My overdue update to this guide to LTE hotspots endorsed a Verizon model and gave a secondary endorsement to an AT&T hotspot with lesser battery life. We then revised the update after it posted to note that the Sprint reseller Karma had downgraded an initially-promising unlimited-data option.
I ran into Techdirt’s Mike Masnick at CES, and on our respective ways out of town he suggested I appear on his podcast. I said that would be a great idea.
The 4.0 update LastPass rolled out right before CES added an emergency-access feature, so I used this tip to tell readers about that and Dashlane’s comparable emergency-contacts option.
The easy answer to Microsoft’s end of support for older Internet Explorer versions is “install IE 11.” But that browser isn’t the same app in Windows 7 as it is in Win 8 and 10, and updating your browser doesn’t end your Web-security chores.
I’ve been looking forward to writing this column for several years, and when the end of Microsoft’s support for Windows XP finally arrived I found it strangely enjoyable to revisit stories I’d written five and 10 years ago about XP. I’ve since heard from a few readers who say they prefer XP to Windows 7 or 8 not just because they need to run legacy apps or don’t want to buy a new PC, but because XP is easier. I’m wary of questioning a reader’s subjective judgment, but… um, no.
(Screenshot shows how the story renders in a copy of Internet Explorer 6 in Windows XP. Don’t ask how I sourced that image.)
4/8/2014: Windows XP, WTOP
I talked for a few minutes about the end of XP support and what users of that fossilized malware magnet of an operating system could do to stay safe.
To judge from the low number of Facebook and Twitter shares displayed next to this story, almost nobody read my attempt to concisely how the intersection of browser security models with Web apps that look and work like local ones can lead to dysfunctional results. I’ll try to find a more enticing topic next week.
CES week has usually been the single busiest workweek of the year, and this time around did not disappoint. It also featured perhaps my shortest and certainly my highest-profile TV appearance yet.
About eight hours into what became a 14-hour workday, I chatted briefly with the Fool’s Rex Moore for a show-opening video segment about some of the trends I’d seen thus far.
As it did last year, Panasonic ran a series of interviews with tech-industry types, journalists, athletes, politicians and various other guests from its CES exhibit. Here, I discussed the intersection of sports and digital media with the Sports Business Journal’s Eric Fisher and host Jordan Burchette. I trust nobody was surprised to see me rant yet again about the idiocy of regional blackouts for live game coverage.
I evaluated some of the more talked-about CES appearances in terms of whether they might entrench incumbents in a market or offer an opening to their challengers.
This show assessment for the NewsHour’s Rundown blog got a shout-out on that night’s NewsHour broadcast, right after an interview of my old Post cubicle-mate Cecilia Kang. Which makes a certain amount of sense, since the piece’s length and tone made it the closest thing to the CES-recap columns I wrote for the Post for… wow, 14 years in a row.
Note that the first version of this posted had a stupid mistake in the description of 4K resolution; when I was trimming a paragraph on the technology, “million” wound up where “thousand” should have been, and it took a reader’s comment to bring that to my attention. (That’s only one of the reasons why I try to read every comment.)
Larry Magid, a longtime tech journalist I enjoy running into at events like this, saw fit to include a sound bite from me in that day’s one-minute tech update.
My CES recap for Discovery–also, my first in the site’s new design–covered the same trends I tackled in the NewsHour piece but benefited from another day’s worth of soaking in the show.
I did a post like this back in 2011 that critiqued the absence of non-TiVo video recorders (among other things), didn’t think to return to the theme last year, but realized it would fit in well with DisCo’s focus on the ways outside factors distort and limit what the tech business can do.
The Fool’s Chris Hill interviewed me about the show for the Fool’s weekly podcast. He had me on as a guest pretty regularly when I was at the Post; it was good to be back.
An editor at NBC noticed the column I wrote for USA Today about Java security last spring and e-mailed to ask if they could interview me for that evening’s show. They recorded something like 30 minutes’ worth of footage; they asked good questions, didn’t cut off my answers and finished by asking if there was anything else I wanted this piece to say. Maybe 10 seconds of that wound up on the air, with me identified as a “USA Today Technology Writer.”
(I was worried they wouldn’t use any of it. Between the heat from the studio lights in NBC’s Nebraska Avenue offices and my own don’t-screw-this-up anxiety, I started getting a little flustered and began fumbling some of my answers.)
Anyway, now I can cross “be interviewed as an expert on a national nightly-news show” off the bucket list. And in yet another weird coincidence, that night’s broadcast also featured my friend Daniel Greenberg, one of my best freelance contributors at the Post, talking about video-game violence.
This week’s column looks at the persistence of Adobe Flash on the desktop and recants some of my earlier optimism about a quick sunset for that format. (Though I have to note that Discovery’s new design finally does away with Flash for slide shows, even older ones; I no longer feel guilty about linking out to those.) It also shares a few tips about talking crash-prone browsers out of their sulk.
(With 15 of these 500-to-1,000-character posts a week, I can’t see adding them all to the weekly roundup, any more than I’d inventory my tweets. But maybe calling out a few highlights will work.)
1/11/2016: Best Wi-Fi Hotspot, The Wirecutter
Rob Pegoraro 