It was a real treat to get back to Austin after three years and eat at least a dozen tacos over five days.
3/14/2022: The best budget phones in 2022, CNN Underscored
My first byline at a CNN property since the fall of 2012 ran at CNN’s new reviews site. My take on under-$500 phones after trying out this batch: The convenient truth here is that you now give up very little if you decline to spend $1,000 or more on a flagship smartphone, but camera quality remains the biggest tradeoff.
3/16/2022: Do You Care About the Metaverse More Than Mark Zuckerberg?, PCMag
I wrote up Mark Zuckerberg’s profoundly detached video appearance at SXSW.
3/16/2022: At SXSW, in-person networking resumes – along with the struggle to tame tech, USA Today
In my USA Today column, I tried to sum up my SXSW experience in 500 words and change. One thing that helped: Future Today Institute founder Amy Webb provided me with the perfect quote to open this piece in her talk last Sunday morning.
3/17/2022: To fight disinformation, follow the money—and the ads, Fast Company
My next SXSW recap came in this post about Check My Ads’ efforts to defund disinformation sites, one ad exchange at a time.
3/17/2022: S02 E11 – SmartTechCheck Podcast, Mark Vena
My part of this podcast this week was telling listeners (and viewers) about SXSW, which mostly consisted of me talking about Zuckerberg’s profoundly detached video appearance.
3/18/2022: Flickr Limits NSFW Photo Sharing to Paid Accounts, PCMag
When I pitched my editors about writing up two policy shifts at Flickr that further emphasize paid memberships, I thought the photo-sharing service’s mobile apps would rank higher than it appears they do.
Flickr desperately needs to update its apps. At the very least they need to make collections accessible through the apps.
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