Chris Cameron

After 6 Months of Pro Blogging

Chris Cameron — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 23:04:54 +0000

With it being the first week of July, this marks the beginning of my seventh month of writing for ReadWriteWeb. During graduate school for journalism, I never thought I would find myself writing (I was looking into multimedia/digital career options), but here I am six months later, and I am loving it so far. I think my lack of enthusiasm for writing was for writing in the traditional newspaper style – blogging is much more up my alley, and I’ve been doing it since 2004.

I wanted to take this moment to share some information about both the site I work for and my experiences there thus far. The founder of ReadWriteWeb, Richard MacManus, has given a few interviews lately during his trips to the U.S. and he does a great job describing the site and what makes it unique. Here’s a video from an interview with ABC News Radio’s Dan Patterson.

And for a longer discussion about the site, our process, marketing, advertising, etc – check out this interview Richard gave to Cali Lewis and John P. on the Wealth Nation podcast.

In six months at RWW, I have written 325 articles with over 1,500 comments on topics ranging from advice for startups, to general breaking tech news to my personal trend/niche beat – augmented reality. I’ve had the chance to travel to Boulder for Startup Week, to Mountain View for the RWW Mobile Summit, to Santa Clara for the Augmented Reality Event, and most recently to San Diego for Qualcomm’s Uplinq 2010.

I’ve learned from my time at RWW that I want to make tech journalism my career, and I’m lucky to have such a great start to it. I’ve taken a few steps towards furthering this goal, including doubling the RAM on my iMac, buying a second monitor for increased productivity, and bestickering my laptop like any self-respecting blogger.

So anyway, here’s to the next sixth months, during which I will hopefully have more fun and news to share.

Show Your Pride: “GO USA!” PSD Template

Chris Cameron — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 22:16:32 +0000

Want to show your American World Cup pride on Facebook, Twitter or any other social network? Here’s a PSD template I’ve made that will help you pimp out your avatar with red, white, blue and the stars and stripes. You will need Adobe Photoshop and a picture of yourself (works best with headshots). Read on for some instructions on how to use the template.

Everything in the PSD is broken into layers so it is easily editable and customizable. If you want to edit the “GO USA!” text, just whip out the text tool and do that. But here’s a 60-second video with all you need to do to replace my lovely face with yours.

Simply replace the layer with my picture in it (should be the bottom one), with a photo of your own. Make sure you crop and resize your photo to fit nicely into the frame, then just place it above mine or delete the layer my photo is on. If you’re going to keep the Stars, simply use a soft black brush on the layer mask attached to the stars layer and paint over where the stars cover your face. That’s it!

To download the PSD template, right-click the link below and choose “Download As…” or “Save As…” Enjoy!

JTech Weekly #7 – Apple’s New iPhone 4

Chris Cameron — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 22:24:25 +0000

It happened. Again. Another epic Steve Jobs keynote at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference from Moscone Center in New York. As he did during his speech the last two years, Jobs announced another member of the iPhone family – this time iPhone 4 with a high-resolution screen, video editing capabilities and a new advertising platform. On this week’s JTech Weekly, Josh I talk how these new features could have a direct influence on the print and journalism industries.

On Dieting

Chris Cameron — Sun, 23 May 2010 22:21:56 +0000

For the past month my girlfriend and I have been simultaneously dieting from a program called the “Fat Smash Diet” (which was supposedly made famous by VH1’s Celebrity Fit Club. Wherever it came from, it’s the first diet program I’ve ever tried and it’s working. I’ll reveal some of the results in a bit but I wanted to share some thoughts I’ve learned since starting the diet.

Dieting with a partner is much easier. — I don’t think I would have been successful with a diet program if my girlfriend (and roommate) were not doing it at the same time. It’s much harder to diet when you are living with someone who is continuing to eat the things your diet doesn’t allow. This may have been why “dieting” while living with other roommates a year ago may have been impossible for me, since they would have been buying and eating the very foods I would be missing, making it much harder to keep away from them. Instead, my girlfriend and I stopped buying the bad foods and bought up tons of vegetable, fruits and other foods that our plan allowed. By keeping the other foods out of the house and out of sight (and out of mind), we were able to stick to out plan. Plus, we were able to encourage each other and slap one another’s wrists when we craved food like pizza.

Dieting is 100% a mental challenge. — Everyone has the ability to diet and eat healthily, it’s all a matter of will power and mental fortitude. I love food. Love it. And unfortunately, I’ve loved the worst foods. It’s a product of childhood habits, food industry advertising and the addictive nature of things like sugar. Also I was unfortunately bestowed with genes that didn’t give me the best metabolism in the world. At a point I actually convinced myself that my body was the body I was stuck with and I should just live with it, accept it and move on, eating whatever I felt like. I never thought dieting would work because I loved food too much. Fortunately for me, I was wrong, and I realized it was all in my head pretty early on.

Following a specific diet plan works better. — If you say to yourself, “Oh, I’m just going to cut back on a few things and eat more fruits and vegetables”, it won’t work. I’ve tried that before. I am in no way trying to be a spokesman for this diet plan, but having a schedule of phases and strict limitations made the whole process much easier to stick to. There are several plans out there so it may be a process of figuring out which one works for you, but it doesn’t always take counting calories to lose weight. Our program spelled out specific foods to eat for predetermined periods of time. The first nine days (called the “detox” period) was strictly water, veggies and fruits only. From there every few weeks we can add more things back in.

Dieting helps you rediscover your love of healthy foods. — Previously for me, snacks meant potato chips, soda, and other unhealthy foods. By going cold turkey in the “detox” period, I realized that fruits and vegetables can actually be satisfying and filling as snack food. I’ve always like apples, bananas, grapes and oranges but I never went out of my way to include them in my diet. Now these items are always in our shopping cart because we go through them so quickly. I also love cucumbers as a snack food, and to make things easier, I bought a vegetable peeler ($5 or so) so I can quickly skin a cucumber and eat it whole (read: delicious).

Results are encouraging. — The great thing about the “detox” period which opened our diet plan was that it provided early results that motivated us through the rest of the program. During that period I quickly shed about 8 lbs, and while the results weren’t terribly visible, the quick numbers were enough to encourage us to continue to diet.

It’s better to eat more than less while dieting. — The point of dieting isn’t to starve yourself, it’s actually the opposite. You lose more weight when your metabolism is running for a longer period of time. For me this meant eating some fruit for a snack in the late morning when I woke up, having a healthy lunch, snacking in the afternoon, and then a large, but healthy dinner. This keeps the metabolism churning throughout the day. When you starve yourself you’re telling your body to store fat because it thinks you’re in a famine. By continuing to eat healthy foods throughout the day it counter acts this, and losing weight is much easier.

Diet and exercise just make you feel better. — Aside from lowering your fat levels and cholesterol, dieting and working out make you feel better all around. This is partly a physical change due to dieting and getting in shape, but it’s also mental. You know you are doing your body good by dieting and working out so mentally you feel better about yourself and feel more active. It’s easy to feel like a slob when you’re out of shape and eating bad food, but eating healthy can quickly turn this mental state around.

My Results So Far

I’ve had pretty successful results in the last month since we started our diet. I even managed to not gain weight during a six day trip to Boulder and San Francisco, and if it hadn’t been for that trip I may have even lost further weight. It’s been a long trek, but here’s a list of some of the foods I’ve managed to avoid for a whole month.

Fast food
Breads
Pasta
Pizza
Beer (except for a few in Boulder and San Fran)
Candy
Junk foods (chips, and other snacks)
Soda (except 1 diet soda a day, which is allowed in stage 2)
Fried food
Desserts (ice cream, cake, etc)

The list is likely much longer, but those are the key ones – the foods I ate on a normal basis that attributed to my weight gain. In my best shape from my days of marching drum and bugle corps I was about 165-170 lbs and had the ability to run for miles without getting winded. Here’s a photo from 5 years ago when I looked my best. For a while I told myself that looking that way again was unrealistic because of the grueling regimin of rehearsing for drum and bugle corps (10 hours days, outside in 110 degree weather, wearing 40 lb drums). Hopefully I can approach this physique again.

When I started the diet program a month ago, I was 220 lbs and outrageously out of shape. Climbing stairs would get me breathing heavily. At 5′11”, 220 lbs is the lower limit for obesity, according to body mass index. The upper barrier of normal weight is 175 for my heigh, and that is my goal.

In the last month I have managed to lose 20 lbs from dieting and exercising, just shy of halfway to my goal. I currently weight 200 lbs, and the visual differences are not shocking, but they are significant. I will share those when I hit my goal of 175 – only 25 more pounds to go. I can also run without being completely breathless for about two miles, or 30 minutes on an elliptical machine, which burns about 300 calories. I try to do this every day.

Hopefully this can be a bit of encouragement to others, as I had all but given up on my body before starting to work out. I am taking pictures every week or so, and I suggest others do this too. You don’t notice the changes yourself because you see yourself every day. By taking a snapshot, you will be able to actually see the change that has happened, and that will motivate you further.

I think I’m going to use this picture as a means of self-motivation.

Photo from Flickr user Smitten.

JTech Weekly #4 – Betty White, Disaster Reporting and Veracious Entropy

Chris Cameron — Tue, 11 May 2010 08:30:20 +0000

Did you catch SNL this weekend? If you did, you saw famed actress Betty White hosting, and due in no small part to a Facebook campaign to get her there. So how else is social media having an impact on TV and news? One way is in the way disasters are covered. Also this week on JTech Weekly, Josh and I discuss an internet startup trying to reinvent the way online news readers comment on and affect the way stories are reported.

JTech Weekly #3 – Remake Camp, Sports Bots, Off the Record & Internet TV

Chris Cameron — Tue, 04 May 2010 01:47:35 +0000

If you’re wondering why there’s a picture from The Simpsons at the top of this post, it’s because in this scene Mr. Burns is showing Homer how his team of 1,000 monkeys will write the next great American novel. “It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times?!” Anyway, sportswriters may be doomed to something similar: robot journalists automatically producing game recaps from box scores. Will automated reporting of run-of-the-mill stories lead to more in-depth reporting? That’s one topic of discussion on this week’s JTech Weekly with Josh and I.

Other topics include a recap of the the events from Remake Camp, an unconference on the future of journalism, as well as a debate over the semantics of “off the record” vs. “on background,” and the future of cable TV on the Internet. Show notes will be up soon on JTechWeekly.com, so head over there in the near future for those. We managed to keep the podcast to around 30 minutes this week, I think that will be a goal going forward.

Hope everyone is enjoying the podcast, we love doing it!

JTech Weekly #2 – ProPublica’s Pulitzer, AppStore Rules, Anonymity, and Gizmodo

Chris Cameron — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 03:18:02 +0000

JTechWeekly is back with the second episode (though we realize we are a week late). Scheduling conflicts and technological difficulties aside, we will be recording each Sunday from now on, so be sure to stay tuned at the JTechWeekly site or on iTunes for more episodes each week!

In this week’s episode, Josh and I talk about what ProPublica’s Pulitzer Prize means for online journalism, and how journalists may want to be wary of Apple’s AppStore. We also discuss the future of anonymous commenting, as well as the interesting story of Gizmodo and the iPhone 4G.

Andrew Long Show #7 – Ryan Guzy

Chris Cameron — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 04:20:37 +0000

Episode 7 of The Andrew Long Show is up now for download. I was unable to attend the recording of this week’s episode since I was in Las Vegas, but Andrew was able to edit it together and put it up. Also new this week, I figured out how to make sure our fine artwork shows up in iTunes, so now when you download it you’ll see the show’s logo.

This week Andrew talked with Ryan Guzy of the Tempe Bicycle Action Group, which advocates for cyclists rights. Should be an interesting episode, so have a listen, I know I will!

Phoenix’s Woeful Playoff History

Chris Cameron — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 07:26:26 +0000

I’ve lived in Phoenix since the hot hot summer of 1995 and it’s a rare treat in the Valley when multiple teams are in the Playoffs in the same year. The Suns have been a consistent playoff team in their 42 year history in town, but surprisingly, the Phoenix Coyotes have brought playoff hockey back to the city for the first time since the 2002 Stanley Cup Playoffs. This also marks the first time since the 1999-2000 season that both teams were in the playoffs, so I thought a statistical look back on these teams’ playoff histories was in order.

Here are facts about the Phoenix Suns playoff history.

Of their 42 seasons, this year is the Suns’ 29th playoff appearance (69% appearance rate).
The longest streak of consecutive playoff seasons was between 1989 and 2001 in which the Suns reached the playoffs 13 seasons in a row, including the entire decade of the 90s.
The Suns’ first round series record is 16 wins and 13 losses, which includes a stint between 1996 and 1999 where they lost in the first round 4 years in a row.
Of the team’s 16 conference semifinals appearances, they’ve gone 8-8, and lost three consecutive 2nd round match-ups between 1980 and 1982.
The Suns have been to 8 conference championships, but have lost 6 times. Twice the team has lost in the conference finals in consecutive seasons: in the 1989 & 1990 playoffs, and in the 2005 & 2006 playoffs.
They’ve been to the finals twice, in 1976 and 1993. Both times they lost in 6 games to the Celtics and Bulls respectively.
11 of the Suns’ playoff match-ups have been against the Lakers, who have beaten the Suns 9 times.
If it seems like every other season, the Suns meet up with the Spurs in the playoffs, it’s because that’s exactly true. The Suns and Spurs have played 9 times since 1992, the Spurs winning 6 times.
This year’s series with Portland is Phoenix’s 7th. In the past, the Suns and Trailblazers have split the series at 3 wins a piece.
The Suns’ most surprising playoff performance came in 1984, when a team that finished the season at 41 wins and 41 losses made it passed the first and second rounds into the conference championships, where they ultimately lost. Not bad for a .500 team.
At the other end of the spectrum, the most disappointing playoff season was 1998, when a 56-26 Suns team was defeated 3 games to 1 in the first round of the playoffs by the Spurs.

And here are some stats about the Phoenix Coyotes/Winnipeg Jets’ playoff history.

The Jets/Coyotes have played 30 seasons in the NHL (after 7 in the WHA), though one could argue this number is really 29 and a half, due the half season the NHL played in 1994/1995 because of a labor lockout in the first half of the season. There was also no season played in 2004/2005 due to lockout.
The franchise has reached the playoffs 17 times, (6 since moving to Phoenix).
Only twice has the franchise won a series in the playoffs, back in Winnipeg in 1985 and 1987, both times against the Calgary Flames.
This year’s series against the Red Wings is the first time the Coyotes have played a team more than once. In Winnipeg, the Jets played the Edmonton Oilers six of the eleven times they were in the playoffs, and lost all six times.
This season the Coyotes won 50 games, the most since the Jets won 43 in 1985. The worst season in franchise history was when the Jets won just 9 games in the 1980/1981 season (the second season in the NHL).
The only “championships” won by the franchise were three the Jets won in the WHA before joining the NHL.

I suppose that says a lot. The Suns are a decent regular season team, and struggle in the playoffs. The Coyotes and Jets make the playoffs half the time, but have only won a series twice. Well, good luck to both!

Adventures in Vegas: That Just Happened!

Chris Cameron — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 09:48:46 +0000

I fly home from Las Vegas tomorrow after jetting up for two days to attend the BEA (Broadcast Education Association) Conference, Fesitval and Awards. A group project (which was actually the product of two separate classes) that I worked on placed first in the student interactive multimedia category. Since I did some of the web design for the project, my name was put on the entry, and thus, I was invited up to accept the award on behalf of the two classes.

This is a bit of a sidetrack from this story and it will make sense in a second, but have you ever been to the website TVTropes.org? Basically its a wiki for the various plot lines and jokes you see in TV and movies over and over again. One such trope is the “And The Winner Is” gag, where an award is being announced and an over-confident favorite assumes he or she has won and just as they’re standing up, the name called by the presenter is someone else’s (sometimes an unlikely underdog).

Okay, so this exact thing didn’t happen to me, but it was eerily similar. See, it turns out my school had won two awards in this category so a fellow student who worked on another project was there also, as well as a few faculty and staff from the school.

Names were not associated with the awards as they were announced (class names were used instead), and when my award was announced, something got mixed up between the other student and one of the faculty members and they wound up jumping up and accepting the award. She also happened to be sitting at the end of the aisle, which made their trip to the front of the room quick.

My ass was quite literally an inch off my seat to stand up and go get the award when I saw the other student jump up and hustle to the front. Then her award was announced next and she got up again.

Later on after the small ceremony was over, everyone realized the mistake and a few apologies were extended, but I really didn’t care to be honest. Sure, the award is a fine accomplishment, and it will find a nice comfortable spot on my resume and portfolio, but I wasn’t distraught over not getting to walk up, shake some stranger’s hand, and snag a box of plaques (which were immediately handed over to school faculty).

To be honest the “ceremony”, if you can call it that, was pretty lame. It was one session in a long series of awards events, and thus it was in a tiny room the size of a schoolroom, and about a dozen people were actually there. Woopity doo. It was scheduled for 2:45-4:30, and the thing was done by 2:55, so I’m not upset that the actual 10 minutes of this trip that I came for didn’t go as planned. No big deal, whatsoever.

I’ve seen and done so much more interesting things while I’ve been here. If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you saw me mention seeing a pair of street-dwellers argue iPad vs. Kindle, and just tonight I passed a lounge in Bally’s where a decent sized band and sexy gogo dancers were pumping up their pittance of an audience with only the sexiest, funkiest, rockin’est song out there — that’s right, “Party in the U.S.A.” by Ms. Miley Cyrus.

I also got to see the Cirque du Soleil Beatles “LOVE” show at The Mirage tonight, and I must say that it is quite honestly the most amazing production of any sort I have ever witnessed. It was also the closest thing to a live Beatles concert I will ever get the chance to see. By that I mean I got to listen to the best songs of The Beatles with a large energetic crowd (not as many screaming girls, though the sounds were pumped in at one point), smoke machines, lazers, lighting effects, projections, dancing, and of course, at a loud volume in an intimate setting.

Aside from the Beatles side of the show, the visual production was absolutely stunning. I’m sure the other CdS shows are equally mind-blowing, but I think having this one set to popular music with well known themes (World War II, The 60s and hallucinogenic drugs to name a few) made this even more enjoyable. That being said, the dancers, actors, acrobats, gymnasts and everyone else involved in the show were ridiculously amazing to watch perform.

What I liked best about the show was the variety of activities going on from song to song. There was acting going on with basic choreography, there was elegant traditional dancing, modern dancers, break dancers, athletic balancing acts, gymnastic performers twirling and bouncing around, free running style choreography that was very much like Parkour, roller-skaters doing half-pipe style tricks (give those X-Games kids a job!), trampoline tricks, arial acrobatics, bungee rope dancing, guys on stilts, prop artists, rope climbers (many of which are clearly risking their lives each night to perform these feats of balance and acrobatics), and SO SO SO SO much more.

Every few songs there were projected video interludes featuring silhouettes of the Fab Four being their usual joking self which often included off-the-record recordings from studio sessions in which they joked around and riffed on their songs. And the other major amazement from the show was the amazing feats of set design. The floor had various portions that would raise or lower (several feat below the main level, you couldn’t see the bottom from where I was (which was almost in the last row), and there were intricate props that made the show even more stunning than just the performers.

At one point, a dream is symbolized by four kids (young versions of the Beatles) riding a bed through the clouds. The bed was on wires and the sheets of the bed were pulled out by other cast members and seemed to go on forever (like a cloun pulling a kerchief from his pocket). They ran up the aisles of the round theater and covered half the audience and waved the sheets to symbolize the clouds as the bed floated around. It was amazing.

During the Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds portion, the room went pitch black and wires with a string lights on them lowered throughout the theater. A light production which played out to emphasize parts of the music appeared using the strands of lights (kinda like Christmas tree lights), and since they had been lowered all around, it was like seeing stars in the sky in 3D.

The music is amazing too, not just because its The Beatles, but because of the job the producers did of mixing, blending and breaking down the tunes. They were also digitally remastered, and they sound amazing. I’ve had the soundtrack for a few years now, but it was great to hear it on a huge sound system with the visual presentation.

To sum up, the show had be saying “Wow” every time I wasn’t signing along to the songs. I’ve seen a lot of cool shit in my life, and this show ranks up there with the best of it all. I highly recommend it to anyone, it is certainly worth every penny of the high-priced tickets.