I'm pleased to announce a cool mapping application I hacked together this weekend which lets you see on a map where each National Team's player's clubs are located. At the moment, I've only included England, Spain, the United States, and Mexico but will be adding more teams as the World Cup approaches.

Some things you can do:

• use the Satellite view to see the stadiums for each club, some have writing on them!
• learn which teams are concentrated in their domestic league,
• and learn which teams are concentrated outside their domestic league

URL: http://www.soccerblogs.net/world_cup_map/\

The Hollywood cartels may try to get hardware companies to put in DRM controls via HDMI with the promise not to use them for 7-8 years.

The effect is that if your screen or recorder isn't blessed by Hollywood, they can limit the video they send to it to a low-resolution image. Manufacturers who want the full signal have to enter into the HDMI license agreement and agree to cripple their hardware in lots of ways -- and have to promise not to make their equipment compatible with anyone else's, unless they, too, agree to cripple their hardware.

Two posts worth reading, first fallout on the financial repercusion of the Italian Soccer scandal.

[Shares in Juventus have fallen 40% since the news broke, amid repeated trading halts on the Milan stock exchange.]{.rss:item}

[]{.rss:item} And another on the measureable effect losses have on national economies.

[...losses in soccer matches have an economically and statistically significant negative effect on the losing country's stock market]{.rss:item}