Terribly Happy

There honestly hasn’t been a lot to alert you to lately and I’ve been so busy with some work and outside-of-work things lately that there’s not even be time to post anything fun and goofy.

What’s new:

• I haven’t done NPR in a few weeks and honestly have no idea when I’ll be on again. It’s been very quiet. People have been on vacation, my producer was assigned to a major blog project and I just haven’t heard much. I’ve been enjoying the summer time off and am still posting an occasional blog entry on All Tech, but there’s been no parting of ways or anything like that (that I know of).
• Ditto with CNN. They originally asked me to write just two pieces and that was that. I’m still waiting on my first check to clear through their large corporate structure and arrive before I ask if they’ve got any more assignments.
• The famous tech podcast Glark and I did that was never famous, Age of Lasers, has transformed into a Tumblr blog at AgeOfLasers.com. It’s much more random and requires a lot less coordinating to post on. So far, so fun.
• The contract Pablo and I have for Trailers Without Pity hits the two-year mark in October and we’re in the process of deciding whether we want to continue. We’ve been told there’s no money for raises, so it’s kind of up to us whether we want to keep doing what we’re doing at the current rate, propose a different project that would be simpler to produce, or just stop.  They’re still fun videos to do and it’s very nice to get paid to do fun work, but it’s very time-consuming and we’ve been doing it with very few breaks for two straight years. I’m inclined to say we had fun, said what we wanted to say, and are ready to move on, but that decision is not set in stone yet.
• Where I’ve been spending a ton of energy lately is at work where I’ve been wrapping up a story scheduled to run on the front page (fingers crossed) Sunday. It was a very tough story to put together — it’s a profile and when it comes to telling one person’s life, especially a person you’ve been wanting to tell people abou for a long time — it’s a lot of pressure. I’ll be very glad when it’s completely finished.
• Lastly, my mom was in the hospital recently for surgery and just got out today. It wasn’t nearly as bad as when she was in the hospital a few years ago and everything seemed to be going wrong, but it was still scary and draining (much more for her than for us).  We’re very glad this whole experience is over.

And that’s what’s going on.  Lilly and Carolina are doing great. I think Lilly has just discovered that if she plays with Carolina, Carolina will respond and play back and it’s a wonderful thing to watch. Lilly has a birthday coming up. The summer already feels like it’s almost over.  I’m trying to enjoy it before it’s gone with trips to Schlitterbahn, walks in the evenings and trying not to take on too many projects, at least for now.

'The Iron Man'

Last week, I asked my folks at NPR if I could do a blog post about how methods of holding your new iPhone 4 might sound really dirty. They asked, “How dirty?” It was a fair point. My list included things like, “FaceTime Fingering.”

Glark helped brainstorm some ideas with me and by the time we were done, the piece shifted into a photo gallery with photos by Glark and text by me. I think the result, “12 New Ways To Hold Your iPhone 4” turned out pretty great. It’s far less dirty than what I originally imagined, but given that this story was mostly told in photos, that’s probably a good thing.

Even more fun is imagining Glark in his home studio setting up lights and gathering props to do these. Or imagining his face, with an iPhone in his mouth, on the front page of NPR.org. He’s got full-sized images on his site. Wow! Check them all out.

Jared and Juanita Esquivel. Photo by Jerrad Henderson, American-Statesman

That’s never possible, but this one, from my point of view, comes close. All the graphic and photo elements came together, almost all the pieces made it onto the online version and there were no last-minute crazy changes that needed to be made. It was as smooth an experience as I’ve ever had with a story like this. I’m pretty thrilled to have it finished.

I wrote a blog entry setting up the story and another one with lots of background and notes I couldn’t fit in the actual story (“deleted scenes”) if it’s a subject that interests you. I had no idea I was so passionate on the subject until I was pretty much done writing it all.

Bonus: the comments on the story are actually unintentionally hilarious, or racialtastic. Here’s one:

Yeah but you know how the economically disadvantaged, among other “classes” score on the TAKS. Maybe homie just don’t got the brain power to see that $70 for access for the whole family is cheaper than a net-capable phone in every hand. Plus I got idea that texting my posse is quite a bit more important than looking up some BS about getting a job or school. That’s uncool. The men in pookie’s gang just wouldn’t approve of it. Here the bottom line isn’t necessarily the bottom line.

Dude. Classic! The same guy made a “pork-n-beans” reference in another post. To be honest, I was expecting far, far worse in terms of comments.

My second column for CNN ran this morning, surprising me a bit. It’s the second one I’ve written and I haven’t gotten any word yet on whether there’ll be any more. This one’s about alternative uses for an iPad, including audio recording, photo editing and bedtime storytelling.

Also yesterday, I did a segment for NPR’s All Things Considered about a new national study on public libraries and the challenges their digital services (free Wi-Fi, computer access, etc.) face. Here’s the blog post (with audio embedded) and a transcript of the segment.

I’m working on a digital divide/mobile story for the Statesman, so the reporting I’ve been doing matched up nicely with the piece. My story is due soon and it’s been a very, very tough one to get my head around, but things are starting to fall into place.

Other new stuff: had a great Father’s Day with my girls and also got to spend time with my mom, dad and brother. I blinked and Carolina is already starting to scoot around on her belly and roll over. I swear she was just a immobile infant a week or two ago. Lilly loves it, of course, and can’t wait for her sister to crawl and walk. We’ve been through this before, but I still find this stage absolutely amazing.

We have a new Trailers Without Pity that I haven’t even had a chance to post and just finished scripting and recording the next. I’ll get that up sometime later today. We’re weighing our options right now on the future of the videos beyond the end of our current contract, but Pablo and I have both been so slammed we haven’t had much time to make any decisions.

That’s it! Back to the grindstone (with my nose).

It’s been a few weeks, but yesterday I was on NPR’s All Things Considered with a segment about how the World Cup is affecting Internet traffic, how to watch it online or on your phone and the debut of 3-D TV sports on ESPN.

The audio of the segment is here and you can see the blog post I wrote to go with it on the All Tech blog.

Apart from the fact that I don’t follow World Cup too much (especially now that they allow a million bees in the stadium), there was another little curveball with this segment: I was chosen as the guinea pig for an experiment.  We did my half of the segment not in the KUT studio like we usually do, but with an app called “Report-IT” on my iPhone.

The app was able to connect to their ISDN line and apparently the sound was pretty good.  The only thing I notice in hearing it back is that the room I was in sounds very echo-filled, but that’s the room’s acoustics, not the app’s fault. I could have switched to a sound-proofed room in my work building (yes, we have one), but the Wi-Fi connection I was using didn’t reach that far and when we tried it with 3G, the quality dropped considerably and there was too much lag.

The best part was talking to Michele Norris while an engineer instructed me to move the phone to different positions around my mouth. “Now hold it upside-down and away from you at a 45-degree angle, like you’re talking across the top of the surface of the phone.”

These guys know audio.  It’s incredible how well they know what works and what doesn’t.

Not sure if I’ll be back on a regular schedule on NPR, but at least for this week I got to feel a little bit like a radio pioneer. (Or “test subject” or “guinea pig.” I’m fine with any of those.)

A few months ago, I got an e-mail asking if I’d like to write some tech columns for CNN.com. After making sure it was cool with my employers, I wrote two, the first of which appeared on CNN’s Web site yesterday. It’s about my belief (which I still believe despite a bunch of nay-saying comments) that smart phones and other touch-screen Internet devices will eventually replace our remote controls.

(I wish I’d taken a screen grab of CNN’s front page yesterday; it was featured there with a little image and headline near news of the oil spill and the NBA Finals.)

So, apparently, CNN is making a big push into online tech coverage. They have a very active tech blog and are publishing a large number of freelance pieces, guest columns and other pieces on their redesigned tech section.

They did ask me for a mug shot, but I had no idea it would run so large up at the top of the story. I mean, it’s cool and all, having my gigantic face up on the Web where America can easily access it and mock, but very few dudes in the tech world can pull that off with anything approaching aplomb.

OK, only one guy can pull it off. He’s Pete Cashmore and we all have a crush on him.

Look at this guy:

Are you kidding me?

Even the background is beautiful and hip and cool! No fair.

Anyway, my second column should appear next week, I think. They haven’t asked me to write anything beyond that, so we’ll see what happens.

iPhone 4, ruiner of current iPhone you own

Even though I haven’t done NPR segments in a couple of weeks (I should be back on next Monday, but I never know from week to week exactly what’s happening), things have been super-busy at work with so much tech news, mostly in the area of new phones and wireless announcements.

Last week I did a story about a partnership my newspaper has started with local social media/location company Gowalla.  Stories where you’re writing about your own company are always tricky to navigate and this one was no exception.  As that was going on, I was testing out the new Sprint EVO 4G phone that hit stores on Friday.

I wrote a review for this week’s Tech Monday, but we ran it early on my Digital Savant blog Friday and the response from fans of the Android OS was… spirited. Make no mistake, iPhone vs. Everybody Else is the new Macs vs. PCs. People are getting really passionate and territorial about their smart phones.

I called it “Impressions” instead of a review because I don’t think you can really hit all the details with just a week or two of time with a phone with so many features and apps, but I did my best to give it a fair shake.  As I was working on that, news broke that AT&T is changing its wireless pricing for smart phones and that created a big flap on the blog, too. ( got an NPR blog entry out of that, too.

That rolled right into my write-up and live chat on the new iPhone 4 Monday, which turned out to be an exhausting time. I love this stuff and I enjoy writing about it, but after a while my brain just gets tired of all the details and just wants to shut down. (Which it did. Last night.)

So that’s been my last week. Lots of writing, lots of trying to keep up with tech announcements.  When I’m not working, I’m trying to take it as easy as possible. We got season passes for our local water park Schlitterbahn (“Shitter Bomb,” Glark calls it) and have been taking Lilly. It’s great, relaxing fun and except for when I take my phone in the water to snap photos or video of Lilly on a tube, I’m trying not to be so inundated with tech in my off time. It’s hard, but I’m trying.

The only other major thing of note that I haven’t mentioned anywhere else yet (not even on Twitter) because I didn’t want to jinx it: my first tech column for CNN.com should be up on their site tomorrow. I’ll post it here as soon as it’s available.