “Members find the group to be a compelling emotional experience; they develop close bonds with the other members and are deeply influenced by their acceptance and feedback.”

Researchers continue to be surprised by just how powerful this effect is. For example, a study published last year in the journal Behavior Therapy concluded that group therapy is highly effective in treating post-traumatic stress disorder: 88.3 percent of the study’s subjects who underwent group therapy no longer exhibited PTSD symptoms after completing their sessions, versus just 31.3 percent of those who received minimal one-on-one interaction.

The importance of this is reflected by the fact that the more deeply AA members commit to the group, rather than just the program, the better they fare. According to J. Scott Tonigan, a research professor at the University of New Mexico’s Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse, and Addictions, numerous studies show that AA members who become involved in activities like sponsorship—becoming a mentor to someone just starting out—are more likely to stay sober than those who simply attend meetings.

Wired magazine takes an in-depth look at how Alcoholics Anonymous works from a human psychology and neuro-chemical standpoint.

 

read of the day: mg siegler on app inventor

A lot of software developers haven’t liked the idea of this movement towards native mobile apps because some feel they’re pushing people towards devices that aren’t as open to tinkering as PCs are. That’s especially true with Apple’s devices. But Android is a pretty open system, and it seems that a tool like this could inspire people to want to learn how to make great apps.

While WYSIWYG HTML editors led to an abundance of junk web pages, those tools also opened the door for a lot of people to learn HTML who may not have done so otherwise. With App Inventor, just as with those tools, it would seem that no one is going to be able to make a truly remarkable apps without digging into the code eventually. And that may be Google’s ultimate goal with this.

But still, they have to hope it doesn’t backfire and simply flood the Android Market with more junk apps than already exist. Google already has a problem with surfacing good apps in their market – interesting, given that they are the ones that surface good webpages as mentioned earlier — the problem could get worse if this tool is a success.

Still, I’m going to be cautiously optimistic that this tool is a good thing. Potentially a very good thing. And it’s something Apple should be taking very seriously.

via techcrunch.com

The incomparable MG Siegler nails the risk/reward of the Google App Inventor.

a beginners guide to spain v. netherlands

My father, a newly converted soccer fan, asked for a preview of today’s match — essentially what to look for and what to know. Here’s what I wrote up for him.

Both teams are evenly matched and play a version of the Dutch-invented style known as total football. The tenets of total football hold that, as any player moves out of position another can move into his position and take his spot. This fluidity requires players to have great technical ability and fitness. It also means that teams who play total fotball have a high percentage of possession and are generally attack-oriented teams.

You can think of total football in opposition to the Italian style, which is known as catenaccio, meaning “door-bolt” which emphasizes strong defense and counter attacks.

Total football was invented by the Dutch and imported to Spain by Dutch legend Johan Cruyff in the 1970s. It has been practiced ever since – in one form or another – by Spanish side Barcelona, which currently dominates the Spanish football landscape. Seven of the players used to beat Germany either currently ply for Barcelona, or had spent time playing for the club or were developed in its youth system.

There is also a high degree of cross-over between the Dutch team and Spanish club football, with several Dutch players having spent time playing for top Spanish clubs.

Look for both of these teams to try to possess the ball for long periods of time (and for Spain to be more successful in the endeavor) and probe for areas of weakness in the other side. I expect both teams to try to control the game in the first 2o minutes, playing probing football rather than going on the attack. Neither team will want to give up an early goal, so I doubt they will be looking to stretch the field on the attack early. Between the 25th and 30th minutes, I’d expect to see both teams launching attacks, with the Dutch being a bit more aggressive in this point.

Looking back at the scores from both squads throughout the World Cup, only the Dutch have scored more than two goals in any match (their 3-2 win over Uruguay in the semi finals) and neither team has won by more than two goals. Spain only managed a 2-0 win over lowly Honduras

This isn’t a reflection on their skill as much as it is a reflection on their style of play, which revolves around controlling the ball at midfield and stringing together passes, rather than looking for quick strikes at the goal.

You’ll see lots of beautiful football today, with great passing and possession, but probably little scoring – I’d expect a tight match, somewhere in the 2-1, 1-0 range. I don’t expect either team to sit back and wait for the match to go into extra time, however. They both have their share of older players and won’t want the match coming down to the chance of extra time and penalty kicks.

If either team has a weakness, it’s in the central defense of both sides. The Central defenders for Spain are old (Carlos Puyol) and prone to mistakes (Gerard Pique), but are also known for their heart and heroics and both are able to score on set pieces. It was the long-haired Puyol who scored Spain’s goal against Germany on s corner kick. Flying in next to him looking for the same ball was Pique.

The Dutch defense doesn’t have the same obvious weaknesses, but has given up goals up the middle.

The Dutch are a more complete team, with a more potent attack.  Dirk Kuyt, Wesley Sneijder, and Arjen Robben have been proven goal scorers throughout the tournament. Robin Van Persie is also a talented striker.

Spain has had real difficulty finding goals outside of forward David Villa and their star forward Fernando Torres, who had an incredible club season, has struggled in the World Cup. But Spain’s midfielders – Xavi, Sergio Busquets and Xabi Alonso are superior to their Dutch counterparts in their ability to hold the ball and string together passes. It will be interesting to see if Spain starts the young Pedro at forward in place of Torres (as they did against Germany). In that game, Pedro brought some freshness to the attack that Spain has been missing.

Both sides have solid goalkeepers and this position shouldn’t factor into the match.

So, my prediction: 2-1 to the Dutch, with goals by Sneijder, Van Persie and — going out on a limb — Pedro.

What’s your prediction?

read of the day: the smell of creativity in the morning

Yes, it feels uncomfortable, and sometimes people get upset, but it’s much better to disappoint a few people over small things, than to sacrifice the big things for an empty inbox. Otherwise you’re sacrificing real productivity for the illusion of professionalism.

The Key to Creating Remarkable Things, by Mark McGuinness, on the99percent.com