 |
 |
 |
| Work Samples |
|
|
|
| |
 |
(Boston Globe, 8/18/2008)
If you've ever thought you could design a better Troll or toaster (move over, Michael Graves), here's your chance to prove it.
Shapeways.com is a new, low-cost 3D printing service that will turn your idea into a polycarbonate or acrylic objet in 10 business days.
|
 |
(Boston Globe, 7/21/2008)
Imagine sailing above the Bourne Bridge on your way to the beach, while consuming less gas than those SUV-driving suckers stuck beneath you in traffic.
|
 |
(Boston Globe, 7/14/2008)
Whenever my mom and her boyfriend visit, they leave behind a pile of screeching dolls with flapping wings and trucks that play repetitive tunes no amount of Scotch can wash from memory.
|
 |
(Boston Globe, 6/16/2008)
Computers are fast becoming tools for the "new literacy," which is more about playing video games than about reading and writing. It's a term the novelist Robert Coover (who wrote the Times essay, in 1992, "The End of Books") suggested to me a few years ago.
|
 |
(Parallelnormal, 6/14/2008)
Practically all of the stupid games, quizzes, widgets and apps used by Facebook social networkers scoop-up more personal data than they need, and keep that data longer than they should, without notifying users.
|
 |
(Boston Globe, 6/9/2008)
The UMass Memorial Medical Center is striking: Its high-rise hospital building, helipad, and sprawling medical school campus tower over Worcester's Lake Quinsigamond. It's a monument to Massachusetts' role as a healthcare leader and symbolizes an industry known for its miracle-making - and its out-of
|
 |
(Boston Magazine, 1/31/2008)
After a glass (or four) of cabernet, how often have you wanted to spin an LP of “Autumn in New York” or “Smoke on the Water” to hear the snap, crackle, and pop of the original vinyl?
The Pro-Ject Debut III, a sleek, manual turntable that looks at home in the modern abode
|
 |
(Boston Globe, 11/26/2007)
This holiday geek-giving season is proving to be my most challenging one yet. Prices for the best toys are high, and the availability for some of them is iffy.
So I'm taking a bit of a different path, into the growing landscape of parent-child engineering projects and iPhone alternatives...
|
|
(Glenn Beck's Fusion, 6/28/2007)
Days after the Virginia Tech shooting, hi-tech firms boasted that their emergency text systems could help prevent further massacres. But terrorists, too, will be targeting so-called social networking technologies. You can count on it. (Email me for PDF.)
|
 |
(Boston Globe, 6/26/2007)
One of several videos I shot this year for the Boston Globe, in which I discuss new technologies and their potential impacts on our privacy and our pocketbooks.
|
 |
(Information Security magazine, 6/26/2007)
As security experts demonstrate with alarming regularity how easy it is to hack RFID-enabled credit cards and e-passports, Ashton is calling for a new standard from EPCglobal, the EPC standards body, to secure RFID tags on shipping containers, palettes and individual store items.
|
 |
(Parallelnormal, 6/25/2007)
Perhaps your real life is so rich you don't have time for another.
Even so, the US Department of Defense (DOD) may already be creating a copy of you in an alternate reality to see how long you can go without food or water, or how you will respond to televised propaganda.
|
 |
(The Boston Globe, 3/19/2007)
The Nokia 5300 XpressMusic Phone, available through T-Mobile (about $100, after discount and rebate, and with a contract), is a cute, lightweight slider with rubberized music control buttons and a blue-backlit keypad that slides beneath the display.
|
 |
(The Boston Globe, 2/5/2007)
Alarm.com has unveiled a wireless system that tells you if the older folks in your family are breaking their routine -- a sign that they may need help.
Family members can look on the Web to see when sensors in their elders' homes were activated, and receive alerts on their cellphones and PDAs.
|
 |
(Information Security magazine, 1/30/2007)
Security experts continue to demonstrate with alarming regularity how easy it is to hack RFID-enabled credit cards and e-passports.
Kevin Ashton is calling for a new standard from EPCglobal, the EPC standards body, to secure RFID tags on shipping containers, palettes and individual store items.
|
 |
(The Boston Globe, 12/11/2006)
Let someone else supply the savings bonds and sweaters this holiday season. You’ll be the hero with your gifts of new robots, arfid blockers, video games, and other tech nonessentials. Here’s Globe Personal Tech columnist Mark Baard’s personal wish list.
|
 |
(The Boston Globe, 7/24/2006)
Retailers are planning to turn our blue jeans into tracking beacons by replacing bar - code labels with radio frequency identification tags stitched into the garments, according to some Biblical literalists.
|
 |
(Grist magazine, 6/13/2006)
Could a wind-energy art exhibit shape public opinion?
British artist Mark Beesley paints the emblems of wind power -- a form of energy he supports -- towering over grazing farm animals and casting long shadows over cultivated land.
|
 |
(Diverse magazine, 6/13/2006)
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Dr. Glenn C. Loury is losing sleep over the achievement gap between Blacks and Whites in public schools. But it's not merely low test scores in the nation's elementary and middle schools that disturbs him.
|
 |
(The Boston Globe, 6/12/2006)
As a bored teenager, I endured hours on the train each weekend so I could hang out with godless New Yorkers in Washington Square Park. Now a PC game based on the "Left Behind" novels has those nonbelievers getting their comeuppance at the hands of righteous Christians.
|
 |
(Wired News, 6/6/2006)
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Katherine Albrecht is on a mission from God.
The influential consumer advocate has written a new book warning her fellow Christians that radio frequency identification may evolve to become the "mark of the beast."
|
 |
(The Boston Globe, 6/3/2006)
Summer internships are where college kids get their first taste of the workplace: the grunt work, the endless meetings, the office gossip, and the tired jokes -- all of which can come without a salary or benefits.
But Diego A. Melani's new internship is shaping up to be something quite different.
|
 |
(Wired News, 3/31/2006)
California researchers say a blood-cleaning machine could save lives if bird flu becomes a pandemic. Fighting viruses by cleansing the blood might sound too good to be true, and many infectious disease experts say it is.
|
 |
(Baard.com: Reports from the Future, 3/19/2006)
One of Spock’s first tunics (from Star Trek: The Original Series) is up for auction. I have no doubt this is an authentic item. I interviewed the ST-TOS creators who hired Profiles in History to sell these items for them in 2002.
|
 |
(The Boston Globe, 1/30/2006)
I don't miss my mother's Irish cooking one bit, but I do wish I could join her in her kitchen more often. That need to feel closer to our folks is driving the consulting firm Accenture to develop a system that makes those human connections via broadband data connections.
|
 |
(Wired News, 12/8/2005)
BOSTON -- It's been 10 years since Alex "Sandy" Pentland's graduate students began strolling around the MIT campus looking like cyborgs, straining under the weight of bulky "wearable" computers and heavy-duty eyeglasses with built-in displays.
|
 |
(Wired News, 11/1/2005)
LEWISTON, Maine -- As a cryptozoologist, Loren Coleman rarely gets to play the straight man at meetings with his fellow scientists.
But at a weekend symposium called Cryptozoology: Out of Time Place Scale at the Bates College Museum of Art here in Maine, Coleman says he feels quite normal.
|
 |
(Wired News, 11/17/2004)
Space scientists and entrepreneurs are envisioning much more than tourists taking pictures, and planting flags and footprints, as they plan humanity's off-world future.
They also want to mine the solar system for its abundant natural resources to make space travel self-sustaining, and to generate
|
 |
(The Village Voice, 8/17/2004)
The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces, rather than routing out terrorist networks, have spent much of the summer picking on college kids heading to the Republican Nation Convention.
Police detectives and FBI agents in at least five states have been calling on young activists at their homes, trying t
|
 |
(Wired News, 7/30/2004)
BOSTON -- The Democratic Party this week promised "to end America's dependence on Mideast oil" through such measures as tax credits for biomass, solar and wind power, and by developing the Alaska natural gas pipeline.
But environmental activists at the Democratic National Convention said the party
|
 |
(Wired News, 7/30/2004)
A group of progressive media activists covering the Democratic National Convention in Boston plans to launch a new television network to counter the conservative news coverage they see on Fox News and CNN.
The group includes one of the producers of the Clinton documentary, The Hunting of the Presi
|
 |
(Wired News, 7/27/2004)
BOSTON -- The estimated 5,000 protesters at the Democratic National Convention this week have so far bumped heads over their political differences. In some cases, they have even barred one another from their scheduled (and permitted) events.
But activists have been largely united in one civil acti
|
 |
(The Village Voice, 7/26/2004)
Some 40 volunteers from the Boston Area Liberation Medic (or BALM) Squad will be on hand to treat any wounded. "If you fail to turn your head away in time, and that rubber bullet or beanbag hits you in the temple or the throat, it can be lethal," said Sandy McKinley, an EMT and BALM medic.
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
| Professional/Personal Overview |
|
|
|
| |
I am the Personal Tech columnist and a correspondent for the Boston Globe and Boston magazine. I have contributed to Wired, The Times of London, the Village Voice and The Scientist. I have been interviewing fascinating people for 16 years. Ask me about my encounters with politicians, dirty cops and ex-cons, IRA members, anarchists and Christian end-timers. I've also interviewed Daryl Hannah, Noam Chomsky, William Shatner (who described squeezing into his Star Trek, Season II tunic), Nobel Laureate Richard Roberts, author Robert Coover and the inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil. More about me below, and at www.baard.com. Thanks for your interest. :-) |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
| mediabistro.com Questions |
|
|
|
| |
What do you wish you'd learned sooner?
How to relax.
What's your idea of a perfect Saturday night?
Too difficult to conceptualize.
What's your idea of a perfect Monday morning?
Thinking it's Monday, then realizing it's not.
What book is on your nightstand right now?
Kill the Messenger, by Nick Schou
Describe your dream assignment
Traveling the United States and Canada, and Australia, visiting with conspiracists and esotericists...
What's the hardest work project you've ever tackled?
Being a dad (tackling is ongoing).
What's the best job you've ever had?
Paperboy.
In ten years, I want to be:
Alive.
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
| Work Info |
|
|
| |
Expertise |
| Content Editor (online) |
4 Years |
| Special instructor of journalism, Emmanuel College |
5 Years |
| Writer |
16 Years |
Specialty |
| Science |
6 Years |
| Technology |
16 Years |
| Consumer Products |
15 Years |
Total Media Industry Experience
18 Years |
Media Client List (# assignments
last 2 yrs)
The Boston Globe (11+), Wired News (11+), Informations security magazine (3-5), The Register (3-5), Grist magazine (3-5), Plenty magazine (1-2), Child magazine (1-2), Wired magazine (1-2), Fodor's Travel Guides (1-2), Boston magazine (1-2) |
Other Work History
Special instructor of journalism, Emmanuel College, Boston (ongoing) |
Computer Skills
OS X, Windows, Microsoft Office Suite |
Technical Skills
Photography, videography |
Equipment
iBook, digital camera, audio recorder, DV camcorder |
Awards
CASE Media Fellowship, University of Tennessee. Numerous radio interviews and recently appointed to chair a panel discussion at an RFID conference in Boston. Also cited in several books about technology and the environment. |
Other
I am a graduate of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University
|
Freelancer Availability
I freelance full-time. I live near Boston, MA. I am willing to travel anywhere. I have a driver's license. I have access to a car. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
