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

12/26/2012: 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.

No 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.