Category: Personal

  • Short Post: ToodleDo printing woes…

    Oh ToodleDo, Oh ToodleDo, you know I love you for your sensuous tagging and sorting, for your alluring ease of task capture, and for your promiscuous spreading of my tasks across the cloud to computer, laptop, tablet and smart phone alike– you saucy service, you.  I’ve trumpeted about my love for you here, and verily…

  • 11 “Change Your Life” Productivity Apps & How to Use Them

    Note: I’ve revised and updated this post here. Over the last year or two I’ve been tweaking the suite of applications and services I use to keep my head above water– here are my 11 “Change Your Life” apps and how I use them. Please tell me about new ones in the comments. In alphabetical…

  • Mom for a Day. Oy Vey!

    My wife Kathi left to teach in L.A. this morning and so I became the POD (Parent on Duty), also known as “Substitute Mom.” That was less than 12 hours ago & I’m totally frazzled. Unlike most of my posts, this has nothing to do with media– think of it as highly individualized anthropology.  Cue…

  • Netflix’s Big OOPS– didn’t these guys take Psych 101?

    Topline takeway for this post: Netflix has screwed up, turning unconsidered background choices into front-of-mind considerations. They don’t understand how pleasure and satisfaction work. I’m on vacation and somewhat unplugged, but I was still connected enought to receive a surprising email from Netflix yesterday saying that if I want to retain both unlimited streaming and…

  • From the Bizarre Question Department: Voice Page Turning for iPad?

    I love reading while on the elliptical machine at the gym, and it’s a handy time to plough through reports and PDFs using the iPad (gen 1).  However, if I’m tracking my heartrate I have to take my hands OFF the paddles in order to go to the next page on the document, book, PDF…

  • New Delhi arrival: first thoughts…

    I arrived in New Delhi last night to attend and MC our launch of ad:tech New Delhi later this week.  It was a pleasant trip (thank you Continental Airlines) if just a little over 24 hours in length.  In a few minutes I’ll wander down to the lobby at the gorgeous Leela hotel in order…

  • Interesting Tidbits for March 16th

    Things worth reading for March 4th through March 16th: The State of the News Media 2011 – Here’s the direct study from Pew that Reuters summarized in the next link. Online readership and ad revenue overtake newspapers | Reuters – Reuters Summary: “For the first time, online readership and advertising revenue has surpassed that of print…

  • Book Review: “Scrawl,” a terrific YA novel by Mark Shulman

    Here’s the executive summary of this post: “Scrawl” reveals the inner life of a junior high school bully, a huge, violent, lower class, shambling boy named Tod Munn who is secretly brilliant but plays being an oaf to conceal his intelligence and retain his hidden-in-plain-sight status in the complex social economy of his school. We…

  • The Best Compliment Ever

    This morning my 5 year old son had a haircut, and upon sitting down in the chair he turned to Eddie — who also cuts my hair — and said, “I want to look just like Daddy.” Here’s an image that Kathi took at the time. Talk about a holiday present!

  • New Life Phases: “the Painted Ponies Go Up & Down”

    I’m writing this short post from the International Terminal at SFO as Kathi (@kathiiberens) and I head out to Le Web in Paris. We’ll be away until mid-month and it’s the first trip we’ve taken just as a duo since becoming parents in 2001. Our children are now 9 and 5, and my mother arrived…