It’s been a busy week, and I still have to pack for a flight tomorrow morning. (I’m off to San Francisco to speak on a panel about “Blogger Language 4.0” at PR Summit.) I’ll have to be a little more concise than usual in these descriptions…

7/22/2013: Former WaPo Staffer Rob Pegoraro Talks About Newspapers’ Decline (Video), Slashdot

Robin Miller, aka “roblimo,” asked me a few questions about the state of the newspaper business and the future of journalism.

7/24/2013: Online Journalism Not All Doomed (Even If You Count Past 538), Disruptive Competition Project

And speaking of the future of journalism, here I argued that the ability of a local-news site called ARLNow.com to hire its first full-time reporter is probably a better sign of the health of my profession than Nate Silver’s headline-making move from the New York Times to ESPN.

7/24/2013: Senator: Weak oversight of NSA may lead to massive location tracking, Ars Technica

I wrote up the speech Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) gave at the Center for American Progress about government surveillance and the secret body of law that barely constrains it.

7/26/2013: #221: We’re #9! We’re #9!, This Week In Law

The number in the title of this week’s episode refers to the U.S.’s ranking in a recent survey of broadband access; tune in to see host Denise Howell, Public Knowledge president Gigi Sohn and me talk about the state of our broadband market and a grab-bag of other issues.

7/27/2013: Rob Pegoraro talks about things that beep and blink, Washington Apple Pi

The last time I spoke at a monthly meeting of the D.C. area’s Apple user group was in February 2011. A few things have changed since then (my ability to get lost on the roads of George Mason University’s Fairfax campus is not among them), so I enjoyed catching up with my friends at WAP.

7/28/2013: To get online during vacation, consider prepaid data, USA Today

A reader wanted to know a cheap way to get a laptop online during a long cross-country trip, so I suggested some prepaid data services–most reselling Sprint’s old WiMax network. I also shared a tip about using mobile sites when you’re starved for bandwidth, one of the things I’ve resorted to in the face of uncooperative WiFi at conferences and elsewhere.

Sulia highlights: Excoriating the worse-than-Apple performance of Nokia’s Windows Phone mapping app, noting the impending arrival of a $999, 50-inch 4K TV, celebrating a pathetically overdue tech-patent ruling and wondering if faster WiFi on Amtrak will induce demand that leads to the same slow wireless as before.