• Identity

    Illustration by Robert Calzada / Austin American-Statesman

    It might have been right after South by Southwest Interactive, when my brain was a slick, goopy putty, that I told my editor I had an idea for a series of stories about online identity.

    There was a fear in me that I didn’t have any decent ideas left (which I now chalk up to being mentally exhausted at the time), and maybe the online identity idea was a way of punting to some indeterminate date in the future as a way of not dealing with a huge project at that moment. But the funny thing about proposing a big project to an editor is that they tend not to forget that sort of thing and next thing you know, you’re actually writing this project, which of course is not at all the way things seemed like they were going to go in your head.

    Which is a roundabout way of saying that I have a sizable project I’m working on at my job and the first chunk of it has been published. The series is about online identity — about the ways that our lives are being lived in large part online and what that’s doing to our sense of self — and it kicked off Sunday with a story that focuses on our online reputations and how they’re increasingly tying to our offline activity.

    The first story was tough. I ended up with about 70 pages of notes and with a story that was about 30 or 40 percent longer than it needed to be. My editor Sarah got in there and helped tame this big, broad thing into something more tightly focused and when we both saw the story alongside the infographic/illustration and photos in its newsprint form we were a little stunned to see that it all worked somehow. The feedback was good. Got a lot of great comments via email, on Facebook, Twitter and even on Google+, where it attracted a lot of commentary. Even the comment trolls were pretty kind to me on this one. People I run with in online social media circles seemed to really get where the story was coming from and had a lot of useful stuff to add. It turned out to be a great experience.

    (Great except for the stressful Friday afternoon when I was writing the piece and thought I was writing way too broad and nebulous for the story to be any good. That part sucked pretty hard.)

    Next up on the agenda is a Tech Monday piece using some material that was cut from the reputation piece and then a story in August about how kids’ online identities and interactions are helping shape their offline senses of self.

    I’ve been pretty obsessed the last few years at how all this time we’re spending online is shaping us (and will shape our kids). I don’t have a really solid answer, even when it comes to myself. I feel like I have fewer real-life interactions with friends, but that’s also due to having kids and not being able to go out as much.

    I feel like I’ve met so many amazing people who would never have otherwise crossed my path had I not met them online, but I also feel like many of those relationships are as thin as stretched cotton candy. When it comes down to it, I’ve also been disappointed by online friends, betrayed even, and of those dozens or hundreds of people who dwell in my virtual neighborhood, only a handful would I ever call in an emergency or rely on for help with anything of importance.

    …

    What else is going on… On Monday, the Digital Savant blog is going to partially morph into a weekly print column in the Statesman. The first one runs Monday and I’m trying to mentally psyche myself for having a weekly column deadline. It’ll be a mix of how-to pieces, tech reviews and reported essays about tech, very similar to what’s in the blog but in a little bit more fleshed-out form, I hope.

    In a few days we’re turning in our last Trailers Without Pity video for this season. We should be back in October or so, but I’m grateful for the break. The videos are a lot of fun as long as we have a finish line in sight for some rest.

    Lilly turns 4 next month, and we’re a little freaked out about it. She starts Kindergarten next year and that’s a whole other kind of angst for us, the parents. Carolina isn’t yet 2, but she’s rapidly growing out of babydom, too, and that’s hitting me harder than it did with Lilly since we don’t plan to have more kids. I love my little pre-verbal, diaper-busting Carolina. That grinning, babbling toddler won’t exist in that form anymore and I’m getting teary just admitting that to myself.

  • Trailers Without Pity: Conan the Barbarian

    We’re down to the last two episodes of Trailers Without Pity for the season (we’re not even sure what the last one will be; we’re still deciding). Our penultimate video for Season Three is this one for the pec-tacular Conan the Barbarian, a remake (or a reimagining? I’m willing to bet it was more making than imagining at work here) of the Arnold early 80s sword and crotch-garb classic.

    I’m a sucker for these kinds of movies (or at least mocking these kinds of movies from afar); my favorite episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 remains Cave Dwellers, starring Ator the Juiced. I could watch that a million billion times. The new Conan looks even dumber and more expensive. It’s kind of thrilling, really, how respectably goofy it looks.

    Enjoy!

  • Parking and Plus’ing

    'Parking in Motion' app screengrab
    Just a short note about two stories of mine that ran over the weekend.

    The first was a sort-of review/riff on an app called “Parking in Motion.” Parking in downtown Austin keeps getting worse and worse and I think most people in town who have to go there are looking for some sort of silver bullet to avoid $10/per parking lots. The app, it turns out, doesn’t really solve that many problems, but it sure does look nice and may lead the way to something even better.

    Of course, the name of the app implies that you might use it while… you know… you’re in motion? I guess? That’s probably not such a hot idea.

    The other story that ran in the paper was a reverse-publish of a blog post I did on Google Plus, but with some updated information and a few opinions from commenters to the blog.

    Work has been a little weird and a lot of interesting lately. My beat isn’t changing, but some of my day-to-day duties might in terms of what I’m working on for the paper and what we prioritize. I’ll be writing certain kinds of features more regularly, so that’s good since sometimes covering personal tech is a pretty large beast to try to get your arms around all the way.

    I’m still trying to get a separate, more personal writing project off the ground and we’re about to finish another season of Trailers Without Pity. Summer, of course, is moving far too quickly for me to keep up and soon it’ll be too late to go toobin’ or to use that Schlitterbahn season pass. So, despite all the stuff I want to write, I’m trying hard not to spend these next few months stuck inside, away from the sun.

  • Apps, podcasts, (absent) fireworks and the Dora Generation on Facebook

    This short week got full really quick! This morning, a CNN.com tech column I wrote appeared this morning about what would happen if the Dora Generation (kids 5-12) begin to join Facebook en masse.

    It’s a little out-there compared to the stuff I usually write for them, but with a few tweaks, they were willing to publish it as satire. I’m keeping an eye on the comments for this one because this time when people post, “This article is ridiculous and completely dumb!” I’ll be inclined to kind of agree.

    Photo by me for the Digital Savant blog
    I might be doing stuff more pieces like this for CNN.com soon, which makes me very, very happy.

    Today, I also posted Digital Savant Podcast #5, featuring GigaOm’s Stacey Higginbotham.

    I always love chatting (or Tweeting) with Stacey and she proved to be a great, fun guest. I look for people who know a lot about tech but also don’t take it too deadly seriously and Stacey is a reporter with a great sense of humor. You can download it on the blog or grab it from iTunes.

    Photo I shot for the Austin American-Statesman
    I wrote a “Coffee With…” feature for the American-Statesman about Michael Doise, an Austin app developer who has created several Braille-education apps. Really remarkable guy.

    I got to meet with him and his girlfriend and geek out a bit over the stuff he’s working on.

    Also in the Statesman over the weekend was a reverse-published blog post I did about Turntable.fm, a DJ chat room/music service that my brother and I have gotten completely hooked over the last week. We’re planning on doing a horrible songs room, perhaps on Friday, and just playing the worst stuff we can think of. You should join us! You can find the room here.

    Other cool stuff: I submitted an “I Am Not a Crackpot!” audio piece to my favorite podcast, Extra Hot Great and it appeared in an All-Crackpot episode. Lots and lots of fun and a great listen with lots of great submissions. You should subscribe to the podcast. My piece is about how we keep Closed Captioning on all the time. It comes in at around the 45-minute mark. I may not have convinced the podcasters, but I feel vindicated by the commenters on the site.

    We had a pretty quiet 4th of July weekend. We didn’t travel anywhere and we had some family stay over. We took Lilly and Carolina to an insane place in New Braunfels called The Jumpy Place where they have giant bounce castles, like six of them in one giant warehouse-sized building. There are also comfy sofas and chairs for parents. But did we sit in them? We did not.

    Were we supposed to go in the bouncy castles with the kids and climb the giant slides and jump around even though we are adults? We were not. Did we? Shit yes.

    4th of July night was oddly quiet. No fireworks, no explosions. We’ve had a drought and there’s been a big ban on fireworks that, strangely, people actually observed. For the last few years, we’ve missed the fireworks. We used to go every year, especially when we were at S. Padre Island. We’d crowd as close as we could to Louie’s Back Yard by the water and watch the explosions.

    The kids go to bed so early that for the last three of four years, we’ve just resigned ourselves to missing the displays. I got a guilty bit of pleasure knowing that nobody else was going to get fireworks this year, either, but then I felt bad sitting inside Monday night, waiting for the sound of Black Cats exploding in someone’s backyard nearby. The sound never came.

    Oh, one other quick note — I was supposed to be teaching a class at the University of Texas this fall as an adjunct professor, but it looks like that has fallen through. I was approached about it last year and agreed to do it. Then, it got to be July and I started wondering why nobody had contacted me; shouldn’t I be preparing or something?

    Turns out it never really materialized and I just found out. So maybe that’ll happen in the future, but most certainly not for the fall semester. That’s OK. I’m sure I’ll find ways to stay busy.

  • Trailers Without Pity: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

    Oh my goodness, do my brother and I love monkeys. I mean we LOVE them. We ARE them, in our dreams, I think. Goddamn a banana sounds good right now. I’d settle for a plantain, even. Know where I could score a plantain?

    Anyway, it was a no brainer (or rather, a chimp-brainer, which is a big step up) for us to do a Trailers Without Pity video about Rise of the Planet of the Apes (and Of the Preposition). Monkeys, James Franco and science. What could be finer?

    This movie looks like it could be really, really bad, but awful in a great, entertaining way. Can. Not. Wait.

    After this episode we’ve only got two more videos left before the end of the season when we’ll go on a break for a few months. Enjoy!

  • A remote chance

    Jeff Roane of MiCommand, Inc. Photo by Zach Ornitz, Austin American-Statesman
    I must have some kind of obsession with the idea of smartphones and tablets taking over the functions of remote controls, probably because of the mishmash of A/V equipment in our living room that all has to work together. I find myself writing about it again and again.

    I’ve given up trying to get our trusty Harmony Remote to make everything work perfectly. There’s still times when the receiver, TV and satellite box all turn on just fine, but there’s still a blank screen that requires pressing “TV On/OFF” on the remote to get the HDMI connection to wake up. Don’t even ask. I’ve spent way too much time stressing about it.

    Anyway, my search for the perfect remote (that doesn’t cost $500) continues as I write about MiCommand’s “Control it All Remote” app and hardware for iOS, released this week by an Austin company. It’s a Tech Monday column that ran in yesterday’s newspaper.