Calling All Word Nerds

Yes­ter­day I start­ed my new job as Com­cast’s chief blog­ger. Now I’ve had some fun with social media so far in my career and have had a real­ly great time get­ting peo­ple excit­ed about bring­ing the A’s back to Philadel­phia, but I have very lit­tle in the way of what you may call deep back­ground on social media practices.

My take: I feel like I have the trick­i­est part–writing–down cold. I have a sol­id under­stand­ing of what sto­ries are best told through text and which are bet­ter explained by video, thanks to my tenure at comcast.net. I know that peo­ple want reg­u­lar con­tent and they have expec­ta­tions around how it’s deliv­ered. That’s understood.

What I have ques­tions about are best prac­tices in the social web. If you can rec­om­mend read­ing either on- or offline, I’d appre­ci­ate it. Leave a note in the com­ments or @ me on Twit­ter. If you have favorite blogs that deal specif­i­cal­ly in this, feel free to share those as well. My Google read­er feels a lit­tle emp­ty after I 86’d oh so many music blogs.

Don’t think I’m not doing some heavy lift­ing myself. I’m find­ing Kristi­na Halvor­son­’s work and the Brain Traf­fic blog a very use­ful font of info and links. I’ve also sub­scribed to sev­er­al rec­om­mend­ed com­pa­ny blogs, rang­ing from South­west Air­lines to Google’s Offi­cial blog. Love how they read!

Current iPhone Home Screen

First & 20 start­ed out as one of my favorite iPhone blogs. It had a clever premise: ask tech all stars to share their iPhone home screens.

They haven’t been pub­lish­ing much of late, but I’ve checked back from time to time any­way. Thought I’d share mine again, too!

I just rad­i­cal­ly reset what’s on the home screen and where. I float­ed text, email and phone from the dock into the top row, replac­ing them with apps I use much more often, like Twit­ter, Reed­er, Things and the cal­en­dar app. It’s tak­ing some get­ting used to, but makes much more sense based on frequency.

The sec­ond row remains more or less unchanged. It’s home to my social web apps, with Instapa­per thrown in for those times when I might not be able to access the web. Learned that while rid­ing the NYC sub­way a few week­ends back.

The third row is where I’ve bun­dled apps into con­ve­nient cat­e­gories. News and Enter­tain­ment are pret­ty self-explana­to­ry. Con­tacts is just an easy way to toss the con­tacts app, LinkedIn, and Bump togeth­er on the home screen for con­ve­nience’s sake. Util­i­ties is a broom clos­et for the apps you need but aren’t all that spe­cial, like set­tings, Safari and the calculator.

The bot­tom row is for enter­tain­ment, too. The iPod app is self-explana­to­ry. I keep the Com­cast app at the ready. It lets me know when some­one’s call­ing my house so I don’t miss any calls. Han­dles my r‑DVR, too, which is real­ly great. Tuner­fish is an app I’m real­ly excit­ed about. It’s like Foursquare for tele­vi­sion, com­plete with fun badges and a suite of social fea­tures which lets you share what you’re watch­ing with friends.

Why have I left a space open? You’ll find out soon enough!

My First Day as Chief Blogger

Check out the view from my new office!

Today was hec­tic, but real­ly cool. Had some neat meet­ings. Was a lot like my first day at Com­cast: a lit­tle con­fu­sion and a ton of excite­ment. Met more peo­ple today than I have in three years at the com­pa­ny and that’s great!

Very excit­ed to see where my new role takes me. This office is just the first step.

In Praise of Kylesa

Bought their new one, Spi­ral Shad­ow, at the show last night. Love this band so much. If you haven’t heard them, you have some catch­ing up to do.

Also, have Torche com­plete­ly dis­avowed their Mean­derthal sound? Love the sludgy stuff, but that was a pret­ty nice turn for them, too.

I Love Roy Oswalt

Now that it’s sunk in that our sea­son’s over, all I can think about how much I love Roy Oswalt.

Why?

Because he was an absolute stud down the stretch. Because he accept­ed play­ing sec­ond fid­dle when he’s an ace on most staffs around the league. Because he played left field! To top it all off, he vol­un­teered to pitch in relief.

He does the lit­tle things fans in Philly love. He’s a team play­er and I can’t wait to watch him next year.