Tag: statesman

  • Ken Starks on A1 and ‘Camp events

    Ken Starks
    Ken Starks of The HeliOS Project. Photo by James Brosher, Austin American-Statesman.

    On the front page of Sunday’s newspaper, a lengthy profile I wrote about Ken Starks of The HeliOS Project ran. It was the second front-page story I’ve had in about a month (after many many months of no front-page stories), and the two articles tie together a bit and have a lot in common.

    For one thing, each story took several months to report and write, and were such large projects that I went through the thing many reporters do where you have so many pages of notes and memories and observances that you forget what it is you wanted to write and begin to panic and get stress headaches.

    Luckily, I have a very understanding editor and was given the time to sort it all out. I’m really proud of this story in particular because it’s one I’ve wanted to write for a long time, ever since I first learned what Ken and his organization does (they raise, rebuild and distribute donated computers to Austin’s poorest kids and community groups). It literally got me teary-eyed the first time I grasped the work they do and one thought just kept pounding in my head for almost two years after: I want to help. In some way, I want to help these guys. So I wrote a story. I hope it will help. I put a lot of work into it.

    On Monday, a different story I wrote, for Tech Monday, runs. It’s a column about how there aren’t as many BarCamp-style events in Austin as their used to be and about an upcoming “ProductCamp” event that’s bucking the trend. Nothing earth-shattering, but the ever-helpful Whurley helped offer some perspective on the subject and it’s always fun to chat with him.

    No NPR segment this week, but I’ve got some other things I’m working on, including a new Trailers Without Pity that was just posted and a separate blog post about a rash I had. Yes, for real.

  • Bar tab apps and e-mail in the cloud

    Rick Orr, co-founder of the company behind the 'TabbedOut' app. Photo by Ralph Barrera, Austin American-Statesman.

    A feature we started in the Statesman to feature mobile app creators in Austin appeared again in Monday’s paper. This one was about ATX Innovation, Inc., which makes an app called “TabbedOut” that allows you to open and pay off a bar or restaurant tab from your phone. Neat!

    Also on Monday, I did my first NPR All Tech Considered segment in a while. It was about companies like Google and Microsoft racing to offer cloud-based e-mail and other services to government agencies and city governments like Los Angeles.

    Here’s the blog post with the audio embedded and the page for the segment itself from All Things Considered.

    More stories coming in the next few days! It’s been a strange few weeks and things are starting to feel like they’re going back to normal.

  • 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.

  • Something silly, something serious

    '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
    The other important thing from this week was a story that ran on the front page of today’s Austin American-Statesman. It took me a few months to write and, as with any long project, I went through all the states of hating the story, wishing I’d never even started it, and then, as it started coming together in the end, passionately defending it and wanting to make everything about it perfect.

    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.

  • 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).

  • Busy in tech

    iphone 4
    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.

    Toobin' Lilly

    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.