that tech show

At the time, I knew Nora had been working on a pitch for a show called Spark. I’d heard the pilots, and they sounded great. But in June 2007, when I first got Nora’s message, I had no idea that I’d end up spending the next four and a half years of my working life on “that tech show.”

Working on Spark has been one of the most rewarding things I’ve done in my time at CBC Radio. Every day, I work alongside a small team of really talented people, making the kind of show I’d want to listen to (I mean, seriously, what other show would let me dedicate the majority of a broadcast to an in-depth look at the history of QWERTY?). I count myself very, very lucky. Sometimes people ask me what I do for living, and I tell them, “I call up smart, interesting people, talk to them, and put them on the radio.” Sure beats any other job I’ve ever had.

Which is why today is bittersweet.

Today is my last day working at Spark for at least for a year. And even though I’m leaving for a pretty awesome year-long adventure in France, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit misty-eyed. I’m going to miss it all: the story meetings, recording interviews, slicing and dicing tape in Pro Tools, and interacting with “the broader Spark community.” But more than anything, I’m going to miss Nora and the whole team who work so hard to put Spark together every week.

Spark, when it works — when it really, really nails it — is a show about what’s next. It’s a forward-looking show made by forward-looking people. So yes, I’m sad to be leaving. But at the same time, I can’t wait to hear what Spark comes up with next.

I’ll be listening.

I look around our public media field and beyond and see a worrisome gap.

As public broadcasting goes through its own turbulent transition to a new Internet and mobile world, the technology talent gap is a risk that looms large. Yes, there are many other challenges: political and policy battles, business model pressures, cultural and structural obstacles, the need for strategic vision and leadership. And there are other recruitment needs across general management, content, fundraising. But the twin coins of the new digital realm are code and design, and with a few notable exceptions, public media is seriously lacking in both.

Spot on, and pitch perfect. This is a huge part of the reason I’m taking a year off, moving to France and teaching myself to be a programmer-journalist.

Here’s hoping they let me start CBC Labs when I get back.

Often, the questions are the same: Is it worth going to school? Are there actually any jobs? How do I get an internship?

I don’t have good answers to most of these questions, so I usually just end up telling people my story — how I came to work at the CBC — in the hopes that it might help.

Last week, I received another of these semi-regular emails asking about how to become a public radio producer. I started to type a reply, but then realized that it might be helpful to write a more public response. This blog post is that. So then, here are a few rambly thoughts on how I ended up in my current job.

Caveat #1: there really isn’t a clearly defined career path to becoming a CBC Radio employee. I took one route. You may (and probably should) take another route.

Caveat #2: I am a bit of an anomaly. By the end of high school, I had my sights pretty firmly set on working for CBC, and spent the next five years trying *really* hard to make that happen. A little more than a decade after deciding to pursue a career in public radio, I now have that job. I’m a producer on Spark, CBC’s national tech/culture show, and I serve as a technology columnist on most CBC Radio local afternoon shows.

OK. Let’s begin.

Journalism school?

I am not a good person to ask about journalism school, because I never went. Sure, I went to two great universities (King’s ’03, Ryerson ’05), both of which have decent journalism programs, but I didn’t study journalism at either. Why? At the time, both journalism programs seemed strongly focused on print, and my interest was very specific: I wanted to make radio.

So, coming out of high school, I took a 3-year BA at King’s, studying English and Contemporary Studies and the History of Science and Technology (and a bunch of other small-liberal-arts-college-type subjects), and volunteered at the small but mighty CKDU. Then, in my last year at King’s, I applied to Ryerson’s Radio and Television Arts program. At the time, RTA had an “advanced standing” option for university graduates, which gave me a second degree in exchange for two years of my life. The advanced standing option no longer exists.

While at Ryerson, I developed some production chops, and learned a bunch of technical stuff that’s now largely obsolete. I co-hosted a campus radio show, sold a bunch of my school assignments to CBC Radio and made a half-hour radio pilot, which was a gigantic TAL wannabe rip-off.

And while Ryerson was great, I’ll be frank: career-wise, the single most valuable thing I got from RTA was the license to call people up and say, “Hi, my name is Dan, and I’m an RTA student. Can I buy you a coffee and ask you about your job?” Holding a Ryerson student card gave me a non-threatening way to approach people with jobs that I wanted. “Hi, I’m a student and I’m interested in your job,” is a way better introduction than, “Hi, I’m some guy who wants your job. Can you tell me how to take it from you when you retire?” Generally speaking, I’ve found that if asked politely (and on a good day), most people are willing to sit down and talk about themselves. The nicer ones might even take pity on a starving student and pay for your coffee.

The lesson: if you decide to study broadcasting/journalism/media/whatever, one of the single most valuable resources at your disposal are professors with professional connections. Find them, then work the hell out of them. The connections, I mean. Which brings me to…

Networking

I hate this word. And I’m not naturally a “network-y” kind of guy. But when people ask me how I got a job at CBC, I usually tell them, “By pestering people.”

I asked my professors who they knew at CBC. I called those people up, name-checked said professors, and got coffee meetings, job shadows, and ride-alongs. After meeting someone, I’d tell them how much I wanted to work at the CBC, and the kind of radio I wanted to make. Then I’d ask, “Who else should I talk to? Can I use your name?”

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Especially when you’re starting out, who you know is how you eat. The best way to get a job is to meet people who are in a position to give you one.

That said, it’s easy to be annoying. I’m sure I was annoying. It’s like Goldilocks and the three bears: there’s too eager (annoying), not eager enough (forgettable), and then there’s just right. I remember asking people if I was too pushy. The straight shooters told me when I was.

Internships

The CBC has a proper internship program. However, I had a hell of a time getting one. Here’s the story, adapted slightly from a report I had to write about it for school:

One day in the summer of 2004, I was having lunch with Alex Mason, a producer for CBC Radio’s Sounds Like Canada. We were talking about internships, and he told me about his at CBH in Halifax. When I asked him for advice, he suggested that my best bet was not to approach a large network show like his, but rather a regional or local show. I asked him why, and he gave me a few reasons:

• On a local/regional show, I’d be more likely to get my hands dirty with real work. On a network show, they might simply have me labeling CDs or doing more traditional “intern” type work.
• On a local show, I’d have a better opportunity to try a wider variety of things.
• Because I’d be doing real work, Iíd have a better opportunity to prove that I could do real work. This might translate into work after graduation.

This sounded good to me, so I tool Alex’s advice, and emailed all the local/regional CBC shows produced in Toronto. On July 21, 2004, I heard back from Metro Morning and Here and Now. Both shows referred me to a woman named Joan Melanson, Executive Producer of Current Affairs for CBL. I got in touch with Joan by email. She wrote back, explaining that “the exact policy around CBC and interns is up in the air. As it stands right now, we are required to pay interns for any work they do. So, as a result, in Toronto anyway, we are not bringing in interns to work as volunteers.”

I came to Ryerson hoping to pursue a career in public radio. Executive producers around the country were telling me a CBC internship was something I needed in order to be considered for any kind of work. Joan’s news didnít bode well for my chances. But at the end of her email, Joan did invite me to give her a call once I returned to Toronto and she returned from holidays. So I did. I called and left several messages on her voicemail. I sent her more email messages.

And then one day in early September, Joan called me back. We talked about school, and radio, and why I wanted to intern at CBL. We found out that we both have Nova Scotian roots. She explained again that the CBC was unclear about its policy on interns, but promised me that sheíd look into it for me. At the end of our first phone call, Joan promised that if there was any way she could make a CBL internship happen for me, she would try. I apologized for bugging her so much. She said it was no problem. Ever since, Iíve not worried about bugging her with my persistence.

And for the next few months, I was persistent. I probably emailed her or called once a week, just to check in. For a long time, there was nothing for her to report. The CBC was still confused about interns. On one hand, they recognized the importance of interns, but on the other hand, there were union issues. Plus, because I was an Advanced Standing student, RTA’s official internship course wasnít available to me, so I couldnít do an internship for credit.

Over the next couple of months, I visited the Broadcast Centre several times. I asked everyone I could about internships. None of them could tell me anything concrete about the CBCís official stance on internships. One day in November, job-shadowing reporter Geoff Ellwand, I met Joan Melanson in person for the first time. We shook hands, sat down for a few minutes, and with little new to report, Joan told me that weíd make an internship happen. Near Christmas-time, a CBC exec who was working on the CBC’s official internship policy told me that without school credit, there was no way I could get an internship. So I concentrated on getting official school credit for any internship that might happen.

After very little success with Ryerson admin, I approached my Case Studies professor Charles Davis early in the winter term. I explained my situation, and asked if he could offer me official credit in his course for an internship. He agreed, and I had what I needed. I contacted Joan, letting her know that I had official school credit. Again, interning was a “maybe.” It continued to be “maybe” until one day, Joan got the final word from those in charge. The word was “no.” I was disheartened.

But Joan pleaded my case. Eventually, someone had a change of heart, and on January 28, 2005, Joan emailed me, saying “I have some good news ñ the approval for your internship at CBL has gone ahead. They are making a bit of an exception since technically, RTA is not part of the agreement CBC has with various schools about bringing in interns. But you can now officially intern with us at CBL.”

I will stop here and try to explain what a wonderful feeling it is to have someone believe in you. Joan didnít know me that well, other than as a Ryerson student who kept leaving messages on her voicemail. Still, she took time out of her day to deal with the CBC bureaucracy, trying to find internship answers for me. And when neither of us liked the answers that she found, she cared enough to champion my cause, convincing the higher-ups to let me into the building. I am very grateful for what Joan has done for me.

So when she emailed, I was delighted with the news. I jumped around my apartment for a bit. I called my mom in Halifax. The moral of the story, I suppose, is that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. On February 11, 2005 I started my internship at CBL.

I wrote that in 2005. Reading it back, I’m still flabbergasted by the bureaucracy, and delighted by the Joan. I spent several months with CBL, assigned to Metro Morning. Sure, I did some pretty “interny” things, but I got a chance to participate in story meetings, pitch ideas, and chase guests.

When CBC internship ended, I already had a job offer for a short-term (2-3 month) contract in Windsor, Ontario. The local morning and afternoon shows needed an associate producer/technician, and somehow, my name ended up on a list somewhere. I took the job, and have been working at CBC on a reasonably steady basis since then (with a 2005 lockout and a few months of freelancing thrown in for good measure).

Freelancing

People sometimes ask me how long I’ve worked at the CBC. “Depends on when you start counting,” I reply.

You could start counting when I sold my first freelance piece to Radio Syndication in 2004 (I sold a bunch of my Ryerson radio productions to CBC as short documentaries). Or you could count my first contract job in Windsor in 2005. Or, you could count the six months I spent freelancing full-time.

In late summer 2005, CBC management locked out CMG employees (like me). Rather than stay in Windsor, I packed up and moved back to Toronto. Personally and professionally, it was maybe the best decision I’ve ever made. In Toronto, I spent hour after hour on the picket line with people I would *never* have otherwise had access to. Executive producers and hosts of the shows I wanted to work for. As we circled the Toronto Broadcasting Centre, I talked about the freelance radio pitches I could sell them once we were back inside. When we eventually got back to work, I had the names and numbers of a bunch of people who were willing to buy pieces from me. Most notably, I started a four-year freelance stint with the Saturday morning show GO!

Freelancing is a hustle. It keeps you hungry. Luckily, I only spent about 6 months freelancing full-time, before getting a “job job.” But it was long enough to learn how to survive on a sporadic public radio income. In my (short) experience, here’s how to make a go of freelance radio at CBC:

1. Find out who has money to hire you. Not everyone does.
2. Find out how those people prefer to receive pitches
3. Be awesome. Deliver great stuff.

For me, freelancing was a stepping stone to a more stable job. If that’s your goal, I have one additional piece of advice: do your freelance work AT the CBC. Even if you have better equipment at home, still do it at the CBC offices. It sounds obvious, but if you’re not there, you’re not top of mind. And you want to be top of mind when the fill-in jobs become available.

Getting a “job job”

Getting a “job job” at the CBC was the goal from day one. Here’s how it happened for me: I interned, then got a 3-month contract, then freelanced, then got a series of 1-week-at-a-time jobs, which turned into a short-term contract job, which turned into a slightly-longer-term contract job, which turned into year-long contract job, which eventually turned into a permanent staff job.

It doesn’t happen that way for everyone, but that’s how it happened for me, and a bunch of other people I know. Little jobs turn into bigger jobs, if you’re good at what you do, and reasonably easy to work with.

Right now, I am staff at CBC. I work on a show that I really like, alongside people I really like. I have a ton of creative license and latitude to explore things that interest me. It’s my job to call up smart, interesting people and talk to them. I’ve been lucky enough to do a bunch of different things, and I got almost all of the most interesting assignments because I knew someone, and had built up a body of work.

People sometimes ask me if it makes sense to pursue a career in public radio, given today’s job market. I won’t lie: I would *not* want to be looking for a job in public radio right now. I know a bunch of smart, talented people who have pursued work in this field, and been left nothing but unemployed and frustrated. But I also know a bunch of smart, talented people who are doing great work, and love their jobs.

So on the “do I or don’t I” question, I’m afraid I don’t have a strong suggestion.

It’s nice work… if you can get it.

1. How can the CBC be relevant and meaningful in the future?
2. How can the CBC best deliver content to all Canadians?
3. Should the CBC only provide different programs and services than private broadcasters?
4. Does the CBC’s programming meet all of its objectives?
5. What more (or less) should it be doing?
6. What should it do differently?
7. Do you feel the CBC reflects your specific Canadian interests and needs?
8. Does the CBC fill your need for reliable and authoritative news and information?

Interestingly, the CRTC is using the third-party commenting service Disqus to collect submissions. That means, even though they don’t publicize it, there’s an Atom feed for all submissions:

http://crtcconsultation.disqus.com/latest.rss

Worth following.

Also, because they’re using Disqus, you can display things like who’s commenting the most (the top commenters are very active):

Top Commenters

And which questions have the most comments:

Popular Threads

Interesting stuff.

Today, after receiving two (two!) separate comments about how crummy the new, official CBC Jobs Twitter feed is, I set to jerry-rigging again. I was delighted to learn that Yahoo Pipes has reasonably adequate screen-scraping tools built-in.

The result: working, automatic CBC job posts, with permalinks, as an RSS feed and Twitter account. Submitted for your approval:

• Work at CBC Yahoo Pipe: http://pipes.yahoo.com/misener/workatcbc
• Work at CBC RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/workatcbc/
• Work at CBC on Twitter: http://twitter.com/workatcbc/

Again, this would be way, way, easier if CBC’s online job board just had native RSS feeds. Seriously.

Most everyone I meet feels pulled in more directions than ever, expected to work longer hours, and asked to get more done, often with fewer resources. But in these same audiences, there are also, invariably, a handful of people who are getting things done, including the important stuff, and somehow still managing to have a life.

What have they figured out that the rest of their colleagues have not?

The answer, surprisingly, is not that they have more will or discipline than you do. The counterintuitive secret to getting things done is to make them more automatic, so they require less energy.

I wholeheartedly agree.

For instance, when we do pre-taped radio interviews for Spark, immediately after the interview, we record a “wrap” — a quick, 30 second web-only audio intro and extro. We tidy up the ends, then drop the audio file onto a script that encodes an MP3, adds metadata, uploads the interview to the web, and spits out a URL suitable for blogging. Because it’s part of the routine, and highly automated, putting full interviews online requires only a small amount of extra work.

In other words, it’s easy because it’s been ritualized, or (as I like to say) “baked into the process.”

First off, on each episode page, in addition to the big PLAY button at the top, there are now play buttons for individual stories. No more shuttling through audio to get to that one story your friend told you about. Of course, we believe that the episodes are best heard as a whole, but we understand that sometimes you’re just after one particular act. So there’s that.

This is great. I’ve been preaching this kind of simple segmentation to my colleagues at CBC for a long while now. Yes, we work hard to create shows that often have themes running through them. Yes, we want our shows to be more than the sum of their parts. And yes, it can be a little painful to build a show up, then cut it back down into its component parts.

But arguing that radio shows “are best heard as a whole” and not offering individual stories sounds a bit like how AC/DC  refuses to sell individual tracks on iTunes, saying, “We don’t make singles, we make albums.”

This American Life‘s new offering makes their show so much more spreadable and sharable by fans.

The other day, a colleague and I were discussing CBC’s digital radio strategy. Particularly, the CBC’s approach to online sharability and spreadability. I offered the following exercise as an illustration of where we’re just not getting it right.

Compare and contrast the experience of the following:

1. Point a friend to a YouTube video you saw
2. Point a friend to an NPR news story you heard on the radio
3. Point a friend to a CBC story you heard on the radio

Let’s try this by writing a few imaginary email messages. First, pointing a friend to a YouTube video:

Hi, Tom.

Check out this video about marmosets: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oiLfTnrC40>. You’ll love it!

-dm

Next, pointing a friend to an NPR news story I heard on the radio:

Hi, Tom.

Check out this crazy NPR story about zombies: <http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/05/19/136465244/cdc-has-tips-for-zombie-apocalypse-and-other-disasters>. You’ll love it!

-dm

Finally, pointing a friend to a CBC story I heard on the radio:

Hi, Tom.

Check out this story about Fabian Manning. Go here: <http://www.cbc.ca/asithappens/episode/2011/05/19/thursday-may-19-2011/> and then click on “Listen to Part 2″ and once it’s loaded, scroll to about the 16 minute and thirty second mark. You’ll love it!

-dm

See the problem here?

I’m not trying to pick on As it Happens here (honestly, I’m not). They’re just a convenient example of a magazine-style show with a bunch of different stories in it. They do lots of stories every day, and there’s a good chance I might want to send one story in particular to a friend. The majority of CBC Radio programs are in exactly the same boat.

Here’s the point: people want what they want when they want it. Offering easy access to individual stories (like TAL does, or how Quirks and Quarks offers a segmented podcast) helps people share and spread the stories they love. It helps create the conditions for virality.

There’s a technical challenge here. There’s a resource challenge here. And there’s a culture challenge here. You need the right publishing tools to make segmentation easy. You need a human being to actually do the segmentation. But most of all, you need a workforce that understands how informations is spread and shared online.

Comparing the spreadability of radio stories from NPR (with it’s relatively small budget) and CBC, we have some catching up to do. Why are we not breakup up all of our shows into pieces? Why can’t I embed a radio story on my blog in the same way I can embed a YouTube video? Shouldn’t we? Shouldn’t I be able to?

===

Last week, a Vancouver-based app-maker called Zite launched a new iPad application of the same name that it bills as “a personalized iPad magazine that gets smarter as you use it.”

As a member of the so-called Generation Y, I am, of course, a narcissistic egomaniac with an affinity for anything that promises to shape itself in my image. So, of course, I downloaded it.

Here’s the idea: Zite brings together stories from across the web — blog posts, magazine articles, stories from news websites — and filters them by your particular interests, creating an up-to-the minute personalized reading list just for you.

The underlying technology was developed at the University of British Columbia’s Laboratory for Computational Intelligence.

Zite’s fundamental innovation is that it tracks how it’s being read.

After narrowing down the subject areas, it shows you a number of stories it thinks you might like, then it tracks how you interact with them.

“We have an underlying philosophy that ‘you are what you read,’ explains CEO Ali Davar.

“When you’re on Zite, and we see you bypassing articles that we’ve recommended to you, that tells us as much as when you select an article. So, when you do that continuously, through time, we learn something about you.”

Staying on track

Zite also pays attention to the form and content of what you’re reading. Is it a long article? A short article? Who wrote it? Does it come from a particular political viewpoint?

By tracking your reading habits, Zite tries to give you more of what you’re interested in, and less of what you’re not.

This tactic will sound familiar if you’ve ever bought something from Amazon, used a TiVo, or watched Netflix.

All of these services track people’s behaviour, then use that information to give them more of what they like.

When I tried the Zite app, I really did have the sense that it was learning about me.

And while I recognize that these recommendation services can be useful, part of me can’t help but worry. Specifically, I’m concerned that online personalization will perpetuate my bad or lazy habits.

For instance, I spend a lot of time reading gadget blogs. Arguably, too much time. Over the past two weeks, there’s no question that I’ve read more reviews of the iPad 2 than necessary.

I know others with similar vices: Hollywood gossip blogs or obsessive sports coverage. My question is: Do I really need a tool that will help me find yet another iPad 2 review? Or would I be better off reading something new and unfamiliar?

Comfort versus challenge

For another perspective on this, I called Ethan Zuckerman, a researcher at the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

As he put it, “personalization is absolutely a double-edged sword. You can imagine it being a force to challenge you, and push you towards things you might not otherwise have read.

“You can also imagine personalization cocooning you in a world of familiar, unthreatening, unchallenging, but copacetic news.”

Zuckerman frames this tension as “comfort versus challenge.”

And it is the first part that worries me. That by giving me more of what they think I want, these personalization tools might actually narrow my worldview. They might cocoon me in the comfortable to keep me coming back.

When I asked Zite’s Davar about this, he told me his company’s technology is focused on what he calls discovery.

“It’s not simply about getting more of the same. It’s actually quite the opposite. The challenge is to give you the things that you wouldn’t typically find if you went out and looked for yourself.”

From a technical point of view, this is apparently a difficult feat. There are two very different answers to the question why didn’t you read that.

One is, I didn’t read it because I know I won’t like it. Another is, I didn’t read it because I didn’t know it existed.

Training computers to tell the difference is hard, but Zite believes they’ve found a way, using a secret algorithm sauce.

Zuckerman, on the other hand, told me that “anytime someone is providing algorithmically-organized information, there are some politics behind it. And you really owe it to yourself to think about what those politics are.”

The personalized recommendations that come from Netflix and Amazon are generated by proprietary algorithms. We don’t know exactly how they work, but we do know their objectives: to sell more stuff, and keep subscribers watching.

Zite’s algorithm is also proprietary and Davar says it took “a lot of money and a lot of time to develop.”

Zite’s service is currently ad-free, but Davar told me the company plans to add advertising and a subscription model to generate revenue.

It seems we’re headed towards a world of increasing personalization. As such, it’s important to think critically about personalization technologies.

When faced with an algorithmically-generated recommendation, we need to ask questions like why is this being recommended to me. Is it making me comfortable, or is it challenging me? And who’s getting paid?

For me, it’s about recognizing your own personal blind spots, and not necessarily trusting a computer algorithm to help fill them.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go read another iPad 2 review.

But here’s the thing: local and regional afternoon shows are completely different from Spark. Spark is a one-hour, pre-taped, weekly show. By comparison, local and regional afternoon shows are several hours long, and live, each and every single day of the week. I’ve worked on these shows, and they can be gruelling. So, the focus of my talk was how shows could prioritize their online efforts, given limited time and resources.

Here’s the theory: some online tools work particularly well in a realtime context, and some online tools work particularly well in an on-demand, time-shifty, random access context. The trick is choosing your tools wisely.

Realtime tools embrace what Nick Carr calls “Nowness.” What’s going on right this minute. Twitter is a realtime tool. Facebook is, in many modes, a realtime tool. Foursquare, Gowalla, and their ilk are realtime tools. On the other hand, podcasts are on-demand, time-shifty tools. A radio show website, updated once a day, is an on-demand, timy-shifty tool.

So, let’s map these tools onto radio.

Radio is “the immediate medium.” It’s fast. Live radio is full of “nowness.” Something big can happen, and you talk about it on the air right now. But live radio items can also have a long-ish shelf life. A feature interview with the mayor will still be interesting in a week, whereas your traffic and weather reports won’t.

So here’s the point I tried to make this afternoon: if, like most CBC radio afternoon shows, you have limited time and resources, be smart about which online tools you use. Use realtime tools for realtime information. Use time-shifty tools for time-shifty information.

I think realtime tools and live radio go really, really well together, and there are some terrific examples out there. CBC’s Here and Now, for example, or The Dave Ramsey Show. Tools like Twitter and Facebook are great for discussion, feedback, contests, questions, and overall, providing an additional layer on top of a live radio show.

Live radio show audiences (if that’s what we call them anymore) are passionate. They are intelligent. They want to help. They want to connect. If you ask me, as a public broadcaster, we have a responsibility to connect with them in as many ways as we can muster.

Postscript

As part of my talk, I tweeted:

Meeting w/ local @CBCRadio shows from across Canada right now. Tell me, what do they need to know about Twitter + live radio? ^dm

The responses are here and here, and worth reading.

[read now]

I do my columns eighteen times every Tuesday (on most CBC Radio One afternoon shows). Here’s an MP3 from one of my hits, with Peter Brown of CBC Edmonton’s Radio Active:

[Click here to download the MP3]

Ebook readers

There’s certainly a lot of choice out there: The Sony Reader. The Amazon Kindle. The Kobo, which is Canadian technology. Plus, a number of tablet computers (iPad, Samsung Tab) can be used as e-readers.

Personally, I think one of the most important questions you need to ask yourself when considering an e-reader for someone else is, “Where will they get their ebooks from?” If they want to read older stuff (Alice in Wonderland, or Little Dorrit), there are several places to download free, public domain books that’ll work on pretty much any e-reader. But it becomes more complicated if they plan to buy or borrow books.

Most e-readers on the market have an ebook store that goes along with them. For instance, Apple has the iBook store. But here’s the thing: the selection of books isn’t the same in every store. So, I really suggest you check out the different ebook stores. See if they have the kinds of books that appeal to the person you’re buying for.

Also, I know that many Canadian public libraries have started to offer digital downloads, so if you’re buying for a library user, make sure the device works with the system their local library uses.

Also, “where does this person do most of their reading?” Some ereaders are better suited to reading outdoors in direct sunlight, and others are better suited to reading in low light.

HDTVs

First thing to ask is: “how far away from the TV will I be when I’m watching?” That will help you calculate what they call the “optimum TV viewing distance.” There are several online tools that you can use to calculate this. You type in, say, the distance from your couch to your TV stand, and it’ll tell you the ideal TV size. Or, you can type in the size of the TV you want, and it’ll calculate how far away from it you should sit. And I know it’s hard to believe, but yes, it is possible to buy a TV that’s too big.

If you go HDTV shopping, you’ll hear a lot of tech specs. People will talk about 1080i versus 720p. They’ll talk about refresh rate: 60Hz, 120Hz, 240Hz, and on and on. These are the sorts of things that really matter to videophiles, but for most people, the biggest factors are the size of your TV, and how close you sit to it.

Another choice you’ll be faced with is going with an LCD versus a Plasma TV. Historically, a big part of the debate has been about which is better for fast moving proogramming like sports or video games. Historically, plasmas have been better for that, but these days LCD technology has improved significantly.

My advice: set a budget, figure out the optimal TV size for your room, and get the best you can for the size and price you’ve set.

Digital cameras

When it comes to choosing a camera, there are a lot of factors. And people have very different priorities: for some people, size and portability are really important. For others, it’s all about how easy it is to use. For others, it’s about expandability – can I add new lenses or accessories? Everyone has their own set of preferences. Which can make buying a camera as a gift quite difficult.

And, like with TVs, there are a lot of tech specs you can get caught up with. Most notoriously: megapixels. My advice: don’t get caught up in the megapixel game. At this point, it’s a marketing thing, and the biggest factors that’ll affect the photos you take are the lens and the sensor size. NOT the number of megapixels — anything on the market right now is more than what the average consumer needs.

I want to tell you about a website that I have found incredibly useful for choosing a camera. It’s called Measy.com. Basically, you go to this site, and it asks you a bunch of questions: what’s your budget? How important is size? Do you prefer a certain brand? That kind of thing. Then it gives you a list of cameras that it thinks will be good. And the best part of this is that you can answer these questions as though you’re the person you’re buying for. I tried this with my mother-in-law, and the camera that Measy recommended was an updated version of the one she already owned.

A word on extended warranties

I can’t go without mentioning extended warranties. Stores push these warranties so hard because they make huge profits from them. But Consumer Reports (the non-profit, independent consumer rights organization) calls them “notoriously bad deals,” and generally advises against them.

Their research has found that, products usually don’t break within the extended-warranty window, and when they do break, the repairs, on average, cost about the same as an extended warranty. They say the only possible exceptions are laptops, netbooks, or tablets. Personally, I’ve only every bought one extended warranty, and it was on a laptop. Other than that, I avoid them like the plague.