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CES 2012 With RadioShack And Gizmodo

// January 9th, 2012 // No Comments » // blogging, technology

I’ve followed the tech industry for years, and this is always a huge time of the year. That’s right, it’s CES time – the Consumer Electronics Show takes place every January in Las Vegas, Nevada, and is a HUGE gathering with all things tech. I’m incredibly excited to be attending the show this year with RadioShack as we partner with Gizmodo!

We’ll be hitting the show floor every day with a video crew to bring you videos of the coolest new phones, tablets, TV, laptops, and any other gadget we can find. We’ll have a daily recap up on Gizmodo every afternoon, so if you want to get a snapshot of what’s going down in Vegas, that’s the best place to watch. We’ll also have all of our videos posted to The Shack Blog throughout the day, so you can check there, as well.

If you just think I’m awesome and want to follow along all day long, you should follow @RadioShackLIVE on Twitter – that’s where most of my CES-related tweets will be, live from the show floor with photos and such. It’s going to be a CRAZY week, so you won’t want to miss it.

This is also poised to be a pretty significant CES this year as Nokia prepares to unleash what it’s calling ‘Operation Rolling Thunder‘ in the U.S. Now, if I had a dollar for every time I’d heard a Nokia executive say they were going to focus on the U.S. market, I would probably be relaxing on a beach somewhere.

Thus far, in 2011, Nokia finally gave up on the aging Symbian platform and switched to using Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform. You already know my thoughts on Windows Phone (spoiler: I like it), and I’m pretty impressed that Nokia is already launching a Windows Phone device on a U.S. carrier – the Lumia 710 on T-Mobile. However, T-Mobile is the smallest of the top 4 carriers in the U.S., so it’ll be a much bigger deal if Nokia can convince AT&T, Verizon, or Sprint to launch a device.

The rumor (pretty much confirmed by the NYTimes) is that Nokia and AT&T will announce a high-end Windows Phone device, the Lumia 900. The last smartphone that Nokia was able to convince AT&T to carry was the disastrous ‘Surge‘, so it’s entirely likely AT&T was a little bit gun-shy with Nokia. We’ll have to see what the Lumia 900 amounts to.

So, with that, I’m off – don’t forget to follow @RadioShackLIVE on Twitter so you can keep up with the latest CES news from the show floor, and keep up on The Shack Blog so you can see all my awesome videos, too.

A New Year Begins

// December 31st, 2011 // 1 Comment » // blogging, technology

Wow, it’s hard to believe that an entire year has already passed. What a crazy one it’s been, too. In March, I started a new position as the Social Media Community Manager at RadioShack, taking the lead on all of our Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and The Shack Blog content. It’s been exciting and fun, but challenging, too. In July, I became a daddy to a beautiful little girl – what an adventure that’s been. The rest of the year has mostly been spent learning how life works with a kiddo – it’s entirely different than life before, that’s for sure.

So, what are my plans for 2012? For starters, I’m going to continue focusing on blogging more. I did a decent job of keeping this site updated through 2011, and I intend to continue that this year. I may even get crazy and go for a complete redesign, who knows. I have always wanted a hand-drawn theme for this site, so maybe I’ll finally do that. At the very least, you should expect to see more regular updates here.

Another goal for 2012 is to read a book every month. When I was a kid, I read all the time. I read all the Bluebonnet books, most of the Newberry Award winners, all that. I read a lot through high school too, and in college, by gradually drifted off. Most books will be business-oriented, with a healthy mix of Christian non-fiction and maybe something random thrown in. I’ll try to do a book review each month here, but I always hated writing book reviews in school, so maybe not.

Last, to use mobile technology more to create content. I used to do this nonstop, and I got spoiled with a laptop. So, for 2012, I’m going to try to create with my phone and iPad more. Starting with this post – it was written entirely on my iPad. More photos and videos, too. I’d like to say ill take a photo of something everyday and a video once a week, but we’ll see how that goes.

So that’s it – nothing fancy or major. What are your goals for 2012? I would challenge you to adopt the mobile technology one, personally. Most people would be astonished at what you can do with just the phone in your pocket.

How To Dress For A Job Interview

// December 26th, 2011 // No Comments » // blogging

Not that this applies to me currently, but this is handy information for anyone to have for reference. Plus, it’s from ‘Art of Manliness‘, so you know it’s good stuff. If Frank Sinatra and John Wayne ran a blog together, it would basically be Art of Manliness.

Speaking of, I need to buy a suit.

Buffer Helps You Avoid The Flood

// December 7th, 2011 // No Comments » // blogging, Social Networks

I have over 250 feeds in my RSS reader, and I keep up with a TON of news that way. I also often find things that I want to share. Unfortunately, due to my schedule, I often plow through hundreds of news items in one sitting, and if I were to share everything I wanted to, I would flood my Facebook and Twitter timelines and all my friends would unfollow me. I had often wished there was a way to have these sort of trickle into my timeline periodically, to avoid the flood.

Enter Buffer. Buffer is an awesome service that does exactly what I was looking for. You can load your ‘buffer’ with up to 10 posts (you can pay a small monthly fee for more, if you need them) and then those posts will trickle out to either Facebook, Twitter, or both at various times throughout the day.

The times that Buffer publishes your posts can be chosen in two different ways. By default, Buffer will analyze your Twitter and Facebook timelines to determine the best times for your individual usage. You can also specify certain times, if you prefer.

There are two main reasons I love Buffer:

1. It’s a ‘set-it-and-forget-it’ type service. Once I set everything up, I simply click a button to load content into my Buffer and that’s it – everything else is automated. I even get an email from Buffer when my queue is running low – a great reminder that I have room to add content, if I wish.

2. Multiple Posting Options. Buffer offers a handful of different ways to load content. You can use a Chrome plugin, a bookmarklet, integrate it into Google Reader’s ‘Send to’ option, or use email or the Android app. It’s genius, and it makes loading my Buffer completely easy no matter where I’m consuming content.

There are a few limits to Buffer, though. For starters, the free version only lets you load up 10 items at a time, and you can only have 1 Twitter and 1 Facebook account connected. If you want more of any of those, you’ll need to pony up $10/month for the ‘Pro’ service. The other downside is that Buffer auto-populates itself with the meta data of the page you’re looking at. Most of the time, this is NOT optimized for sharing via social networks, so I find myself having to tweak the post before I submit it to Buffer, which is somewhat annoying. It would be great if Buffer could automatically reformat its content to include just the headline of the post and the link, at least.

There are TONS of tools to help you be more productive and efficient with social media, and quite honestly, many of them are good, but many of them also require quite a bit of upkeep. Buffer solves this one problem for me, and it solves it really well. I would highly recommend Buffer if you’re a prolific sharer and want an easy way to spread that out a little bit.

Disclosure: I really honestly love Buffer. The links above are referral links – if you sign up through these links, I’ll get an extra post (and you start with an extra post, too!). Honestly, the free 10 posts are good enough for me.

 

Introduction: #KloutChevySonic

// December 2nd, 2011 // No Comments » // blogging

A few weeks ago, I got an email that I was eligible for a new Klout Perk from Chevy, so I clicked over to check it out. Apparently, Chevy is launching a new vehicle called the Sonic. It’s their new super small car, and they offered folks with certian Klout scores a free 3-day loan to test the car out and see what it’s about. So….I filled in my information and picked up the car this afternoon.

Here’s my quick walkthrough video of the car itself:

Apologies for the crappy quality – I have a new ROM on my G2 and I experimented with the 720p settings. I’ll use a different phone the rest of the time.

In any case, that’s the car – I’ll be logging the trip each day, highlighting new discoveries of the car and cool features. I’ve never ‘reviewed’ a car before, so I’m pretty jazzed for the opportunity.