Jared W. Smith

In case you’ve been avoiding the Internets today, this morning (on the West Coast) saw the Philnote at MacWorld Expo 2009. As I write this, it’s been done for a half hour; though if you’ve been following it on Twitter, Tony Bennett is just now starting up. Right now, my timeline’s about 37 minutes behind. It’s better than nothing; I’m still getting my replies in real-time, but if you were hoping to follow Macworld on Twitter, it’s clear that it just doesn’t fly. There was a similar issue on election night when Obama claimed the presidency.

Instead, I followed the keynote in a real-time Apple room on FriendFeed. While there were occasional hiccups where I’d get a ton of stuff dumped on me at once, FriendFeed continued to demonstrate excellent performance under duress. And, real-time interactivity with “likes” and comments on FriendFeed enables discussion that Twitter simply can’t, especially when it’s running a half-hour behind. So, I think it’s worth saying that this time around, FriendFeed made following the event easier and more intuitive, not to mention that it stayed on pace with the event.

I’ll give Twitter one thing: At least it didn’t crash. That’s a huge improvement over last year. It’s clear there’s still more work to do to improve capacity, though. Here’s a status update from Twitter regarding the timeline issue.

Update: The Twitter API has given up the ghost.

This Chargers fan has seen this face far too much, and it needs to stop. Today’s performance was, once again, pitiful. They completely squandered LT’s first real healthy performance of the season with turnover after turnover, and they have completely forgotten how to play defense. There’s a REASON why Ted Cottrell was working in the NFL office before he became the Chargers’ D-coordinator!

But let’s get back to Norv. The Chargers are showing clear signs of being Norved — they’re disorganized, not playing defense, and there are a lot of selfish people on the team making plays for their own stats instead of for the overall big picture (Cromartie, I’m calling you out). Most importantly, they do not look ready to play. That’s where coaching and conditioning come into play.

Remember, Norv took a 14-2 team that was one dropped interception from the AFC Championship down to 11-5 and squeaked into the playoffs. Granted, he got one more playoff win than Marty Schottenheimer could muster, but the more I see this year play out, the more I feel like the Chargers — very, very trendy Super Bowl picks — are going to flame out as the most talented 8-8 team in NFL history.

I realize that injuries have hurt this team somewhat, most notably the absence of Shawne Merriman in the pass rush, but that’s no excuse for completely failing to play secondary, for somehow forgetting the fundamentals of tackling…ugh.

The Chargers are now 3-5 and it won’t get easier. It’s an uphill battle for them to get into the playoffs now, especially if the Broncos right the ship after their bye week. (And I refuse to blame Ed Hochuli for that bad call in the Denver game, in retrospect — yes, it eventually did cost them the game, but the Chargers still have to make that stop, and they couldn’t do it — twice.)

At least the Panthers won today. Might don that shade of blue for the weeks ahead if the Chargers can’t turn it around.

Apparently some former Google folk decided they could do search better. Enter Cuil, which is becoming a synonym for fail.

UPDATE(S):

• Cuil does a number on Patrick’s iFroggy Network.
• Someone, erm, sidestepped the Wikipedia neutrality guidelines in the Cuil article.
• I’m quoted in Veronica Belmont’s analysis of Cuil.
• The Girl Riot also points to my LinkedIn fail as an example of Cuil fail.
• To be fair, things are improving a little bit, as I’m getting some more reliable results now. The “About Cuil” page no longer 404s, too. It still has a ways to go, and a lot of work to do both technically and in PR to overcome this absolutely terrible first impression.

Also, if you find this story worthy, please give it an ol’ Digg.

This made it into the National Hurricane Center’s advisory system tonight:

000
WTNT21 KNHC 130150
TCMAT1

TROPICAL STORM OPHELIA FORECAST/ADVISORY NUMBER 27
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL AL162005
0300Z TUE MAY 12 2008

AT 11 PM EDT…0300Z…A HURRICANE WARNING HAS BEEN ISSUED FROM THE
SOUTH SANTEE RIVER SOUTH CAROLINA TO CAPE LOOKOUT NORTH CAROLINA.

AT 11 PM EDT…A TROPICAL STORM WARNING HAS BEEN ISSUED FROM NORTH
OF CAPE LOOKOUT TO OREGON INLET NORTH CAROLINA…INCLUDING PAMLICO
SOUND.

A TROPICAL STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM NORTH OF EDISTO
BEACH SOUTH CAROLINA TO THE SOUTH SANTEE RIVER.

A HURRICANE WARNING MEANS THAT HURRICANE CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED IN
THE WARNING AREA WITHIN THE NEXT 24 HOURS.

A TROPICAL STORM WARNING MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE
EXPECTED IN THE WARNING AREA WITHIN THE NEXT 24 HOURS.

TROPICAL STORM CENTER LOCATED NEAR 31.8N 77.9W AT 13/0300Z
POSITION ACCURATE WITHIN 15 NM

PRESENT MOVEMENT TOWARD THE WEST-NORTHWEST OR 290 DEGREES AT 3 KT

ESTIMATED MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE 990 MB
EYE DIAMETER 90 NM
MAX SUSTAINED WINDS 60 KT WITH GUSTS TO 75 KT.
50 KT……. 70NE 70SE 70SW 70NW.
34 KT…….140NE 120SE 120SW 120NW.
12 FT SEAS..250NE 240SE 225SW 180NW.
WINDS AND SEAS VARY GREATLY IN EACH QUADRANT. RADII IN NAUTICAL
MILES ARE THE LARGEST RADII EXPECTED ANYWHERE IN THAT QUADRANT.

REPEAT…CENTER LOCATED NEAR 31.8N 77.9W AT 13/0300Z
AT 13/0000Z CENTER WAS LOCATED NEAR 31.9N 77.7W

It’s an old advisory for Hurricane Ophelia in 2005 that has apparently been re-dated for today, and it’s causing some minor chaos right now. It’s showing up in my Hurricane Advisory RSS feed, but now some of the automated systems that take in these advisories and warn on them are going nuts. I first noticed when BreakingNewsOn on Twitter started reporting a hurricane bearing down on North Carolina. Similarly, local blogger Matthew Gregg noted the error in a tweet shortly after the BreakingNewsOn tweet. Following the link in Matthew’s tweet took me to the errant advisory listed above. Since then, though, this has made it out to sites like Reuters and the UK’s Tropical Storm Risk center.

I can assure everybody that there is no tropical storm out there, and I hope that this isn’t reaching even further than just these locations. I haven’t seen any false warnings being raised here, which is a good thing. Hopefully NHC will get this out of their news stream quickly.

EPILOGUE: Here’s a Post & Courier piece by Dan Conover about the errant advisory. Interesting how it all went down.