The Zoom H2 Handy Recorder has been shipping for a few days now. This unit is a followup to Zoom’s H4 Handy Recorder. It’s smaller, lighter, seems to have a sturdier plastic case, can record 4 channels at once (instead of 2), and costs about $100 less. First off, let me say that I do […]
Getting Things Done for bloggers
Web Worker Daily has published an excellent post on GTD for Bloggers. Essentially GTD (Getting Things Done) is a method for you know… doing stuff. But more than that, it’s a set of guidelines for organizing your work and increasing productivity while reducing the amount of time you spend doing useless time-sucking stuff. At least, […]
When no news is good news
The public editor for the New York Times (ie: ombudsman) has an interesting piece on the negative consequences of search engine optimization. What’s search engine optimization? In a nutshell, it’s a series of techniques web publishers can take to push their articles toward the top of search results from search engines like Google and Yahoo. […]
Anchorwoman Canceled: even T&A doesn’t sell local news
Fox has canceled Anchorwomanafter just one episode. I’m not going to delve into this one too extensively, since the subject’s been covered in depth by my friends at TV Squad. But wow. I have a tendency to watch TV shows and movies about journalism. Sure, it’s navel-gazing stuf for me, but I find it fascinating […]
Zoom H4 firmware update is kind of anticlimactic
I’ve been doing a lot of recording with my Zoom H4 over the last few weeks. The more I use it, the more I learn. Now that I’ve figured out how to eliminate the electronic pulsing tone in recordings, I’ve turned my attention to getting the best use out of the built in mics. In […]
LA Times: Google News isn’t journalism
You know I’m starting to think I should only update this blog on the weekends. Throughout the week the news that dominates tech news tracker Techmeme tends to be about Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and other companies developing new products, buying one another, and offering new services. Very few products are launched on the weekends, and […]
eBay should have snatched up GrandCentral, not Google
It’s funny, but when I’m covering breaking news, I rarely bother to think about how it affects me. If I’m covering a political race, I often don’t decide who I’ll vote for until the last possible second. And when Skype was experiencing major service outages this week, I reported it as news, without stopping to […]
Publish2 blog roundup: the day after
So yesterday Scott Karp goes and announces a new social news service based around journalists. It won’t be up and running for a while yet, but he wanted to build buzz, and it seems to have worked. Here are a few thought provoking articles written by media bloggers: I don’t care what journalists are reading; […]
Publish2 – building a better Digg or just giving more power to news gatekeepers?
Scott Karp of Publishing2.0 has announces his new project, cleverly titled Publish2. At least he left the .0 out of the name. Karp is joined in this venture by Robert Young, with advice from big name media bloggers/thinkers like Jeff Jarvis. If you’re wondering why I haven’t described exactly what Publish2 is and how it […]
Freelancing pays (a little)
My first wedding anniversary is coming up in a few weeks. This morning it occurred to me that this means I’m celebrating another anniversary. Exactly one year ago I quit my full time job and struck out on my own as a freelancer. (Yes, I quit my job just a few weeks before the wedding. […]
Random acts of radio
Round three of the Public Radio Talent Quest is underway. For this round, the 7 remaining contestants were asked to conduct an interview with… pretty much anybody. And also to be interviewed by a public radio host in their home towns. The participants interviewed everyone from an 11 year old African American who sings Chinese […]
Bush vs. Zombies: fun with press conference tape
This American Life ran a piece 10 years ago that made me fall in love with radio. OK, that’s probably an overstatement I was obviously listening to radio at the time, or I never would have heard the story. But at the time I was a college student immersed in media criticism, and something in […]
Mr. Sulzberger, tear down this (Times Select) wall!
The New York Post is reporting that The New York Times is getting ready to eliminate its Time Select subscription service. Unlike pretty much every other newspaper on the planet (with the exception of the Wall Street Journal), the New York Times has maintained a wall between free and subscription content online. The idea might […]
Radical transparency in the blogosphere
Yesterday some kid who happens to share a name with a product manager at Google sent a juicy tip to several high profile tech blogs about some soon to be announced new Apple products and upgrades. Gizmodo went ahead and published an article based on the tip, labeling it as a rumor, albeit one from […]
Historic church may have to sell its Tiffany Windows
I have a piece on Weekend America this week about a historic church in Elizabeth, NJ that may have to sell its stained glass windows. A hundred years ago, Elizabeth was one of the wealthiest communities in the state, and St. John’s Episcopal Church could afford to commission expensive windows from Louis Comfort Tiffany. Elizabeth’s […]
Insignificance Tour of the American Museum of Natural History
A few weeks ago I read a story about a new tour at the American Museum of Natural History. As part of an educational program for college students, 19 year old Jing Li had designed an “insignificance tour” of the museum, which he’s been conducting throughout the summer. The idea is for students to come […]