brass Blog

As many of you are already well aware, we recently unveiled the new web site for brass. The first, and most important reason why you should care, is that it just looks a lot cooler. The second reason is that we’ve added, and are continuing to add a whole lot of new tech features. Some of the new things we’re doing are listed below:

1) Exclusive cover photos
We’ve included the ability to view our past covers as well as additional exclusive photos from the cover photo shoots. You can find these above on our homepage.

2) Videos in blogs
The same way you can post videos in a MySpace profile, we’re now able to post videos in my blogs, so expect to see a lot more of that. As a debut, I’ve included my favorite Super Bowl commercial from FedEx.

3) Blogs by mobile phone
I signed up with a new service on Blogger, which allows me to post blogs by text messaging through my cell phone. It should be pretty tight because now I’ll be able to blog from anywhere.

4) Articles via PDF
Another new feature we added is the ability to download the articles via PDF. So if there’s an article you like, just download it and save it for reference.

5) Plans to begin Video Podcasting or “Vodcasting” I’m putting some plans together to begin Vodcasting on the blog. These will range from my travels across the country, the behind the scenes of producing a magazine, and interviews with our cover stories.

6) Use RSS
We plan on building RSS into a lot of the things on the site, so whether you want to subscribe to my blog, have brass articles automatically update on your personal homepage, or have my Vodcast downloaded via iTunes to your iPod, these are all things we hope to have available in the not too distant future.

Hope you like the new features, and if you have any other ideas, let us know.

Bryan

I am fortunate to get invitations to speak at conferences in what seems like an invitation per week. Scratch that. It’s more like no invitations for 4 weeks, and then 5 in one week. Sometimes they’re in New York, sometimes in Las Vegas, and of course, Hawaii. “Oooh, Hawaii,” most people say. Meanwhile I think to myself, “Uh-ooooh.” I read an article from a fellow editor recently that described the differences between a true traveler, and recreational traveler. His point was that while most people would jump for joy at an all expense paid trip to Hawaii, a true traveler sees it as a 5 hour flight with a 3 hour time change, and if you?re an East Coaster, a 10 hour flight and 6 hour time change.

The reason I bring this up, if you could not guess already, is that I am in fact, on a plane traveling. Today’s trip started with a 3:50 am Orbitz phone call, a three hour reminder that my flight left at 6:50. Thanks Orbitz. I then fly from 6:50 am to 5:00 pm from Eugene, OR to Boston, MA. I go to a dinner off the plane, go to meeting tomorrow, and then fly out at 5:00 pm and arrive back in Eugene at 11:30pm. I’ll be in Boston for a total of 24 hours.

In trips like these, you literally sit on a plane for a day, grab dinner, attend a meeting and fly home, and there is no time for anything else. It all becomes just one, really, really long day.

In previous years I checked a bag for these trips, foolishly thinking I’d get an evening run in. About a year ago I upgraded to the carry-on, which I could still fit work-out clothes in, while skipping the wait in the check-in line. Well today marks the day of a new era. On this trip, you won’t find me with any luggage at all aside from my computer bag. My computer bag contains a pair of boxer briefs (which is grammatically correct, but I still cannot figure out why a single clothing item is called a pair), a pair of socks (this pair makes more sense), a tooth brush and stick of deodorant.

Hey, at least I brought deodorant.

P.S. I wish blogger would get their stuff together so you can copy and paste without there being a thousand stupid formatting errors.