Here is my most recent Macworld.com piece; a review of. FileXaminerr. As I say in the review, it’s like Get Info on steroids.
Macworld Review: FileXaminer
Posted in Announcements, General Store, and New Media and Tech
Category: New Media and Tech
My Newest Thing: SXSW Panel Moderator
Posted in Announcements, and New Media and Tech
My friend and fellow podcaster, Matt Edwards asked me to join a panel he’s on at this year’s South by Southwest Interactive conference. I’ll be moderating a session called IRL: Improving Communities with Social Media. It’s always nice to be asked, but it’s even nicer this time because I have a lot of passion for the idea of real community; the kind that exists outside the structures of social media, and the kind that can…
Appearance on the MacJury
Posted in General Store, New Media and Tech, and Pods and Presos
I had the chance to join Chuck Joiner’s MacJury for a discussion of social networking in the age of earthquakes and late night talk show wars. We talked a lot about the earthquake, not so much about the late night TV. We spent a lot of time discussing Twitter’s usefulness, and its place in our respective social media diets. It was a great discussion, with some really smart people from the Mac community. Listen here.
How I Read Now
Posted in General Store, New Media and Tech, and Random Personal Nonsense
Just now, I had a brainstorm. The 20-page PDF files I’ve been studying on my computer screen, as I work my way through an online learning program, could easily be transferred to my iPhone. From there, I will be able to sit in my most comfortable chair and hold the device at a most comfortable distance, with the text zoomed to a most comfortable size. I raced to my computer to affect the transfer. This…
Taste-Making in the Social Media Age
Posted in New Media and Tech, and Podcasting
I’m not here to offer advice to marketers about how to alter the tastes an culture consumption habits of social media users. That sort of thing makes my skin crawl, frankly. I have noticed, though, as I talk to fewer people IRL on a daily basis, and listen to less broadcast media, that my opinions, and certainly the opinions of people who consume way more media than I do, are influenced much more by the…
Blog Bullets: iPhone, Fundraising, and Social Media Skills Development
Posted in New Media and Tech, and Politics and Public Affairs
Time once again for a very irregular feature, in which I rattle off some short comments about a variety of seemingly random subjects. If you listen to my podcast, think of it as a text-y Lightning Round(tm). iPhone 3.1, the “oh yeah, that” of yesterday’s Apple announcement, features a bunch of accessibility updates that make me extremely happy, and more likely to use accessibility on a regular basis. These are genuinely updates, not new features,…
Random IPhone 3G S Thoughts
Posted in Access and Disability, and New Media and Tech
I’ve had lots of nice linkage since my post about iPhone 3G S accessibility. I don’t have enough new information for another proper post, but here are a couple of things I’ve been thinking about. The iPod Touch, my beloved iPhone substitute, was released, and updated to version 2.0 in conjunction with other iPod announcements, not during iPhone launches. So even if we are to see a hardware-updated iPod Touch, it will most likely be…
I’ll get right to the point: the iPhone 3G S includes several features that should make Apple’s smartphone accessible to many blind and visually impaired people for the first time. And rejoicing was heard in the land? We’ll see what we’ll see. The new phone, debuted at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference, and due for release on June 19, includes a version of Apple’s VoiceOver, the screen reader built into Mac OS X. Since we…
I’m acquainted with a lot of podcasters and writers. Some of my friends are both, and some have used the spoken medium to gain wider distribution for their written work. I love these people. I love that what they are selling is creative work. They are, in a very real sense, also selling themselves. Tools like podcasting, Twitter, Facebook, fan art and the like are the grassiest of grass roots, and the most personal of…
I’ve been following a local story about police shooting a couple of suspects when they surprised them in a car suspected of involvement in some robberies. Neighbors were angry at the cops, and broke out windows in several police cars. Big story, still under investigation. Too early to know exactly what happened. Many details yet to be made clear. I tracked the story on Twitter, where I follow a local TV station and two newspapers.…