Tag: cnn

  • Summer days unpacked

    Every year, it’s begun to feel like since I moved to New Braunfels in 2004, I complain around August or September that I felt like I missed the whole summer, but that’s probably because I haven’t thought to quit my job and be a river bum all summer, tubing all day and sleeping outside staring at the stars all night.

    Come to think of it, that sounds kind of crappy, at least the sleeping outside part. Where would I plug in the HEPA filter?

    Instead of working on my (not really in need of help) tan, I’ve been mostly indoors, working, and this last week there was so much output I began to feel like I should just stop talking for a little while. The week began with a new CNN.com tech column that I pitched when the summer started and I saw that my DVR was about to make for a steep climb for the next few months. It’s about how much old crap we have hanging out in our digital video recorder and the stuff you notice when you’re digging back through months or years of old programming.

    My Digital Savant column is rolling along. My second weekly print column was a list of intermediate/advanced tips for Twitter now that it’s matured quite a bit since the last time we did a primer on it, back in 2008. Really good reaction on this one and it got passed around quite a bit on the social media sites, especially on Twitter itself.

    The third column, which runs in tomorrow’s paper, is about the Livescribe smart pen, which I’ve been using for the last few months. It’s replaced my old digital audio recorder and notepads for taking interview notes and I’m surprised more reporters aren’t using something like it. (Or, really just it. I’m not aware of any product that does exactly what it does.)

    I also had a story run in the paper last week about Spotify, the online music service that recently arrived in the U.S. I’m still using it, but still not sure what I’ll do once the Premium trial runs out this month. I’m not sure how much I’d like it if I couldn’t use the mobile app and I’m not sure I can justify $10 a month on music given that I already pay for Sirius XM and carry my entire music collection with me on my phone every day. I ran a long blog post with all the comments that readers and social media friends shared about their thoughts on Spotify.

    I also had two pieces in the paper about South by Southwest Interactive raising its rates for the 2012 fest.

    Despite all the output, it’s been feeling a little lazy here, at least at home. We’ve got a break from videos for a few months, a writing project I’m working on with a friend hasn’t really gotten off the ground yet and apart from working on some jokes for a friend who’s hosting an event and very short iPad reviews for Kirkus, I’ve mostly been spending my nights catching up on Breaking Bad (only about 7 episodes left and I’ll be up to date!), reading some books including the first three volumes of The Walking Dead, finishing off the last book of Y: The Last Man and savoring Spoiled, a really well-written and hilarious young adult novel by The Fug Girls.

    As much as I’d like to be outside enjoying the summer, it’s been so hot this year for so long that we can’t even take the girls outside in the evenings anymore unless they’re going to be submerged in cool water or we’re taking them directly to another place that’s indoors. It sucks not to be able to take your kids to the park, even, when it’s still 105 degrees as the sun’s going down.

    So we’re going to Schlitterbahn when we can, going to indoor places like the New Braunfels Children’s Museum or just shopping. Maybe we’ll make it down to the beach before summer’s over.

    But not to complain. I’m actually enjoying the rest and kind of digging how busy work has been and how busy home has not.

  • 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.

  • The dead (virtual) children problem

    There’s a segment on the Extra Hot Great podcast called “Tiny Triumphs” about little victories that we have in our lives. I was blessed to have one this week; I wrote a piece for CNN.com that was published early this morning and appears to have struck a nerve. As of this writing, it’s earned more than 700 comments and I’ve gotten lots of e-mails and Tweets from people who read the piece. That hasn’t happened before, even with the piece I did on Facebook and religion.

    The editor I work with at CNN e-mailed me to tell me that at one point today it was the 3rd-most-popular piece of content on the entire site.

    Last week, a trailer for the video game Dead Island was released (my brother Pablo sent me the link) and it earned near-universal praise on gaming blogs (and some mainstream ones as well). But something about it just didn’t sit well with me and the more I thought about it, the more I realized I didn’t have a problem with just this trailer, but with several video games that are using the deaths and torture of children as central plot points.

    I pitched the column to CNN and they were able to get it published pretty quickly. I don’t know if what I wrote is right or wrong, I just know that the best stuff I write typically comes from a strong feeling I have and the need to explore what that feeling means and where it came from. This was the rare piece where I got to do it for a very popular site and get the idea out in front of lots of people.

    I’m embedding the original trailer below. Warning: it’s VERY gory and potentially disturbing. It’s also well-crafted and haunting, an amazing piece of work. And there’s part of the problem.

  • Stories and glories

    It’s been a really busy two weeks, at work and at home.

    Off stage, out of sight, we were dealing with a family medical issue that had us feeling worried and vulnerable all of a sudden. Then we got some good news that made things not-so-scary, but we’re still reeling from having even dealt with the problem in the first place. It’s something I really hope to write about soon, but I promised I’d hold off until we had some kind of resolution and we’re just getting there.

    Even with some of the sick time I had to take off, things actually seemed to speed up at work. As the holidays approach, our deadlines are getting tighter and I seem to be just writing and writing and writing.

    The biggest surprise and bright spot recently was that CNN.com approved of a crazy, weird column idea I had months ago about Facebook theology. I pitched it tentatively, sure it would be a strange and unwelcome fit, but the editor I work with over there took a chance on it and ended up liking the result. The piece ran on the site today and this time at least I was prepared for abusive comments and ridicule. (Sample comment: “No disrespect to the author, but this is the dumbest idea for a news article I have ever read.” Right. No disrespect.) It actually hasn’t been as bad as I was expecting and the article has been shared more times on Facebook already than the previous two columns I wrote over the summer. And how adorable is that illustration up there? I really like it.

    The CNN thing made up for having to try to explain to people why I’m not on NPR every week anymore (short answer: I don’t actually know and am afraid to ask). After a rough couple of weeks, it was a nice boost I really needed.

    On the Statesman front, I had a story on the front page today about Gowalla’s big parks deal with Disney, did a story recently about Texas State professor Cindy Royal’s online war of words with Wired over a recent boobalicious magazine cover, a review of the Xbox 360 Kinect that ran in Tech Monday (longer, more exhaustive blog version here) and a Tech Monday column about next week’s Austin intellectual property summit.

    As of this writing, I have another A1 story scheduled for Saturday (fingers crossed), tech gift guides running Sunday in the Statesman and later on Television Without Pity, a profile of Epic Mickey game designer Warren Spector and a Season for Caring story about an amazing Austin family I am lucky to have met. Shit got really busy lately, I’m telling you.

    And on top of all that I’m working on an iPad-related writing project with an Austin company that I’ll tell you more about soon. Busy times, but it’s not all work. I’m watching tons of TV after Lilly and Carolina go to bed at night, trying to finish Franzen’s book Freedom (50 more pages!), listening to great podcasts on my way to and from work and trying to enjoy life right now. I looked back on the summer and realized I was really having a hard time adjusting to our new reality (having a toddler and an infant in the house) and was really crabby a lot of the time.

    Given the recent things that have happened, I’m letting myself enjoy the situation a little more and trying not to stress out so much. I know that if I don’t relax and enjoy it, I’m going to regret missing out on some really wonderful times with my girls.

  • Programming notes

    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.

  • On iPad uses and library tech woes

    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).