Gawker: valleywag, technologizer

The Twitterati Launder Their Woes

Owen Thomas — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 18:15:05 EST

Not a good day for the Twitterati! Dan Abrams found himself stalked by a coworker. Perma-perky PR person Brooke Hammerling got bummed out. And an underling of Tina Brown faced up to an unwelcome chore:

Daily Beast West Coast editor Tom Tapp did his laundry at 11 a.m.

Reporter-pimping rapscallion Dan Abrams felt vaguely annoyed at Rachel Sklar. (We've all been there, Dan. She's everywhere!)

Tech blogger Harry McCracken overthought Twitter.

Snacky tech superflack Brooke Hammerling let the weather get her down.

Farm and Dairy editor Susan Crowell had a cow over milking online users. Ba-dum-bum!

Anyone else's tweets we should keep an eye on? Send us more Twitter usernames, please — or email us your favorite tweets.

OLPC repeats its mistakes with new "Give One, Get One" program

Paul Boutin — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:00:03 EST

Once again, the One Laptop Per Child Foundation is offering two of its XO machines for $399. One goes to you, one goes to a third-world child. Technologizer editor Harry McCracken, the pathologically honest former head of PC World, bought into the program last year. This year, he says, he'll do it again, but he's not sure you should:

Should you Give One, Get One in order to get an XO to use as a netbook for serious adult-type productivity? I wouldn’t: The child-sized, rubbery keyboard wasn’t meant for grown-up touch typists. And while OLPC has introduced an XO that runs Windows XP, the G1G1 laptops are the original ones, running Linux and the decidedly kid-oriented “Sugar” user interface.

There's one big improvement this year. OLPC has arranged for Amazon to handle fulfillment.

Last year, the fulfillment firm chosen by OLPC proved incapable of getting laptops out to donors in an organized and timely fashion: When I made a donation I didn’t to the fact that I had to wait for weeks after the estimated arrival date had come and gone so much as that the fulfillment house lost my mailing address. Repeatedly.

PC World steals ex-Infoworld editor

Paul Boutin — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:20:00 EDT

Further proof that the print world isn't like the Internet: Eighteen years after he first took a job at monthly service mag PC World, Steve Fox has been brought back by magazine publisher IDG to replace outgoing editor and Internet hero Harry McCracken, whose Technologizer site is nearing an official launch. The unapologetically nuts-and-bolts PC World, with covers like "72 Ways to Make Software Do More," is generally considered the largest-circulation tech magazine in the world. It outsells both Wired and Fast Company by a small margin.

No wonder the smarter-than-your-average-trade-journalist Fox returned from going-nowhere startup Affinity Labs, which he joined after helming fading star Infoworld, an IDG monthly for IT professionals that no longer publishes in print. How will Fox get modern computer enthusiasts, both excited and jaded by the Internet, to buy a magazine? Just a suggestion, Steve: "Summer Glau's 72 Ways to Terminate PC Problems"(Photo by Dealmaker Media)

Former PC World chief: Macs no more expensive than PCs

Paul Boutin — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 18:40:00 EDT

"A MacBook is in the same ballpark as a roughly similar Dell or HP, and less than a Sony." That's the conclusion of Technologizer editor Harry McCracken, after running the numbers several different ways on competing notebooks. The MacBook didn't win most hardware categories, but it came out well-rounded, with superior warranty service and media software. McCracken, until recently the editor in chief of PC World, was infamous among local tech journalists for toting Apple laptops to work.