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Category: New Media and Tech

January 24, 2013
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Pack Rat

Posted in General Store, New Media and Tech, Podcasting, and Random Personal Nonsense

People talk a lot about hoarding nowadays. I’m told by multiple sources that there is a reality TV show featuring people who do it to the extent that their houses and lives are destroyed. Sounds super-entertaining, huh? That’s another subject, and one on which you probably wouldn’t like my opinion. But whether it’s inspired by basic cable or not, the word “hoarder” comes up all the time when people need a word to describe their inability to unburden themselves of the objects they have accumulated. Is it a different thing when you need to carry the objects with you? Before…

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January 23, 2013
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Return to Macworld

Posted in Announcements, General Store, and New Media and Tech

I used to go to Macworld Expo (now Macworld/iWorld) every year. I covered the show for MacUser along with a swarm of my colleagues, roving the aisles to find new products, and meeting with vendors who had secret things to show me. When I became a freelancer, I continued attending the show. I always had a book to sell, or a writing project research. A few times, I gave presentations or signed my books. I helped put on a few parties, and published a bucketful of podcasts, too. That was always a lot of fun. And then there was the…

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February 8, 2012
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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 be strengthened by access to online tools. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about our panel and the other participants as SXSW draws closer,…

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January 20, 2010
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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.

November 19, 2009
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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 from a woman who devours audio books, and gazes worshipfully at the shelves full of old paper books I have acquired an read throughout my…

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October 27, 2009
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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 online world than they would have been even a few short years ago. As a non-regular TV watcher who reads a lot of tech blogs,…

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September 10, 2009
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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, but they are the kind of thing you get in a .1 release that shows Apple’s commitment to accessibility that is useful, not just window-dressing.…

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June 12, 2009
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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 a few months. This makes me sad, but I’m going to check out the iPhone 3.0 software update; hoping against hope that some accessibility features…

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June 9, 2009
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iPhone 3G S Accessibility: What To Expect

Posted in Access and Disability, and New Media and Tech

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 learned at its launch two years ago that the iPhone is an OS X-adjacent device, lots of accessibility advocates, including me, have suggested that lighting…

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