Tag Archives: Facebook privacy

Weekly output: 2013 tech policy, 2013 predictions, Facebook contacts, Facebook privacy, headphones

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The last workweek of the year ends with one new freelance client.

PBS NewsHour post12/26/2012: Commentary: A Tech To-Do List for Washington in 2013, PBS NewsHour

I wrote a guest post for the NewsHour’s Rundown blog about the tech-policy issues I’d like to see Washington tackle next year–and how much of those tasks might actually get accomplished.

Surprise, surprise: Congress has already disappointed me. First it rejected measures that would impose a minimal level of transparency on the use of warrantless wiretapping of communications involving individuals overseas. Then it dropped an amendment that would force prosecutors to obtain a warrant to request e-mail stored online for longer than 180 days.

12/28/2012: Reverse Predictions For 2013, Discovery News

Are you as bored of thinly-sourced evidence for the impending arrival of an Apple HDTV as I am? Then please read this post, in which I cast a skeptical gaze on that and six other tech forecasts for the coming year.

12/31/2012: Tip: Sync Facebook friends with Mac contacts, USA Today

This week’s column–marking the start of my second year doing it–began when I was trying to update my address book. A friend’s Facebook data revealed that she had moved to Oakland; her Christmas card had her street address, but when I typed that into the Facebook-sourced home-address field in my Mac’s Contacts app, my edits vanished once I closed out of the record. I have since turned off Facebook contacts synchronization, as I suggested I might in the column.

RD headphones pieceNo timestamp or link on this last one, as it’s print-only: I wrote a listicle for Reader’s Digest covering a few reasons why one pair of headphones might cost 18 times as much as another, and it should have begun appearing on newsstands a week or two ago. I finally remembered to look for it this Sunday and grabbed a quick shot of the piece; it’s on page 56, if you’d like to read it for yourself.

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Weekly output: new iPad, 4K, Web chat, DVD ripping, Facebook social apps

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For some weird reason, this new tablet from Apple kept showing up in my work this week. How does that happen?

3/19/2012: The New iPad: A Super Screen and a Big Battery, Discovery News

When two different Discovery colleagues mentioned their interest in buying the new iPad, I opted for an unconventional product-review tactic: I offered to stand in line that Friday morning to make that purchase for them, on the condition that I get to spend a few days testing the hardware before turning it over. As a result, this is one of the few reviews of Apple’s latest tablet to feature photos taken of one new iPad with another.

3/20/2012: Retina displays, 4K TVs push pixel limits, CEA Digital Dialogue

My new-iPad coverage continued with a look at what its magical and revolutionary seriously impressive Retina display means for other handheld devices–and why TVs don’t need a similar beyond-high-def upgrade. This post involved way more math than usual and may have been the first time I’ve dealt with a tangent function since high school (if by “dealt with” you mean “plugged variables into a WolframAlpha equation form”).

3/23/2012: Spring Gleaning: Smartphones, Social Media and Tablets (Web chat), CEA Digital Dialogue

Unsurprisingly, the new iPad also prominently figured in this month’s Web chat. But I also got some good questions about secure browsing over public WiFi, a sluggish iPhone, problems syncing an iPad with iTunes over WiFi (I’m pretty sure that query came from one of my NASA Tweetup pals), rooting an Android phone, Windows 8′s clashing interfaces, phone screen sizes and my own uncertainty about what kind of phone to get next.

3/25/2012: Tip: How to copy a DVD to your PC, USA Today

The first item in this week’s column, recommending the open-source Handbrake for DVD ripping and revisiting my dislike of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention clause, began with a query from my neighbor across the street. The second started with an exchange on the DC Tech Facebook group complaining about the Washington Post’s Social Reader app.