In sports, they talk about a "game-changer" as a player who can alter the course of an entire game. In technology, that label means something much greater; a service or application that alters the way people live their lives and consume information (think Google, the iPod, YouTube, MySpace, etc.)

If news reporting truly does evolve like most people in the industry know it needs to, we may look back a few years from now and recognize Mike Sando as daily journalism's game-changer.

At a time when most mainstream journalists treated bloggers like lepers, supposedly spewing unfounded opinions for the tin-foil-hat brigade, Sando jumped in with both feet. He committed himself to thriving in a new medium without sacrificing any of the high standards he maintained in the old one. He learned audio, podcasting and a mastery of Excel that would make accountants swoon. He managed a crowd of readers that grew by the month, shutting down those who didn't contribute something worthy to the discussion, and encouraging those who did.

Two years ago, he didn't know how to do any of this. Now he's leaving The News Tribune to take his considerable talent to a bigger stage at ESPN.com. It's a smart move for the Worldwide Leader in Sports to have the Worldwide Leader in Sports Blogging on its staff. And it's a smart move for Sando to take what he's learned here on a local level covering one team and see if he can apply it to a global level covering the NFL.

If newspapers hope to ease into the digital age by serving their communities with information, interaction and authority, they would be wise to take a page from Sando's playbook. (We certainly are trying to serve his flavor of Kool-Aid to anyone who will drink it here at the TNT.) The connection he made with his readers is evident by the comments posted to his goodbye post (193 of them as I post this). Reporters talk about "owning" their beat. I would consider those dozens of messages of thanks and goodwill some pretty good ownership.

Now, of course, we've got our work cut out for us trying to replace him. I know sportswriters at newspapers around the country have watched his work with angst and envy as their editors asked "why can't you do this?" Hopefully we'll find someone who can pick up where Sando left off. We owe it to his readers and to him, because if we can't continue this game-changing legacy with all the momentum he's created, what chance does this newspaper (or others) have at thriving in the digital future?

Wonder what it looked like from inside the Word Trade Center when the jets hit on Sept. 11, 2001? Scientists have reproduced a digital simulation that is way interesting (and way popular on YouTube).

Call it David vs. Goliath, but a local entrepreneur is taking on the Web’s undisputed champion – and attacking its biggest strength.

Tacoma entrepreneur Paul Festian and partner Rob White of Gig Harbor launched searchforithere.com last week, hoping to become the “no per-click charge site for ecommerce into the 21st century.” What that means to those of you who haven’t paid for search terms on Google or Yahoo and paid a few cents or a few dollars each time someone clicked your ad is that this is a flat pricing alternative for ecommerce web sites.

They are hoping to promote their customers with a news blog and attract them with their no per-click-charge model. (See press release here.)

Could it be the next Google? Let's just say they've got a long way to go.

“We wanted to make the site easy for the shopper,” Festian told me by phone this week. “You want to shop for it and get off the internet.”

Festian said the motivation for the site came from a previous business venture, nintendogames4sale.com. Operating that business meant a monthly bill in excess of $1,000 from search companies, charging him every time someone clicked on his link from their search engines.

“And I spent a lot of time on search engines trying to locate products,” Festian added.

Although I don't want the poster to hang on my wall, the web is the perfect vehicle for this kind of information display. (No, this has nothing to do with the South Sound, but it's pretty cool just the same.)

Newspapers have been trying to get more hip and edgy for years now, chasing the latest trend/fad online in an effort to attract the younger, more digital audience. Blogs, video, user generated content, podcasts ... some newspapers are doing it all, whether it works or not.

Here's an example that shows just how far the Houston Chronicle is willing to go:

Thanks to an extra long day on Monday and some above-and-beyond effort by Mike Bednarczyk, Jeff Hendrickson and Laura Gentry, we have upgraded the software that runs our blog system. You will see some minor improvements in how the blogs look and hopefully experience some more substantial improvements in how they perform.

If you run into problems, or have any feedback, drop me a note.

Pardon us here at thenewstribune.com - we're having "one of those days."

The software that runs our blogs began breaking down over the weekend and the problems continued today. The bottom line: Comments are not available right now.

Although it is unrelated, we're trying to upgrade our blog software to a new version. So you may see some subtle changes as early as tonight.

Send me an email if you have questions or run across a problem.

I like the new look of the Kistap Sun. It's very clean and well organized. It has a relaxing feel rather than some news sites' overindulgence in links that is so busy, it's almost stressful to visit. (Take the tour here.)

I previously complained about this site's design - when it was difficult to find the content in between all the ads. Now instead of a Nascar-like mosaic, there's a smooth "peel-away" ad from the top right corner.

The design looks like it might be part of a corporate template; the Sun is a Scripps newspaper, like the Evansville Courier, which looks very similar. I'm generally not a fan of corporate template sites (see The Oregonian), but this one works pretty well.

Sports was (again) popular on our site last month. But the most interesting part of the top 10 list is the No. 1 story.

Paul Sand wrote a blog item about the dead fawn for our Light & Sirens blog, which Associated Press picked up and ran on the national wire. It became one of those quirky items that get popular and appeared on our site through an automatic feed into our weird news section. From there, a weird news web site linked to it and drove enough page views to make it our top story.

Anyhoo, here are the 10 most read stories on our site last month:

1. Dressed up dead fawn left near theater (AP)
2. Star Trek culture club (Hutchens)
3. An NFL sequel Jerramy Stevens' Second Chance (Boling)
4. Poison pill goes down easy (Sando)
5. Hargrove howls over Manny's HR
6. No. 2 pick for Kobe? No thanks (McGrath)
7. Having No. 2 pick creates divided camps (Hughes)
8. Who are they? Not really sure but they're looking good so far (Boling)
9. Lake Tapps' tap dry for Memorial Day (Archbold)
10. Sabey makes bid for Sonics (Hughes)

We began asking readers who have snapped photos of the new Narrows Bridge during its construction to submit their favorites to our reader gallery. And, as of this morning, there are 199 pictures posted. Editors will pick their favorites to be published in a special newspaper section to correspond with the bridge’s opening (now set for July 15 – but only in pencil).

No one has taken more photographs of the new bridge than TNT photographer Dean Koepfler (he gets paid for it, after all). Dean estimates that he’s taken more than 20,000 pictures of the bridge during the past five years and you can see some of his work at the History Museum’s current exhibit. Dean’s photos will also be featured in a book that we’re publishing that chronicles the construction of the new bridge. I got a sneak peak recently and it’s very cool.

So what other photo galleries should we have that allow readers to share photos? Sunsets (as GritCity asked)? Local landmarks? Pictures of readers with celebrities? Post a comment or drop me a line if you have an idea.