Justin Shaffer, former geek in residence at MLB Advanced Media, the digital arm of the nation’s pastime, is on the cusp of tossing a new entrant into the social media game with “Hot Potato”. When Apple finally gets off its duff and approves the iPhone application, you’ll be able to experience it first hand.

There’s been some reasonable press coverage since Justin first tipped his hand at TechCrunch last week, but I think Hot Potato is more like Twitter: until you use it, you won’t get it. Put another way – Every time the Devils score a goal at a game where the Bubba and I are rockin’ our last row seats, we make sure to high-five people sitting behind us. I don’t know who they are, they wouldn’t pick me out of a crowd, but for 90 seconds they are my best friends in red and black. I’d love their thoughts and comments on the event as it unfolds. Sports fans participate by sharing their views, however loudly, and it’s more fun when you have an audience.

Despite media predictions that “location” is the next killer service, it’s not. I don’t really care what half-wasted Rangers fans think of the Devils, even if they are in the building. There were plenty of coffee-loving people at my favorite Dunkin’ Donuts this morning, but I’m not interested in connecting with them, just having them avoid double-parking so the lot doesn’t congest further. Location and intersection of interests is the killer – add in the mildly unknown, like an amazon.com recommendation, or (gasp) a Facebook ad based on your preferences and recent activity, and you have the basis for digital life accentuating the real world.

Now if only we could really throw hot potatoes at Rangers fans, via our iPhones….

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Jewish Fashion Conspiracy had its run and their products sidled over to PopJudaica. In addition to “Jews for Jeter” t-shirts and matzah-print toilet seats, they put six-points of light into a bunch of housewares. It’s funny, quirky stuff.

Today ModernTribe announced they’re buying PopJudaica. Hip chanukiot, CBGB-inspired shirts and other coolness reign.

At some point, I’ll pester them about carrying the Jewish Hockey Book. I just have to finish writing it first.

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Take heart, fans of the injury-prone but get’em next year Amazins: New Rome Clothing has something equally sacrilegious for you. You can have “Messiah” embellished with the mogen david, sporting Sandy Koufax or Hank Greenberg on the back.

Tip of the yarmie to ESPN: The Magazine for the New Rome pointer.

WordCamp New York City 2009 is now open for registration, speaker selection and general excitement. The venue has moved to Baruch College, making this year’s event potentially an order of magnitude larger than last year’s 150-person gig. Disclaimer: Sun Microsystems, my employer, is a sponsor of the event, and I’m a volunteer.

Buy your tickets or better yet, become a sponsor. I’ll be there on Sunday November 15, along with fellow Jersey guy Brad Williams and possibly the peninsular David Damastra, also known as my Professional WordPress co-authors. And the t-shirts (logo above) are definitely a badge of nerd honor.

[cross-posted to Snowman on Fire].

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Yum in so many dimensions.

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During 1960 and 1961, a series of 15 bobble heads were made representing 12 Major League Teams and 3 Pacific Coast League teams. They are made of a (now) brittle plaster or soft clay/ceramic mixture, much denser and more poorly weighted than today’s acrylic bobbles. Some time during the late 1960s, an aunt (I think) gave this Minnesota Twins bobble to me as a gift, probably to appease me as I sat bored in her living room on a day when it was too muddy or rainy to play outside. It sat on a shelf for the better part of 15 years, then in a drawer, has been moved twice, and has remarkably few dings or chips.

I have no idea how it ended up with my family. I have four theories: (1) someone visited the Twin Cities in 1961 and got this as a stadium give-away, which seems unlikely for a variety of reasons; (2) a visitor from Minnesota brought this as a gift for one of my cousins, and my aunt gave it to me after it sat on his (or her) shelf for half a decade, which is somewhat less unlikely; (3) they were sold in other Major League ballparks, and a cousin bought it on a summer outing, with it ending up in my hands much in the manner of my previous idea or (4) the distributor or manufacturer tried to leverage local Topps distribution and left a sample in my grandfather’s general store (the source of my pasteboard empire in the day), and my uncle (who worked in, and later owned the store) brought it home, where my aunt passed it along to me.

Option (4) makes the most sense, as my sole recollection of the bobble is getting it at that particular aunt’s house, and nobody (that I know of) had family west of the Delaware River, let alone the Big Muddy. If we were getting in the car to visit, it was a trip to the deli and perhaps the beach, but not a baseball game in Minneapolis.

If you know any of the backstory of the 1960-1961 colored base bobble heads, leave a comment. I’m looking for data on how they were distributed or sold, how a Twin ended up on the right coast, and how to trace back the route of a giveaway item that now has totemistic value in my family.

The bottom line is that if you make something easy and fast enough, people will do it without weighing opportunity cost versus other financial returns: While I could have sold the mirror via craigslist, it would have taken at least a week, and I would have ended up haggling over price until I could mentally justify selling it for a fraction of what it cost. Easier just to think that something of no immediate value (or worse, negative value if I moved it one too many times) is useful to someone else. Freecycling the bulk item is a good return for a new consumer and I hope on my investment of a total of fifteen minutes. Now that I’ve done it once, I’m tempted to become a repeat freecycler. That’s what makes barter economics work.

A trip to the home of the original beach flip flops introduced me to Sanuk sandals, self-described as sandals with a shoe upper — they look like shoes, but feel like sandals, or flip-flops minus the big toe thong. I think they rely on some of the same physics as the Nike Free sneakers — using your own foot to keep you balanced and maintain stride, rather than the physical structure of a sneaker.

Now if only that improved balance could help me get up on the surfboard…..that’s one that even Bob Brewin finds intractable.

Got this incredibly slick stick from Meredith Gran, author of the Octopus Pie online comic. She asked readers to send her hand-written notes so she could see others’ scribbles; what we got back was a personalized note backing mass-produced iconography. “Team Asthma” is how my wife has referred to my hockey endeavors over the years, interspersed with “Inhaler League.” All terms of endearment of course. I doubt the American Pediatric Society or the NHL are going to call me for public service appearances when probable Cup-bound heavy breather Gary Roberts fills the role nicely. If you’re wondering what the intersection of Brooklyn based comics, aging NHL stars and even older left wings looks like, it has roots in this four-month old comic that cemented me as an OP fan.