This is a clever “movie trailer” promoting Wired editor Chris Anderson’s new book The Long Tail. For those that are unfamiliar with the long tail concept, the book theorizes that the advent of the internet and all the new time- and place-shifting technologies have enabled producers to capitalize on the long tail of their inventories. Instead of needing huge hits to be profitable, they can market much larger, more diverse libraries and work further into the long tail of consumption. Basically, instead of needing to sell one million copies of one product, it is now possible to sell 100 copies of 10,000 different products without incurring a huge increase in distribution costs.

Over the weekend, Ryan and I were involved in what most people would call a “mountain bike race” but in our hands revealed itself to be more like sharing a trail with some seriously talented riders. We were part of a four-person relay team that itself was part of a much larger 12 person group of bikers that we ride with on a regular basis. There were roughly 10 - 15 teams participating in the relay, a good turnout as this was the inaguration of this particular event.

The race required each person on the team to complete an 11-mile loop through the woods. Upon emerging, the rider hands off a team lei to the next team member who then dives into the woods to start their loop. This continues until the fourth rider has completed the trail and the team’s total time is logged.

Some of the riders out there were really incredible. Jason, the guy wearing blue in the picture above, actually rode the entire trail on a single speed bike. Yep, that means one gear as opposed to our 27. He was part of Alpharat’s team and they actually managed to nab 3rd place for our class!

Race results aside, I think everyone had a great time and I’m looking forward to getting out to some more trails this summer. Especially when the outings result in sweet pictures like this:

Photo (c) 2006 Ten Mile Media - Hans Nyberg

I noticed something interesting over at the Official Google Blog today. The search giant’s mapping software for mobiles now includes real-time traffic monitoring. I’ve been a big fan of Google’s mobile applications for some time now, News and Local having come in really handy on more than one occasion. This addition of traffic information makes these mobile applications that much more enticing. You can also now store favorites so you won’t find yourself having to type in addresses of your most often queried locations all the time. Once you have a map up you can turn on traffic monitoring by pressing the # key. The major roads will then light up as either green (traffic moving steadily), yellow (traffic is slow) or red (complete traffic congestion).

After downloading the new Google Maps to my phone at http://google.com/gmm I used it to give me a traffic picture of my part of Oakland County. I found that the application ran reasonably quick on my Sony Ericsson s710a over Cingular’s EDGE network and the traffic monitor picked up on the fact that 696 is down to one lane between Orchard Lake and Telegraph Road. It even seems to differentiate between different directions of traffic on highways that have a median. You can switch to satellite view similar to using Google Maps on a PC and you have the ability to call up driving directions between locations.

While I can certainly see myself using this application often in the future, it is becoming a little confusing why Google is developing both this mobile version of Google Maps as well as their Google Local utility. I blogged about Google Local back in December and still use it when searching for certain types of restaurants or stores when I’m out and about. Oddly, this new mobile version of Google Maps has all of the features of Google Local except for the search function. I have to believe that one of these will eventually consume the other rather than Google supporting two separate apps.

Not all phones are currently supported, (I noticed a lack of any Palm Treo models) but Google promises more compatibility is on the way. If you own a supported phone and feel like giving your data plan a workout, go download Google Maps and start beating that summer construction traffic!

I recently stumbled across a video for Dayvan Cowboy by Scottish ambient rockers Boards of Canada. The video includes some archival footage of Joseph Kittinger’s 1960 skydive from just outside the Earth’s atmosphere. One can only imagine that as he reached terminal velocity hurtling through space the same thoughts were racing through his head as those that often race through the heads of people listening to Boards of Canada.