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I’m a huge college basketball fan. It’s the only sport that I truly care about, and it has BY FAR the best format for the regular season and post-season for any major sport.

Think about it: Major League Baseball is ungodly long. Teams routinely give players days off when they’re not injured just because there are so many games. Only 8 teams make the playoffs so half the league is playing for nothing before the All-Star break. The NBA and NHL are also too long. Single games mean nothing through the course of the year so it’s not a big deal if a team loses one. And seriously…2 months to get through the playoffs? College football is on the opposite spectrum. If you’re a national title contender and you lose the first game…you’re done. It doesn’t matter if you win every other game by 50 for the rest of the year. There are still going to be two teams that go undefeated and they’re going to play for the championship. And of course the post-season in college football is beyond bad with the BCS and all the random bowl games. The NFL is probably the only other sport that comes close to college basketball. My only problem with the NFL is that the games are only on Sunday/Monday. The rest of the week is just dead.

Now take college basketball. Each team plays about 30-35 games so every game truly matters. So you can’t have a bad streak and lose 4 in a row (which wouldn’t be a big deal in MLB/NBA/NHL) and expect to have a great year, but you know that everyone is going to lose at some point so 1 loss at the beginning of the regular season doesn’t ruin the whole year. You have games almost every day of the week, major upsets where fans rush the floor, parity to the point that anyone can win on a given night, and new superstars emerging every year. Plus, I think everyone can agree that there’s not a more exciting week in sports than the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament. The NCAA tournament is without question the best event in sports. No other event can stir up that many different emotions from everyone involved. I seriously get goosebumps every single time I watch the One Shining Moment videos from 2005 and 2009 when my Tar Heels won it all. It won’t do much if you’re not a UNC fan, but try watching the video from when your team wins. If you don’t get a little emotional then you’re probably not a real fan.

Now, on to my second point (which was going to be the original point of this post until I felt compelled to justify my thoughts on college basketball).  Tom Izzo is considering taking the head coaching job of the Cleveland Cavaliers.  Tom has won a national championship with Michigan State, and taken his team to the Final Four in 6 of the last 11 years.  Every player that he has recruited that has completed their full eligibility has gotten an opportunity to play in the Final Four.  The thing is, MSU wasn’t that good in at least 2 of their Final Four runs – getting there as a 5-seed twice.  Izzo was great at getting his team to play it’s best when it counted and became a master of the back-to-back format of the tournament because of his thorough preparation.  Plus, he makes 3 million/yr and has an incredibly talented team coming back to play next year.  He’s only won once in 6 trips to the Final Four so he has some unfinished business there that I’m sure he’d like to clean up.  Oh, and one other thing.  Michigan State is known to run nearly a hundred different set plays that Izzo orchestrates.  In order to succeed in Izzo’s system his players have to know what their role is on every different set play.

Now, take everything you now know about Tom Izzo and tell me why he thinks going to coach the Cleveland Cavaliers would be a good idea.  Ok, if Lebron James stays in Cleveland, than yes Lebron alone makes it a good idea.  If that’s the case then I can understand Izzo’s thinking.  But Lebron hasn’t given any indication that he wants to stay in Cleveland.  Plus, you’d think that Cleveland management would at least consult Lebron on the new coach if he’ll be staying, but clearly they have not.

My question is : Why would Tom Izzo succeed in the NBA?  Do you think the 1-on-1, streetball mentality of NBA players is going to fit well with Izzo’s huge list of set plays?  Has any other college coach actually done well in the NBA? (Calipari -no, Pitino – no, Donovan-quit before he started) Is Izzo going to be able to mow through the NBA playoffs like he did the NCAA tournament when it’s so drawn out that it gives everyone more than enough time to prepare?

I just see the move as a bad idea for Izzo, a bad move for the Cavs, and a disappointing blow to Michigan State.  Nobody is a winner there except Izzo’s bank account, and that’s already doing just fine.

So Tom you have the opportunity to become one of the also-ran college-turned-NBA coaches, or you have the chance to become one of the best college basketball coaches ever.  I think it’s an easy choice.

This past weekend I participated in Startup Weekend Indianapolis, and the experience was even better than I was expecting.  The premise of Startup Weekend is to leave on Sunday evening as part owners of a new business.  I’ll be honest, I had my doubts that we would be able to get a business started in about 30 hours of work.  But we accomplished a lot more than I thought we could, especially considering we chose the daunting task of launching a competitor to Craigslist.

Zankit is an online classifieds marketplace where anyone can share listings to their social networks on Facebook and Twitter.  If your link produces the buyer you earn a referral commission.  Now you can have thousands of people helping you sell your big-ticket item like a car or a condo rental.  They’re happy to do it because they know they can make some money if someone from their network buys the item.

Take a look at our Zankit demo video to get a better understanding of the full experience.

I also learned a few things at Startup Weekend that were pretty cool.  First, web development skills are definitely not a commodity that can simply be outsourced.  The development guys on our team did some amazing work in a short period of time.  They formed the plan for the site and then executed on everything.  Being able to design the functionality of the site, and then build everyone of those features is definitely not a skill that many people have.  Second, you can accomplish a lot more in a short period of time than you think when you bring people together with different disciplines that are committed to the same goal.  While the developers were hard at work building the features, the marketing team was busy creating content around our brand, scripting and producing our demo video, and designing the look and feel of the site.  It all came together in our final presentation, and it felt pretty cool to show off our new business to all the other teams.

I’m looking forward to pushing Zankit forward.  Let me know if you have any suggestions or feedback!

Inspired by Will Critchlow’s SEOMoz post on How I Get Things Done and How You Can Too, I’ve recently started to experiment with setting my Gmail screen up to be a dashboard of everything going on in my life.  It’s only been a couple of days, but I have already started to feel better about my ability to get things done.  This post is mainly going to be about the technology tools that I’ve used to make things easier for me.  However, productivity is never about the tools.  It’s 100% about personal motivation and the ability to actually execute on the things that you plan to do.  My favorite part from Critchlow’s post was the quote from Charles Schwab -

“Each evening, pick six things to do tomorrow. Then do those things.”

That is absolutely the most important part of being productive.  I find that sometimes I go through the day completely distracted because there aren’t any pressing items on my to-do list, and the things that I am doing might be boring or monotonous.  However, when I have a list in front of me of 3-5 that I absolutely need to get done that day I’m much more focused and when something gets boring I can jump to the next task on my list and work on that for a while, but I don’t really lose any productivity.  Ok, enough of the conceptual stuff – onto the tools that I’ve been using.  Here are the tools that I’ve worked into my system.

1. Gmail

2. Remember the Milk (w/Gmail gadget)

3. Google Calendar

4. Motorola Droid phone (w/Remember the Milk app)

That’s my basic view that I keep open in my browser the entire day.  (side note: If you need to log in to multiple Google accounts throughout the day the best way to do that is to open an “Incognito” window with Google Chrome so that you can log into your second Google account without logging yourself out of the first.  Simply click on Tools or File and then “New Incognito Window.”)

Task Management – Remember the Milk

You’ll see on the bottom left I’ve added the Remember the Milk Gmail gadget to my Gmail screen.  To do this click on settings in Gmail and then labs.  You’ll want to enable the labs project that’s titled “Add any Gadget by URL.”  While you’re there you might want to also enable a few more gadgets like “Enable Right-Side Chat” and “Drag-and-drop labels.”  These 2 give you more room and flexibility on where your gadgets will sit on your screen.

After you’ve enabled the gadgets you can go to the Remember the Milk Gmail Settings page for full instructions on how to add it to your dashboard.

Google Calendar

The next item that I included on my Gmail screen was my Google Calendar.  Unfortunately, you can’t see it on the screenshot because it’s below the fold and I have to scroll down to see the whole thing.  It would be great if Google allowed right side gadgets (besides chat).  Apparently this used to be possible, but Google decided to ditch the feature.  Clearly, the bottom right of my screen is wasted space and it would be nice to have my calendar right there in plain view.  Nevertheless it’s still helpful to have my list of meetings and commitments right there on my screen without having to go into the separate Calendar application.

Mobile Access

Having all my information with me on the go is huge for me since I’m on my Droid quite a bit.  That’s a big reason why I chose Remember the Milk because their Android application is extremely good.  I have one-click access to all my tasks, events, and email messages right there on my phone.

Previously, I had been using Google Tasks for my to-do list.  I liked it a lot and I had a free application that synced with my phone.  However, I found myself just building item after item on my list that didn’t really have high priority.  With Remember the Milk I can easily separate tasks into different lists and differentiate by date.  This is where I’ve been utilizing the 5 daily tasks idea and making sure to get those 5 tasks done each day.

Like I mentioned before, it’s not necessarily the technology that will make you productive, but finding a system that works for you and then sticking to it.  How do you make sure you’re getting things done?

My Motorola Droid got upgraded to Android 2.1 a couple weeks back, and one of the most hyped new features in the release was support for multi-touch browsing.  Now that I’ve gotten use to it for a couple weeks I wanted to share my experience about the new upgrade.

The verdict: I haven’t used my browser any differently than before.

When I would get a chance to play with a friends’ iPhone or when I went in an Apple store to test it out myself I always thought the web browsing was pretty awkward.  I got the hang of it, but I hated having to use 2 hands to zoom in on an object, and half the time my zoom attempts became clicks.  It was kind of a mess.  I’m sure I would get used to it if I used it all the time, but it just seemed somewhat clunky to me.  When I got my Motorola Droid I was pretty happy that there was no multi-touch browsing in the beginning.  To zoom in I simply tapped the + sign that appeared at the very bottom edge of the screen, and likewise on the – when I wanted to zoom out.  It was simple, and even though the button would occasionally get in the way of the page content it was a very rare occurence.  The best thing was that I could operate everything with one hand without having to awkwardly strain my fingers to make a pinch or zoom with one hand.

I haven’t figured out why so many people are crazy about multi-touch mobile browsing.  Is it just because the iPhone had it from the beginning and everyone got so used to an iPhone.  It was weird to me that so many Android fans complained about the lack of multi-touch support and then rejoiced when it finally came. Oh well, I’ll go ahead and keep happily using my single touch browser.

According to an article from Techcrunch Facebook says they will serve 1 billion “Like’s” over the course of the first 24 hours that this new feature is available.  Facebook is allowing an website to integrate with Facebook so that users can see what their friends “liked” on a site like ESPN, CNN, Pandora, or IMDB.

For example, when I listen to Pandora now in my broswer every time a new song comes on I get a message about which one of my friends “likes” this artist.  This is currently pulling from the “Interests” section of their profiles.  It’s somewhat interesting to see what my friends musical tastes are – especially at a time when I’m thinking about music and am engaged in listening to a song.

I think this concept is great, and I’ll be excited to see more sites implement the tools that Facebook is providing.  What I have a problem with though is that Facebook says it will serve 1 Billion “Like’s” in the first 24 hours.  That’s a pretty huge number, and I just don’t see how you can convincingly claim that anything would happen a billion times on the first day it’s available.  You just can’t expect users to completely understand it right away and start using it the way you expect.

Even with huge partners like ESPN, CNN, Yelp, etc it would be difficult to get to a billion in one day.

Take a look at Compete.com’s data for some of the big partners that Facebook is brining on at launch.  These are all massive sites, but they still only reach a combined 75 million visitors per month.  That’s really only 2-3 million per day.  If only half the visitors used any kind of new “Like” button – that would mean each user would need to do so 1,000 times…in 1 day.

Looking at the math from another way – Facebook has about 400 million users.  Let’s say 200 million of them are actually on Facebook at some point today.  Every single one of those users would need to “Like” 5 different things…in one day.

I’d love to see the actual statistics on how this goes for Facebook.  I’m sure it will eventually be a huge development for the web I think the 1 Billion “Like’s” in one day is a little bit unrealistic for now.

Although I haven’t seen the Facebook integration on ESPN yet, I did my part by hitting the like button on a few new songs in Pandora.  So far that’s the only site involved that I use regularly and would actually contribute anything meaningful.

One of the overlooked features of Android 2.1 was text input by voice. Now on this wasn’t totally new, because there were other 3rd party apps that had the same basic functionality. I was surprised at now good this built in app was though. I figured I would have to go word by word instead of speaking full sentences. However, the first 3 phrases I tried worked out exactly right. It’s definitely not perfect, especially for writing out a blog post like this, but there are a lot of useful applications for this.

Sending a text message, Tweet, or quick response to an email are all perfect for voice text. I will probably start using this quite a bit for pieces of messages here and there. Google has done a great job with their voice algorithms, and I’m interested to see how this develops.

When it comes to getting projects done and making progress at work there are two main components – planning and execution.  At big corporations these two functions are almost entirely separated.  The corporate brass in the C-Suite are the ones that set the targets for the year, and provide some direction on how to get there.  The organizational structure allows for the Vice Presidents and Directors to spend their time planning and seeking out new opportunities without having to roll their sleeves up and do the work that it takes to get there.  Everyone underneath them is charged with completing the set of tasks that are handed down.

Now, the corporate workers don’t have to worry about responsibility for these plans.  They are simply responsible for their piece of the plan handed down by their boss.  They’re likely a specialist in the piece of the plan that they’re responsible for so it’s simply a matter of executing on the tasks that they know how to do.

This is the system that makes corporations effective, and it also makes indivdual jobs fairly easy.  Managers plan and make sure their workers are getting things done, and workers simple complete the tasks that are handed down to them.

Now, what’s difficult to do is to create your own plan and follow through on all the necessary tasks to get it done.  It’s even harder when the project doesn’t directly affect your well-being or something that you absolutely have to get done.  It’s really hard to take the initiative to plan for exactly what you want, and then have the ability to follow through on everything it takes to get there.  By no means should you try to do every single task yourself because there are some things that can be done much better by a specialist.  For example, if you’re starting your own law practice it’s probably not a good idea to build your own website (unless you’re a web designer by hobby) because it’s not something you can do well.  However, it’s probably not effective to outsource everything because if that’s the case, what value are you actually providing.  Think about legendary entrepreneurs like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.  Sure they were great leaders, but they also got their hands dirty on the software code (in Gates’ case) and the physical manufacturing of their products (in Jobs’ case).  Gates and Jobs built great companies because they had the rare ability to plan and execute flawlessly at the same time.

On a personal level I don’t think I’ve mastered the ability to plan and execute well at the same time.  I’m pretty effective when it comes to planning out everything I need to do to achieve my goals.  I’m also very good at completing any tasks that I’m responsible for at work or that I absolutely need to get done.  Where’s its difficult to execute is on the plans tasks that I’ve set for myself that are without any tangible consequences.  I’ll be working to improve on this, and I’m open to any suggestions on how to make that happen.

This afternoon I was looking for an easy way for my sister and I to share photos.  It’s always a pain to try to email a set of pictures because email clients can only handle so much data in a single message.  Sites like Flickr and Facebook are great for photo albums, but sometimes you don’t want to make everything public.

I’ve become a pretty big fan of Dropbox as I’ve used it to collaborate on a new e-book and to sync files easily between my computer at home and at work.  I’ve also used Box.net in the past on school projects, and I know they’ve improved the product quite a bit with tons of 3rd party integration.  However, I didn’t want my sister to have to sign-in with my username and password or have to download an application on her computer.  I just wanted to send her a URL and allow her to click on an “Add File” button so she could upload the photos.

Enter Drop.io.  It fit the criteria of exactly what I was looking for.  It’s drop-dead simple.  All you really have to do is click on the “Create a Drop” button and without any kind of sign-up or download you have your URL that anyone can access to upload or download files.  You can create a custom URL like Drop.io/onlinemarketing or you can leave it at the random letters that Drop.io generates.  Then I simple sent the URL to my sister in an email and all she has to do is click on the “Add a File” button to upload all of her images straight from her computer.

If you run into the problem of trying to send files back and forth with a friend or even a group of people keep Drop.io in mind because it might make things a lot easier.

Lately I’ve been watching a few of the past episodes of Undercover Boss on CBS.  I was particularly interested in the show last night because GSI Commerce is one of the major competitors of the company I work for.  I don’t watch many shows on TV, but I think this one is pretty interesting.  If you haven’t seen it, the concept is that the CEO of a major corporation goes “undercover” for a week in a variety of roles at his own company to get a better perspective on how things really work in the field.

So for this past episode on GSI Commerce CEO Michael Rubin packed boxes in a truck, took angry calls from customers in the call center, and picked items from a warehouse.  Now I know the show dramatizes things a little bit for the sake of the TV audience, but it’s interesting to me how bad the CEO’s are are at some of the jobs they have to do.  Both Rubin of GSi and Coby Brooks of Hooters were essentially “fired” from their part-time positions for not being up to par at jobs in their own companies’ stores.  Sometimes you get to thinking that because someone is the CEO or some other high level position that they’re infinitely smart and could figure out how to do any job well.  From their performance on the show it’s clear this isn’t the case.

There were people in the warehouse that could do their job of packing boxes or picking products at lightning speed.  They found creative ways to get things done that were not part of the traditional training.  I took my car in to get a brake inspection today.  The technician explained all my problems and what needed to be done to fix them very clearly.  I would have had absolutely no idea what to do myself.  I’ve realized how important it is to become amazingly good at the one thing you do because that’s when you become invaluable.  Certain people are cut out for certain jobs, and if you can’t become one of the best at what you do then it probably is not what you should be doing.

I’ve also been reading Seth Godin’s book Linchpin, and he discusses a lot of the same principles.  He contends that there’s a big difference between work and art.  Work is simply following instructions and completing the checklist your boss gives you.  Art is when you create something new and valuable out of your own intuition.  There is always someone able to do the work cheaper, faster, or better than you can.  Art is what makes you invaluable.