Technologizer by Harry McCracken

Time 2020-06-26 21:03:13

Web Name: Technologizer by Harry McCracken

WebSite: http://www.technologizer.com

ID:11811

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Posted by Harry McCracken on May 20, 2018 at 1:22 am Next month, it will have been a decade since I started Technologizer, a blog which later became part of TIME but has been largely dormant since I joined Fast Company. The whole notion of a tech blog now seems very 2008.But some of the things that made tech blogging fun the freewheeling informality, the ability to experiment, the direct connection to an audience have lately shown up again in a new package: tech newsletters with a bloggy, personal feel. Last week, I was editing an article by JR Raphael about newsletters as a publishing medium and particularly those created using a platform called Revue when it dawned on me: Why not revive Technologizer in newsletter form?So here we go. Over at newsletter.technologizer.com, you ll find a signup form for Technologizer the newsletter. Issue #1 will go out on Sunday. (At the moment, someone still has the opportunity to be subscriber #1.) [UPDATE: Thank you, first 22 charter subscribers!]I plan to send it out a few times a week and use it for stuff that s meatier than a tweet yet doesn t feel like it should be a Fast Company article. I ll share what I m working on, link to what I m reading, and indulge in a certain amount of tech nostalgia. And I hope you ll join me.One comment Posted by Harry McCracken on September 28, 2017 at 1:28 am Back in early 2016, as an experiment, I redirected the Technologizer.com homepage to my Flipboard magazine. The goal was to have something called Technologizer that I could update easily without writing anything. It worked! But lately, I ve found that I miss having Technologizer as an outlet. So I ve turned off Flipboard and intend to blog here at least occasionally.Don t expect too much. My day job at Fast Company keeps me plenty busy, and mostly, I ll probably just point you to stuff I m working on there. For starters, I wrote the cover story for our October issue. It s a profile of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and it s unique among my pieces for our dead-tree edition in that it is primarily a profile of a person rather than something about a company that touches on the people who run it as a secondary matter.My relationship with Microsoft is longer than any other I have with a technology company, dating back to 1978 (I think), when I was a junior high student and Microsoft was a three-year-old purveyor of BASIC for PCs such as my father s TRS-80. So getting the chance to spend a significant chunk of the past few months working on this story, which involved three trips to Redmond and supplementary interviews with everyone from Sun Microsystems cofounder Scott McNealy to Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota, was particularly meaningful.That s all for now. See you at FastCo and on Twitter and back here before too long, I hope.7 comments Posted by Harry McCracken on January 24, 2016 at 12:55 am Back in 2014, when I became technology editor for Fast Company, I said I was keeping Technologizer open and reserved the right to write here if I had anything to say that didn t fit into Fast Company. As it turned out, Fast Company is a wonderful place to write about nearly anything. I ve only posted on Technologizer twice, both times because I wanted to write about someone who d passed away.That tended to make the Technologizer homepage look abandoned. So I ve flipped a switch to redirect it to my Technologizer magazine on Flipboard, which I update frequently with my own articles and worthwhile reads from around the web. If anything, knowing that it s what people see when they go to Technologizer.com will induce me to share even more stuff.This change doesn t impact all the existing Technologizer posts they re all there, just as I published them. And I can still write new Technologizer posts such as this one if the mood strikes. This site has been part of my life for almost eight years now, and even if it s not my bread and butter, it s nice to know it s here if I need it.Be the first to comment RIP, Tom Magliozzi--and thanks for the memories Posted by Harry McCracken on November 3, 2014 at 12:34 pm Back in the summer of 1997, I got my one and only assignment for a magazine called The Web, back when it seemed like it made sense to publish reviews and profiles relating to websites on dead trees. It turned out to be one of the most entertaining projects I ever worked on: I profiled Tom and Ray Magliozzi, better known as Click and Clack of public radio s Car Talk.When I saw the sad news today that Tom had passed away at 77, the memories came flooding back.I made contact with the Car Talk team by getting the phone number of their production company. In 1997, you did that by calling directory assistance. I still remember the pleasure I took in asking for the number for Dewey Cheetham Howe.At least back then, snagging an interview with the brothers was tougher than you might think. They didn t particularly like publicizing their show, and rarely talked to the press. But my timing was good: My editor, Dan Miller, had asked me to write about them because they were launching their first website. That they were willing to promote.I conducted the interview one afternoon when they were taping their show at the studios of Boston s WBUR. They were a little impatient with being interviewed, but smart, warm, and funny. I learned that even though the show felt like it was live the Magliozzis mom sometimes called in after supposedly hearing another call on the radio the handful of people who made it onto the program were actually chosen from 10,000 prospects a week who left recorded messages. That explained why so many of the on-air callers seemed so similar in personality and car problems. (There was a certain sort of female caller who pretty much made it onto the air several times a week.)And I was startled to see that the Magliozzis sometimes worked from material written by others. That seemed to happen during the bridging sequences, and I don t think it s scandalous, since much of their funniest moments did appear to be ad-libbed or at least not read off a script. But I see that I didn t mention it in my story.The best part of the assignment was that it finally taught me to tell the difference between the brothers, who I d never bothered to think about as separate individuals before. Tom, the older brother, was a wacko who pretty much seemed to say whatever came into his head. Ray was far more low key, and prevented the proceedings from careening completely off course. From then on, I never had the least bit of difference keeping track of who was who.When I d finished my interview and was ready to leave, the producer handed me a cassette of me chatting with Tom and Ray. It sounded like an episode of Car Talk which I had mysteriously wandered into. I still have it somewhere but I don t think I have a tape player anymore.Anyhow, here s the story, which I just scanned in from the September 1997 issue of The Web. As far as I can tell, it s not otherwise available online.2 comments Posted by Harry McCracken on August 11, 2014 at 12:30 am Just a quick reminder: I m now happily ensconced in my new gig as technology editor for Fast Company. That means that the vast majority of my tech writing will appear on FastCompany.com. To see what I ve been up to so far, you can check out my author page.I do reserve the write to blog here occasionally if I have something to say which doesn t feel like a good fit for FC. And I m updating the Technologizer Flipboard magazine with my own work as well as interesting stuff I m reading elsewhere. But mostly, I m over at Fast Company and I hope you ll hang out with me there.2 comments Posted by Harry McCracken on August 1, 2014 at 3:41 pm Jim Frederick, the first editor I had during my time as a tech writer for TIME, died unexpectedly on Thursday night. He was only 42, and I m still in shock.The loss would be incalculable no matter what the circumstances, but it feels especially jarring and surreal given the bright future Jim was building for himself. Along with his wife Charlotte, he d just switched coasts from New York to San Francisco in order to start a media consultancy. (I got the LinkedIn notification formally announcing the news just yesterday morning.)Jim s most obvious legacy will be his work as a globe-trotting journalist the author of an important book on the Iraq war and a reporter for TIME in Tokyo and London who eventually oversaw all of the magazine s international editions. But to me, he was my editor, one of the best I ever had.If you were making a movie about a TIME-like newsmagazine and wanted to cast the role of a smart, capable, sympathetic editor, you d try to find someone exactly like Jim. He was tall, good-looking, a little gangly, and, above all, unflappable. The expression on his face in the photo here, which I stole from his Twitter profile, captures him perfectly those eyebrows, as far as I knew, were permanently arched.Digging around his recent tweets, I just learned that he had an interest in transcendental meditation. Given his preternaturally unstressed air, it makes perfect sense: Maybe the media business would be in better shape if all of us gave it a try. As the editor of TIME.com, he remained remarkably calm when I pushed my deadlines to the limit (and beyond). Every change he made to my copy was a carefully-considered improvement. He was good at checking in, offering compliments, imparting wisdom, and admitting mistakes. I trusted him, in part because I knew he trusted me.Not too long after I began writing for TIME, I met Jim in person for the first time. He took me out for a drink at a bar near the Time Life Building in Rockefeller Center, and in about 45 minutes, he told me everything I needed to know about TIME a primer which, in retrospect, gave me as clear and canny an understanding of the institution as I d ever get.I last saw him in June, when we met for a beer at a restaurant in the Inter-Continental Hotel in San Francisco called Luce. (When I suggested the venue, I forgot the establishment s name, but the reference to TIME s founder was probably Freudian on my part.) I d just resigned from TIME and filled him in on my plans; he let me know about his intention to come west in search of new opportunities.He d already visited a few startups in Silicon Valley and San Francisco, and told me that he was struck by the atmosphere. By and large, people seemed to be happy to be at work. They were energized, excited about trying new things, and not overly worried about the possibility of failure. (The vibe at big New York-based media companies can be radically different, for reasons I don t have to explain.)Jim asked me: Was the optimism he noticed normal in the Bay Area? Yes, I said, it was. He was so much looking forward to being part of it, and I still can t believe that he won t be.The New York Observer s Ken Kurson, who worked with Jim during an earlier part of his Time Inc. career at Money magazine, has written a wonderful remembrance of the man. I m sure there will be many more to come.One comment Posted by Harry McCracken on July 20, 2014 at 11:52 am They weren t the best thing he ever did, or the one which we ll cherish the most. But with the sad news of the passing of James Garner, it s worth pausing to remember the commercials he did in the late 1970s and early 1980s for Polaroid. And this being Technologizer it s how we ll memorialize him here.When it came to celebrity spokespeople, Polaroid wasn t stingy: Laurence Olivier did the first ad for the SX-70 camera, and Danny Kaye touted the ill-fated Polavision instant movie system. Hiring James Garner was a similarly classy move, but the ads he appeared in weren t like anything which Polaroid had done before. Or anyone else, really. Continue Reading

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