D.C. searching for more road points at K.C.

Kansas City, KS — 

D.C. United has quietly turned its fortunes around after a disastrous 2010, and its road form has been a major reason why Ben Olsen's club is just two points out of a playoff spot.

D.C., which had the worst record in Major League Soccer last season, has four wins and four draws in 11 road matches, and visits Livestrong Sporting Park on Sunday to battle Sporting Kansas City.
K.C. (8-7-9) has just one loss since its new $200 million stadium opened this season, and is 7-1-8 overall in 16 games since late May. With a win on Sunday, Sporting could move within a point of the top spot in the Eastern Conference.

The Columbus Crew lead the East with 37 points, but Kansas City sits just four points back in third place entering the weekend's games. With three teams just two points or less behind in the standings, K.C. cannot afford to slip up.

United (7-6-10) is among the group behind K.C., as it sits even on points with Red Bull New York for fifth but just six points off the East lead.

Sporting had gone 14 straight games without a loss until a 2-1 loss to Seattle Sounders FC on Aug. 6, but the club rebounded with a 3-1 win over the Portland Timbers and plays its next four and six of its next seven at home.

"We needed this game," K.C. midfielder Milos Stojcev said after the Portland win. "We need wins now, and we are playing well as a team. Everyone has been playing very well, and most of all, we believe in each other.

"But now, we need more wins so we can go to the playoffs."

United overturned last season's woes early this year, but since signing Dwayne De Rosario in a trade with Red Bull New York, Ben Olsen's club has turned into playoff contender.

United is 3-1-6 in its last 10, and 3-1-4 since De Rosario arrived. Thursday's 1-1 draw at the Chicago Fire pulled D.C. even with New York, and a road win on Sunday would put the team in position for a top-three finish and playoff spot.

"When you come back and tie a game it always somewhat feels okay," Olsen said after the draw against Chicago. "The guys really worked hard in the second half. Credit them for a good second half. We have to play the whole ninety together at this point."

United will be without goalkeeper Bill Hamid, who injured his hamstring late in the first against Chicago and will be sidelined for an unknown period.

"We don't know the severity of it but we will know shortly," Olsen said after the match about Hamid's injury.

K.C. and D.C. will also know Sunday where they sit in the Eastern Conference, as the race for playoff spots will go down to the wire, and Sunday's game will put the winner in much better position. 

READ MORE - D.C. searching for more road points at K.C.

‘The Daily Show’ defends Rick Perry: ‘The real bigot here is Ed Schultz’

After Texas Gov. Rick Perry spoke earlier this week of a “big black cloud that hangs over America,” referring to the nation's enormous debt, MSNBC host Ed Schultz called racism. Schultz was sure the big black cloud Perry spoke of was none other than President Obama.
Wait, rewind.
Schultz later apologized for his interpretation, but “The Daily Show” couldn’t resist pointing out how ludicrous it was. Jon Stewart started out the ribbing with a montage of clearly innocuous statements featuring names of colors before declaring: “The real bigot here is Ed Schultz.”
Stewart also noted that, to be fair, “debt” was only two words after “cloud” in Perry’s comments.
“That’s the thing about clouds,” Stewart joked, “some people see a racist dog whistle, while some people see George Washington wrestling a leprechaun.”

READ MORE - ‘The Daily Show’ defends Rick Perry: ‘The real bigot here is Ed Schultz’

Five lessons tablet OEMs can learn from HP TouchPad fiasco

Don’t launch a product, launch an ecosystem

One of the biggest mistakes that HP made with the TouchPad was to  release a product and then hope that an ecosystem would magically form around it. Things might have worked that way with the iPhone, but that was a long time ago and the platform didn’t have much in the way of competition.

Why should consumers gamble on a product like the TouchPad (and HP’s lack of commitment to the platform shows just how much of a gamble it was) when there is an established player in the market.

New products entering the market now need to have an ecosystem that users can tap into. If a company wants to launch a product without a decent ecosystem to support it, then that company better have invested in time travel technology, because the only way it’s going to work is to travel back in time to a world before the iPad.

Have a little faith in your products

How much faith do you think HP had in the TouchPad to trash the project in 49 days?

When consumers by a PC or a tablet or a smartphone, they don’t just want a device, they want to see a long-term commitment from the vendor in the form of updates and apps. This means that users expect a vendor to properly support a product for a decent length of time (a few years).

If HP can bin the TouchPad so rapidly, how committed is it to its other products and services? What message does this send customers and potential customers?

Don’t expect a weekend blockbuster

I’m not really sure how many TouchPads HP was expecting to sell in the first year, but I can’t imagine how bad the initial sales had to be for the company to dump the product after less then two months.

Did HP expect the TouchPad to be an overnight success? Seriously? Has hardware gone the way of movies where success or failure is judged on the basis of the first weekend? I hope not.

Don’t take people’s money if you can’t deliver

Companies don’t operate in a vacuum, and dumping products shortly after releasing them isn’t a good way to build long-term consumer confidence.

Think about it - if you’d just bought a TouchPad, would you be in the mood to buy another HP product in a hurry?

Unknown operating systems are a gamble

People have heard of Windows and Mac, and Android and iOS. webOS came from nowhere and HP expected people to embrace it without giving customers a solid ‘why’. The promise of apps and updates wasn’t enough (and given that the platform died within a couple of months, can you blame people for being wary).

If you’re going to bring out a tablet with an unknown OS, take the time to actually sell it to customers.

READ MORE - Five lessons tablet OEMs can learn from HP TouchPad fiasco

PRC's policy on state cellphone texting hazy

Taxpayers footing the bill for the cellphones of Public Regulation Commission employees can't see the text messages on those phones unless the state can get a subpoena.

That's the word from Verizon wireless after The New Mexican requested text messages from the state-issued cellphones of Commissioner Jerome Block Jr. and others at the regulatory panel.

"I don't have access to the actual text message content a user is sending or receiving on their mobile number," Heidi Jackson, of Verizon's Business and Government Customer Operations, wrote to the Department of Information Technology, which forwarded the newspaper's request to the phone company.

"If you have an agency that needs this information we will need a subpoena in order to provide this information," she wrote.

State rules regarding the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives views a text as an electronic message subject to retention by an agency if it includes business matters. If the subject is not related to work, the message can be deleted.

It is up to each agency to retain records, according to state statute.

But the Public Regulation Commission has no policy requiring employees to archive or preserve text messages of any kind on taxpayer-funded cellphones.

"Our cellphone policy is pretty vanilla," PRC Chief of Staff Johnny Montoya said Friday. "It doesn't refer specifically to anything about text messages."

Enforcing a policy that required retention could prove tough, he said.

"How would I discipline an employee for not retaining those?"

Still, he said, he is willing to look into the issue further and see if the texts can be made public.

"If there is a way to get access, I'm all for that," he said.

However, he said most employees understand that anything done on state equipment is subject to public scrutiny.

"[Former Gov.] Bruce King used to say 'don't ever put anything in email that you don't want to end up on the front page of The New Mexican," he said.

Sources say some of the texts on Block's phone could possibly help shed some light on questions surrounding the commissioner, who is under scrutiny for spending on state gas cards. Block is also facing questions in a stolen car case and has missed about a third of PRC meetings so far this year. He has admitted a prescription drug addiction but does not plan to resign.

Sarah Welsh, executive director of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, said the lack of text message retention is something that can be dealt with in policy.

"Employees who are given devices for communicating about public business should understand that messages sent on the devices are public records," she said.

"There should be a mechanism for forwarding the messages automatically to a public server, and/or an explicit requirement to store messages and produce them upon request," she said, noting that email-use policies already have similar provisions.

"The agency shouldn't have to get a subpoena to access what are essentially its own records."

At the same time, though, some agencies have policies that allow for limited personal use of a cellphone or email.

Welsh said in those cases, an employee may have an expectation of privacy for personal messages.

The state's Department of Information Technology doesn't have a policy on retaining text messages. But if it had an infrastructure in place, possible policies might include requiring all employees with state phones to export messages to a database on a regular basis or reaching an agreement with Verizon to export all messages to a state-owned database, a spokesman said.

States across the country approach text message retention differently.

In North Carolina, for example, texts are not required to be kept, because they are considered records of "short-term value," while in Florida they are required to be kept for various lengths, depending on the content.

Meanwhile, the PRC is still without an email retention policy, after The New Mexican reported in June 2010 that the agency was going to revamp it.

At the time, the then-administrative services division director said no one was following it.

The 2009 policy calls for employees of the regulatory agency to sort their own emails and determine what is public. Those public records then must be forwarded to an address for retention. But nothing was being sent there.

The issue came up after The New Mexican requested the emails of former Insurance Superintendent Mo Chavez, who left the job in the wake of criticism over approval of a hike in health insurance premiums for some 40,000 individual customers of Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Chavez at the time said he has nothing to hide and cleaned his inbox at the direction of the agency's information technology staff.

Montoya said Friday that the PRC is looking into buying more server space to have room to archive emails, and a policy on doing so would come after that. 

READ MORE - PRC's policy on state cellphone texting hazy

WWE 12: Friday Night SmackDown Aug 12 results and updates

WWE 12: Friday Night SmackDown Aug 12 results and updates. The weekend has been great for WWE fans. Two major events 625 Friday Night SmackDown and SummerSlam on Sunday night make the world wrestling fans in cheer. 625th edition of WWE SmackDown took place at Sacramento in California, just 48 hours before the SummerSlam Pay-Per-View at the Staples Center.
In SmackDown, WWE Chief Operating Officer announced Triple H announced he would be the chief guest referee of the WWE Title Unification between CM Punk and John Cena at the SummerSlam, one of four major WWE events in a year.

The humorous chat between Triple H and Christian Cage was the major attraction of the Friday night WWE event. The World Heavyweight Champion, slated to take on Randy Orton in the No Holds Barred match for the World Heavyweight Championship at SummerSlam amused that he would sue Triple H, his children and even the entire WWE fans.

The reason for his ‘lawsuits’ was that Triple H put him in a battle with a fighter, who has severe anger management issues. He argued that Triple H was supporting Ortiz.

Christian was later announced to take on Sheamus at the SmackDown. But the champion was defeated by Sheamus. What will be the champion’s fate in his celebrated clash against Ortiz? This is a million dollar question for Sunday evening.

One another featured bout of the Friday Night SmackDown was Intercontinental Championship match between Ezekiel Jackson and Cody Rhodes. WWE Money in the Bank winners Alberto Del Rio took on Daniel Bryan, who will meet Wade Barret in a singles match at the SummerSlam, the year’s second biggest WWE event after Wrestlemania. Sheamus Vs Mark Henry is another singles match event of Sunday night.

READ MORE - WWE 12: Friday Night SmackDown Aug 12 results and updates

WWE News: WWE 12 video game roster revealed

The following are the rosters for the WWE 12 video game that was announced on Saturday. Thanks to Dot Net reader Jonathan Crowe for passing along the report.

Raw: John Cena, John Morrison, Kofi Kingston, R-Truth, Husky Harris, Santino Marella, David Otunga, Evan Bourne, Goldust, Zack Ryder, Mason Ryan, Triple H, The Miz, Alex Riley, Alberto Del Rio, Rey Mysterio, Michael McGuillicuty, Big Show, Dolph Ziggler, Drew McIntyre, Mr. McMahon, CM Punk

Smackdown: Ted DiBiase, Mark Henry, William Regal, Daniel Bryan, Tyson Kidd, Sheamus, Cody Rhodes, Kane, Yoshi Tatsu, Jack Swagger, Justin Gabriel, Heath Slater, The Undertaker, Christian, Sin Cara, Ezekiel Jackson, Wade Barrett, Randy Orton

Divas: Eve, Natayla, Maryse, Layla, Michelle McCool, Beth Phoenix, Kelly Kelly

Legends: Stone Cold Steve Austin, Arn Anderson, Ricky Steamboat, Road Warrior Hawk, Road Warrior Animal, Vader, Kevin Nash, Booker T, Eddie Guerrero, Demolition Smash, Demolition Axe, Edge, The Rock

They had The Miz, Todd Grisham, and Jerry Lawler as the presenters. Randy Orton and Cory Ladesma also made appearances.

READ MORE - WWE News: WWE 12 video game roster revealed

Cubs place volatile pitcher Carlos Zambrano on disqualified list

John Nestor – AHN Sports Correspondent

Atlanta, GA, United States (AHN Sports) – The Chicago Cubs appear to have had just about enough of Carlos Zambrano.

The Cubs placed Zambrano on the disqualified list Saturday, saying the starting pitcher would receive no pay and have no part in team activities for 30 days.

Zambrano cleaned out his locker and left the team after giving up five homers and being ejected from Friday night’s 10-4 loss to the Braves.

After Zambrano did not return to the team Saturday he was put on the disqualified list.

“This was the most stringent penalty we could enforce without a release,” Cubs general manager Jim Hendry said.

Hendry said Major League Baseball and the players’ association would discuss Zambrano’s statements about his baseball future.

“There’s not much worse than running out on your teammates in the middle of a ballgame,” Hendry said.

Zambrano was ejected by plate umpire Tim Timmons in the fifth inning after throwing two inside pitches to Chipper Jones. The pitches followed homers by Freddie Freeman and Dan Uggla.

Worse to Hendry was that the incident came on the night the Braves honored former manager Bobby Cox.

“I feel that anything at all to detract from Bobby Cox’s night other than usual competition is totally intolerable.”

READ MORE - Cubs place volatile pitcher Carlos Zambrano on disqualified list