Category Archives: Thinking

I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing: The Agony & Ecstasy of the Real-time Web

I find myself at a cross­roads with new real-time tools and old school meth­ods like RSS. I’m find­ing myself more drawn into Twit­ter than ever before for track­ing the peo­ple and top­ics I care about most, but I’m always para­noid that I’m miss­ing some­thing bril­liant as the news flies by. So I keep Google Read­er locked and loaded as back­up, only to find myself over­whelmed by 1000+ unread items when I arrive, much of which I’ve seen through­out the day on oth­er ser­vices. The real-time web is a thrill ride of instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion for the news-obsessed, but the oth­er side of that coin means we’re prob­a­bly miss­ing more rel­e­vant sto­ries than we realize.

How do I rec­on­cile these things? Will real-time tools ever offer the reas­sur­ance RSS does for the news junkies among us?

Con­tin­ue read­ing “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing: The Agony & Ecsta­sy of the Real-time Web”

Making the Internet Fun Again

I’ve been self­ish about how I share things online. When I was writ­ing reg­u­lar­ly as a crit­ic, wield­ing my blog like a bull­horn for what­ev­er I desired, I shared with near wreck­less aban­don on vir­tu­al­ly every plat­form at my dis­pos­al. Lately, I’ve turned inward, keep­ing cool arti­cles and ideas nes­tled snug­ly in Instapa­per, or worse, my head, like they’re some pre­cious bauble to hold close. Well, that’s going to change. I’m vow­ing to share more in 2012.

Some­thing I’ve come to love about the most excel­lent writ­ers (call them “cura­tors” if you must) is how they edi­to­ri­al­ize links. I think I’ve been slow to accept this because with music writ­ing, it could be mon­e­tized in clear ways by pub­lish­ing through a third par­ty. When you read great stuff at blogs like dar­ing fire­ball, you mar­vel at how far a link and an ounce of edi­to­r­i­al can take you. Same is true for Twit­ter fol­lows like David Carr, who just re-shared his insight­ful inter­view with Ter­ry Gross on Fresh Air specif­i­cal­ly about this top­ic. Serendip­i­ty! It’s what makes the Inter­net fun and I think that I for­got that some­where along the way while hoard­ing links and arti­cles and ideas in Google Read­er and Reed­er and Twit­ter and Tum­blr and Instapa­per and all the oth­er ways we use the web today.

So 2012 at Ram­say­ings will be about shar­ing those insights. Brace yourself.

Making Tech Resolutions for 2012

Did­n’t fol­low through on any of my res­o­lu­tions last year. Those CDs? Still in box­es or in the rack that dom­i­nates a full wall in our walk-in clos­et. New goal? Get them out of the house by the end of Jan­u­ary. DVDs, too. I’m going to go wild with Hand­brake and get all the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion titles I nev­er get around to watch­ing onto the new iMac I plan on buy­ing first thing next year.

Upgrad­ing the home stereo, too. Thanks to the Wire­cut­ter, we’re going all in with a Pio­neer VSX 1021. I can’t wait to take advan­tage of Air­play like nev­er before and final­ly get some good use out of my beau­ti­ful Axiom Audio speak­ers I bought back when. Can’t wait!

Impor­tant­ly, I need to unplug more. It’s one thing to stream music through the home and anoth­er to be glued to my iPhone. Need to cut down on that and spend more time away from glow­ing screens and non­stop news­feeds. I’m an info junkie through and through, but I need to give my eyes a break and make time for oth­er things.

What are your per­son­al tech res­o­lu­tions for 2012? Any big pur­chas­es on the hori­zon? Ser­vices you’re plan­ning on optimizing?

How I Fell in Love with the iPad

I know I’m the last per­son on Earth to admit this, but I’m in love with the iPad. Strike that: I’m in love with my wife’s iPad, which I gift­ed her two years ago. At first i thought my iPhone was all I need­ed. I start­ed play­ing with it Thurs­day night and now it’s on my lap non­stop. I’m writ­ing this post on it!

Favorite app? Cur­rent­ly obssessed with Flip­board. Real­ly changes the way I engage my feeds and browse the web. It’s fun again!

What am I look­ing for­ward to? Read­ing. I’m des­per­ate to embrace dig­i­tal books because I can’t shoe­horn anoth­er in our mod­est home. Hope this screen is addic­tive for read­ing as it is every­thing else.

If you have an iPad and are a fan, let me know what your favorite apps are in the comments!

Goodbye, R.E.M.

Like many guys my age, R.E.M. was the band that helped me through that awk­ward phase, i.e. my entire life in every aspect from the time I was 11 until my mid-twen­ties. Their lyrics described almost every feel­ing I could feel; that ambi­gu­i­ty, that dis­com­fort, that uncer­tain­ty of being myself.  It all began when my ele­men­tary school bud­dies start­ed mak­ing fun of “Stand,” and it did­n’t stop until grad school. I would bor­row a swim team­mate’s tape of “Green” and lis­ten non­stop on road trips and I kept lis­ten­ing until the after­noon I bought “Reveal” at Rocks in Your Head in SoHo.

My fan­dom crys­tal­lized in the fall of ’95, when I watched this per­for­mance of “Wake Up Bomb” at the MTV Europe Music Awards while I was on exchange in Denmark.

That to me was their apoth­e­o­sis of cool. This band not only sound­tracked that por­tion of my life I found most dif­fi­cult, but as Michael Stipe embraced the role of arche­typ­al front­man, so did I. Rather than with­hold opin­ions or judge­ment, I just let it blurt. But as much as I enjoyed Stipe’s trans­for­ma­tion to extro­vert, songs like this one still give me chills:

I still think “Coun­try Feed­back” is the quin­tes­sen­tial R.E.M. song, what with its false starts and long­ing, its mood and tone. Those sen­ti­ments hit me where I lived for most of my ado­les­cence and I imag­ine I’m not alone in think­ing that when peo­ple remem­ber R.E.M., their mem­o­ries will always be encum­bered by the gauzy wist­ful­ness that envelops that time of my life.

I’m in the camp that wish­es they called it quits on New Year’s Eve 1999. It would’ve been fit­ting. Even with a tod­dling Inter­net, that was news that I heard in the hin­ter­lands through pub­li­ca­tions and rumor and I was ready for them to walk away after wrap­ping the “Up” tour. That knowl­edge made it urgent that I see them once before they quit so I bought tick­ets and caught them in Cam­den (setlist here), where I watched peo­ple talk through “Pil­grim­age,” thus end­ing my belief that R.E.M. fans were inher­ent­ly cool. It was a crush­ing blow and my devo­tion to the band waned until Reveal, when what­ev­er pas­sion I felt for the band and their music van­ished altogether.

R.E.M. were a gate­way to inde­pen­dent music to me as I grew up in the sticks in a town where the Klan ral­lied at the main inter­sec­tion while the school bus drove me home. Put anoth­er way, I can remem­ber the “mod­ern rock” radio for­mat! It’s hard to believe there was a time when there weren’t infi­nite choic­es, but grow­ing up, bands like R.E.M., the Cure, the Smiths and even U2 kept me sane until the pop punk explo­sion hap­pened and geek cul­ture went a lit­tle more main­stream. Can you believe I was once asked if I was a hip-hop­per or a punk at school because I wore a 49ers beanie while wear­ing a used cardi­gan? That happened!

Lest it sound like I’m a dis­ap­point­ed fan, R.E.M. don’t owe me a thing. I can’t think of anoth­er band that so enriched my life. I dare­say their music pro­tect­ed me from more seri­ous hurts as I came of age in the ’90s. They did­n’t aban­don me as Nir­vana did when I was still a vul­ner­a­ble kid look­ing for mean­ing. They wrote songs that I found per­ti­nent to near­ly every sit­u­a­tion and their earnest­ness was per­fect for a kid who did­n’t need more sar­casm in his life. Thanks for so many amaz­ing songs includ­ing this one that gave me com­fort when I was lone­ly in Den­mark that dark, rainy autumn.