I usually don't follow "celebrity" Twitter users. Most of the time the Tweets they send out is pretty useless. I could care less what people are having for lunch or who they are hanging out with. However, Ric Bucher of ESPN has some damn useful NBA information. For instance, he just Tweet'd that Antonio McDyess is going to San Antonio, 3 years, $15 million. ESPN.com, Yahoo! Sports, etc don't even have this up yet. Plus I think he's a Bay Area guy since his back drop during ESPN segments is always San Francisco locations.

So a few days ago, my TiVo hard drive crashed. Since it also acts as a digital cable box, I basically have not watched TV since Tuesday. It's a somewhat weird feeling but what I'm beginning to find is that television may not be quite as necessary to my daily life as I once thought. With Hulu.com, I basically get to watch all of the shows I usually watch anyway (House, Chuck, Heroes, 30 Rock, Family Guy, etc). I hit ESPN.com for my Sportscenter highlights and with video on all the major news networks, I pretty much get the rest. One thing I will miss is the ability to channel surf. You never know when Commando or Batman Begins is playing. Then again, if I didn't watch the same shows or movies for the hundredth time, I'd probably have more time to do other stuff.
 
Don't get me wrong. When the new hard drive arrives in a few days, I'll be back to my happy TV watching self. It's just a nice change of pace to not have the TV on pretty much every waking hour when I'm at home.

I was at the local coffee shop the other day and while waiting for my drink, I browsed through a full stack of New York Times. It got me to thinking, when was the last time I actually bought a newspaper? This isn't a commentary on whether newspaper companies are dying (they are) but the curious observation that I actually don't read printed newspapers any more. I used to have a subscription to the San Francisco Chronicle but canceled that around 2003 once I realized that everything I was reading was old news. I had already gotten the sports scores from Sportscenter and ESPN.com, stock quotes and business articles from Yahoo Finance, even local news from SFGate.com. It just got to the point where I was tired of paying for stuff I had already read (plus having to take a sack of newspapers to the recycling bin each week).
 
Nationally recognized publications like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal might still have a printed news audience but eventually, I just can't see how even they can keep up with the increasingly real-time demand of content. To be fair, most newspaper companies have a website but when will the cost and inefficiency of printing newspapers outstrip the newspaper subscription fees generated, if it hasn't already? I'm sure there's a demographic of folks who enjoy sitting down with a nice cup of coffee and the paper (I used to be one of them), but those folks are dwindling in number.