The Guide to Gaming With Your Kids

The Guide to Gaming With Your Kids is designed to help grown-ups who are not gamers learn enough to get started and bond with their kids over videogames. The piece starts with the benefits of gaming, shares some common lingo, examines all of the major gaming platforms, offers guidance for online safety and then suggests a few hot games that are family friendly (these were my choices, not any sponsor’s). I received a lot of positive feedback on this article (which turned into a slideshow). I really hope it helps a lot of parents find common ground with their kids and, potentially, enjoy games for themselves.

Hilarious Gifts for Male Friends and Coworkers

Hilarious Gifts for Male Friends and Coworkers is basically just a gift guide, but one that is intended more to provide laughs than actual guidance on presents to buy. Some of the items are exorbitantly priced, a few are really gross and I’ve had reports that a couple items are already sold out indefinitely. But, again, that’s not the point. Just knowing that these things exist was enough for me (well, except for the plush Portal turret – we really did buy one of those to guard the Christmas tree!). I basically scoured the Internet for products that made me laugh, and then wrote up descriptions that I hoped would extend the laughs even further. The assignment actually morphed from one that was a general guide to funny gifts for guys to one targeted specifically at coworkers, so I had to make a few edits to make it work. One of my favorites, the toilet mug, had to be altered most. My original caption was written from the point of view of a spouse or live-in mate, not a fellow employee:

Sure, this thing is pretty disgusting, especially when it’s filled with his favorite dark brown beverage. And, if you’re his significant other, he’ll definitely bring it out when your parents are in town. If you’re really lucky, he’ll delegate it to the bathroom and let the dog drink water out of it. (That never gets old!)

You’re right, there’s no really upside to this present after the initial peals of amusement wear off. You’ll have no other recourse but to destroy it and blame the dishwasher. Again.

It’s worth noting that both of these are slideshows, and both have lengthy intros and captions. I wrote as long as I felt was needed to tell each story – or in the case of the gift guide, make it entertaining. I typically write much shorter copy (headlines and captions, mostly) in my everyday work, but I left the topics dictate length here and made it modular enough that the editors could easily cut elements without damaging the whole if they felt it didn’t fit the space. I was actually surprised at how little changed from my final drafts.

Selecting audio in Audacity

If you’re thinking of starting a podcast, it’s a great idea to grow an audience around whatever topic you are passionate about and boost your public speaking skills at the same time. We posted an article last year on how to get started.

But perhaps you’ve been posting podcasts and can’t quite seem to get the level of professionalism you desire? A good podcast typically sounds like either an energetic conversation or a polished radio program, though this can be hard to pull off without some hard effort and audio-editing expertise.

We’ve recorded and edited 47 weekly episodes of the Busy Gamer Podcast (with more on the way!) and have continually worked to improve the production quality. If you listen to our first and then our more recent podcasts, there’s a world of difference. Benefit from the lessons we learned – often the hard way!

To script or not to script? Our podcasts are tightly scripted, in part to keep them short and tight (they are designed for busy gamers!) and because we want them to sound like professional radio segments such as you might hear on NPR. Some people work better unscripted, though you should at least have an outline to ensure you cover all of the topics you intended. Jacqui actually does really well unscripted (she excelled at Table Topics back in our Toastmasters days!), so she usually ad libs the What We’re Playing section while I write out what I want to say so I can get really detailed and reserve spots to add audio cues. Hers sounds more natural, but mine are often more polished – plus, I would ramble a bit more and forget important details if I tried to improvise. Both approaches have their pluses and minuses, so determine which works best for you – or develop a hybrid as we’ve done.

Outside audio. A podcast about videogames is pretty Spartan without sounds from the games themselves, yet it took us a few months to get comfortable enough with the format to add them. Plus, this added a level of complexity we weren’t ready for back when we first started. Depending on your sound source, there are different ways to cleanly capture outside audio. If the sound is on your computer, say from a YouTube video, you can use Audacity to record it directly. Be sure to shut down any other programs that might make noises first. You can also run a stereo plug from your computer, portable device such as an iPhone or stereo receiver to your podcast recorder (we recommend the Zoom H2, which is inexpensive and versatile). Use headphones or an external mini-jack speaker so you can hear what’s going into your recorder. Be sure to set the levels so the input is neither too quiet or hitting the top of the meters. And remember your settings, so you can be consistent! If you need cables for audio input, check Radio Shack – they have virtually any audio part you could want. Prep your audio cues ahead of time in a separate file so they’re easy to grab when you’re ready to incorporate them into the main podcast.

Capture room noise to cover your coughs. Every time you record, even if it’s in the same place every time, the room noise will be a little different. Lock up any pets so they don’t vie for your attention while you’re recording, turn off air conditioners, heaters and other noisy appliances and aim for a time when garbage collectors and airplanes won’t interrupt your flow. Move anything that makes noise if you brush against it away from the recording area. Use a windscreen (that piece of foam that probably came with your recorder) to minimize crackles and pops. Then record at least a few seconds of absolute silence (no breathing or sniffling) so you have something to cover up any loud breath sounds, coughs and other noises that may interrupt an otherwise seamless podcast. Use headphones when editing to ensure you can hear every detail, and then cut and paste a short silent section over any unwanted noises. I actually create a new room noise file each week from which I draw different sizes of silent spaces, and then I make a leveled room noise file for the final edit pass (more on leveling in a bit). Although sometimes I just grab a silent segment near where the problem is, especially if the audio quality has changed (like on those occasions when a plane gets recorded passing over us during a segment and we didn’t stop to wait it out).

Master Audacity (or whatever tool you use to edit your podcast). My tips here are for Audacity, which is both free and very powerful, but most audio editing tools will have the same or similar features. You may notice that your main podcast segment looks like a slightly bumpy line, making it hard to see what to select when editing. If so, zoom in to blow up the main audio stream so that you can spot the waves for each word and the silences between them. Create separate tracks for different audio sources so you can adjust the volume for each separately. Even though you’ll be leveling everything later, you do want to be able to hear things at roughly the same volume as you work so you can tell how it’s cutting together.

I’ve found I can quickly delete small mistakes (or long segments that are easy to identify) by selecting them in Audacity and just pressing Delete. (If it doesn’t work, make sure you’ve hit Stop. It won’t allow changes when you’re on Pause.) You can adjust your selection by moving your cursor to the start or end line until it turns into a finger, and then clicking on the line and dragging to move it. Give it a listen to ensure you have the right audio selected before taking an action. For bigger mistakes or more complex edits that require a lot of tinkering, you may want to use the Split New feature. For instance, you can select everything from a particular point in your podcast to the end, split it into a new track, find the point where you want to stop deleting and then select everything from that point to the start of the track and delete it. Confirm your edit works with a listen, and then cut and paste the tracks back together.

Work on longer, more complex segments in separate files, then combine them later. Save often! When introducing music or audio that doesn’t mesh with the rest of your podcast, use Fade In and/or Fade Out to smooth the transitions. Fade In/Fade Out can even sometimes fix minor editing mistakes! Don’t be afraid to experiment, you can always Undo!

Dual screens makes editing go faster. If you can afford two monitors (or a single monitor attached to a laptop), extend your desktop to make editing easier. You can open your sound cues and editing notes on one screen and edit the main podcast on the other.

Level and test drive. When you’re done, export your podcast as a WAV, run Levelator and then reopen it in Audacity. Listen through for any mistakes and places that need tightening or mild edits. Then export your final podcast as an MP3. If time permits, copy it to an MP3 player and give it a test drive with an audience – we listen in the car, since this is how we expect most of our listeners will enjoy it. You may find areas that can be improved.

This may seem like a lot of work, but it does get easier the more you do it. Set a manageable schedule for regular releases – at least every other week, so people don’t forget about your podcast between episodes. Don’t take on too much right away. Start small with just your voice and maybe some public domain musical bumpers from Mevio’s Music Alley – and build from there, adding improvements every episode or so.

I’ve given this a lot of thought, and the problem with social media isn’t all of the noise. Sure, there are a lot of things that you could care less about passing through your Facebook wall and Twitter timeline – but one person’s noise is another’s signal, right? I actually enjoy picking up bonuses in the Facebook games I’m playing, but many of my friends wish they would all be banished from existence.

The sad thing is that Facebook nearly had the answer, but they missed the boat. And Twitter, from what I can see, hasn’t even found the right paddle.

The answer is something I’m dubbing “streams.” And, as our friends the Ghostbusters proved, crossing them isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

The idea is simple: Classify different types of content and let users turn them on and off at will. Really, that’s it. But let’s delve a little deeper into why this isn’t just possible, it’s plausible.

For awhile, Facebook actually allowed app specific filtering of your news feed until their most recent overhaul, which – for some inexplicable reason – completely did away with it. Instead of expanding news filters, they banned app-specific notifications which bothered nobody since they could easily be surpressed.

Filtering was only half the answer to Facebook’s problems but a definite step in the right direction – and removing it moves them away from where they need to be. Rather than just allow me to filter and quickly scan all of my friends’ Farmville posts all in one place, they should have offered the option to block all Farmville posts (or posts from any other app) from their feeds. Maybe block is too harsh. Let’s suggest a “toggle” since you could, theoretically, turn it back on whenever you wanted, view it as an entirely separate feed or create an aggregate stream with all of the posts from your games of interest.

Now you’re getting it, right? Social media, just like my iPhone, works best when I can customize it the way that I want it. Make me play in your sandbox your way, and I might go find another sandbox.

Twitter has partly solved the problem with hashtags, but do these really work all that well? You can create search queries against hashtags, and some Twitter readers like TweetDeck allow you to filter on keywords in your selected feeds but – again – these are half measures. Hashtags, I’d argue, are really just a hack, a poor man’s search meta data (hacktags is more like it!).

First, hashtags are prone to user error: One typo or a bad guess at what the prevailing hashtag is for an event or product you’re tweeting about and you’re already out of the game. And hashtags eat into your already constrained 140-character limit. Bah, there has to be a better way!

Here’s what I think needs to happen for all social media that wants to stay relevant: Streams that segment your timelines or news feeds based on different themes and let you decide how (or even if) you want to consume them.

For example, I’m not playing foursquare, and I find the endless barrage of notifications whenever someone I follow visits a Burger King bathroom to be intrusive and a waste of time when I’m poring through a backlog of 150 tweets from the past hour or so. But these alerts are generated via an application (API), right? How hard would it be to use a hidden API code that’s passed with the tweet to define a stream and pass that to the Twitter client outside of the 140 characters being transmitted?

I know these exist to some extent today. I can see that someone posted using Twittelator even though it doesn’t say Twittelator anywhere in the tweet itself. Or, look at this, from a recent foursquare tweet:

That information has got to be passed along with the tweet via the existing API, am I right? So, Twitter devs, let’s use those as a starting point to define streams that can be quickly toggled on and off to make your timeline more manageable.

There are two additional areas that have become barriers to pure Twitter enjoyment, at least for me: contests and live tweeting “events.” But I see a stream-based solution there too. Build these in as switches that the tweeter can activate when posting. For instance, the person launching a contest could set the flag as a contest originator, and any replies or retweets to him get a secondary response flag. That way you could always see the original post to enter if you like, but you could ignore the stream or – if you’re a contest devotee or just curious once you’ve caught up on your core Twitter stream – peruse the contest stream separately.

When you’re going to live tweet something, you could have a secondary Twitter account set aside just for this purpose. But that’s a lot of trouble, so most people don’t bother. Instead, they post something that says, “If you don’t care about (FILL IN THE BLANK), unfollow me for the night.” Well, maybe I do care about – let’s say the Lost finale – but I’m watching it two hours behind you. I want to enjoy your observations on my own schedule. So rather than leave you behind, possibly forever if I forget to refollow you in the morning, let me separate your stream from my regular timeline for a few hours until I’m no longer concerned about spoilers. Perhaps the tweeter could create a custom code (like a hashtag, but hidden outside of the tweet and tied to just their account). I could just click “Joe’s Lost stream” on my client and toggle it off for now and then go back and view it later.

The same stream filtering and mix/match capabilities could and should be applied to keywords, hashtags, lists, whatever you want – but API codes would be the most reliable and “go to” choice whenever they are available.

Think of the power of this approach: You could consume your social media your way, all of the time, crossing to different streams as time permits and only after you’ve quickly caught up on the stuff that matters most to you. Or you could mix them together anyway you like, on the fly.

What’s the worst thing that could happen, total protonic reversal? It didn’t phase the Ghostbusters in the end – they were hailed as heros.

Don’t get too excited about streams: This is just one observer’s idea on how to “fix” what’s wrong with social media today. But I believe it’s a modest one that builds on features like Facebook filters and Twitter API codes that have already been created and could be put to better use.

So, social media makers, why not give it a try? Are you a “god”? Please say yes, and go fix this.

By default, Twitter posts are viewable and searchable by anyone. Using your real name or providing enough private details could make it easy for anyone to figure out where you live. If you don’t want to protect your tweets by making them private, you should not use Twitter to share your vacation exploits.

Here are some tips to help you stay safe in virtual space – and the real world one:

Twitter. The safest thing you can do is protect your updates and only accept followers that you know. This sort of defeats the potential of Twitter since none of your witty wordplay will be seen except by a select few and you’ll never get a gajillion followers. If this is important to you, just open two Twitter accounts – one for friends and the other for your public persona. Then just make sure that you only post the private stuff to your trusted friends.

Facebook. On the whole, Facebook tends to be a safer place to share your travel plans since most people only accept friend requests from trusted friends. But there are some ways you can fine-tune your privacy. Click on Settings in the top blue bar and select Privacy Settings. From there, you can choose who can see your profile and personal information, tagged photos, etc. If you or someone you know is going to be posting and tagging photos of your family to Facebook while you’re out of town at obvious tourist locations, you might want to limit these to just your friends. Be sure to go to Contact Information and set your current address to No one. Your friends will know where you live or can call you if they need this information. There’s a nifty feature that lets you preview how a specific friend sees your profile, which will give you a good idea whether you’ve done a good job locking down your private details.

Blogs. If you have a blog, you should use private domain registration so if someone looks up your domain contacts, they don’t get your home address and phone number. As a quick fix, you might be able to update your contact information to your ISP’s, so that any lookups and inquiries go to them. Private registration may cost a little more, though some places do offer it for free.

If your blog is only updated sporadically (once a week or less), taking a week off shouldn’t be any big deal. But if you have a following and readers have come to expect daily updates, you’ll probably want to mention that you’re taking a break and that updates will be a little less frequent while you “enjoy some personal time” (saying it this way doesn’t signal that you’re leaving town). You don’t have to be specific about your plans unless you feel comfortable doing so. You might also preload some posts and, if your blogging software supports it, schedule them to go live on the days you are away. In my case, I alerted readers that some regular features might be incomplete or delayed and then preloaded several posts that I then published remotely each day using the Movable Type for iPhone interface.

Even though I bought my iPhone 3G last December, I decided I wanted the 3G S for a few reasons: added storage (I’ve already filled my 16GB model!) and better camera topped the list.  Since my original purchase was so recent, I did not qualify for the fully subsidized $300 price, but was offered the 32GB model for $500 (still better than $700 with no commitment). If you bought a 3G last summer, AT&T recently expanded the offer,  so check: You may qualify for the best price.

Rather than brave the launch day lines, I ordered mine last Thursday from the Apple Store online and was promised delivery in about a week. Alas, I noticed during my semi-frequent online order status checks that it was unceremoniously cancelled on Monday. No explanation. I called Apple’s customer service and, despite the fact that I should have been preauthorized after going through their upgrade wizard, I received some vague excuse that AT&T had not validated my offer and I would have to clear it up with them.

I called and then ran down to my local AT&T Store, where they were backordered 7-10 days. I went ahead and placed an order for the 3G S from them in case that proved to be my only recourse, but I had been hearing that the Apple Store across the way had ample supply. Midday Tuesday, my AT&T rep informed me that they could not clear the problem with my account but that I could buy the 3G S at full price from the Apple Store and then walk over and get a $200 credit on my cell phone bill once AT&T re-upped my 2-year commitment. The net here is that I paid an extra $18 in sales tax, but didn’t have to wait an extra week. AT&T promptly canceled my order and promises the credit will appear by Friday.

So now I had an iPhone 3G S but it would be hours before I could start playing with it. The AT&T rep offered me the option to swap my SIM card from the old phone, meaning I could use my old iPhone for now and activate the new one instantly when I got home and was ready. I first backed up my old phone again, and then swapped the SIM and plugged in the new one. The restore process was painless and relatively quick (about 15 mins) but this only restored my core settings and mail accounts. Apps, music, videos and picture galleries were not present when I turned on the new iPhone. Getting these over required a full sync.

It’s worth noting that I am using iTunes on an older Windows XP machine with USB 1.0. Until recently, I had a USB 2.0 card installed but due to conflict problems I had to remove it. (I really need to move iTunes to a newer machine, but every time I attempt any kind of iTunes move it takes six months to get everything fully functional again!) Since Apple depracated FireWire sync, my only option was a 6-hour slow transfer of my apps and media. Once this completed (about midnight), there was still a little work to do. Here are some tips to make this easier:

• Have passwords handy. For security, all Exchange or POP e-mail  accounts require you to re-enter your password in your new iPhone. Exchange and voicemail prompt you immediately after you turn on the phone, and you’ll need to set a security passcode on your iPhone before Exchange will work. I had to reset my voicemail password, which can be done by calling AT&T customer service or logging into https://www.wireless.att.com/. POP mail passwords need to be entered in your Mail Settings. I created a password-protected cheat sheet with the passwords I require most frequently so I didn’t need to wade through my master list to find the handful that I needed.
• Check your apps. Some apps may require password re-entry or account recovery to the new iPhone, though surprisingly many do not. Spend a few minutes launching the apps you use most often and see if they need anything to run. Amazon, Slacker, Tapulous and Flight Control are a few that needed some recovery work. Kindle required me to delete and redownload all of the books that I had bought, though free samples and the older public domain free books still worked fine. 
• Try the new apps. Go ahead and click Compass. You’ll probably never use it, but it’s cool, right? Fortunately, the compass functionality will help other applications with things like directions (though it sounds like you’ll need to pay AT&T a monthly fee to run GPS apps – boo!). OK, now launch the Camera and try the new focus and video camera features. Next hold down the Home button until Voice Control launches. Say something and see if it does it. (I tried, “Play On the Go Playlist” and never got it to work. It was comical, really. I’ll need to start naming my playlists with voice recognition in mind.)
• Revel in the speed. Apart from the three big changes above and the potential for greater storage space, the 3G S’s real advantage is speed. It really is faster. Loading and clearing e-mails takes me a lot less time, and I no longer have to click back and forth to mark some of the bigger messages as read.
• Show battery percentage. The 3G S has a hidden new feature that shows your battery percentage next to the visual battery indicator. Go into Settings, General, Usage to turn it on.

I made the mistake of putting off an iTunes update last week, and it was required for this iPhone update. That delayed me an hour. Then I had to actually download the iPhone update, back up the phone and then have the install validated by an Apple server. That last part proved to be the weakest link in the chain – it took about 20 tries for the first phone, and 50 for the second. The install itself took maybe 15-20 minutes (per phone).

When my iPhone finally came back to life, there was a new app, Voice Memos, installed at the bottom right of the first page of app followed by a new 10th page – so now you can have 164 apps instead of 148. The extra page is blank except for the front page icon that was bumped by the new “official” app (read: cannot be removed), but the good news is that moving icons is now a lot easier. Your pages of icons do not reshuffle until you release the app you are moving. Too bad cut and paste doesn’t work for icons, but this is still a huge improvement.

I also ran into problems updating apps from the App Store on my phone, thanks in part to a new terms of service agreement that kept timing out. Unless you really need a particular app or app update right away, you might wait until things settle down – probably later this evening.

In the meantime, if you’re looking to find out what’s new beyond the widely reported big features, read How To Use The Best 40 Features of iPhone 3.0.

TweetDeck for iPhone

Back in April, I deconstructed what I thought was wrong with TweetDeck. Now I only do this sort of exercise with products I think show real potential. I did the same on BusyGamerNews.com for the Nintendo Wii user interface and twice for the Xbox 360 (but never got around to the PS3).

I critique because I care.

It appears that someone at TweetDeck is listening. But they have their own ideas too. And it’s hard to tell whether it’s getting better or I’m just getting used to the ever-growing array of columns that stretch off the right side of my screen.

The big news is that TweetDeck is now available for iPhone. And it’s free. The column metaphor actually seems to work well with a touch screen where you can swipe to quickly flip columns. I currently trade off between TwitterFon (slightly old version since people dissed the latest update) and Twinkle (nice for community tweets though Seattle lately has been overrun by overly dramatic teens and tweens with iPod Touchs who feel the need to text for attention every 12 seconds or so!). I’ve also toyed with Twitterific but so far it hasn’t stuck.

TweetDeck for iPhone looks promising, though it is a little crash prone (not unusual with first gen iPhone apps). What might keep me coming back is this: Sync with my desktop TweetDeck. The way this works is that you either use the iPhone app or the newest PC version of TweetDeck to create a TweetDeck account (yes, another password to remember). You then login to the other version and it offers to sync your columns – to a point. The iPhone version doesn’t support Facebook (at least not yet) so that’s not carried over from your desktop. Nor are any secondary accounts you add. You have to manually add these in both places. And sync’ing doesn’t seem to work from the iPhone back to the desktop, though I could be wrong. I’m still testing this.

Wait, did you catch that? Multiple Twitter accounts are now supported – on both versions! Other new desktop app features include unlimited columns, trends for any column, reply all, YFrog support, spam reporting and smart filtering. Supposedly there’s a conversation window, which sounds great - but I couldn’t find it.

Still, all in all, TweekDeck continues to show promise. Just when I was about to go fishing for alternatives.

There are thousands of plug-ins to choose from, so from time to time I’ll call out the ones I have found indispensible or at least highly valuable, plus the occasional one I’ll suggest with reservations (and helpful tips to save you the trouble we had implementing it). Here are some of my favorites so far:

WPtouch iPhone Theme. I found this theme when browsing a friend’s blog and immediately installed it for our own. It greatly speeds up load times and improves readability for iPhone visitors, who have the option to turn it off if they prefer your default view. The way this makes your site look like an iPhone app is pretty compelling (see picture at right).

Add to Any: Share/Bookmark/Email Button. If you write something worth sharing, you want it to be as easy as possible for your site visitors to do just that. You can select which social networking/sharing mechanisms are displayed by default. Hovering over the Share or E-mail This Post link opens up the full list, which is constantly expanding (see icons and link at bottom of this post).

WP to Twitter. This highly configurable plug-in automatically tweets your blog posts. We use this only for new posts, so any updates/edits do not result in an unwelcome Twitter flood. URLs are automatically shortened using the Cli.gs service, though we had some problems until we created and entered a Cli.gs API key.

Simple Tags. If you don’t want to spend a lot of time adding tags (aka keywords) to your posts, this plug-in can help, although it can be tricky to get working. First, you have to add at least one tag to a post before it will function at all (you’ll get a “Javascript must be enabled” message but that’s probably not your problem). The autotagging feature only pulls tags you have entered previously and applies them, where relevant, to existing posts. Once it’s up and working, use tag suggestions to find common keywords in your articles and apply them quickly. After you have a decent set of local tags, the auto-tag feature can help you quickly generate tags for older posts that don’t have them.

Have you had different (better, worse?) experiences with these plug-ins? Have a favorite plug-in that nobody loves but you? Let us know!