Bedtime with Rob and Alex | Social Signal

This episode, Rob talks about the release of Google Sites... which Alex hasn't had a chance to check out yet, leading her to ask, how do you keep up with the news in your field when everyone's so busy these days?

We come up with six questions to ask about keeping up to date with the latest developments, and propose that Feb. 29 become World Catch-Up Day... when everyone has a chance to catch up on the reading they've missed, and the creation of new content is strictly prohibited.

In a nutshell, Alex wants to know why the left doesn't have more really funny stuff up on YouTube.

Rob suspects fear has something to do with it... and, judging by some of the stuff passing as funny, lack of practice.

But we both salute the lefties who are out there - often independently - creating genuinely bust-a-gut-funny stuff.

And then we go to sleep.

This time out, we talk about the kind of writing that makes good blog posts, telling stories and finding a conversational voice.

That, oddly enough, leads us to a new speech recognition option for the Mac. Alex notes that Richard Powers, the author of The Echo Maker and Galatea 2.2, uses speech recognition to write. And Rob launches a passionate defence of video walkthroughs.

Valentine's Day has come and gone, but we're not going to let an arbitrary deadline conspire with the flu to rob the Internets of the chance to hear a few more bedtime conversations from Alex and Rob.