Tag: column

  • Access

    hipDisk, from the CHI 2012 conference.

    There are all kinds of non-profits in Austin doing cool things with technology, but the nature of my beat is that there’s never enough time to write about them all. But it’s really nice when the opportunity does present itself as it did this week when we focused on the keynote speaker for an event involving Knowbility. Knowbility is known for putting on events to train developers (and allow them to compete in competitions) related to making the web more accessible to those with disabilities (and that includes many more people than you might imagine).

    I spoke with Kel Smith for the column to help explain the concept of accessibility and how it’s changing. It was a great conversation and I hope the column got across some of the main points. It’s far too large an issue for one column, but we did our best to start a conversation.

    The column dovetailed with a strange and wonderful conference I got to attend last week called CHI 2012. I’d never heard of it and it won’t even be back in Austin next year (it’ll be in Paris, I believe; I need to start lobbying now for work to send me over). Focused on computer-human interfaces, it actually is a research-heavy event where super-smart people present the mind-blowing stuff they’re working on that could change our lives. It was fun, eye-opening and inspiring. I wrote a wrap-up of some of the highlights, but I missed so much that I only hit the very tip of what was there.

    Also a little eye-popping was a new technology used in last weekend’s Austin mayoral campaign. An augmented reality campaign flyer. A different version of the piece also ran in the paper.

    And lastly, I wrote in the blog about a video game based on a horrific (but ultimately not so bad) bus accident that happened at UT and went viral as a web video.

    That’s about it for this week. I have a CNN article running later this week that I’ll post about soon, but it’s not live yet.

    A weird and completely random thing did happen this week. For a few years, I ran a site called People Dancing at Concerts that I probably mentioned here before.

    About a year ago, I just stopped updating it. I just didn’t have time to hunt for the videos and do posts anymore. But apparently it lives on in some form because I got an email from WNYC’s “Soundcheck” program about it and ended up talking about the site on the air today. (I come in about 10-15 minutes into the segment after they start taking callers.) It gave me a reason to update the site a bit. The last few weeks, I’ve been repurposing old entries and posting them on Pinterest as well. No idea if I’ll keep it going, but it was nice to get a little traffic surge on a site I’d pretty much given up.

    Fun week!

  • Text in effect

    He's just not that into (seeing) you

    Every now and then we hit on something in the column that I don’t think is being written about much elsewhere and which I fight as hard as I can to get right. This week, the Digital Savant column was about the false intimacy we have with texting (which is as popular as ever and actually still growing in the U.S.).

    It’s couched in a column that seems like it starts out saying, “Yay for texting, here’s why it’s not going away) but then takes a bit of a left turn to talk about cheating, the way we communicate with loved ones, why voice calls still matter (even as we make less of them) and then, in a sort of coda, a short bit about our wedding anniversary last week. (Which, per my wife’s request to be mentioned as little as possible online, I didn’t really talk about. Aha, but she didn’t say I couldn’t mention her in a column for the newspaper. Loophole!)

    I mentioned that I was writing something along these lines last week on Twitter and Facebook and I got some really helpful, thoughtful responses that did help shape what I ended up writing. It’s one of those topics that everyone has an opinion about as I learned today when a reader emailed me:

    “It’s just cool to become a gibbering idiot who is no longer obligated to spell correctly and string together coherent thoughts.”

    Indeed, sir. Thx 4 the msg.

  • Products



    Sometimes the weekly column I do is made up of smaller bits instead of one big topic and that was the case this week when we rolled together three product reviews into a Digital Savant piece.

    Slightly longer versions of my reviews of the Nike+ FuelBand (beautiful, baffling), the Xbox Live game “Fez” (indie, retro, cool) and the Swivl for camera phones (rotatin’ follow-you action).

    Last week was pretty busy at work. I broke the news about the follow up to Wizard101, Pirate101 from the Austin developers at KingsIsle Entertainment. (The version that ran in print is a little different.)

    And I did a mostly-photos preview of the new Austin Microsoft Store in the blog.

    Things got even busier later in the week with the Moontower Comedy and Oddity Festival, a new thing in Austin that we covered. I ended up writing up The Divorce Show, Aziz Ansari’s fantastic headlining performance, the Theme Park improv show featuring Laraine Newman, Oscar Nuñez from “The Office” and performers I’d seen years and years ago in the sketch troupe “Totally False People.” Saturday night, my coverage ended with Wanda Sykes, which was also great. Aziz Ansari ended up Tweeting a link to the review of his show, which brought us a nice little surge of traffic.

    Still doing reviews over at Kirkus every week or two of children’s apps. In fact, apps were part of a discussion I had with Patrick Jordan, who does a weekly blog feature called “What’s On Your iPad.” I told him what’s on mine for a feature he ran last week.

    And I saved probably the biggest news for last. Because I work for a large company that owns several large papers and is in the process of consolidating lots of things across them, my Digital Savant column will be appearing in the other ones as well. That means the column will run more regularly in Atlanta, Dayton and Palm Beach.

    In Palm Beach, it started two weeks ago with a flourish. They interviewed me for a very nice introduction piece and ran a past column of mine that I suggested would be a good intro to the Digital Savant column. The first column brought me some very nice emails from South Florida from people either needing tech help or offering their own opinions about everything from LINUX to what devices are best for people suffering from disabilities like multiple sclerosis.

    All that recent activity made me exhausted enough for a bad crash early this week. I got several pieces of bad or weird news on the same day, including one about a writing project that I was rapidly losing confidence about (one thing about that; when a writer loses confidence in one piece of writing it can often trigger a chain reaction that leads to thinking you can’t write ANYTHING, EVER AGAIN. That can be dangerous.). It took pep talks from several wonderful people in my life including my writing partner, my wife and my two daughters, who each suddenly became angelic and nice to their dad for once and then things were fine again. I got a good night’s sleep and then today, the day of my 8th wedding anniversary, everything seemed fine again.

    It’s been a weird combination lately of big changes at work (not for me specifically but for the paper and the company in general), always feeling pressed for time at home and having gone on a jag of writing so much in a short period of time that the words began to ran together and I stopped processing. Add lack of sleep to that and things get worse really quick.

    Now my priority is resting up, getting back into the exercise routine and getting recharged because it’s almost summer, I have a few big tasks ahead of me and I’m gonna need every ounce of energy I’ve can generate. (Just not Nike Fuel points because I’m starting to think those are just useless.)

  • The big to-do

    Sometime in my early-early 30s, I went from flying by the seat of my pants on assignments and tasks to being a full-on productivity nerd. I’ve written about GTD a few times and at least once or twice a year I end up reassessing whether the software/apps I’m using are really working for me or if I should try something new.

    (It helps a lot that my editor is also into GTD and is very organized; you should see her desk. There aren’t huge piles of papers and junk on it like everybody else in the newsroom. It’s kind of amazing.)

    That’s enough preamble to say that I <a href="http://www.statesman.com/life/whats-next-on-the-to-do-list-make-1966882 viagra pour acheter.html”>wrote a story for the Statesman about to-do list apps, websites and tips. I finished working on it last week and didn’t read it again until today and I was pleased with how it turned out. The print version ran with really huge artwork and the whole package works well, I think. Some of the artwork was of my actual real-life to-do list and it ran so large you could actually see what I was doing last week (and what deadlines I had missed). I’d be embarrassed, but I think I lost the capacity for that when they started running my photo with the column every week.

    The other thing I wrote this week that ended up in print was about the night that Rick Perry made a mistake in a debate, Joe Paterno was fired and Ashton Kutcher mis-Tweeted something and the Internet got really mad.

    We went to Wurstfest a few times, which the kids are getting old enough to appreciate on a whole other level. They are now aware that this is a place that has not only sausage and music they dig but also rides and booths that give you prizes if you give a grownup enough tokens that you get from your dad.

    The holidays are getting here too quickly, but I’m enjoying the ride. So is Carolina:

  • Tick tock

    Photo via Computer Chess, LLC

    We had layoffs this week. They didn’t affect the newsroom directly (but, boy, indirectly… you could say we’re rattled, to say the least). I found out about it late; I was out of the office when word got around and I missed it in the paper the next morning.

    So that’s been rolling around my head yesterday and today and frankly, I look around my desk and think, “Should I start taking a few personal things home so they don’t all have to be taken out at once in a big box some day down the road?” We’re not at that point, I hope, but it doesn’t mean I can’t worry a little.

    It’s very hard to work in an environment where things are changing so quickly around you, when people you’ve gotten used to for literally more than a decade are out the door every few months. You start kind of laying low and just plowing through your work and wondering if there’ll be a day when the luck runs out. One day you go to work, a little grudgingly but pleased with what you do, and then next, that whole idea (you:work) just stops existing. You are shown the door. It’s not good thoughts. You hear the clock and you’re thinking Hemingway titles and the fun just seeps out of your day.

    But time rolls on. On Monday, I had a story run in the paper about retro computing. There’s an Austin movie that’s been shot called Computer Chess that I’m really looking forward to seeing. The film folks were a pleasure to deal with.

    I don’t think I’ve written much about it here, but my life from about 8 till high school had a lot of computers in it. My dad got me into it and I fondly remember those glasses-wearing geek days. The best part of the story was getting to visit Goodwill Computer Works and seeing my story up there. It made me feel really, really warm.

    I also had a Tech Monday column the same day about this week’s Game Developers Conference Online. I wish I had more time to see more panels over there, but they’re a lot more inside-baseball than we’d typically write about for our readers. Still, if you love video games, it’s fascinating stuff to see what developers talk about when they get together.

    I got to see author Neal Stephenson speak and hear Atari founder (and Steve Jobs’ former boss) Nolan Bushnell entertain a room with his typical bombastic silliness. (He IS smart and knowledgeable, though. To a scary degree.).

    Then on Wednesday, we broke a little news about Austin game studio Twisted Pixel being acquired by Microsoft Studios. Right after I wrote that story, I got to go to GDC one more time to hear some writers from Valve talk about their work on games like Portal 2 and Team Fortress 2. It was awesome. They were funny and inspiring and clearly work very hard at what they do to get it right. I didn’t write about that panel so I’m so pleased I got to attend.

    I don’t really know what else to talk about, but you can probably tell I’ve got a lot on my mind right now. We’re starting up new Trailers Without Pity videos soon (first new one should be up around Halloween) and I’ve got vacation in early November. I’ve been keeping myself distracted upgrading to iOS 5 on our various Apple devices and waiting for my iPhone 4S to come in the mail. (My 3GS, seriously.. it’s so close to death. Cracked, missing volume buttons, wheezing, practically.) The death of Steve Jobs hit me a little harder than I was expecting last week. I wasn’t an early Apple user, but boy did I learn to love the hardware in college when we used those machines exclusively to put out a daily newspaper.

    Now, my wife and I both use iPhones, my daughter uses an iPad almost every day and I do most of my writing on a MacBook Pro now when I’m not at work. (Sometimes even at work.) I was bummed when Jobs’ death got turned into a globalization debate, but I’m sure Steve himself would not have been surprised. He was used to being polarizing. I think he liked that on some level.

    We gave up Macs at work a while back and switched to PCs, right around the time all these huge changes started happening. Most of our workplace got a new version Microsoft Office installed the same day the layoffs happened. It’s probably not a great mental association to create, but I’m sure it was a coincidence.

    But, seriously, that vacation can’t get here soon enough, y’all.

  • 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.