As founder and principal of Howard Digital Media, a Massachusetts-based creative media development company, I work in the fields of film and video production, DVD authoring, website development, music composition, studio and location audio recording, editing and mixing, as well as group and one-on-one software training on the Macintosh. I produced and edited the independent feature film "The Trouble with Boys and Girls," written and directed by my brother Jesse P. Howard, which premiered in Los Angeles, CA at the 2003 Dances With Films film festival in competition. I was also the editor of Guinivere Turner's short film "Spare Me," which screened in the 2001 Sundance Film Festival.

I dug into doing more music production, recording engineering and multitrack mixing work in 2009, when I co-produced, mixed and wrote and performed full-blown drum kit and percussion parts on the debut CD of independent recording artist, singer/songwriter Bill Bonnell. Starting in the fall of '09, Bill and I began a recording project with Ally Laroche, a wonderful singer/songwriter, who is now a student at the Berklee School of Music in Boston. She is originally from the northern Berkshires and she sang harmony vocals on Bill's CD, as well as recorded an original song with me back in early 2009. Both albums will soon be available on iTunes Store.

I am also a published author, and have written two books to date: "GarageBand '09 Power!" from Cengage (who bought Thompson Publishing in 2008), which is the fully revised second edition of my 2008 release GarageBand '08 Power!, and "Who's Afraid of HTML?" from Morgan Kaufmann Publishing, released in 1998. In 2009, I finished "GarageBand '09 Power!", the second edition of my GarageBand tome which was released on April 1, 2009.

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For about a year and a half, beginning in February of 2007, I was writing for a creative media tech blog called Zoom In Online, and I have since branched out and began working on my own independent blog which I will be launching in early 2010! While working with Zoom In, I was sent to Boston to cover the Flashforward 2007 Conference and Film Festival for the Zoom In blog, and had the opportunity to conduct several podcast interviews with innovative leaders from the Flash developer community, and also the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, where I was part of the official Sundance audio podcast production team. The podcasts can be downloaded from Zoom In's Sundance channel.

With website development projects, I help my clients achieve a web presence that is custom tailored to their specific business goals. I work with my clients in a fashion that encourages asking the tough questions and finding real solutions that fit. Most recently, I completed the design and build of a new website for Isabella's Restaurant, located in North Adams, MA - a project for which I did all of the photography as well. Just before the Isabella's project launched, I launched a site that I built from a design by Jen Rork Design for Excelsior Printing. 2007 also saw the launch of the new Pacific Comedy site, which I designed and built, with Eric Tully once again handling the database side.

In Spring 2007, I launched a complete re-design and re-build of the website for MASS MoCA, The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams. MASS MoCA is one of the largest centers for contemporary arts in the United States. I am extremely excited about this project, and had the opportunity to work once again with my good friend and ace PHP/MYSQL programmer Eric Tully who handled the MySQL and PHP backend. I worked directly with MoCA staff designer Dan McKinley to achieve an updated, stlylized look for the site, and a seemless integration with a new back end to manage and maintain all of the various types of events and installations at the museum. This project was very well received by the client and the community at large.

I have done a lot of work with Megan Cunningham and Magnet Media - NYC-based creators of the award-winning Digital Media Training Series (DMTS). I created a podcast training series called Assets In Motion with Adobe and Magnet which was released in September 2007 helping creative artists take their existing static artwork from Illustrator and Photoshop into the world of the web, into Flash animations, and even into mobile device versions of their websites. I am the instructor on Magnet's DMTS "Inside Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger" training DVD, released in May 2005 and winner of a 2006 Videographer "Award of Distinction". I also created "Inside Apple's iLife '06" for Magnet, featuring a very well-received "Podcasting with GarageBand" section, which hit shelves in August of 2006. The next Magnet DVD title I created was Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 Jumpstart, and the most recent was 2008's Mac OS X Leopard: Jumpstart. All of these training titles are available for purchase by following the previous links. Magnet owns Zoom In Online, where I spent almost two years as a daily tech/music/film/mac blogger, and following a very succesful showing at Mac World 2007 covering the announcements of the new iPhone and Apple TV, I was invited to go to Las Vegas in April 2007 with the Zoom In team to cover NAB - the largest annual conference event for video, TV, broadcast and production professionals. I produced and hosted many of the official NAB podcasts, where Megan and I caught up with with senior product managers from Apple, Adobe, Sonic, Microsoft and many other thought-leaders and top-of-field hardware and software vendors. Check out Zoom In for all of that exclusive content! I covered Lynda.com's FlashFoward Conference in Boston in September 2007, and the Macworld Expo in 2008.

I work with clients on video and DVD projects with an approach that cultivates creativity, flow, design and good story-telling. I directed and edited a series of television spots for The REACH Community Health Foundation in North Adams, MA, for their "Get Fit" campaign which have been particularly effective at connecting people in the community with REACH and its vast health resources. I also worked with industry leader Hendrikus Schraven and The Hendrikus Group in Issaquah, WA, to create a beautiful promotional DVD for thier incredible work in the pacific northwest. I will have clips from that DVD up here on the site very soon.

I spent 2000 - 2002 leading Apple Computer workshops and corporate training courses in Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, Photoshop, GoLive, HTML and Web Design and Mac OS X while based in Seattle, WA., and continue to lead one on one and small group training on Mac software and computers to this day. Email me if you are interested in getting together to expand your knowledge and ability to use your Mac for the things you want to do in your life!