Look closely, and you’ll notice I’m holding only half a kayak paddle. Which could be a metaphor for how I feel writing about my own year in review. Yup. (Photo by Jennifer Phillips)

Man, this week was slow. This last week, the one between Christmas and New Year’s? Really slow. I never liked it when, as a reporter, sources would answer questions with, “Slow news week, eh?” But I’ll say it to myself. Nobody wanted to read much of what I get paid to write about this week. So I did what everybody else does and just ran out the annual clock with a year-end review. Of myself.

Leaving Lifehacker

It was a big deal, stepping away from the job that changed my life. But after three and a half years of waking up early, scanning hundreds of headlines, and pinching five or six rapid-fire posts, plus a feature or two every week, it was time to go.

I’m really proud of the work I did at Lifehacker. I’m extremely grateful to Gina Trapani, Adam Pash, and Nick Denton for giving me the chance to write about topics I really enjoyed, for money, every day. I had a great crew of coworkers, almost always. And there’s no doubt that my time at Lifehacker, and the truly impressive spread of the site’s content, allowed me to start writing as a paid freelancer at a number of other web sites (along with the occasional return visit to pick up a day shift or two).

Then again, the weird thing about that kind of instant writing, about getting your hooks into topics the moment you hit them, is that it accelerates everything about the job, not just the word count. The reactions and results from your writing are seen and felt instantly. And if you’re not jazzed about what you’re writing about, give it 30 minutes, and you’re onto the next thing. But you also start to feel like you’ve “covered” something many, many times over. Like a political reporter inured to the same campaign tricks and scandals year after year, but in one-eighth the time.

After a year or two of writing for Lifehacker, I became my own worst enemy at feature pitch meetings–more self-antagonizing than usual, anyways–because I couldn’t think of anything that hadn’t been written. Anything respectable, relevant, helpful, it seemed, had been covered four times. There’s the general notion that there’s no such thing as new stories, just new writers. I think that’s true, and in my case, it became a good reason to move on and let some talented young guys get paid to write more.

Freelancing

Since I’ve yet to hit it big with my Fancy Coffee Illustrated app (wait, is he joking?), I took up a few offers to write freelance for web sites. Some of it is very much in the same realm as Lifehacker, but it’s usually up to me to pick the topics, the angle, and the depth. So it’s been fun to occasionally lean back in my Aeron knock-off, stroke my entirely non-existent chin hair, and scan past the immediate headlines.

So I wrote about my “knitting circle”, finding a job these days, and using caffeine strategically for Fast Company. I told the tale of how a small group fared with a free Google Apps installation at TechRepublic. And I’ve just started regularly blogging for ITWorld, where I’ve lately proven that even an Android guide book author can get fired up about bad moves by his bread and butter.

TEDxBuffalo 2011

Photo by Tricia Marcolini

For the first part of 2011, I was an eager participant in TEDxBuffalo, an independently organized conference in the style of, and under license from, the global TED brand. The conference, as scheduled for April of 2011, didn’t happen, due to a key figure’s personal issues that I shall not dive into here. But when it came time to apologize to the stakeholders and possibly regroup, I found myself more eager, and more leader-ish, than I’d ever thought I could be.

Why? It sounds so idealistic now, but I thought the first outcome, the one where we tried, gosh dang it, but never quite got a conference together was just a terrible rap on Buffalo, and the associated crew. I kept thinking about what the web searches would look like. I’m serious. You know what I’m talking about: you’re wandering the web, and you suddenly come across the sad remains of a business, an event, a project–something where the last update was more than a year ago, and it’s about “Big plans for 2011!” or something akin. I really, really didn’t want people to wonder if Buffalo ever put on a TEDx event, and have the answer be, “Oh, kind of, I guess, but in a sad, bicycle-with-a-flat-tire way.”

I thought I’d long since grown the psychic armor to deflect the arrows of What People Might Think. But I couldn’t resist the urge to fire back and get at least one show done. The folks who put together this event made that show far greater than I thought it could be, and I’m freaked out about how 2012 might turn out.

Anyways, I wrote up a post-conference wrap-up and a “What I learned” post, and it’s hard to believe it went down just over two months ago.

Google+: The Missing Manual

When I wasn’t making my friends sick of hearing about TEDxBuffalo, I was deflating all their remaining camraderie with grumbles about “the book.” The book was my second instructional tome about a Google product, after The Complete Android Guide, but this time published and edited by what you might call a more traditional publisher, O’Reilly Media. Even though O’Reilly is an innovator in many areas of the publishing field, it’s becoming a kind of standard-bearer for tech publications, and there’s a well-defined process for pitching, writing, and producing a book.

I was, to say the least, unprepared for the demands of this type of book when I started. You might also say I was spoiled by the Complete Guide process, which left me to make most of the decisions about organization, templates, copy styles, and other details. It took a good deal longer to write this book, and I probably ended up writing it 1.8 times, really. But I’m quite proud of the finished product, and I think it’s a real help for anyone looking to learn more about Google+.

It’s an ebook sold without any digital restrictions, with free lifetime downloads and updates, and easy transfer to any e-reader device, and I’m pretty sure the printed version will be very nice, too, in keeping with O’Reilly’s standards for putting out the best tomes around. You can buy a nice print/ebook combo at O’Reilly’s store, or buy the paperback at Amazon.

In Pod Form

Here’s another thing that was hard to do this year: start a podcast. Not with Lifehacker, or O’Reilly, or from any other pre-existing platform I’ve lucked into. Just from the efforts of myself and Phil Dzikiy. It has been humbling, in all the right ways, to start from scratch, learning how to not suck at planning, recording, editing, publishing, and promoting a show where two guys you (probably) don’t know are trying to entertain you with takes on the news, not-that-young dude culture, technology, and other not-too-specific topics.

Phil and I work pretty hard at In Pod Form, though most of it doesn’t show, hopefully. We argue out topics, try to keep the show flowing, and, on the technical end, sweat the details as much as possible with our amateur recording and editing equipment. I clip out a few “Umms” and “Likes” where I can, and I try to keep it between 35-40 minutes per episode. We want to respect people’s time, and we provide all the links we talk about on our show notes.

It’s been revealing to see how hard it is to build an audience from scratch. And I mean scratch–if you have a cousin in South Dakota, they have almost certainly gathered more Facebook “Likes” than In Pod Form. But Phil and I are proud of each episode, we’re learning the ropes in a new medium, and heck if it isn’t great to have a mandatory weekly appointment to see a good friend.

Travels

TripIt says that I traveled 0 miles in 2011, but I trust my memory more than their apparently twitchy API.

• I got to visit Los Angeles for a week in February and hang out with the Lifehacker crew in-person, which was damned fun. We shot video for the Lifehacker Show
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  , ate at a number of wonderful spots, and got to see whether we actually laughed out loud when we typed “lol.” And, while I wouldn’t diminish a week spent in L.A. during a Buffalowinter, but Adam P. gave me an AeroPress
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  to take home, and it totally upgraded my life.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  

  
  
  

• I hit up SXSW 2011, my third South-By visit, with a crew of Buffalo geeks working on a start-up: Steve Poland, Nick Barone, Dan Magnuszewski, Chris Moyer, and Michael Collins. We stayed in very close quarters.
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  

  
  
  

• I flew solo at Google I/O 2011
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  , but I got to meet up with Adam and Gina, meet some really neat folks from O’Reilly, and spent a good bit of quality time with Paddy Foran. Paddy even snuck me into Twitter’s headquarters for an impromptu lunch. And I finally had a chance to meet up with Pete, one of the my father’s unofficial brothers (long story), and it was just a great extended weekend.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  

  
  
  

• I vacationed in Maine for a week. I ate a lot of seafood, read more than one book in a week, and continued to fail at tanning.
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  

  
  
  

• I tagged along with my wife to Washington, D.C., where she was sworn in to the Supreme Court Bar
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  , and where we watched a morning session of the Court. It was intense. And Clarence Thomas really does look very close to nodding off at times.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  

  
  
  

Miscellania

• I was the “Most Saved Author” on the web in 2011, according to Read It Later
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  . Nifty. On a related note, I compiled my five favorite Longreads “of” 2011
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
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• I turned 30. The best part was the bowling alley party that involved pitchers
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  of White Russians.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  

  
  
  

• It was bittersweet to see The Main Washington Exchange
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  come and go in what seems so quick a fashion, looking back. I think most of the Buffalo-area tech types I know think that a communal space for our projects, gatherings, and, yes, working can happen, but it probably needs to start smaller, and probably as an outgrowth of a tech firm that ends up with a little extra space on hand.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  

  
  
  

• Elizabeth and I finally saw the end of a total kitchen remodel, which took more than half a year and which had us finding new appreciation for a working stove. I wouldn’t recommendit to people who aren’t looking to watch how fluidly a project can double in cost, size, and time, accompanied by numerous reassurances of how nice everything is going to be. And it is very nice. But it was the Let It Be/Get Back
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  of our home ownership experience. I’m serious. I can definitely play this metaphor out and point out who the Phil Spector character was, if you’d like (you wouldn’t).
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  

  
  
  

• According to my personal ThinkUp installation, this was my most-retweeted Twitter post of 2011 (at least as long as ThinkUp has been tracking): “Just because you’re self-employed doesn’t mean you can’t be mad at your boss and his total lack of focus.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
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Over a long weekend in September 2007, and right before I sent an overly earnest pitch letter to the editors at Lifehacker, I created this web site so that I might appear impressive, experienced, and engaged in the wider world of tech.

Once I’d made the jump to being actually engaged as a full-time, at-home, independent editor and freelancer, I made updates to the site so as to appear busy and important. Once I was busy, and at least self-important, I wanted to appear responsive, involved, and all kinds of quirky.

These days, I have no time to appear anything at all. Or appear most anywhere, unless it’s tangentially work-related or deductible from taxes. Free food, sure, but otherwise, no dice.

This is, as The Wire‘s Marlo Stanfield put it, “One of those good problems.” Still, I occasionally get time to look back over my shoulder and notice how much space I’ve put between myself and this site, and its original aims at being about me, my interests, the people who share my interests and earn my respect, and the place where I live.

Oh, well. This update mostly keeps the pace down that same, singular street, but let’s hope it’s the last block before I turn the corner again. Having pounded that extended metaphor into the pavement (meta!), let’s get to the new stuff about me, me, me:

Writing a book: The Complete Guide to Android. There is nothing to show at this point, and nothing’s ever certain. But I’m sure trying to get something done, in the vein of Gina Trapani’s Complete Guide to Google Wave, with the topic being the rising Android smartphone OS from Google.

This Week in Google: We all listen when Gina suggests something, and she was kind enough to suggest to the host of This Week in Google that I appear to talk about a Top 10 Android Apps post, and other topics related to Android. So I plugged in my webcam, sat my headset on my ears, and had more fun than I’ve ever had with a camera on me.

You can grab audio and (soon) video from that episode, “Perky Jerky,” at the site. If you dug the topics and talk, subscribe to This Week in Google from iTunes, or head to the show site for other feed options. I get through it every week, often while cooking or watching dishes. It’s like having some really nerdy, wonderful friends let you join them at their tech table.

Nickel City Chef:

As you might imagine, it’s a Buffalo-focused take on the Iron Chef (America) phenomenon, with two chefs–one a “Nickel City Chef” from Buffalo, the other a challenger–competing, on deadline, to imaginatively incorporate a secret ingredient into several dishes.

I was asked to represent Buffalo Spree magazine as a judge at the first regular season throw-down, and I gladly accepted, since tickets last year sold out before I could think twice about it. Adam Goetz from SAMPLE took on challenger Ross Warhol, executive chef at the Chautauqua Institution’s Athenaeum Hotel, with the secret ingredient being whole milk ricotta cheese from Sorrento, itself headquartered in Buffalo.

Via Nickel City Chef [Facebook].

The highlights:

• Learning that local NPR morning host Bert Gambini doesn’t look anything like he sounds. I’ve had similar “radio voice/image dissonance” revelations about folks like Brian Ibbott, but, seriously–Bert Gambini sounds like your toy-train-collecting uncle after enunciation lessons, but looks like he could lift your car if you dropped your wallet under it.
• Eating ricotta as a powder steeped in Earl Grey. Probably won’t ever get to do it again.
• Learning how to think fast, faster, fastest about what I’m eating, as the microphone lands in my face. Mention was made of “a chocolate bar left just a minute too long in the back of a station wagon,” though.
• Eating all that food, meeting the chefs, chatting with friends after, learning how hard it is to talk about food.

Artvoice’s 5 Questions With … Were asked of me. My dad later informed me that the “little brown device” he carried around was actually a signal emitter that let him use his own long distance service over AT&T lines. Which is kind of neat, to learn your dad dabbled in phone phreaking while you were wolfing down Honey Nut Cheerios.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Interviewed me for a feature, “‘Life hack’ aims to boost productivity in workplace.” Steve Twedt was great to talk to, and genuinely interested in learning about the roots, range, and regular uses of all kinds of things Lifehacker-ish.

CBS3 Philadelphia: Did a video Skype interview for a feature on resolution-keeping apps.

Yeesh. I feel like I’m about to drown in the internet equivalent of a very still pond. With all that What I’ve Been Up To out of the way, though, I aim to write something else next time. Something with cheese, perhaps.

I’m really enjoying my guest stint on The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC, public radio for New York City. When someone, be it a host or caller, forces you to actually talk about something you write about every morning in short bursts, it brings a new kind focus to it. You’re forced to think about the most commonly applicable aspects of technology and productivity thinking–what I like to call the “Brother-in-Law Test” (more on that some other time).

Since I know you’re crushed to have missed the segments when they originally aired, they’re embedded below: Aug. 13, talking about web applications and universal capture tools, and the Aug. 20 segment, focused on email.

I’ve been on two different WNYC morning radio shows in the last month or so, talking up Lifehacker-type topics and describing how I watch TV (without cable) and get things done (when I can).

First up, an appearance on The Takeaway with John Hockenberry to talk about living “Life After Television,” i.e. switching away from cable to streaming net content (and over-the-air DTV). Click the play icon below to listen:

[audio:http://thepurdman.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/takeaway_interview_kevin_purdy.mp3]

Next up, I was asked to take part in a month-long series of segments dealing with productivity on The Brian Lehrer Show. The first segment was this morning, and I should be on again every Thursday in August, around 10:40 a.m. Here’s the embedded clip–hit “More” in the upper-right corner for a download link, if needed:

I’m glad I was able to score another invite with my elite plugging skills near the end. But, seriously, I do listen to On The Media nearly every week. Because I was popular in high school.

I was lucky enough to be interviewed at Rochester’s local NPR affiliate, WXXI, for its weekly Mixed Media segment. You can hear my 13:48 of audio fame in a full, streaming podcast; the version that plays on actual air waves (July 1 at about 3:44pm, methinks?) will be much shorter. It’s mostly a soft, slightly rambling introduction to Lifehacker, as well as some honest answers about what it’s like to blog for a living.

I tend to do two things when I’m talking on the spot: use many more “um” verbal placeholders than I would in casual conversation, and, to put it nicely, venture off the path with my answers to straightforward questions. The latter is somewhat inherent to how I think, but the former is something I could use some help and training on. If I find great resources online, I’ll share ‘em; if you’ve got any tips for a neophyte interviewee, let me know with a comment.

Personal blogging is hard when you’re updating another blog at least five times per day, and often more. As I put it to my editor recently, it feels like my Who Cares Filter is completely closed up by the time I find myself with time to write in this space. I don’t have to write about software, productivity, gadgets, or time management here, of course; it’s just a vague feeling that I’ve linked and updated everything I need to on the net each day.

But! Now it’s way too early on a Sunday, and I’ve got a few things that need sharin’.

• The headline: Yep. Less than six months after moving to Rochester, the wife and I are moving back to our home of more nine years. I defer my feelings on this to an upcoming Roc/Buff open comparison chart I’ll be posting (seriously) later this month.
• Food Week at Lifehacker: That was seriously fun. I earned some experience doing solo video shoots, interviewing Art Rogers of Lento restaurant about slicing and dicing onions and fileting a fish.
  
  What did I learn? Per @jordanconway, I might find a bolt that fits in the tripod mount of my Zi6 and attach it to a lanyard for steadier shots. When shots go wrong (“Macro Mode” my butt), I’ll politely ask my subject to back up and re-explain, and I’ll keep the camera on the subject (food!) more often.
• Rockin’ the G1: Finally joined the realm of folks who can complain about two different kinds of cellular reception. I dig the open nature, the browser is pretty snappy when the bandwidth’s there, and certain apps are total killers (Locale, for one). Many reviewers and iPhone purists have knocked on the hardware, but I see a clear trade-off for the “bulk” and “design choices.” Namely, having 3.2 megapixels in your pocket at all times, to shoot ridiculously clear photos and video:
  
  
• Firefox add-ons for journalists: Titled Journalist Picks for now, and it’s a work in progress. Got an extension that would help with research, note-taking, or tracking beat subjects online? Drop them in the comments or hit me up on email.

Thanks to Kevin Lim for shooting and posting, and to BarCamp Buffalo for letting me try out an alpha-level presentation on the late-night crowd.

I’d intended to run through three areas early-morning bloggers can use to sprint through material and write faster, but ended up focusing on one app I could easily keep in the 10-minute time frame. Intrigued? Check out the full list of tools and tricks referenced at the end of the vid.

Since the last time I dropped some HTML here (2008!), quite a bit has changed for the Purdman. Here’s the traffic-friendly listicle version:

• Moved to Rochester: I started at the University at Buffalo in 1999, and have lived in Buffalo—minus a 1.3-year hiatus in Sandusky, OH—ever since. Rochester’s only an hour and a half by car from my old town, and, to the vast majority of those who even acknowledge its existence, upstate New York is all one big exurb of NYC anyways. But it’s no small thing to leave a place where you’ve got a really good handle on the local media happenings and gossip, the menus of approximately 70% of the regional eateries, the non-abridged lexicon of local legend and lore, and all the other stuff of small-city life behind.
  
  How to adapt to Rochester, then? Reverse every future-of-news-business article at once and get the actual print newspaper delivered every day. Sign up for things you’d normally shrug off (BarCamp Rochester, anyone?). Be randomly friendly to people. Working from home makes it tough to find a clear path to local enlightenment, but, then again, it’s the dead of winter. Sunshine, I hope, is not only the best disinfectant, but a powerful energy source for social generators (Sorry, I’m still recovering from a wind energy piece).
• Senior Editor at Lifehacker: Mostly because the site’s originator, motivator, and, uh, editor gracefully said goodbye to pursue a truly freelance life. There’s an old Gawker Media trope about how one year of full service does, actually, constitute being “Senior,” but I’ll leave that to the MediaBistro/TechCrunch types to parse. It’s a bigger step up than it might seem to those on the other side of the PHP, but I’m really enjoying having an active role in asking questions, planning features, and making changes that shape the day-to-day success of my favorite site.
• I turned 28:
  
  ‘Nuff said.
• Canceled cable, switched to streaming: Nor have I looked back once. I’m using Boxee and Apple TV to cut the cable, so I can stream The Office, 30 Rock, and (very soon) Lost whenever I want in HD. For everything else, there’s free, over the air digital television. Seriously, it took a lot of mental re-programming to get used to the idea that there’s actually free television out there.
• Reminded what real reporting is like: Nothing I did approached the completeness of the intense, strongly-felt coverage by the Buffalo News. But I covered the crash of flight 3407 in Clarence, NY for the NY Post, and it struck me, for the first time in a long time, just how intense deadline journalism involving real humans can be. It was overwhelming, terribly sad, and an experience I’ll keep with me for a long time.

My social-media-savvy (and skilled) fellow Lifehacker Tamar Weinberg did the yeoman’s job of getting the whole editorial team to spill what we use in discussing, planning, researching, and writing the site. My own picks and preferences are about halfway down the page–they’ll stand out for all the Linux gear (plus the open admission to using Vista without a pistol to my frontal lobe).

Brian Ibbott, creator and host of the long-running, ground-breaking music podcast Coverville, agreed to chat with me last week, and the Q&A is posted at Lifehacker.

It was really weird, in a great way, talking one-on-one with a voice I’ve been hearing for years–on car trips, during dish-washing sessions, over the occasional jog, and in other spots. But he’s very candid, very honest, and didn’t mind when one of my questions went for more than a minute (which got axed in editing, by the way.