T.0

A few days before the wedding, I found myself sitting with my laptop searching YouTube for makeup tips. In a matter of seconds, I'd found exactly what I was looking for. I discovered a channel called The MakeUpChair With Sineady Cady (she has a really lovely accent, and the videos are worth watching just to hear her). Sineady is a young makeup artist living in Ireland, who uses a blog and her YouTube channel to promote her brand and find new clients. Her email address is posted right there on the channel, so if you're looking for someone to do your makeup for a special day, you can shoot her a message.

My family has a long history with the border town of Laredo, Texas. As a child my mother moved around a lot along with her six older siblings, as part of an Air Force family. Laredo just happened to be one of the towns that stuck. Two of my aunts and one of my uncles still call it home, along with their families. As a born and bred New Englander, it's pretty much another planet to me.

I recently jumped on the Mad Men bandwagon. That Jon Hamm sure is handsome, and boy oh boy, did they smoke a lot. There's plenty to gawk at-and cringe at-on that show. The sexism. The debauchery. All those pregnant ladies hitting the bottle and smoking up a storm. As I watch--floating somewhere between awe and disgust--the goings-on of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce have got me pondering the modern business of advertising.

It is autumn in New England-my most beloved time of year. Apple fritters, harvest festivals, and all sorts of baked goods covered in cinnamon: These are a few of my favorite things. Outside the EContent office windows the leaves are turning, and inside there's plenty of change afoot. Yep, 2011 has been a year of reimagining for us, and it's all starting to come to fruition.

I have fallen under the spell of one of the most sinister forces in the digital universe. Yes, I'm talking about Angry Birds. I managed to avoid the birds' pull for a long time. In fact, I refused to even download the game until the rest of the world had more or less stopped incessantly talking and tweeting about it. I mean, how great could one game be?

When I graduated from college and moved into my first place with two roommates, it was months before we decided to get cable. We used rabbit ears to get the basic channels. The images were fuzzy, but it was enough to watch the Red Sox games and Gilmore Girls. That was all we needed, because we spent most of our free time sitting around the kitchen table playing UNO and drinking cheap beer anyway. Now I'm down to zero roommates and back to no cable. Yes, I've cut the cord, so to speak.

During a trip down to the Information Today, Inc. offices, I listened to one of my favorite new-to-me podcasts: the Slate Audio Book Club. It's been a long time since I was in a literature class where I argued the merits of Toni Morrison's Beloved or gushed about To Kill a Mockingbird, and I miss it. Moreover, I loved the convenience of using what could have been a tedious 3-hour car trip to let the folks at Slate tackle David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest for me because I just don't know if I have that kind of reading stamina.

I have a not-so-secret secret. I like to write fiction and hope to someday write the great American novel, leave behind my glamorous life as a technology journalist, and retreat to the woods of New Hampshire to become a Salinger-esque recluse. Of course, that little confession could have been made by just about anyone who makes his or her living as a writer of any sort. But wait … I am, as aforementioned, a technology journalist! Shouldn't I be leaving the fuddy-duddy world of publishing behind and hawking my works of literary genius on the web?

I've been reserving comment on The Daily - the world's first daily newspaper for tablets, brought to you by Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. - because I am having trouble truly deciding what I think about it. As a technology journalist, the concept fascinates me. The iPad was, after all, said to be the publishing industry's savior. As a reader, though, I wasn't all that interested.

The winds of change are blowing-and not just through the EContent office. Sure, I've moved my desk into Michelle's old office, gotten a new view, and taken on a whole new set of responsibilities, but that's not what I'm talking about. No, this past holiday season I headed out to buy an iPod nano as a gift for my brother.