I finally got around to reading The Long Tail by Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine. If you are not familiar with the “long Tail” concept (which seems unlikely) the basic idea is that while you can make a lot of money selling hit movies, music, books, etc, you can also make a surprising amount …
Made To Stick – Getting the Message Across
I just finished reading Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. In this wonderful book on communicating ideas so that people will remember them the author has 6 principles: Simplicity – Find the core or your idea, don’t bury the lead of your story Unexpectedness – Surprise will get people’s attention Concreteness …
Living with CPA (Continuous Partial Attention)
As I write this blog post I am also watching a movie. It is not that the movie is so bad, in fact it is a movie I like, but I suffer from CPA (Continuous Partial Attention). CPA has struck the nation with the fervor of an epidemic. We talk on cell phones while driving, …
Multitasking and the Magic Tea Machine
I have a small white box in my house that is labeled as a “microwave” but is known to my family as a “magic tea machine”. The reason for the re-labeling is that in the winter months it is quite common to open the door to this magic box and find a mug of tea, …
Fictionary – A Fun and Free Game
Here is a game you can play with only a dictionary and a group of creative people (Aunt Nell can just watch). Fictionary – noun In this game each person takes a turn being the person who finds an obscure word in the dictionary. You know the kind of word I mean. It is the …
Notes from the 2007 PNME (Podcast and New Media Expo)
I got back last Sunday from the PNME conference in Ontario, Californa. This is the biggest conference of the year for podcasters and it is a wonderful combination of smoozing, presentations, hobnobbing, and networking with other people who are also obsessed with podcasting. Tim and Emile Bourquin (The Podcast Brothers) did another wonderful job on …
A Case for Podcast Editing – Saving 100 Days Of Listener Time
I was looking at stats for one of my recent episodes of the Amateur Traveler podcast. I think it a good episode and it has had between 29,000 and 30,000 downloads so far. It occurred to me that I had spent a few hours editing the audio for that show. The guest had very interesting …
Call Recorder
I have a podcast that includes an interview almost every week. None of those interviews have been done face to face and some of them have not even been done from the same continent as the interviewee since my show is a travel show. I record all of my interviews using Skype. Sometimes I am …
Twas the night before MacWorld
a poem that I wrote for MacWold in 2007 Twas the night before MacWorld And all through the hall Not a vendor was stirring No, not at all The attendees lay snuggled asleep in their beds While visions of iPhones danced in their heads The iPhone is here! It’s coming right quick We’d been told …
Jumpcut review
One of the utilities that I wonder how I ever got along without is called Jumpcut by Steve Cook. My day job is working for an internet company so I live in my browser for hours and hours everyday. I am constantly copying or cutting and then pasting a piece of information from one place …