Author Archives: Chris

Mentioned on Diggnation

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article that poured one out for GeoCities, the ancient network of websites that Yahoo axed after buying it for way too much money. The article, “Goodbye GeoCities: 7 Retro Things We’ll Miss Forever,” hit the Digg front page and top in all topics with over 1400 Diggs.

But more importantly, it earned a spot on last week’s episode of Diggnation (skip the intro, it’s the second segment above… or follow this link). That’s right. Being mentioned on an actual television show every week isn’t enough — I’d like to be mentioned by two drunk guys on a couch in a web show instead.

It’s been a goal of mine for about 3 years to get an article on Diggnation. Check that one off the list.

My TV Debut

One day a few weeks ago, Daniel asked me if I wanted to shave my head. Of course, I did it. Who wouldn’t want their head shaven? Pretty soon, everyone else in the office was shaving their head, too. It was all good fun. Until we were walking down the street one day and…

Tosh.0

Quoted in eCampus News

eCampus News

Open universities offer students a shot at learning for free and the freedom of doing so remotely. It’s a really cool movement in education. eCampus News just did a feature on the subject and I was lucky enough to be one of their sources. Here’s the pertinent chunk so you don’t have to register on their goofy site:

Chris Lesinski, a blogger who tracks education technology trends, credited institutions like MIT and Stanford University for making lectures available online for anyone to download and watch, but said an entire college education via the internet and without cost could remain a foreign concept for traditionalists in campuses’ Ivory Towers.

“Universities aren’t exactly forward thinking all the time,” Lesinski said. “I think it’s the main thing that holds back open universities. … There’s a technophobia there. People who are still using AOL for their eMails are the ones running the universities.”

Hot, huh?

[via eCampus News]

Researching for Tosh.0 on Comedy Central

tosh.0 logo Some how, I landed an incredible job. I get paid to browse the internet — don’t we all?

Tosh.0 is a weekly half-hour variety show hosted by Daniel Tosh that makes fun of the internet and my job is integral to that concept. I pitch the best of the web to the writer’s room and what they don’t use, I write about with my own take at the Tosh.0 blog. I also manage some of the social media presence and a lot of the video distribution.

It’s been more than a month. Here are a few of my posts so far:

“Coffee Making Robot”

Cover of The New Yorker Created on iPhone

5 Lego Fashion Trends That Never Took Off

A Dictionary Informed by the Internet

Long-Hair Brusher Guys

Is That How You Treat Your Mother?

A Site Dedicated to User-Submitted Street Mattresses

Tron Guy Forced to Sell Airplane

If you want more you can check out my latest posts or subscribe to a feed of my Tosh.0 contributions.

Wired – Hack a Hottie’s Digits

I have another blurb in Wired this month! It’s “How to Hack a Hottie’s Digits.” (That makes it sound way better than it is.)

Up in Wired

It’s been a long time coming — this little 1″ strip in Wired magazine — but I’m still proud. It’s hard to miss the video segments below, but here’s the original piece: How to Push a Coin Through a Table

I’m starting my own magazine. Not.

Hooray! It’s my first official LA Times Tech Blog post! It’s about how I’m starting my own magazine. Or how I could if I wanted to.

And you thought starting a blog was easy…

Why start a blog when you can start a nice, glossy print magazine? Hewlett-Packard recently launched a new service called MagCloud, which flattens the entire magazine distribution process into one website. Give HP the content in PDF form and out comes a magazine. The cost: 20 cents per page. HP handles all the printing, mailing and subscription management. Users can set the subscription price for their rag (above the base price plus postage), leaving some room for profit if they choose. Gutenberg would be proud.

…Read the full story at the LA Times Technology blog

Insanity:

Another day at the L.A. Times. In case you didn’t know: the Tribune Company, its owner, is dying along with every other newspaper on the planet.

The thing that strikes me day after day — whether I’m at the L.A. Times, or talking with a studio friend, or sitting in a film class — is this: You can’t do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. The economy is no excuse — some media companies are doing okay right now.

New Media is hard, but it’s not as un-paved as people keep saying it is. There are ways of making money. There are ways of finding an audience. But they aren’t the same as the old ways.

A single serving

This is my first real website. It’s a simple, single-serving site with just one answer: how much a first class stamp costs.

My Thesis prez

I’m finished with college. Next semester, I’ll be taking yoga and independent studies. It ought to be a hoot.

But my capstone presentation was about web video distribution. Appropriately, I streamed it online. About 50 people were in and out during the live stream and hopefully they were all thinking, “I can’t wait to hire this kid in May!” Maybe not.

I’m especially proud of a concept I’ve engineered called “segment parsing.” I introduce it in the video — but there’s more to come soon.

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