at's blog will be updated occasionally with news about PatsPapers.com, observations about the news business and comments about life and the stories in the news.
Pat's at Yankee Stadium
I just finished a 3 minute conversation with someone from the Food Network about whether I might enjoy the fish tacos or hearth-fired pizza more.
One of the most striking features about the new Yankee Stadium is the vast allocation of concourse space. You can walk away from your seat and never come back. I think the people at the bar behind me have no intention of returning to the game. There are the usual bottlenecks of a big crowd and opening night. Security going in to the game tonight seemed no smoother than at the old ballpark. And the fancy automatic bar code turnstile didn't work the first two times.
But the stadium is well staffed and the crowd is having fun checking out what you get for $1.5 billion. (I should also make clear that I've written this entire post while waiting for my fairly simple food order. I'm up to about 20 minutes now. I think I'll eat at home before my next game.) Clearly the stadium was designed to have the feel of the old ballpark. If you are in your seat (and disregard the outrageously sharp high definition big screen) it's not hard to imagine you're in the old place.
4th inning now.Must admit I haven't seen much baseball. But that's not really the main attraction tonight.
Baby don't forget my number
The ten digit mobile phone keypad is dying. At the cell phone industry's biggest North American trade show,
USA Today noted that only a handful of new phones have the traditional numeric keypad. Almost every cell phone coming to market has some sort of QWERTY keyboard or touch screen instead.
I guess this shouldn't really come as a surprise given the number of people who agreed with me yesterday that they
prefer e-mail to voice mail. Show organizers say the trend away from numeric keypads is a direct reaction to a trend in the business toward e-mail and text messaging. US mobile phone customers send a trillion text messages last year -- three times as many as in 2007.
Labels: keypad, mobile phone
Valentino dressed in orange
He really is orange.
Fashion designer Valentino was on the red carpet last night for the premiere in LA of a documentary about his work.
As seen on
Sky News and
TMZ, his fake tan really is quite frightening.
Labels: Valentino
Please don't leave a message
Technically, I still have an answering machine at home. But I've pretty much lost interest in checking it. It just seems like voice mail is an inefficient way to reach me when I'm so easily accessible on e-mail.
A story in the
New York Times today supports my view about voice mail becoming obsolete. The Times says "the burden of having to hit the playback button and sit through the "ums" and "ahs" can seem too much to bear."
Labels: Voice mail
Google says April Fools!
Everyone knows Google likes to be the best at everything. Now they can add something else to their list: best April Fools Day gag. Check out the Gmail "Autopilot" program, allowing users to outsource the pesky task of answering a whole inbox--from relationship terminations to communications with your therapist--to a computer program.
