Here’s the short version of my bio:

Rob Pegoraro writes about interesting problems and possibilities in consumer technology.

And here’s a longer take on it:

Rob Pegoraro tries to make sense of computers, consumer electronics, telecom services, the Internet, software and other things that beep or blink through reporting, reviewing and analysis–from 1999 to 2011 as the Washington Post’s tech columnist, now for a variety of online and print outlets.

But wait, there’s more. My time at the Post goes back in 1993, when I started work as a part-time “copy aide”; over the years at 1150 15th Street NW, I sorted mail and answered phones, wrote for almost every section of the paper (National, Metro, Style, Sports, Business, Health, Food, Home, Weekend, Real Estate, Outlook, Sunday Arts, Sunday Source, Travel, Book World and the Magazine), and appeared on the front page all of three times. Things got busy towards the end: In addition to the weekly column I wrote for the Business section, I did a weekly Q&A, a blog, a tip-of-the-week e-mail, a weekly video clip and Web chats every other week. Over those years, I used and was baffled by four different editing systems in the newsroom, each of which occasionally had me yearning for my college newspaper’s copy of Aldus PageMaker.

Speaking of college, I have no real academic qualifications for my work. I graduated from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in 1993 with a degree in international relations, and without taking a single course in journalism or computer science.

As for my spellcheck-defying last name, it comes from a lovely town in northern Italy called Vicenza, not far west of Venice. Here’s how I pronounce it (but using the short “a” you’d hear in Italy instead of the long “a” my ancestors switched to after settling in the Midwest is okay too):

Download: pegoraro%20pronunciation.mp3?w=c9da26c1

My work also has had me on the radio (for example, WTOP, WAMU’s Kojo Nnamdi Show, WBUR’s On Point and various BBC World Service news programs), TV (WTTG’s morning and evening news programs, ABC News Now’s Ahead of the Curve and MSNBC’s Countdown–Keith Olbermann grilled me about the lost iPhone 4 prototype in my sole prime-time appearance) and podcasts (the Motley Fool’s Motley Fool Radio). I’ve also been behind podiums fairly regularly, having spoken at events hosted by such groups as South By Southwest Interactive, the Consumer Electronics Association, Free Press, the New America Foundation and the Future of Music Coalition. Since leaving the Post, I’ve started working as a freelance contributor, including writing for Discovery News, the Consumer Electronics Association, USA Today and other clients. Consult my disclosures page for updates on who else has paid me lately.

I’m a member of the Internet Press Guild and the Online News Association. I do business as Prose Hacking, LLC.

Other ways to connect with me:

• Twitter: what I call my “public notebook,” that’s the first place I’m likely to share some amusing, insightful or irrelevant observation
• My public Facebook page: where you can learn 25 random things about me
• LinkedIn: the most current, detailed version of my resume
• Google+: in practice, this serves as an offsite comments thread for stories shared there
• Flickr: mostly albums from conferences and trips, plus the occasional screenshot
• Tumblr: I set up a blog here under my company’s domain name to provide links to my work as it appears (which is probably a Tumblr foul, but whatever)
• Reddit: after leaving my account dormant for years, I’m finally making some use of it
• Quora: ask me something, anything
• About.Me: this exercise in self-marketing seems redundant at this point
• MySpace: Still haven’t taken that page down–everybody point and laugh!