Back in prehistoric times, when I was in college and considered public radio something to listen to rather than a way to make a living, I noticed something. An awful lot of the theme songs on national radio shows, were written by the same composer. At the closing credits of programs including Morning Edition, Weekend […]
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But I think there SHOULD be an 8-bit tie!
As expected, everyone on the interwebs is going hog-wild with April Fool’s pranks. But just because someone makes up an idea as a joke doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea. Online retailer Thinkgeek, for instance, has posted 8 non-existent products on their main page today. The device that lets you test whether your electric […]
April 1st: a dangerous time to blog
April Fool’s Day: It’s the best of times, and the worst of times for bloggers. A significant portion of the blogging community is going to have a field day Sunday. If they had their druthers (what’s a druther anyway?) I think many bloggers would be writing great literature. Or at least slapstick comedy. So they […]
Philadelphia Airport gets virtual fitting room for shopping while you wait
One of my local airports, Philadelphia International is apparently the first airport in the country to get a new virtual fitting room, supplied by Intellifit. A couple Levi’s stores already have similar machines. So how does it work? Basically you stand in a kiosk that’s 7 feet in diameter and 8 feet high while a […]
Win a Wii just by writing about it
A while back I wrote a post for Download Squad on getting free stuff by entering contests on blogs. Here’s the thing, while major media contests usually get thousands of millions of entrants, smaller blogs often get dozens, or hundreds. If you use Google Blog Search, you can sometimes find blogs with very low readerships […]
On the dull blade of mobile technology
Yesterday Minimo 0.2 was released, and today Microsoft announced a limited beta for its new Deepfish web browser. Each represents a major advance over Pocket Internet Explorer. Minimo supports tabbed browsing, something that the commercial Opera Mobile browser already supports. Deepfish has a nifty new interface that lets you view an entire web page and […]
When it rains
As a freelancer, one of the things that scares me about taking even a short vacation is that I won’t have enough work to do when I come back to pay the bills. But just about a week after coming back from a few days off, I’ve found myself working on a piece about Indian […]
Now that’s real journalistic transparency
So there’s this guy named Justin. And he’s strapped a video camera to the side of his head. He wears it 24/7 and it broadcasts a live webstream at Justin.TV. Now, this isn’t meant to be a journalistic project in any way. He’s basically just wandering around San Francisco recording everything he does. Everything. Going […]
The Onion News Network launches
When I’d first heard that The Onion was launching a “TV” news network, I was dubious. Wasn’t this just going to be another Daily Show, but this time with clips that might actually be allowed on YouTube? I’d tried listening to The Onion’s radio news in the past. They’re kind of funny, but they’re too […]
A few Zoom H-4 complaints
I’ve had my Zoom H-4 a little longer now. And while I still think it’s a great recorder for $250, I do have three main complaints. When using the internal mics, the Zoom is very susceptible to handling noise. After a while you start to develop a feel for how to hold it without generating […]
New Jersey considers repealing the death penalty
I turned in a 5 minute story on the death penalty for this week’s episode of Justice Talking from NPR. I think the story came out pretty well. The impetus for my story was an Associated Press article I’d read a while back. Basically, New Jersey lawmakers are considering abolishing the death penalty in the […]
A transparency in journalism project
I’m going to try something new. Rather than just posting links to stories I’ve completed on this blog, I want to leverage some of the power of the internet to better tell a story. One of the hardest things to learn as a journalist is how to whittle a lot of information into a small […]
What’s up with Twitter – or why there should be limits to social networking
During my teenage years, I spent a lot of time hanging out on bulletin board systems and the Cleveland Freenet system. I’m no stranger to meeting people online. But a few years ago a friend sent me a link to Friendster. I signed up, posted some interests, linked to a few friends, and then couldn’t […]
COPA struck down
Back in the late 90s, it was considered trendy to pass legislation that would protect “the children” from “objectionable” material online. Never mind the fact that those laws were usually written in such a way that they would limit adults from accessing all sorts of content online. We’re not just talking about skeezy guys with […]