Author: Benson Hendrix

Benson Hendrix, APR has been called everything from a “social media zen warrior” to the ” ‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper of Public Relations,” and from a “behind the scenes powerbroker,” to “the loudmouth PR love child of Henry Rollins and Anthony Bourdain,” but doesn’t really believe any of it (except maybe the “Rowdy” Roddy Piper part). Hendrix is the Digital Media Manager for the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology and loves helping organizations and people tell the stories that are important to them. He is also an adjunct social media instructor at the University of New Mexico, and the Social Media Strategist for TEDxABQ. In the few minutes a week he calls "spare time," he relaxes with his wife and chases his dream to be a better photographer.
apple, computers, Microsoft, Technology

Dell’s Been Reading my Blog Again

Posted on by Benson Hendrix

A few months back I wrote a couple of pieces about the problem my old Dell laptop was having.  Well, it wasn’t as much of a story as it was me bitching about the problems I was having with it.

And to my surprise and delight, one of Dell’s consumer advocates left a comment and asked me to email him.  I did this and he has helped me out several times with my old laptop and with problems with my current laptop as well.

Following up on all of my posts about iLife for the PC (which I know you can’t possibly be tired of yet 😉 ), I was looking at the Dell site a couple of weeks ago and I found this!  Adobe Elements Studio, offered only from Dell and only for a few of its products, the new XPS One desktop (Dell’s answer to the iMac single form factor computer) and the XPS 420 desktop. 

Now I don’t want to say that Dell got the idea from my previous post about how to bundle Adobe software to produce an iLife clone for PC. (But I’m cocky enough to do it anyway 😉 )  But it’s a good idea to have this kind of a bundle for PC users as well.  Another bundle I’ve found that would work as a PC iLife replacement is Roxio’s Easy Media Creator 10.  It’s another bundle, focused more on video, audio and basic image editing.  One thing I’ve been finding is that these bundles don’t focus as much on basic Web site design, which I think is a mistake since many people are interested in putting their pictures and video on their own Web site, but don’t have the know how to design a site from scratch.  Then they end up putting their stuff on MySpace.. ugh!  I’ll keep looking for a package that includes web templates, or at least some decent web templates you can use (I’ve already found some at Open Source Web Design)

 

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4
Discworld, Terry Pratchett

Holy Great Writers, Batman!

Posted on by Benson Hendrix

This just in!  Terry Pratchett – author of the best selling “Discworld” series, and an author I rank right up there with Stephen King, J.R.R. Tolkien and Bruce Campbell – announced that he’s got an rare form of  early-onset Alzheimers.  His statement is available here.

I came up with my pen name – William de Worde – from his book, The Truth.  As I said in the About me page, it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read (and a character I was hoping to see again in the Discworld series.  I’ll always associate Terry Pratchett and his Discworld with my fiancee, since she was the one who introduced me to this world.

Wow, I’m really bummed and hope there is something that can be done to pull him through this.  There are many more Discworld books he needs to write, dang it!

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apple, internet, Microsoft, Sony, Technology

moreLife for PC

Posted on by Benson Hendrix

(RELATED UPDATE:  I have a review of Sony’s Imagination Studio Suite HERE)

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In an interesting turn of events, the post that has given me the most traffic in recent weeks hasn’t been any of my comments about Mayor Chavez (although I did get a spike in traffic from linking to Eye on Albuquerque) or my posts about the Albuquerque Tribune possibly shutting down.

Nope, my biggest traffic getter for the past month and a half has been my call for Apple to release iLife to the PC platform. As I discussed before, Apple can get a decently large piece of the pie from Adobe and Sony if they were to do this, because there are other geeks like me out in the big wide world who wouldn’t mind trying out iLife.

That said, it doesn’t sound like Apple will be doing this anytime soon. So for those people looking for a PC suite of programs that will work in much of the same way that iLife will, I offer the following groups of programs that play well together and give you some integration (although again,one of iLife’s strengths is its incredibly tight integration and smooth workflow between programs, Sony and Adobe can offer similar workflow, however):

Sony Adobe Free/Open Source
Video Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum Premier Elements 4.0 Windows Movie Maker/JahShaka
Music ACID Music Studio and/or Sound Forge Audio Studio Audition or Soundbooth Audacity
Photo PhotoGo or Windows Live Photo Editor Photoshop Elements 6.0 GIMP or Windows Live Photo Editor
Web KompoZer GoLive CS2 (since they have Dreamweaver, they can do something else with this) KompoZer (getting a there here?)

As you see, I also included a column for software that comes with your Windows machine, or that you can get via the Open Source community. These programs, I’ve found, tend to have a little steeper learning curve than some of the Adobe/Sony programs – much less the iLife suite. But it’s like most software programs, once you master them you can do amazing things with them.

I’ve also included a piece of Open Source software in the Web component of the table (at least for Sony and the Open Source columns). KompoZer is a cool software application, built on the Nvu platform – an open source competitor to Dreamweaver or (probably more appropriately) Microsoft Expression Web. iWeb’s strength is still all of the templates that came with it – from what I’ve seen it’s more a matter of different CSS’ for the same WYSIWYG framework templates. A good idea, because people can drag and drop files onto the pages or start typing in the predesignated areas before moving them around.

Adobe should do the same thing with GoLive, add a lot of templates to the software, lower the price or (better yet) bundle the software as part of this package, and make it more accessible to the same market segment that Apple could be gunning for, but hasn’t yet. (More on Dell’s Adobe Elements studio in the next post).

For those of you interested in a PC version of iLife, I hope these help provide you with some of the same enjoyment and utility that I have had working with them – until Apple takes my advice and moves iLife over.

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computers, Technology

No iLife? How about aLife? anyLife?

Posted on by Benson Hendrix

(UPDATE:  Sony did the surprising and released the Sony Imagination Studio Suite.  I have a review HERE)

Before everyone reading this (all three of you) start agreeing with me that I need “a life” outside of my fiancée, computers, and my Xbox, remember that a little while back I wrote a post discussing the perceived benefits of Apple releasing the iLife suite to PC’s. Now that we are up to speed…

I wrote about the financial benefit that I believe Apple would receive from making this suite available to the broader market of PC users, there are quite a few PC users out there who, like myself, would jump at the chance to have these basic programs loaded up (for a price of, say, $200 or so – $50 per program isn’t too bad, and no iDVD doesn’t count as a program for this purpose.)

And I have to say that I am quite let down that Steve Jobs hasn’t already taken my advice, made this software available to the market, and personally called me to thank me for coming up with such a great idea and offering me a fabulous job working on more amazing ideas. 😉

I know that the programs installed in iLife are basically grandma-ware versions of Apple’s more powerful consumer level (Final Cut Express, Logic Express) programs, and they are very basic compared to Apple’s pro level stuff. But they are still strong enough for what most basic-level social media/internet peeps want to do – put up a quick site, record podcasts in Garageband (which has a killer World Music Jam Pack, I’ve gotta say – see Steve, it’s not all vitriol 😉 ) or edit some video in iMovie.

In lieu of Apple coming up with iLife for PC (they can put a wrap around suit and tie on the box to go with their current marketing theme), I’ve come up with another brilliant idea.

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computers, Technology

We Wants the Precioussssssss…..

Posted on by Benson Hendrix

Earlier this year I wrote about the new ASUS 701 EEE ultraportable palmtop computer. A 7″ screen, runs on either Linux or Windows XP, internet ready with a camera. This thing was made for the mobile blogger (like yours truly tries to be). It’s the perfect size for a small messenger bag, along with your digital camera, cell phone and a Zoom H2 recorder and you’re ready to go!

The EEE is a sleek design, asking to be played with, and is available in white or black apparently.

(Sleek and available in white or black?? Asus might want to get their lawyers ready, Apple will probably sue them for having a nice looking computer available in white and black. Too close to the Macbook. No sir, I don’t like it.)

Tnkgrl Mobile breaks down her first view of the EEE for us (lucky! I’m so jealous!) and Engadget has a review of the EEE as well.

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computers, Technology

Microsoft Vista – “It just works…”

Posted on by Benson Hendrix

I’ve been reading about the various problems that Apple users have been having with their upgrades to their newest $129 service pack… er, stupendous, outstanding, super-duuuuuuuuper OSX upgrade – Leopard, or Siamese, or Tabby, or Puddy Tat, or what-the-hell ever kitty cat name they are giving this release to convince their buyers that they are a fierce cat in the computer jungle… feh.

Computers locking up, people having problems with some of the security features (the Apple Firewall is set up to be in “off” mode when you turn it on. I guess it “just works” at being turned off) – and some Apple fan-ites getting the equivalent of the Blue Screen of Death (something that, oddly enough, I haven’t gotten since I bought the completed version of Vista). I fact, I haven’t seen a BSOD in a loooooooooooong time with Microsoft.

Now I know that some Apple fanboys are going to blast me as some anti-Apple, “don’t get it” type of person. I’m glad to tell them that they are totally wrong. One of the first computers I cut my teeth on was an Apple IIc and I still enjoy puttering around on Macs when I get a chance. I’ve even told my fiancee that my next laptop will be an Apple Macbook Pro – once they get the hardware up to the level that my Inspiron E1505 is already at.

But it is nice to be able to tell Apple fans that, with Vista Home Premier, everything seems to “just work” for me.

Video editing software? Check
Audio and music editing software? Check-a-roonie
Web design software? Oh hell yeah
Photoshop? Yeah baby, yeahhhh
Anti-Virus and Firewall? Piece of cake
Video players? Check – and on a sharper screen than an Apple 15″ Macbook Pro

Not to mention, my digital video camera which works perfectly on Vista when I plug it into the Firewire port. You see, on my mom’s iMac, the video camera would not register at all.

Plug it in? Nothing.

Restart the computer? Nothing.

Pick up the iMac and shake it like a British nanny with a 3-year-old? Nada.

And don’t get me started on Apple’s great contribution to the browser wars – Safari (I’m starting to pick up a theme here… I wonder what it is…). Once it was ported to the PC platform it took… one, two days… for bugs and errors to be found? I was really excited to get to use Safari, too. I like they layout of Safari, it’s so pretty. But gosh darn it, it just… what’s the phrase I’m looking for here… “wouldn’t work” on my PC. And the fanboys went into full-on emo mode – doing the digital equivalent of sniffing and looking at their navels while saying “Gee, I don’t know why those mean, nasty Windows people take such pleasure in telling us there are problems with our browser.”

Maybe – since Macs have the opportunity to run Vista via Boot Camp – fanboys can load up Vista while they try to figure out what’s wrong with OSX: Leopa-Tabby-Puddy Tat.

See ya later, Space Cowboy…

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computers, Technology

Adventures in Ubuntu-land…

Posted on by Benson Hendrix

This afternoon I’ve been downloading the new Gutsy Gibbon version of Ubuntu and Kubuntu.  I’ve been interested in using Linux, although I can’t really dive into it too much because all of my web design and audio and video editing software is Windows (Sony and Adobe).  I’ve got an older laptop floating around (with a Pentium M processor and 768MB of RAM) that can’t run Vista, but I’ve been told would be great for Ubuntu.

I’m a little nervous about tooling around in Linux, but I’ll keep y’all updated about the progress, trials and tribulations (as opposed to Tribune-ations).

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Uncategorized

“It was so cold one winter, she froze to death.”

Posted on by Benson Hendrix

There are two homeless, or home-challenged, guys who came by our house every couple of weeks this summer to pick our weeds for $15 or $20.  My fiancee and I didn’t have a problem with this, they were willing to work and we were willing to pay for their services.

As these guys came by, we would start to learn about one of them.  He was the more talkative of the pair and I picked up bits and pieces over the summer.  He and his wife moved to Albuquerque from Roswell, he had been out of work for a while, they were living with his step-sister while he walked around the city looking for odd jobs, he had been a car detailer before he was jobless.  I have to give him snaps, he hadn’t been coming around looking for a cash handout.

The summer moved on, and his pal stopped coming by the house to work (although I still see him every few days panhandling on Lomas), but he kept coming by.  However, he’s been coming by more often, and not just to work, but to ask for a ride when he missed the bus (which he did this weekend) or to ask for an advance on work to be done later (which, to his credit, he remembers the next time he comes back – which he has done a few times).

I don’t usually mind giving him a little bit of money, because I consider myself very lucky to have a few bucks to give him.  I’m lucky enough to have a home, food in the cupboard, clothes in my closet, a fiancee I love very much and who loves me back, a sweet dog who has been with me through my separation and divorce, and my return to college and graduation.  All in all I’m a very lucky guy.  I realize that for the grace of God/Goddess/Buddha/Sam, the bad breaks could have hit me and I could be in his shoes.

He was making a B-line to our house today when I was biking home and we bumped into each other across the street from my place and he was telling me he didn’t have any cash, and had gotten a message from one of the car wash/detailing places he had applied for a job at.  They wanted him to come in to talk with them, and he was looking for some money for a haircut and shave – trust me, he needed it.  But I didn’t have any money to help him out this time.  After talking a few minutes he moved on and went to another house where he works at to see if they had work (or money).

I felt bad for the guy, and I hope he gets his money and gets his job, that would make things easier on him.

What does this have to do with the title of this post?

Well I’ll tell you…

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albuquerque, media

The Bell Might Not Toll for Thee, Tribune

Posted on by Benson Hendrix

This report is in from the Santa Fe New Mexican – Doug Turner, CEO of DW Turner Strategic Communications and Tom Carroll, President of DW Turner – are making a bid to buy the Albuquerque Tribune.  If this is true, it would be a very interesting turn in the saga that has been the potential closing of the Albuquerque Tribune.  In full disclosure,  I have worked at DW Turner before, and have many friends currently working at the Tribune.  Doug and Tom are great people to work for, and they know how to run a dynamic company that is capable of changing in the ever fluctuating media landscape.

As I said in previous posts, anyone buying the Tribune would be faced with many possibilities and pitfalls – they would not have any income coming in from the Joint Operating Agreement, they would not have access to the Journal’s equipment or advertising and publishing staff, they would have to start from scratch.  That said, they would also be able to publish a morning paper, print on Sundays, switch design from a broadsheet design to a tabloid design and they could remain creative with their design and online content.  In fact, who knows what they could plan to do with the Tribune!  It could be something completely different than what any of us are thinking.
I’ve got to jet to bed – long days today and tomorrow – but I am looking forward to  the future of the Tribune and media in Albuquerque.  As I said earlier tonight on DCF, It’s going to be an exciting time!

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Halo

Halo 3: That's it??

Posted on by Benson Hendrix

This is a post I had been meaning to write last weekend. But I was busy with another project and with work that it got moved to the back burner. I bought Halo 3 the night it came out – I was in line until about 1 am to pick it up, then I came home and played it for a couple of hours before going to work. Since I was working hard to prepare a conference that was running that Friday, I didn’t get play much more Halo 3 during the week. An hour here, 30 minutes there, 10 minutes before work – you know how it goes.

Then on Saturday (afternoon, of course, no way I was getting up in the AM), after my conference had ended I sat down in front of the XBox 360 and dug into what I expected to be a couple of days of enjoyment.

Four hours later I said “What? After three years?  That’s it?!?”

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