Yankees 27

Yankees 27: that's the proud number that the New York Yankees can boast as a result of winning the 2009 World Series last night. That's 27 titles that they've won over the years, making them by far the most successful team of all time in the sport.

The way it went down is that Hideki Matsui (who was named World Series 2009 MVP as a result) got 6 RBIs during the game which in itself is a World Series clincher game record. Matsui himself is now a free agent in the winter and that's not a bad way to start off a career as a free agent now, is it?

But the 27 titles that the Yankees have won really rather confirms that they're larger than the sport itself. Just as Manchester United have fans all over the world, even amongst those who don't know all that much about soccer, so the Yankees have fans all over the world amongst those who know little about baseball. They're a team that transcend the sport they compete in.

Yankees 27: no one else is even close and it's most unlikely that anyone ever will be.

The Yankees win the World Series

Yes, well, we thought it might happen: the Yankees win the World Series. Again.

Yah boo sucks from everyone outside New York City and wild jubilation from half of the people in it (or perhaps somewhat more than half: the Mets don't have quite the same home town support).

Actually, that might be rather over doing it. The Yankees winning the world Series is perhaps a little like Manchester United winning something in soccer. They're both, in their respective sports, rather larger than the actual sports they compete in. Huge number of people around the world claim Manchester United as their team, just as any number of people who aren't really sure of the finer points of baseball claim the Yankees as theirs.

So perhaps there will be jubliation outside NYC as well as the Yankees win the World Series.

Maybe.

New Celebrity News Source

If you're interested in news about celebrities like Katie Holmes then you'll want to have a look at this site dedicated to news about her.

It might be that Katie Holmes' marriage to Tom Cruise fascinates, or the connections with Scientology, or maybe it's the baby, Suri?

But whatever your needs for celebrity news about Katie Holmes you'll want to ckick through and see what the site has to offer.

That Antarctic Band

This upcoming Live Earth series of concerts is going to be fun.

There's a band from hte British Antarctic Survey base in Antarctica that will be taking part (thus the 7 continents covered) called Nunatak.

I'm sure that we'll see lots of amateur performances across the world but these guys will be the only ones who are actually supposed to be amateurs I think. So look out for that section of the show...Nunatak, the only folk indie band in Antarctica.

Thought So

When I saw this headline I thought I would be able to guess the nationality of those involved:

A court in Germany has convicted three men of stealing over four km (2.5 miles) of rail track, weighing nearly 500 tonnes, to sell as scrap metal.

The court in the city of Marburg said Tuesday the men, aged 26 to 29, pretended to be working for the national rail operator Deutsche Bahn when they began carving up a disused line between nearby Niederwalgern and Lohra with blowtorches.

"They even went around handing out leaflets to locals asking for understanding about the noise," a court spokesman said.

"The stolen tracks were worth about 170,000 euros.

The three suspects, all Germans born in the former Soviet Union, had removed 476 tonnes of steel track by the time they were caught when a local man contacted Deutsche Bahn to check their story.

Yup, the number of times we've seen something similar in Russia. Anything and everything being sold (often to us) as scrap metal.

Ringtones Links

"Everybody loves ringtones. So i decided to have a search for the best ringtones sites. Maybe everyone knows Ringophone.com or Ultrasonic-ringtones.com but to tell the truth the best site for free ringtones to download is GoldRingtone.com. Download the best Ringtones for free! Doesn't it sound attractive? The site has a weekly update (as they inform me with their press release) so you can continuously find the best new free ringtones.

The site is simple. The users can download free mp3 ringtones from any carrier. Besides, there are sections for all carriers. You can get free Sprint Ringtones, or free Cingular Ringtones.

Predicting Earthquakes

Scientists believe they have some encouraging news about how and when to predict earthquakes:

Paris - Geophysicists poring over an earthquake hotspot beneath southern Japan believe massive temblors may be preceded by slow, barely perceptible quakes that can last for days or weeks.

In a new paper published in the British journal Nature, the scientists say the warning signs are buried in tiny seismic signals caused by a slip deep within a fault.

Their focus is on phenomena that lie far below the threshold of human sensation called low-frequency earthquakes (LFEs) and non-volcanic tremor.

Seismologists have until now mainly viewed non-volcanic tremor as a weak shaking of the Earth, and LFEs as a swarm of small temblors, with a magnitude of just one or two, that can last for weeks or even months at a time.

These low rumblings are typically found in subduction zones - the regions on the Pacific's "Ring of Fire" that have unleashed the mightiest quakes on record, say the US-Japanese team, led by David Shelly of Stanford University, California.

As someone who has lived in two earthquake prone areas, I say this can only be good news (although, oddly, the only one I've ever felt was in hte UK).

More Google Tools for Webmasters

Google has made some changes to it's reporting tools making life a lot easier for webmasters:

Google has enhanced the reporting capabilities in its Webmaster Tools to show full phrases being used in anchor text, instead of just keywords within the anchor text of links to a site, the company said on its Webmaster Central Blog last night.

Webmaster Tools previously had reports showing the top terms were included in the anchor text other sites are using to link to them. So the list would include the terms "Search," "Engine," and "Watch" when it assesed this link: Search Engine Watch.

With the new reports, the entire phrase will be shown on the list, so the previous link would show up in reports as "Search Engine Watch," which is a much more useful bit of information.

The report is available to verified webmasters who have logged into Google's Webmaster Tools, under the "Statistics" tab, in the "Page Analysis" section. The list of top 100 anchor text phrases can be viewed as a table or downloaded as a csv file.

It's useful to see what anchor text is being used to link to your site, as it provides some insight into what people think of your site, or why they are linking. The anchor text also affects Google's ranking algorithm, so since lots of other sites link to our blog with the term "SEW blog" as anchor text, that affects results for a search on [SEW blog], causing this site to show up at the top of those results.

Now, if only I understood what any of that meant.

The Problem with Google Apps.

Sure, Google Apps is billed as and aimed as a Microsoft Office killer, however, there's one major problem here:

Like it or not, the internet just can't be trusted - and therefore neither can Google Apps. If you've got deadlines to meet and the only copy of your work is stored on the Google servers, then you're putting your life in the hands of Google, your ISP and every other link in the chain between you and your precious documents.

Google claims more than 100,000 small to medium enterprises have replaced Microsoft Office with Google Apps, along with big names such as GE, Procter & Gamble, Prudential and Loreal. These big companies are paying for the Premier Edition of Google Apps, which promises 99.9 per cent uptime - the equivalent of being down for a total of almost nine hours in a year. Still, Google can't make that promise for your ISP and your office network. If they both offer 99.9 as well then suddenly your overall downtime has blown out to more than a day - more if your ISP can't even offer that level of reliability.

Google Apps is a great idea, but it's crying out for a way to synchronise documents between the online storage space and your desktop. This would mean you've automatically got the latest versions wherever you go, but a backup to call upon if your access is down.

Actually, there's a further problem here. A large number of people, in fact, the real technology adopters, spend a lot of time travelling: and there just ain't web access everywhere yet. So sitting on a plane, for example, you can't do anything, because you can't log in. It really does need a version that sits on your own box and whih youcan, when you can log in, you can synchronise.