Terribly Happy

This one was a lot of fun. Morning Glory is a holiday movie starring Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton and Rachel McAdams about a national morning TV show, which I’m sure will make for lots of mockery. (It sure made for some easy second-hand mockery on our part.)

We’re still figuring out the future of Trailers Without Pity; I think it’s most likely that we’ll either stop doing them after October or at least take a very long break. I’ll let you know when we know for sure. In any case, if either of those things happens, we’re probably down to the last two or three videos.

Anyway, here it is, the Trailers Without Pity for Morning Glory, which includes a fresh new background from Pablo. Follow the link if you can’t see the video embedded below.

Our latest Trailers Without Pity is about the upcoming Robert Downey, Jr. / Zach Galifianakis comedy Due Date, directed by the guy who did The Hangover and Old School.

It’s nice to go into a comedy and know that you’re in competent hands for a change.

We’re still knocking out videos, but haven’t yet made a decision about what we’re doing after our contract is up in October. I think we could both really use the free time, but on the other hand, the videos are still a lot of fun to do and don’t seem to be taking as long to produce as they did when we started. In any case, enjoy! Here’s the link to the video if it doesn’t appear embedded below.

I wrote a Raising Austin column for the paper that ran in Saturday’s American-Statesman. It’s about iPad apps aimed at toddlers that are mostly bedtime stories with lots of interactive elements.

While pulling together the art for the piece, it was suggested at work that I try to get a photo of Lilly holding the iPad. I sat her in her bed, turned it on and tried to shoot photos but it became quickly clear that it was going to be impossible to get her to hold it away from her face but up to obscure it properly. (We didn’t want her entire face running in the paper; paranoid, maybe, considering her face is all over my Web site and online, but then you don’t see some of the letter and e-mail I get from readers of the newspaper.)

In about two minutes, her arms were too tired to hold up the iPad, resulting in a regrettable incident where she bonked herself in the nose with it and started crying. Photo shoot over.

We got one decent image, at least, and that’s what ran in the newspaper along with screen shots from some of the apps. The column also appeared as a Digital Savant blog entry earlier in the week.

Photo by Rodolfo Gonzalez, Austin American-Statesman

In today’s paper, we ran a roundup of smart phones that I put together. It includes the iPhone 4, the Sprint EVO 4G, the Verizon Droid X, the T-Mobile Samsung Vibrant, the BlackBerry Torch and the Dell Streak (which is either a mini-tablet or a comically large Android-based phone depending on who you ask).

For the last few months, since right before the iPhone 4 came out, I’ve been pretty much flooded with devices. The EVO came first, then two iPhones (Apple wanted reviewers to be able to get wowed by FaceTime), then a burst of smart phones that arrived when I started requesting them for the photo shoot that would yield the image above.

The story was originally supposed to be what we call a “Charticle” (chart + article!), but for space reasons ended up a more traditional introduction + info box.

I’ll tell you that while it’s fun to get to play around with different phones and try them out, it’s not fun to have 6 or 7 phones in the house in addition to the ones we own ourselves. It becomes a constant game of keeping track of chargers, updating software, updating apps and navigating tons of menus. It’s a little stressful, if I’m being honest, and I’m kind of relieved to be sending a bunch of them back this week. (The Torch has already been returned and a batch of phones go back on Monday.) But then two more phones arrived late last week (Sprint Epic 4G and AT&T Captivate) for some follow-up reviewing.

It’s getting harder and harder to do real reviews of smart phones because they’re basically computers now with their own software ecosystem and people want to know not only how the phone performs but what apps are good for it. Reviewing a smart phone now without trying out some of the best apps available for it isn’t really acceptable anymore. (It always amuses me when I see some tech writers post a review of a smart phone the day it debuts when it’s clear they’ve only had an hour or two to play around with it. Way to be unhelpful to any potential buyer who’ll be stuck with it on a two-year contract.)

I also posted a blog entry with my reviews of the some of the phones in the roundup and links to other reviews for the ones I wasn’t able to get to. I had play time with all the phones in the roundup, but some I had a lot more time with than the others. The iPhone and EVO I had about two months to try them out while the BlackBerry had to be sent back within a week after we received it. (Plus, BlackBerry has an operating system that I’ve never been able to get my head around. )

Our newest Trailers Without Pity is about the retired-assassins comic book adaptation Red, starring Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren.

The video gave me the opportunity to bust out the Morgan Freeman impression I’d been storing in the closet and, ironically, the opportunity to throw in Viagra and adult diaper jokes while taking the filmmakers to task for Viagra and adult diaper jokes we only can assume will be in the movie.

Clearly we hold filmmakers to a much higher standard than we hold ourselves. I am OK with that.

Enjoy! Here’s a link to the video on Television Without Pity if you’re unable to view the embedded video below.

On Monday, I was on NPR talking about seniors and new technologies that allow them to live at home longer and (in theory) more independently.

Or as independently as you can live with a house full of sensors and tracking monitors recording your every move. But then, that’s part of the whole discussion.

The blog post includes the embedded audio and links to some resources. You can find a link to the audio segment (and a transcript soon, I think) of the discussion here and a separate lead-in story that contains some of the more interesting reader/listener comments.

As in a segment we did last year about the elderly and tech, the subject of robots came up again. I’m not sure if my use of the phrase “Robot companions” seemed reassuring or extremely perverted. Both, I hope!