1FPS|by David Chartier

TUAW Talkcast #4: Best of the Week & more - Join us tonight!

Thanks to the efforts of Mike Rose, TUAW has started up a weekly Talkcast powered by TalkShoe where a few of the bloggers hop into an audio + text chat room and we have a roundtable discussion of current Apple events. Readers are invited to join in to listen and chat, and we usually have an Ask TUAW portion of the show where we field questions from a few of them live on the air. Mike usually hosts, but he took tonight off so I had the reigns and it was only our 4th episode, but things are going really, really well. We’re gelling more as a team doing live audio (c’mon, we rarely ever meet face to face, let alone speak over audio; we’re a telecommuting company/blog) with every episode, and the readers really seem to be digging it.

At the end of our more recent shows, after we stop recording, we open up the lines and let everyone who is able to audio chat to let it rip. Of course with all these people there are the occasional false starts, but on the whole it’s a fun way to talk to the readers and hear some of their zany stories that top a lot of the stuff we get even over the tips line. It’s really, really cool, and I’m having one of those “damn I love my job” moments coming down from the experience right now. We have some great ideas on how to improve the show format and what to talk about, and I’m really excited for next week’s episode. You should swing by and join us - watch TUAW next week for details, as we might (or might not) be switching up the show time to see if more folks can make it.

And suddenly that disturbance in The Force Kenobi was complaining about was silenced, perhaps due to my new harmonious balance of posts and comments on TUAW.

Or perhaps I’m just surprised that I’ve been spending this much time in the comments with readers. Wow. I just hope it’s doing some good.

Technology Bloggers, what are they good for? ¬´ Scobleizer
The TUAW team has been whooping ass the past few months (well it’s really been ‘always’ if you ask me), and Robert Scoble has offered up some much-deserved (and graciously accepted) love. In his own personal A list of bloggers, Scoble listed TUAW as #13, and apparently left us as the only Apple-centric blog on the list. Awesome.

Speaking on behalf of the team (even though no one really gave me permission to): thanks Robert! It’s an honor to make your Google Reader-powered list, and we’ll keep on trying to kick ass so we can stay there.

Why yes, yes they are.

That said, I still don’t agree that comments should be eliminated entirely. That solution is using a sledgehammer to silence what I believe to still be a minority of off-balance jerks who were never taught - and never bothered to learn for themselves - the meanings of such wonderful colloquialisms as ’self-restraint’ and ‘being civil instead of a jackass.’

Of course, there could be a discussion surrounding how useful it could be to truly use a sledgehammer to quiet said jerks, but that’s a chat for another time.

After long negotiations, sacrificing a few things around the house and a lot of ‘have your people call my people’ with my manager (read: my wife, Jessi), we have been able to green-light the purchase of an iPhone. A triumph of both personal and professional interests since I’ll have a lot of iPhone-related blogging to do for TUAW and Download Squad, as well as writing for an Apple-related book I’m contributing to, I am definitely excited for such a (hopefully) rocktastic gadget.

As another perk, I realized that the iPhone might be the first mobile phone that can actually handle the CMS we use to run TUAW and Download Squad, which means I can probably perform at least some of my Assistant Lead-related duties for DLS from the wonders of my phone instead of being glued to my Mac all the time. This, as you might guess, is also a victory for spending more time with my family and on other hobbies.

The fact that the iPhone will be a tax write-off will be another perk, especially since I plan on purchasing Jessi a new Sprint phone she so badly needs around the middle or end of July. It’s just too bad it’s a Sprint phone, y’know?

[tags]iPhone, TuAW, Download Squad[/tags]

Weblogs, Inc.’s Ryan Block just celebrated his 5,000th post - holy crap. Like TUAW’s Dave Caolo, I suspect Mr. Block might also employ a small band of children - or a massive fleet of monkeys and typewriters - to get all that blogging done.

Tin foil hat theories aside, I found myself struck with the ‘me too’ syndrome, so I decided to check on how my post stats are doing. I’ve been going through quite a bit of personal and academic drama as of late, so things have been a blur the last few weeks; so much so that I didn’t notice when I passed the 2K mark. Our CMS tells me I’ve written 2,033 posts in my time at Weblogs, Inc. since July of 2005. Those posts are spread across TUAW, Download Squad, The Unofficial Photoshop Weblog and The Design Weblog - the former two receiving the bulk of those posts, with the latter two retired some time ago.

I’ve really enjoyed my time blogging, and the exciting thing - as cheesy as this may sound - is that I’m gearing up to do a lot more of it. I’m almost done with school, and after this semester I’ll have nothing but a senior thesis project to complete in the fall. We have some big plans for Download Squad and TUAW, and it should be a lot of fun to be a part of them.

Here’s to 2,033 more posts.

I finally have my first Macworld Expo under my belt, and what a trial-by-fire it was. We more or less had five bloggers and one HD-slinging cameraman for our TUAW coverage, and I’m pretty happy with the results. We shot quite a bit of video, but we had a few technical difficulties getting some of it up right away. No biggie though; that’s why we’re calling this ‘the beta year’. Our public numbers put a huge smile on our faces as well. According to SiteMeter, we had over 1.1m page views on Tuesday, which to my knowledge is our best.day.evar. This was the day we live-blogged Steve Jobs’ keynote, during which I was furiously typing away in the hall and Erica (you rock!) was translating and cleaning it all up for prime time.

Personally, I learned a lot. This was my first time covering a major event of any kind (including live-blogging a major keynote), and boy was it an experience. I met some great people, interviewed some awesome people (footage and podcasts pending) and was offered some exciting freelance opportunities. Three cheers for networking! We already have a ton of ideas for doing things differently and better, and I’m already excited for WWDC, even though it’s a completely different beast and not quite as consumer friendly.

Still, Macworld Expo 2007 rocked, and I am incredibly thankful I had the opportunity.

[tags]apple, blogging, macworld, macworld07, mwsf07, TUAW[/tags]

We’re covering the hell out of Macworld Expo 2007 at TUAW and I’m loving it. Two podcasts, tons of live keynote blogging and a boatload of showroom floor coverage throughout the entire week - and more - are all on the menu. We’re rocking Macworld pretty hard so far, and having a blast doing it. I also had the fortunate opportunity of putting together a few short intro bumps for all the video we’re shooting here, which will go well on my pending portfolio page.

All in all it’s been a great - though draining - experience so far, complete with meeting some of my co-bloggers in person for the first time. Stay tuned!

Lego Digital Designer | TUAW

This is too cool, especially since LEGO released it themselves and it’s a Universal Binary. I remember being so upset when my parents got rid of my giant hand-me-down (from my older brother) chest of basic LEGO pieces when I left for college - maybe this will finally fill that void.

[tags]fun, LEGO, TUAW[/tags]

w00t! TUAW is now in digg’s podcast directory!

We’re in there, though it looks like we (or digg?) have some quirks to work out in the feed. We don’t have a square logo set up for it, and all our podcasts seem to have been pubished on Nov 30th, 1999. Call me crazy, but I’m pretty sure we didn’t blow our entire podcast wad in one day, especially since I don’t think we even existed in 1999. Who cares though - we’re in there, and we have some big plans for our podcasts and vidcasts in the coming weeks and months. Stay tuned.