Ramanujan Redux

Really, this again?

WuChess, a partnership between Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA and ChessPark, a social network around online chess playing, launches today. It’s the “world’s first online chess and hip hop community” and will also include exclusive videos and mp3 of the “hottest cats in hip hop.”

See a tour of the service here. That’s as far as most of you’ll get on WuChess, because, incredibly, they’re charging $48/year to join. ChessPark, by contrast, at least has a free version (but no videos or mp3s, sadly). The company promises to donate “a portion of the profits” to the Hip Hop Chess Federation.

Awesome. Hip hop, chess and $48 per year - definite winner.

I wouldn’t pay $50 to talk to most celebrities, much less match wits with RZA. Only Charles Barkley makes the cut right now.

The Internet is free for a reason–it’s to make us more open to each other, not to allow the richer and the privileged among us insider access. It’s to bring us on the same level, not place celebrities on a pedestal. Yardbarker allows athletes the opportunity to connect with their fans. Why can’t celebrities acknowledge that they’re human too?

It’s a trivial thing, but it’s one of the many problems the Internet solves–finding information that wasn’t easily accessible in old media days, then having the means (iTunes) to build it up.

YouTube ad commericals are something I frequent when I like the music. Of course, finding the music attached to the piece is a chore, especially if it’s instrumental. But ask the commenters and they can help you find message boards that answer your questions.

I find this particularly effective. Thanks to commenters I found out that Massive Attack was in charge of the song for this chilling West Wing clip. That Dockers SF commercial is only catchy because it evokes funk from Marlena Shaw’s California Soul. Michael Jordan knows how important advertising is, so he mixes powerful music like Zero 7’s Red Dust into his commercials.

Internet communities have the power to relay information much faster to each other than ever before, to help move us and empower us in our regular lives. The next logical step in that progression? Relaying ideas to one another. That’s what blogs, discussion boards and social networks are slowly evolving into.

And what comes after that?

Seth Godin seems to be right on more often than not, and I think he’s starting to take on an edge. More and more the Internet is being cluttered with many, many things. However, I don’t think that’s the fault of the Internet. I think that’s just us tech geeks taking the Internet to the extreme.

My RSS feeds are huge, and I certainly only read about ten or twenty. But let’s face it–how many of you actually read your RSS? How many of you actually have RSS?

As much as I enjoy finding new information, new pictures, new sources of data, unless they add something to my life, their appeal is brief and illusory. The only time RSS is probably useful is if it’s current events (politics, sports, entertainment), or if the site is really really good (Umair Haque and Godin are two examples). I think connecting with people will require something separate (RSS 2.0?).

I don’t have it in my head quite yet, but information is one part of the Internet experience, and that’s the only thing RSS does a good job taking care of. It needs to be minimized to what you care about (basketball and football for me, celebrities and their crappy lives or politicans and election results for others) so you can make room for what really matters.

Time to prune that RSS feed now.

I’m trying to build up a steady resume of my writings and accomplishments online, and I don’t want to seem like I’m embellishing. This is to serve as two things:
1) A set of online accomplishments that can show value to other people.
2) A set of online accomplishments that can show value to me.

As much as I enjoy me, and talking about me, I want other people to know about me. Me is great. Me is the best. So let’s get going spreading the legend of me!

I wrote up three live blogs on The Play in CA (New Orleans at Dallas, Phoenix at San Antonio, Washington at Cleveland). I enjoyed the experience, but one thing I did learn is that it’s not fun talking to yourself on a live blog. It’s enjoyable if the games are great (and thankfully all three lived up to the opening), but I want to figure out a way to blog NBA games and have a captive audience. If I can do that, I’ll be pie-in-the-sky happpppy.

As usual, running Bears Necessity with a deft hand. I’m not exactly tiring out (I come up with decent ideas for posts all the time), I just want more free time to focus on other things. Hence my call for guest posters on Cal football. Hopefully more people will answer the call.

Finally, wrote an article on my slowly developing (and by slowly I mean stagnant) sports site, Get Up Eight Times. How the hell did the Phoenix Suns fall into a 3-0 hole against the San Antonio Spurs? I try my best to explain in the NBA roundball way.

I’m not sure what I’ll do about Squidoo and Metafilter. Squidoo seems to relate more to life experience, and I have very little of that at the moment. Metafilter seems pretty interesting, although it seems to be inhabited by librarians who will pay for gated access and people too snobbish for NPR. I hope this isn’t the case, but those are my preliminary thoughts on the matter.

Tune in for my weekly resume. It should be totally bereft of useful details.