Wed Jul 09, 2008
So You Want To Be a Tech Blogger?
First of all, don't blog industry news. Don't spend all day linking to Engadget and reposting press releases. Have you seen lately how many people subscribe to Engadget's RSS feed? I'm pretty sure whoever is reading your site and somehow found your site is probably reading the top 5 tech sites already. Please don't blog when Apple releases a new iPod. Don't post it as if no one knew about this already. I hate when Apple releases a new product. I wait 25 minutes, go into NetNewsWire and mark everything as read because 50 blogs just posted the same exact story.
The folks at Macworld and Ars.Technica are busy creating in-depth first looks of that new product with photos and geeky info that is actually important. Everyone else is just reposting the Apple press release. That's the first thing in tech blogging. Most of the blogs I subscribe too (97 total) are single tech bloggers who write excellent editorials and opinion pieces on current and upcoming technology and their insight is important to me. If you have zero insight and don't come up with your own content then I won't follow your blog and visit the next time Macrumors links to you with "spyshots" of a new product but after that, I won't come back.
There are only a few bloggers that I truly respect. Read their content and you'll see what I mean.
1. Ryan Block (Editor-in-chief, Engadget)
2. Jacqui Cheng (Assistant Editor, Ars.Technica
3. Jeremy Horwitz (Editor-in-chief, iLounge)
4. Violet Blue (Blogger, various publications)
5. Paul Thurrott (Editor, Windows IT Pro)
6. Scott Beale (Primary Tenticle, Laughing Squid)
7. Jason Snell (Editor-in-chief, Macworld Magazine)
8. Scott Kelby (Author, President, NAPP)
These men and women have posted very influential items and their writing style is each unique. Read their books and follow their personal blogs because these people have it down. They're not snobby, they don't ignore fans and they're all very hard working. If you want to be a tech blogger, researching each of these individuals writing style is where to start.
Don't be afraid to give your opinion. If you're a dumbass then keep your opinion to yourself but if you have something to say and can deliver it well then go ahead. I'll read it and might disagree but will respect you more for giving your opinion. My posts here are sometimes totally incorrect and the delivery is sometimes off but I still do posts because I have something to say. If you have nothing to say and just post links to tech sites all day then you're wasting everyone's time.
Don't review products that companies send you and call yourself a writer. I did this when I first started out. I was posting opinion articles and news articles daily and would ask every company for free stuff. I was snobby about it and always had a different shirt or iPod case but all of that doesn't matter as you get older. It's fun to receive free stuff in the mail but at the end of the day, it's still just one guy's opinion. Lately, I don't ask for free stuff. I email friends at companies that I have a relationship with and compliment them on a product release or email companies when I have bought a product and really enjoyed using it. I also buy a lot of technology gear and if I like it then it'll be reviewed by me. The same goes for products I hate but I am always respectful to the company and email them or call to give them my concerns. Sometimes its user error and other times the product really does suck and so I'll talk about it here.
If a company insists on sending you a review unit, review it and be honest as if you bought it yourself. Offer to send the unit back to the company and follow up with them and link them to the review when it's posted. Sometimes, companies link to reviews on their website and you'll get some extra visitors that way. It's important to develop relationships with 3rd party developers of software and hardware because they can help you out some day.
Attend trade shows. This is extremely important and it helps you in a few different ways. The first thing is you'll meet people at companies you've been speaking to for the past year. It's nice to put a face to the name and will open up more opportunities in the form of cross-promotion, advertising and some review units. You'll meet the writers and bloggers that you look up to and they'll meet you. Swapping business cards and making connections is very important. Attending a trade show gives you a lot of inspiration for content and you'll have photos, audio, video and blog ideas for a few months after you get home. Your mind will grow. You'll find new blogs, meet new people learn skills in various sessions. What I'm getting at is, as a blogger you're just another wordpress blog on the web but at Macworld, CES, Photoshop World and Gnomedex (to name a few) you're a face and it legitimizes your trade and opens up more opportunities. Now when someone over at Engadget sees your blog they say, "oh that's Adam from the party last week" instead of, "what does this guy have to say and why do I care?" Go to trade shows, you won't regret it.
To bring things back, remember that none of this matters if you're a terrible writer. I tend to ramble too much and I also lack structure in my blog posts. Ideas just fly around and over the years this has improved but is not perfect. I read each of my blog posts 4 times before they go out and there's still errors that I have to go back and fix. You have to love technology and be able to express that to your readers. Don't use the excuse that, "I only have 100 RSS subscribers" as a reason to have poor writing skills. Write as if you have 10 thousand subscribers and feel proud of your work. Happy blogging!
If you have any more questions, just let me know and I'll try to cover them.
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Tue Jul 08, 2008
Touchscreen Phones Love to Buzz
Gizmodo posted some details about the Blackberry "iPhone Killer" Thunder's keyboard.
...it has two big tricks: The screen itself is "sort of like a big button," so it pushes in a little bit with a clicky sound, and it buzzes where you push it (localized haptics).
Haptics as far as the Blackberry is concerned is a vibration feedback that lets the user know that they just touched something. What's funny is every "iPhone Killer" that I've used and read about uses haptics for their touchscreen interfaces. They use this on virtual keyboards, icons and pretty much every thing you touch with your finger.
If I was going to engineer an iPhone killer, why would there be a feature that isn't on the iPhone. What inspired these mobile companies to think they need touch feedback for every action? I used the Samsung Instinct and some other phone that was an iPhone killer from Verizon and both of these were unbearable to type on because it kept buzzing! It's annoying as hell and my first priority was to disable the sound so I could get some work done.
I hope to god that RIM doesn't include this feature on their upcoming handheld because I was considering getting one of these when it comes out.
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Subscribe to the DailyTechTalk RSS Feed
We have an RSS Feed. It would be cool to have some new subscribers. I'm uploading daily now so don't miss a beat and subscribe.
DTT RSS
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Respond To Your Emails!
When I send you an email, it's meant to give you some info. I did not write within the email that you don't need to respond but you take it upon yourself to simply ignore it. No one gets that much email. At my last full time job, I was sending and receiving nearly 400 messages a day and never let an email go more than 8 hours without responding to it. I was organized, had a system and never just let an email float out there without a response.
If I email your company and say, "I'd like you to give me one million dollars for being a loyal customer", it would be respectful of you to at least respond and say, "That's unrealistic. Have a good day." You've responded and now we're straight. Instead, I ask how things are going, offer you adspace on my site FOR FREE or simply ask about a new product and yet I get no response.
As proof of this ratio, at my old job (before I left) i had 30 thousand sent items in my outbox but my inbox only had 12 thousand messages. My DailyTechTalk mailbox that I totally emptied back in April has 3 thousand sent messages and 2 thousand in the inbox. (that excludes BACN). Why don't you just respond for god's sake?
I agree that not every email needs a response but when I bought an eBay item from you, email you looking for a freelance writing gig at your publishing company or looking to test out your new software that's in private beta, just respond back with "no" or something like that. It's not very hard. I want to try out your beta software but you don't want me to so instead of ignoring that email, just say "no" and I'll understand. It's not that hard! I've never EVER ignored an email because I respect and understand that someone took the time to write a letter to me so they deserve to get a response from me. No matter how busy I get, that will always be the case and you can quote me on that.
I've worked for myself, small businesses with less than 20 employees and even Apple Computer as a manager at one of their retail stores and no one deserves the disrespect of sending an email and not getting a response. It's rude and a big ef you to the sender.
What makes this epidemic of ignoring emails really tick me off is when I see someone in person that I emailed and when I bring up the email I sent a month ago that they didn't respond to, they say, "yeah i got that but didn't care or it wasn't too important." I bet if I sent you 10 thousand dollars over Paypal it would get opened immediately, wouldn't it? I emailed someone in publishing that I respect, have interviewed and looked up to for years now asking if there are any internships at his publishing company. No response. I emailed a 2nd time simply asking if he got the message and nothing. It would take less than 5 seconds to say, "there's nothing available. Good luck" but instead I don't know if it got to him or not. For me, it's now awkward when I see him out. Do I say hi or does he hate me now or something? When you don't respond to an email, it's telling me that we're no longer on speaking terms and that's what I feel.
Let's stop this vicious circle and just respond to our freaking emails.
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MacBook Pro Redesign
The Aluminum PowerBook look and feel first appeared in the form of a 17” form factor in January of 2003 and was followed shortly after by a 15” version. The enclosure got thinner and received a few minor cosmetic changes in January of 2006 when Apple killed PowerBook and released MacBook Pro as its successor. Aside from those few changes, the professional line of Apple notebooks has been greatly unchanged in over 5 years. I say if it isn’t broke then don’t fix it and today’s MacBook Pro is a rock solid, well built and fantastic notebook.
There are rumors that have been floating around for over a year now that Apple is working on a completely redesigned MacBook Pro. That’s great news but I won’t be buying one. I’ve picked this opportunity to purchase the fastest and best of the current generation MacBook Pro. I’m actually not a huge fan of the current design and would love to see a change but some aspects about a new model have me nervous like switching to an “air” style keyboard and shaving more height off the shell and switching to a built-in battery.
I’m a blogger with some audio / video editing expertise so I don’ t need 3GHz in a notebook. The first version of anything is always going to have issues. Since Apple has had since 2006 to perfect Intel chips in the MacBook Pro, it’s a perfect time to upgrade my computer. Apple might have some kick ass features in a new model but a redesign will not come without hiccups.
My current machine is a 2.33GHz Core2Duo MacBook Pro. It has 3Gbps of ram and I’ve upgraded the hard drive to a 7200RPM 200Gb model. It’s been an awesome machine and I don’t have to get a new one but getting the last model of the current MacBook Pro is important to me.
What’s in the mail? A 2.6Ghz Core2Duo 15” MacBook Pro with 4Gbs of Ram and a 200Gb 7200RPM hard drive. It’s the fastest notebook Apple makes and with a 3 year warranty, I’ll have a high resale value even if Apple completely redesigns the exterior.
I’m very happy with the purchase and I say good luck to everyone holding out for a redesigned MacBook Pro. It will have issues and that’s just the unfortunate truth.
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How Do You Find The Time? [Blogging]
One of my friends and a fellow podcaster asked me last week how do I find the time to blog so much. I found that kind of funny and figured that it would be a good idea to address that.
I blog for 1-2 hours a day. If I get off work at 5PM then I blog until 7 with no exceptions. I might post some things up on Saturday or Sunday but it’s a Mon-Fri job for me. As far as content goes, that’s the easy part. I’ve got it easy compared to radio disk jockeys that have a 4 hour morning show each day. Throughout my day, things stick out at me. I see something happen and a blog entry comes to mind. Since the iPhone doesn’t have a “to-do” feature without Jailbreaking it, I’m forced to email myself ideas for content. As an example, I wrote 4 pieces today, each about ¾ of a page long. It’s easy, inspiration is all around you.
As you’ll notice, DailyTechTalk isn’t full of news or reviews. I don’t ask companies for free stuff anymore but when I buy a product that’s worth chatting about, it’ll go here but for the most part DTT is a place to express my thoughts and opinions on technology. The same goes for my other blogs.
I love writing opinion pieces and I don’t hold anything back. My writing style isn’t professional and I don’t think about readers when I make absurd claims about things that might be incorrect. This is not a newspaper and there is no editor. That’s sometimes my downfall but others love the raw aspect of things.
Are we hiring? Yes. If you can write and have something to say then bring it on. This is not a place for you to regurgitate news from other blogs and repost press releases. We used to do that and people hate it. This blog is meant for people like me who subscribe to the top 25 technology blogs, they’ve seen the same announcement 8 times and they’re looking for tech talk on current topics & trends. I hope that covers things up for you.
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Mon Jul 07, 2008
The iPhone 3G: Coverage
I haven’t talked about the 3G iPhone since it was announced mainly because there’s not much that I can add that hasn’t already been said. I’ve been marking all iPhone content as “read” in NetNewsWire because every blog speculates and then gets the facts later. I can understand why Engadget and Gizmodo readers are always expressing their distaste with the constant iPhone coverage because I’m a Mac user and iPhone owner and I can’t stand it either.
Well, today is the 7th, which means there are only 4 more days until the iPhone 3G release. If you want to be a fanboy, 3 days and 23 hours for me as of this writing.
I’ll be doing some unique coverage:
A) Live broadcast on Justin.TV from the Apple Store Line starting Thursday at 8:00PM PST from The Apple Store.
B) Unboxing photos
C) Editorials and first impressions of the device over the next 2 weeks
What I won’t be doing is posting daily tidbits about how awesome the iPhone is with helpful tips. That’s just a waste of my RSS feed so it’ll be articles about the iPhone and nothing more. iLounge and other sites will post better photos than me, others like crunchgear will have walkthrough videos that rock and Gizmodo will flood you with tips and tricks.
I do hope you’ll all join me on the live broadcast from the Apple Store. I’ve received two suggestions. I should either line up at the Palo Alto store where the Mac celebrities will go or I should camp out at the San Francisco Apple Store where the masses will be and it will make more a more interesting broadcast. I’m not sure yet. It depends on how many people are in line the day before at each store. If San Francisco’s store only has 10 people in line, I’ll be going there. Palo Alto is quite a ride for me on BART to get there and back and the ride home would be some quality time groping the new device.
Anyway, I haven’t decided yet but there will be iPhone coverage starting on Thursday.
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Starbucks is Becoming Irrelevant
Back home, Starbucks was the spot. We’d take a 15 -30 minute drive to hang out at Starbucks and chat with friends. There were a couple of notebook users but mostly it was friends meeting and studying for exams. The reason is that, aside from Starbucks, there were only 3 local coffee shops in our area that were independent. There wasn’t a café and most independents didn’t know what Wi-fi was. You’d have to ask, “do you have wireless?” and even the owner would say, “we should but I don’t know what it’s called.”
In San Francisco, where freelance and tele-working is a large part of the population, many working professionals go to Cafes to get connected and get work done. Apartments are small here due to high housing costs and the best way to get out of the house but still make deadline is cafés.
There are places like Citizen Space which is a space for anyone to come and get work done in a co-working atmosphere but there just aren’t enough of those. I’d say San Francisco is leading the trend when it comes to more freelance and less full time employees. There is still a Starbucks on every corner but never will you see a laptop out and most of the tables are empty as working professionals in suits come in, grab their coffee with plans of drinking it from their desk.
The laptops are at local independent coffee shops and cafes and that means those places are more profitable. Fresh squeezed OJ with bagel is $6 dollars. String a few coffees and bottled water out over the course of 6 hours and they’ve made nearly $15 dollars on you being here. Starbucks sells a lot of grande coffee to a lot of people but without free wi-fi and with an uninviting atmosphere, I’d say Starbucks is not making the margins of independent shops and in the bay area, is barely close to breaking even.
The company has announced losses recently but they’re certainly losing this game to independent shops as far as I can see. I can’t vouch for every major US city but in San Franciso, I can see how this is a battle they can’t win.
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Justine Ezarik Impressed Me Today
I've known Justine for a long time now and she's always amazed me with talent on camera but her blog posts have never been thought provoking, full of meaning and as honest as the post she put up today.
Twitter vs Friendfeed is the most open & honest post I've ever seen by Justine in my 7 year history of reading her blogs and following her Internet trails. This single post through me back. The laughs stopped, she got her poker face on and spoke to us like a bunch of web2.0 bubble babies and set the record straight on this whole Twitter Vs. FriendFeed debacle.
Thank you Justine. Your post was perfect and I respect you more for having posted it. By the way, you should do more posts like this.
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Sat Jul 05, 2008
Tech Meetups Need A Revamp
Since moving to San Francisco, I've been attending 2 technology meetups a week. Prior to that, it was about one a month. These "meetups" have always been the same format but since I was in Florida before and we're a bunch of hicks down there, it was my assumption that Floridians just weren't doing it right. I've now realized that all of these gatherings are the same. Unfortunately, they usually suck and I go home feeling more lost than I did when I showed up.
Here's the format for a successful meetup:
1. Pick a product, technology or company that interests you.
2. Get a friend of yours to give you space in their office or find a quiet bar that isn't too packed.
3. Place the meetup info on Upcoming.org and have people blog about it to spread the word.
4. Show up and either A. bring food & drinks or B. ask other people to bring food & drinks.
5. Find people you already know, stand around, swap business cards and talk about anything you want. You don't have to talk about whatever it was that the meetup was focused on.
That's pretty much it. It's the same 15-50 people meeting at different places around the city to talk about the same stuff and you might meet some new people if you're outgoing. If you're popular, they'll come to you.
Why I hate this format: It's pretty simple. I go to a Twitter, Flickr or Wordpress meetup to learn about the product more but that never happens. The conversation is never about the product and it's incredibly hard to break into a circle of friends chatting away and introduce yourself. There's needs to be a format and some kind of organization to these things.
1. Let's have an RSVP list and each person can bring a guest or two.
2. Let's get more organization as far as freebies. Drinks are free or they're not. Please specify.
3. FORMAT. Someone needs to be the organizer / speaker and maybe we all meet in a room and they introduce themselves, there's some kind of name tag deal and other roundtable discussions for the first hour. From there, we can mingle and meet other people.
At the Wordpress meetup, no one was talking Wordpress and it was a bunch of personal conversations and everyone knew each other already. I didn't know if food and drink were included until I got there. The only icebreaker for me was my LaughingSquid shirt. I wanted to learn more about Wordpress but who in the group worked for the company that I could ask questions. I left that evening learning a couple of things from Matt of WP but he and I didn't chat until the after-party so at the actual meetup, I learned squat. Maybe it's my fault for thinking a meetup resembles a barcamp but I am wanting more and not getting it. It's fun meeting new people but that's all I see in these meetups.
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