For those of you familiar with twitter, you know of its addictive properties, and for those of you who don’t know what the hell it is, imagine being able to tell the world that you’re about to sit on the can and… ok, bad example.

The best thing I can compare it to is to Facebook’s “status” option, or AIM’s and gchat’s “away” message option. The difference being that instead of using a chat client or a social networking site, you’re actually “publishing” your status to a network dedicated solely to that end. Oh, and it’s convenient, you can send updates to your status from your mobile phone or IM service.

The point is not only to share your “status” with friends and other people, but to “follow” others as they update their accounts. And did I mention it’s convenient? If you want, you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed, or actually get a text message on your cell every time there’s an update. Fun, eh? Hey, I didn’t invent the Internet, so don’t ask me to explain.

Furthermore, before you go all judgmental on me, know this: Twitter can actually be a helpful tool. A number of mainstream media sites (NYTimes, NPR, CNN) are using it to push “breaking news” tidbits or links to interesting news stories and articles to the network.

Anyhoo, as you probably guessed by now, we created a profile for UmpBump on twitter, and every time we post a new blog entry, we’ll send out alerts to those of you following us there (it’s all thanks to Mr. Alex King and his twitter tools plugin for Wordpress - if you self publish on WP, his plugins are essential, check them out).

So that’s that, we’re following a number of people who came up in the search results when we entered “baseball” but hit us up on twitter if you’re using the thing so we can follow you as well. Let us know what you think what other things we can use it for in the comments.

A few days after we learned that the MLB Extra Innings package will fall exclusively on DirecTV’s lap this year [why haven’t we heard anything on DISH?], now comes the news that MLB’s New Media Goons have indeed found ways to supplement the sources of revenue they eliminated on that infamous deal.

From Apple Insider:

Apple Inc. said friday it plans to embrace the 2007 Major League Baseball season by offering highlights for the 2007 season on its ubiquitous iTunes Store, giving fans the ability to catch all the action of their favorite teams anywhere, anytime.

MLB video programming on iTunes will include a daily 25 minute “MLB.com Daily Rewind” highlight show and two weekly “Games of the Week,” featuring full versions of the best games from the National and American Leagues.

Customers will be able to download individual episodes of “MLB.com Daily Rewind” and each “Game of the Week” for $1.99, or purchase a Multi-Pass for a month of Daily Rewind shows for $7.99 or a Season Pass for every “Game of the Week” at just $19.99.

“We’re thrilled to be teaming with iTunes to give baseball fans access to MLB highlights via the world’s most popular online TV store,” said Kenny Gersh, senior vice president, business development of MLB Advanced Media. “We’re excited that baseball fans now have the opportunity to enjoy America’s favorite pastime in a unique way by taking MLB with them on their computers and iPods wherever they go.”

So the season preview was supposed to be free. I’m sure it was; too bad I was too late to the party, and, even though it’s clearly visible on the front page of the iTunes store (first image to the right), it really wasn’t available (second image below).

Whatever the case, I have to think this new entrepreneurial initiative on behalf of baseball has its merits. I dunno if anyone noticed, but last year, Baseball was offering per-game downloads at $3.95 a pop, but now they’ll offer a “Game of the Week” on iTunes for almost $2 dollars less.

But placed in the context of the recent developments, going as far back as last year, when MLB New Media decided to pull podcasts from the iTunes store, it’s a puzzling move.

One thing’s clear; these New Media Goons sure know how to make money.

I’m sure Steve Jobs and Apple had a stronger sense of self than iNDemand and its cable parents. Regardless, the content being offered in iTunes does not, and will not, supplant the experience of watching live baseball in your living room.

This is text-book capitalism, explore new sources of revenue for your already-sold product, maximizing profit to the fullest.

I just don’t see where benefit to the fan…er… consumer, really is.

UPDATE [Sun. 04/01 - 10:20 a.m.] : I had a chance to read Joe Nocera’s Talking Business column in yesterday’s New York Times. Here’s the link, but unfortunately, it’s a TimesSelect column, so you’d have to pay for it (or have an email address with an .edu extension to get it free).

Nocera basically recaps the MLB / DirecTV deal nicely, giving it good light in business terms, but, much like everyone else who opined on this deal, he concludes that it’s a “dumb” move on behalf of Baseball. Yes, he said dumb. I’ll share some passages with you, fellow readers, after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

In what continues to be a common pattern where Major League Baseball is divorced from reality – not to mention shutting out fans, it has asked Apple to remove all content created by the league’s Advance Media arm.

From AppleInsider

The Internet arm of Major League Baseball has pulled podcast clips of its games from Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes Store, in a move to exercise greater control over how its games are presented online, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Bob Bowman, chief executive of Major League Baseball Advance Media, told the Journal that Apple declined to give its podcasts better visibility on the site when the league asked for it. It’s reported that Apple does not accept monetary offers for improved placement.

Bowman also said Apple wouldn’t give the league a say in where promotions for its podcasts would appear on iTunes, leading to situations in which the league’s content was adjacent to podcasts by individual baseball fans.

Not that many people cared for MLB Radio Daily or Radio Rewind; but Selig and Bowman should take note of what the top sports podcasts are right this instant – almost all come from ESPN. Why wouldn’t the boys from Bristol have a problem with their suff freely distributed all over the iTunes Store, beating out low quality indy baseball podcasts?

Because they probably realize that ads within podcasts is the sure way to cover their production costs (although it’s true that almost all of ESPN’s content was already produced for Radio and TV; any internet dissemination is better than having it archived where no one can reach it).

MLB Radio is solely produced by the league; by pulling its podcasts from iTunes, they’re going to experience a drop in susbscriptions and downloads. Do they trust that people will go the extra click just to listen to Vinny Miccuci’s whiny-ass voice?

A minor league baseball team is letting fans make some of the managerial decisions — for better or for worse. And mostly, it seems, for worse.

To promote his club, the owner of the Northern League’s Schaumburg Flyers decided to have cameras follow the Flyers through a half-season of baseball — 48 games. He also agreed to let fans, voting online, decide the team’s starting lineup each night.

So how’s it all working out so far?

The team won the division title in the first half of the split season, going 31-17. But since “Fan Club” began to start the second half, the team has gone 14-31, good for last place, with three games remaining. They just recently snapped a 14-game skid.

Of course, the team’s manager hates the experiment. But the owner is getting results. Even though his team is far less competative than it was in the first half of the season, attendance is way up.

So maybe there’s something to be said for interactive managing. But where does it all end?

According to the L.A. Times, in future seasons of “Fan Club,” LivePlanet, Microsoft and the Flyers want to let fans trade and release players via online voting and use real-time software to swap in another pitcher or hitter during a game.

It’s the part about letting fans trade and release players that sounds a little scary. Can you imagine getting fired from your job because you a bunch of people who don’t (directly) pay your salary don’t like you? I thought that could only happen to the governor of California.

A recent post in my favorite technology blog, engadget.com, dealt with the convergence of Media and baseball.

MLB is upset that a new service, Sling Media, is offering a product (the Slingbox) that will allow you to watch your TV’s signal from anywhere in the world through a PC or a web-enabled phone.

Apparently, they don’t like the fact that folks are catching “free” games on their phones and laptops in local markets were they otherwise would’ve been forced to watch the game on the local TV station, or through the MLB.TV subscription service.

That’s so not how it used to be.

During the 2000 season, I was able to listen to all of the ChiSox’ games through espnradio1000.com’s live web-streaming.

Back then we didn’t have the goodness of MLB Extra Innings or MLB.TV, so I had to use my instincts as a young web wiz (not) to listen to the games through Chicago’s ESPN affiliate.

Well; Bud Selig must’ve been very attuned to the fact that I, and presumably, many others, were consuming a Major League game without technically someone paying for it.

In 2001, the free web-streaming was gone; now I was forced to pay for a radio subscription ($79.99) if I wanted to catch every game live.

Fast forward a few years – eons in Web/technology time – and now I watch most of the Sox games on my desktop.

Baseball also introduced MLB Mosaic this year, which is a (beta) program for Windows that allows you to watch six games all at once.

To be quite honest, I think MLB is using technology to squeeze every penny out of our pockets.

MLB Extra innings for your cable/satellite is $150. MLB.TV can be as much as $100 (not to mention the radio package - $14.95 for the rest of the season).

They also offer the ability to download individual games for $3.95 each.

But Selig and his henchmen have not been able to catch up with the 12-to-6 curve; the technology curve that is.

This year, MLB.TV is only using Windows Media Player; as opposed to offering both WMA and Real Player streams like last year.

It just so happens that Windows dropped support for their media player in Macs and as a result, I’ve had to use a pluggin for Quicktime, Apple’s own media player.

Since I have Quicktime Pro, I am able to save the game file if I’ve watched it on its entirety.

Much like the Slingbox issue, this is something that MLB cannot prevent unless they force a legitimate service or product to stop working simply because MLB Advanced Media executive VP George Kliavkoff wants to tap new sources of revenue.

The services that MLB Media are, in my opinion, great; but if they don’t reconsider their excessive rates, fans will just tune out and resort to the good ol’ box score.