Author Archives: Steve Mays

All I need is one more ending

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It’s the first day of anatomy class and the med students are being assigned cadavers. During the dissection process, one geeky but brilliant student discovers that his guy didn’t die from natural causes. He was, in fact, killed in a highly sophisticated manner that could only have been murder. The kind of high tech death that should have been undetectable.

We all know the next part. He takes his discovery to his professors, the cops, etc etc. Nobody listens.

The med student can’t find the dead guy’s name because the records have been erased. But his geeky-yet-adorable former girlfriend matches the face with images she finds online and discovers the guy was a blogger for the last ten or twelve years of his life.

The plot unfolds as our two protagonists dig back through the dead guy’s blog, looking for clues to who killed him and why.

Regular readers know this is as far as I get with my plots but, in a few days, Kay Henderson will come up with a thrilling conclusion.

If you can’t come up with a killer (snicker) ending, feel free to suggest a title.

Grokking new iMovie

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My first brush with the new iMovie was bumpy. I’m looking forward to taking another run at it, after watching the first of a two-part tutorial from from ScreenCasts Online.

ScreenCastsOnline is a weekly video podcast of computer based video tutorials. The video tutorials cover many different topics from week to week but predominantly cover mac related subjects. The video tutorials are in the form of "screencasts" which are basically videos of screen captures demonstrating a particular application or service, with a spoken commentary explaining what is happening on screen.

Don McAllister’s easy-to-follow demo/tour was just what I needed. I’ll still use iMovie HD (the previous version) for a lot of stuff, but when I need to throw something together quickly…

I can’t recommend ScreenCastsOnline highly enough. It’s a free podcasts but I recommend the Extra! membership ($50 a year).

Monkey Fez

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The Order of the Fez now has enough members to play ping pong doubles. Please rise and join me in recognizing David Brazeal, Order of the Fez #4:

“Hereby is submitted my application to the Order of the Fez. Thanks to ebay, I have obtained a fez from a monkey trainer in Tel Aviv.  It belonged to his dear, beloved macaque, Ahmed, who was recently crushed to death in a fruit stand accident.”

Queen of Live Blogging

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Google_earth_kayI rely on sites like engadget and gizmodo to live blog events like Wednesday’s big product launch of the new iPods. And I’m always amazed that anyone can listen/think/type that quickly.

But I’ll put my home girl Kay up against one and all when it comes to live blogging. Check out her coverage of Fred Thompson’s announcement in Des Moines yesterday. Seriously, it’s like being in the room…minus all the sweaty reporters.

Help Wanted. Tedious work, low wages

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I’m looking for a young man or woman to help me do some web stuff at work. This would be a paid internship or part-time gig to start, but could turn into something more. I’m posting here because I do almost everything here first. And nobody knows me better than you who haunt the digital hallways of smays.com.

This person will be chained to an oar, deep in the bowels of our digital galley ship. I’m searching for someone to help me keep up with a whole bunch of websites (Learfield sites and client sites). Things like checking and updating links, processing images for use online (a little Photoshop savvy would be very helpful), and the like. Too numerous to list here.

If you know a little about blogging and flickr and YouTube and such… go to the head of the line. If your first questions are about hours and pay… never mind. You’d hate this job. The person I’m looking for spends more time online than off. They sometimes check their email before they brush their teeth in the morning. They watch TV while holding an open laptop.

This ain’t a resume kind of position. I’d much rather get a link to a blog or a “why-I’m-the-right-person-for- this-job” video on YouTube. Otherwise, tell me in an email (no attachments) why you would be good at this. 500 words or less. If the email isn’t good, you’ll never get an interview.

If you know someone like this, send them a link to this post.

A special shout out to Corey and Lauren K: You guys were great at this and I’d love to have you back. Or if you know someone half a good, send them my way.

HD Radio looking for iTunes hook

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“Polk Audio will announce the next generation of HD Radio tuners that will establish a direction connection between HD and iPods — and in the process bring e-commerce to HD. In an alliance with Apple, Polk’s new I-Sonic ES2 HD Radio will include an iPod docking station that features a “tagging button” which will allow listeners to buy songs they hear on HD Radio stations via iTunes. The advancement requires HD stations to encode their signals and insiders say eight radio groups have committed to encoding.” –

– INSIDE RADIO

Key to efficient blogging

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Pick3This post at E-Meida Tidbits is aimed at journalists who worry about the additional time it takes to blog. But I think this is good advice for any blogger.

“…the key to blogging efficiently is this: DO NOT treat it like writing an article. That is, make blogging part of your ongoing processes for research, notetaking, and communication.

A blog post is not (or at least, it shouldn’t be) a writing assignment you must prep for and deliver as a finished package. Let go of the idea that you must have everything nailed down, organized, and edited before you publish.”

I’ve been stressing (just a little) about my light posting of late and had this idea for a T-shirt.

Time to rethink the AP model?

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Reply

Cory Bergman at Lost Remote raises some interesting questions about the AP model in light of Google’s deal to host AP stories (rather than link back to newspaper websites).

He also points to a blog post on the "prickly issue of local broadcasters pulling local newspaper stories via the wire and posting them online (and occasionally vice-versa). Now that both mediums have expanded to the web, they’re direct competitors. And the local wire goes a long way to beef up the depth of content on a local TV site."

I’m pretty sure he’s talking about TV broadcasters. I’m afraid nobody is much concerned about radio stations getting their news from Google.

iPod Nano

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Ipodnano_2I love my sleek black nano iPod. Works great in every respect. Couldn’t be happier with it. And I didn’t like the new nanos, based on the speculative images I’d seen on the rumor blogs. But when Uncle Steve pulled the new nano out of his pocket and put it up on that big screen… I was done. New nano on the way.

Here’s my rationale: I’m playing with video more and more and, well, obviously I need a way to watch/share my little projects.

I admit to being tempted (but only a little) by the new iPod touch. But I’ve got the MacBook with me at all times, so…

More on the nano once we test drive. Watch the TV spot.

Spreadsheet fun

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Only Apple could make spreadsheets fun. I only open Excel when someone sends me a file with some data and I have to take a look. But there are some tasks that really need a spreadsheet.

I had 5 minutes between tasks earlier this week, so I fired up Numbers, the new spreadsheet app in Apple iWork. I didn’t get far because as soon as I started playing with the chart tool, I was like a monkey with a piece of tin foil.

Yes, Excel can make charts and graphs but I always struggled with them and they didn’t look all that sexy when I did figure it out. I wish I could show you how much fun it was to swivel and turn and tweak this little chart (Ooh, ooh, ooh!)

I think the Apple folks would concede that Numbers is not for power users. More for math cripples like me that need a spreadsheet from time to time. I could list some of the neat features but don’t want to listen to MS Office vets tell me how easy it is to do the same thing in Excel.