On 15 Years Of Blogging

I hadn’t planned to pen any reflections on my 15th year blogiversary, but this drive by comment last week was an amusing impetus: Wow! I remember when “journalists” had a basic understanding of English grammar, sentence structure, and and communication skills. The author of this piece of drivel fails on all three counts. It seems … Read more

When technology fails you…

My wife wanted to get something off her chest today. Every mom dreads when the babysitter cancels. Or in modern day cases, when the digital “babysitter” suddenly malfunctions at the worst possible time. How many of us need to jump into the shower, or similar, and rely on the DVR or tablet to occupy our … Read more

Remembering Blake

While others are better suited to pen a remembrance, I too have fond memories of Blake Krikorian – who most know as the guy behind the Slingbox. We first connected the summer of 2005 on AVS Forum… which is an unusual place to find a company CEO geeking out (and taking on trolls). I had a bone to pick since Windows XP … Read more

Where’s Dave?

Yes, the blog has been quiet. And it’s likely my already low output will further decrease in the short-term as, after five long years…Eliana, our sweet, magical little miracle baby has arrived! Despite working so hard towards this goal and the vast majority of our circle having children, we’ve clearly only understood parenthood on an abstract level — no matter how good our time … Read more

OneNote-to-WordPress Seems Cool, But Slows Workflow

onenote-wordpress

As one of the bazillion WordPress bloggers, I’m always on the lookout for tools to improve my efficiency. And, sadly, Microsoft’s surprising new OneNote plugin isn’t one of them. While Microsoft does seem to have intelligently integrated picture attachments into WordPress (including the Media Manager), the rest leaves something to be desired. The initial linkage is a kludgey exercise. Fortunately it’s just a one time thing — so, though it lacks polish and may seem somewhat arcane, the directions can be followed by most that first time. I was more concerned with the slightly dirty HTML and slow Notebook/Page lookup in brief testing.

Read more

The Ghosts of CES Past

With the 2015 edition of the annual Consumer Electronics Show upon us, it’s time to reflect on how various companies utilize their time in the sun. And, unfortunately, the signal to noise ratio is not always favorable for the gadget blogger given a large number of introduced products that skulk away with nary the follow-on discussion and no product on shelves.

Some of the more intriguing CES 2014 items we covered that pulled a Houdini:

Read more

Where's Davis Freeberg? (Restoring Arcade Games)

Long time readers may have noticed ZNF contributor and TiVo fan Davis Freeberg has gone silent. Well, I’m stoked to share that he’s been putting his free time to better use in launching a Bay Area startup… and unlike so many others, we’re not talking Web 2.0 and Ruby — Davis is taking on the real world with what I … Read more

CES Gadget Go Bag

CES gadget go bag

 

After skipping the “International CES”* last year, both Dave and I are headed back to Vegas for the consumer electronics show in 2013. And that means it’s time once again to look into the gadget go bag. For next week’s trip I’m packing up the laptop and smartphone, but also a few accessories that should hopefully make my rounds at the show a little easier. First, despite Dave’s insistence that I use my phone to take all photos, I’ve acquired another point-and-shoot camera. The quality of my smartphone photos is seriously lacking, and while I have no aspirations to be an award-winning photographer, it would be nice if a few of my gadget pics were recognizable as such, even in low light and among jostling conference-goers.

Second, I’ve added a critical new piece of hardware to boost my phone’s naturally crappy battery life. The Anker Astro 3 external charger may be overkill given that I only need one of the one thousand enclosed adapter tips, but it promises to power my phone at least six times on a single charge. And that is invaluable while traipsing around Vegas roughly 20 out of every 24 hours each day.

Finally, I’ve included a small Skooba case for organizing my various gadget cables, and a set of cheap but worthwhile Panasonic earphones so I can safely ignore my fellows anytime and anywhere. Remember, just because we bloggers want to learn more about this year’s gadgets doesn’t mean we actually want to talk to other people while doing it.

Interestingly, while pulling this post together, I happened across a photo of my gadget bag from CES 2010. There have been a few changes since then.

Read more