There it is, right next to the ESPN3.com logo: You have access to ESPN3.com.

My first thought: great!  There have actually been some instances in the past where ESPN360 had something that I wanted to watch and couldn’t because I didn’t have access.  So I click through to see what I can now view and what do I get?  Reality.

You can see, Cablevision is not listed as one of the cable providers that allows access to ESPN3.com.  So why is ESPN.com telling me I now have access?  Not cool, ESPN, not cool.

Nevertheless, this could be huge for the future of sports viewership.  I have tried to get into professional surfing as of late, but the biggest difficulty in following the sport is that it is not televised anywhere in the U.S.  The events on the ASP World Tour, the main professional surfing tour, schedule are shown online through each tournament’s website (such as the Billabong Pro at Santa Catarina that I watched last week), with highlights available in multiple places on the Internet.  The reason why these can’t be shown live on television is because the events are scheduled over the course of ten days, though only five days are required for surfing.  The biggest problem: no waves, no surfing.  If a network wanted to showcase the final day of an event, but there are no waves, how does it fill the time?  Or, what does it do if it has something else scheduled and then the final starts?

It’s a big problem and the only real solution is to continue to show these events online.  And I may be crazy, but wouldn’t a partnership with YouTube make the ASP infinitely more valuable and desirable to watch?  If people knew they just had to go to youtube.com to watch live surfing, wouldn’t they be more likely to watch it than to go through ASPWorldTour.com and try to find the live feed elsewhere?  Or, if you were bored and just randomly checking out YouTube and saw that Kelly Slater was coming up live from Hawaii, isn’t that something you might click on?

While the ASP and YouTube don’t necessarily need each other, wouldn’t it be great if they hooked up so we could all watch more surfing?  I certainly think so.

I do hit some dead spots during my commute and occasionally in the office and it’s always frustrating while you are at work and trying to do anything that requires the internet on your phone and you’re unable to do so.  In an effort to learn more about its own problems, AT&T came out with a free iPhone application called “Mark the Spot,” which AT&T iPhone customers are supposed to use when they hit a dead spot or have a call dropped.  I thought this was a great idea, but had the obvious question of “if I don’t have service in a certain location, how does it send the information to AT&T about the dead spot?”

I finally tried it today after having no service at work and here is a screenshot from my phone:

Unfortunately, just what I expected.

Not only does it love Google, it also seems to like Gmail, Google Maps and Google Images.

You see, Google doesn’t advertise on television.  It has made billions of dollars figuring out how to best advertise on the internet, so why start spreading the gospel of Google during the most expensive time of the year?  From the moment that I heard they were going to have an ad, I was intrigued.  How would they do it?  Would they only show the search engine, or would they also show Gmail, Google Docs, Google Maps and YouTube?  Would they try to introduce Google Wave to the masses and show us why it’s the future of communication?  I had no idea, but I was very very interested.

The opening shot hooked me.  A blinking cursor in a search box.  Not everyone would know what it was immediately, but I knew, since I was anticipating this ad more than any other:

What came next was nothing short of genius.  Playing off a Parisian love story, Google’s search engine wafted us through a life story of a young man who meets a girl in Paris while studying abroad and leads us all the way through their long distance relationship, to their eventual marriage and the birth of their first child…all through the search engine.

We all know that Google is the top search engine in the world.  What this company has been able to do with its invention is incredible.  It has taken on titans such as Microsoft and Yahoo! and yet still maintains itself as a company for us, the internet users.  Microsoft’s Bing search engine is certainly a well done site, but it continues to struggle to take market share away from Google.  With this Super Bowl ad, Google may have ended the fight.

The single greatest aspect of this ad is that it was able to bring us through the story while never leaving Google.  And that in itself is something incredible; it showed us how to use Google and what it looks like working for us.  It’s not a Snickers ad that shows Betty White getting tackled during a football game, it’s not a beaver playing a violin and then using a job search site, and its certainly not a baby talking about trading stocks online.

It’s simply Google being Google.

So the question must come up: can Steve Jobs save newspapers the way he saved the music industry?

I remember when I was a freshman in college and discovered the most amazing technological invention of my lifetime: Napster.  With a few simple clicks you could steal practically any song ever recorded.  While Napster was eventually broken down to nothing, there were still plenty of places to go to download pirated music.  Sure, some of these programs still exist, but iTunes has changed the way that we obtain music: we buy it again.

With the Apple tablet, Jobs will try to do the same thing for newspapers.  Obviously there is a major difference between how Napster allowed us to steal music versus media companies that made their writings available for free (hoping the advertising on their sites would supplement the costs).  However, both industries came to a breaking point and the music industry was able to succeed.  Newspapers looked dead, until now.

The New York Times is apparently already working at Apple headquarters developing ways to make the paper more interactive and worthy of charging for a non-print edition.  The dream scenario for Apple is that you would own an Apple tablet, buy a digital subscription to the Times on iTunes, download the day’s newspaper when you update your tablet through iTunes and regain the feeling that newspapers are something to be purchased, not to be read online for free.

Can it work?  After seeing what happened to the music industry, I see no reason why not.

According to the AT&T website, the 700-minute plan is $129.99 per month, which includes two phones.  Since there are three of us, we have to add $39.99 for an additional line.  Unlimited text messages are another $30.00, bringing us to a grand total of $199.98 all-in.

So what happens when we get our first bill?  Of course, it’s just short of $400.  It’s almost a joke at how many “Credits, Adjustments & Other Charges” and “Government Fees & Taxes” are on this bill, but naturally, everyone has these so I know I am not shocking anyone with this list:

Regulatory Cost Recovery Charge, County Gross Receipts Surcharge, Federal Universal Service Charge, MTA Telecom Surcharge, State Telecommunications Excise Surcharge, 9-1-1 Service Fee, Local Wireless 911 Surcharge, NY State Sales Tax, City Sales Tax

Again, I know these are probably on every bill so complaining about them is useless.  What I will complain about is that my brother and I EACH got charged a $36.00 “sponsorship fee” and an $18.00 “transfer of service responsibility” fee.  That is $108 extra on our bill that NO ONE FROM AT&T EVER MENTIONED TO US.  I communicated with four different people at AT&T and my mother another two and not a single one mentioned that they would charge us for changing our plan or transferring the names on our accounts.

This is absolutely outrageous and AT&T can rest assured that as soon as the iPhone becomes available on any other network, we’re gone.

And that will probably cost us another $500.

The most surprising part of the article to me was how much these search engines can do that I didn’t know about.  I usually only use Google for searching, but even then I am not searching so much as using it as a shortcut.  If I want to quickly look up (for example) how many Grand Slam finals former tennis player Todd Martin made, I would look it up on wikipedia by typing in “todd martin wiki” into my Google search bar within Mozilla (I use Mozilla at work, Safari at home).  By doing this, I’ll get a direct link to Todd Martin’s page on wikipedia and I will learn that he made two finals, one in 1994 at the Australian Open, where he lost to Pete Sampras 7-6 (4), 6-4, 6-4, and then at the 1999 U.S. Open, where he lost to Andre Agassi 6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-7 (2), 6-3, 6-2.  I do this instead of going to wikipedia.org and searching “Todd Martin;” it doesn’t sound hard, but it’s easier with the Google search bar.

Instead, thanks to Pogue’s article, I learned that:

For example, if you search for a celebrity’s name, that space offers an attractive table of common-sense links: News, Movies, Quotes, Biography and Images. When you search for a sports team, you see Schedule, Tickets, Stadium, History and Wallpaper. When you search for a medical condition, that table offers Causes, Remedies, Treatment, Prognosis and News.

I had no idea that this was all available through Bing.  And not only that, but:

When you search for a flight, a similar table offers the cheapest fare (“$259 JFK>LAX”) and links to other deals. A prominent icon tells you whether prices are about to go up, down or stay the same. That detail is brought to you by Farecast.com, which Microsoft bought last year for $115 million.

And finally, movies and maps:

Google is still way ahead on other kinds of searches, like movie showtimes: You get a complete table of nearby movies, complete with trailers, reviews and even links to IMDB.com (the Internet movie database).

Google also wins with maps and driving directions; it offers features like Street View (actual photos along your route) and the ability to drag the colored route line to alternative roadways with your mouse (to avoid a traffic jam or take a favorite shortcut).

On the other hand, Bing wins on traffic searches (such as “traffic nyc”), where you get a color-coded map of current traffic speeds without having to dig. It also excels with company name searches; the 800 number for customer service appears right in the results list.

What I find so weird is that I had no idea these search engines provided so much information that seems quite relevant for any search that I do.  Will I start using search engines more often for this type of stuff?  Probably not.  But it’s nice to know that I can if I want to.

Finally, Pogue points to a rather cool site that compares the two search giants: Bing vs. Google, a fun little website that shows you the differences when searching the two engines.  Below is a screenshot after searching for “Costa Rican hotels” (click on the picture for a clearer view):

Twitter has already received tens of millions of dollars from a regular batch of venture capitalists, including Union Square Ventures, Bezos Expeditions and Institutional Venture Partners, which could delay an outright sale at this time.  While Facebook is apparently dying to pick up the micro-blogging site, there is no real chance for Williams and Stone to cash out by accepting shares in another private internet company.

News Corp., owner of former internet social network darling myspace.com, is also in the mix, as is Google, which appears to have the upper hand on any deal for Twitter due to Williams’ and Stone’s history at the internet conglomerate.

Speaking of which, you can also follow King Morland on Twitter!

The New York Post is reporting that the deal could be worth up to $50 billion, which would represent a $12 billion premium over Yahoo!’s current market value. There have been informal talks over the past couple years in regards to a combination, but the latest indications appear to show that Microsoft would like to make them formal.

Yahoo! shares surged $4.36, or 15.47%, on the news, while Microsoft shares were down $0.59, or 1.94%.