"I think he's a very good coach," Westhoff said of O'Dea, who has not been made available to the media. "What I've tried to look at it as is that we would work .together, and that's what we Obviously, it's probably been a little easier from my perspective than his, but I've enjoyed it."
Mangini hasn't run from addressing the situation. He said just before the season that Westhoff would have the final say on special teams' calls. Although Mangini also has praised O'Dea consistently, it is clear the coach has something bordering on reverence for Westhoff, who has worked with Don Shula and Jimmy Johnson.
"He's got great insight, too, to other things that I ask him from a head-coaching perspective," Mangini said.
Mangini added, "He's pretty funny," which reporters saw a few times Wednesday in about 20 minutes withf. Mostly, however, they saw someone thrilled with the decision he made late last year that allowed him to return to the job he loves.
"Most of my femur is metal, it's prosthesis," he said. "It's incredible; it's mended together. Smartest thing I've ever done. Changed my whole life. I went from having to wear special prosthetic shoes, trying .braces, you name it. We tried it all. Now, I'm doing fine. I walk .almost perfectly normally. I won't use the cane shortly. I hope next winter to go back to playing golf. Best thing I've ever done."

g3 iphone
On the Japanese market, the iPhone's capabilities are less revolutionary, where people have for years used tech-heavy local phones for restaurant searches, e-mail, music downloads, reading digital novels and electronic shopping.
The latest Japanese cell phones have two key features absent on the iPhone -- digital TV broadcast reception and the "electronic wallet" for making payments at stores and vending machines equipped with special electronic readers.
But they don't have the iPhone's nifty touch screen or glamour image. By Friday morning, the line at the Softbank Corp. store in Tokyo had grown to more than 1,000 people, and the phone quickly sold out.
"Just look at this obviously innovative design," Yuki Kurita, 23, said as he emerged from buying his iPhone, carrying bags of clothing and a skateboard he had used as a chair during his wait outside the Tokyo store. "I am so thrilled just thinking about how I get to touch this."
The phone went on sale first in New Zealand, where hundreds of people lined up outside stores in New Zealand's main cities to snap it up right at midnight -- 8 a.m. Thursday in New York.
Steve Jobs knows what people want," Web developer Lucinda McCullough told the Christchurch Press newspaper, referring to Apple's chief executive. "And I need a ew phone."
In Germany, T-Mobile stores reported brisk sales, particularly in Munich, Hamburg and Cologne, said spokeswoman Marion Kessing.

Paintball Juice

Randolph, who turns 54 next month, was looking forward to participating in the final All-Star game at Yankee Stadium as a coach of Rockies manager Clint Hurdle, but Minaya robbed the Brooklyn native – and longtime Yankee -- of that opportunity. Randolph, the 18th manager of the Mets, ends his Flushing career with a 302-253 record and the second-best winning percentage (.544) in franchise history behind only Davey Johnson (.588). He had roughly $3.35 million remaining on his contract, which ran through 2009.

Before Monday's game, Randolph again faced another round of questions regarding his job status and that of his coaches. It had become a routine for Randolph only 10 weeks into this season and had started to overshadow everything else involved with the club, a media obsession that he loathed – but had learned to handle better and better in his final days.

"We spend so much time talking about all this extra-curricular stuff, man, and it's like, this team just needs to focus on playing winning baseball," Randolph said Monday afternoon. "That's the way we started out spring training and that should be the main focus here. It's unfortunate, but that's the way it should be."

As for Peterson, the man once dubbed as the Mets' "CEO of pitching," his legacy stands somewhere between the promise to fix Victor Zambrano "in 10 minutes" to the progress he has made more recently with young pitchers like Oliver Perez, John Maine and Mike Pelfrey. On Monday, Pelfrey wrapped his fourth straight solid outing by beating the Angels for his first victory since April 15. Afterward, Pelfrey was asked what Peterson had meant to the staff.

"Rick and I have a good relationship," Pelfrey said before the firings. "It's unfortunate that it's come to this. I think there would be a lot of guys that would be upset. But on the other side of it, it's a business and it's out of our control. We don't make those decisions. I think there's definitely guys in here that support him and back him up. It's kind of like the whole team, we're like a family and we stick together. But in the end, if they feel like they need to make a move, we don't make that decision."

simmons, jannace & stagg

By re-signing Moises Alou, Luio and Ramon Castro and trading for Johnny Estrada, Minaya filled his club's only vacant positions on the field. At least that's the prevailing wisdom.

Steve Jannace

But Minaya already has explored other options at catcher, inquiring about the Rangers' Gerald Laird, the Orioles' Ramon Hernandez and the Nationals' Brian Schneider. Even the Giants' Bengie Molina reportedly could be available.

If he finds a better alternative, Minaya could simply non-tender Estrada, who then would become a free agent; the net gain from the trade with the Brewers would become the $3.2 million the Mets save on Guillermo Mota.

In that sense, Estrada can be like insurance against the rising cost of the available catchers, perhaps driving the cost down in terms of talent. But it seems more likely that Minaya will need to hold on to his trading cake a run at an ace starting pitcher such as Oakland's Dan Haren - or even chase the dream of Johan Santana.
If Minaya truly wanted to make one of those deals for a catcher, he could have done so by now. Instead, he first targeted free agent Yorvit Torrealba, whose three-year, $14.4-million agreement satisfied with Paul Lo Duca - they didn't bother to make him an offer - and wanted someone who, along with Castro, would do a better job of handling the pitching staff. Based on his previous three stops with the Braves, Diamondbacks and Brewers, Estrada appears up to the task.
Starting with the Braves in 2004, each of those teams' ERAs improved after Estrada arrived. With Javy Lopez in 2003, AtlanRA, which ranked 12th in baseball. That dropped to 3.75 with Estrada the following season, tops in baseball.

Simmons, Jannace & Stagg

erstanding mobile devices is crucial to your journey into the heart of the mobile ecosystem. Most mobile phones are not dynamic systems like a computer, with the exception being Smart Phones and PDAs where the hardware is designed around the requirements of the platform.

Most subscribers cannot upgrade the operating system, messaging client or Web browser. Software is often customized to the device model’s specific limitations. In many cases, in order to make devices available to subscribers, hardware and software components must be further customized by the device manufacturer to suit the carrier. This creates a landscape that is wrought with... how should I say, “uniqueness.”

Mobile content companies not only need to own every device sold by a carrier, they must also maintain a tester-developer ratio of as much as 5-to-1 to test functionality on so many devices. This makes it difficult and costly for the little people to enter the market.

Ah, but there is a shining beacon to the device dilemma—standards.

Mobile Standards? They do exist!

When I talk to people that work mostly on the Web, I am always surprised to hear the misconception that there are no standards in mobile. Maybe it’s because we use “standards” to describe both technique and philosophy on the Web, however mobile standards do exist now, and in fact, always have.

One benefit of having a carrier-controlled ecosystem is that flash-in-the-pan technologies never make their way to devices. From the onset carriers and device manufacturers adopted a consistent and future-looking approach to the standards and practices of the mobile ecosystem. For example, take Flash, which exploded on the web in the late 90’s, has taken Macromedia engineers years to get Flash (and Shockwave promised before it) on to mobile devices. But unlike the desktop where you can simply release an application, Macromedia had to work with carriers and manufacturers for five years to get a mobile version of Flash , called Flash Lite, as a viable technology for mobile devices.

In fact for such a diverse ecosystem to exist it relies on basic standards for interoperability. Of course there are outliers that choose to propagate a different method of doing things, but it is not as diverse as one may be led to believe by standards groups peering into the mobile world.

With a modern phone in hand and a firm grasp of basic HTML and CSS, any Web designer/developer can create Web sites for the Mobile Web. It really can be that easy. As well, many traits of the Web beyond code can be applied to mobile, strategy such as information architecture and design and usability principles. Developers can apply standards to both the mobile Web and applications written for devices.

I won’t down play the challenges that device diversity creates, but you can meet the challenges as long as you take a flexible approach to the design and development of your mobile experience.

Conclusion

Hopefully this article helps to you understand and provide some background of mobile. There are a lot of topics that are still yet to be uncovered like mobile applications or mobile technologies like messaging and the Mobile Web. But the first step is understanding that mobile is about context, in order to get mobile you have to first understan

ferences of various solutions as well as some samples uses and techniques.

Understanding the Mobile Ecosystem

The mobile ecosystem is immense. It‘s analogous to “The Web”—very large with many moving parts and many different technologies working together. Though unlike the Web, it isn‘t a field where anyone can buy a few books, sink their teeth in and sort it out. Knowledge and information is closely guarded in the industry, making getting mobile a difficult task.

Most importantly, mobile is a controlled ecosystem, much like a drive-through wildlife preserve where animals roam free and you see them from the relative safety of your car. You may not be able to see the fence that keeps the animals caged, but it exists nonetheless.

The wireless network is the cage I refer to. Owned and operated by carriers (operators outside of North America), they’re trying desperately to prevent what happened on the Web to happen in mobile.

A Brief History

While it may seem that a mobile phone with a Web browser is some sort of modern marvel, the first WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) capable phones were introduced in the late 1990s. In fact, just as the dot-com bubble was deflating, mobile devices started to show signs of the Mobile Web to come.

Seeing websites focus on strictly inclusive experiences, overwhelming consumers with choices during the early dot-com era, the carriers wanted to ensure that their subscribers were protected for the onslaught that was to inevitably happen in mobile. Being such a limited device, they knew that consumers would leave for another carrier if they could not maintain the integrity of the their Mobile Web.

This yielded the “walled garden” of many mobile carrier services. This is the concept of creating an Eden for your phone - a mobile paradise where everything you need is readily accessible, on one condition—you cannot leave. Many carriers prohibit subscribers from accessing the Web by redirecting their quest for information to their own controlled experiences.

Why does this happen? Largely because carriers must increase ARPU, or Average Revenue Per User, by charging you for games, ring tones, videos and other mobile-only content. It is also partially due to the lack of mobile-ready content on the Web, and to the need to create a consistent customer experience.

Yet other carriers embrace the Web, by creating their own subscriber portals, known as “decks” to encourage subscribers to explore the Web instead. With little mobile-optimized content available, carriers charge subscribers by the kilobyte for loading bloated p

Chinatown. Everybody who's got a Range Rover in the garage, a closetful of Armani suits and can tell the difference between a Medoc and a merlot is buying contemporary art. In the past few years auction prices for even mid-range famous artists (say, Richard Prince) have escaped the gravitational pull of prudence. Museums of modern and contemporary art--often glamorous and costly edifices designed inertia youth by international "starchitects"--have sprung up in practically every American city with a neon bank logo hovering more than 10 stories high. All of this has naturally led droves of ambitious youngsters--many of whom only a few years earlier would have chosen careers in graphic design, screenwriting or public relations--to declare themselves artists. The enterprise of contemporary art is now sufficiently noticeable to Cineplex-goers and couch potatoes to earn it a recent movie comedy (Art School Confidential) and a reality TV show (Art Star). In absolute terms, more ink is probably spilt on modern and contemporary art today than ever before. It would seem that there's not only enough material around to keep art critics currently writing for daily newspapers and national magazines busy in the extreme, but enough to require even more writers, more column inches, more coverage.