“As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.”
That’s how Goodfellas begins. But me? Ever since way back when, I always wanted to be involved in technology.
March 31 was the first day of my dream job as Editor in Chief of Digital Trends – and that’s no April Fools’ joke. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do: I get to work with some of the leading experts in the technology world to talk about and pore over the newest gadgets. It’s ideal for someone like me, who can’t remember the name of someone I just met, and can’t forget the name of the processor in the Mac clone I bought in 1996. (It was a top of-the-line system from Power Computing, and it had a blistering 210-MHz 604e chip. The guy I met was named Dave, I think. Or was it Dan? Duncan?)
I was working at the time at a technical magazine publisher, programmer journals. Two years later, Michael Miller hired me to work in the copy edit department at PC Magazine. And when I saw the Labs, and the analysts running benchmark tests on everything from computers to network gear to word processors – there used to be dozens of them, remember – I was completely hooked.
I had grown up as the technology world took off, and knew PCs pretty well already. My dad was an engineer, and brought home an early computer with a black screen that displayed green text and a blinking DOS prompt. I bought a book on programming at the time, and wrote my own choose-your-own adventure game. To hell with Zork; I was building Kaplanville.
To hell with Zork; I was building Kaplanville.
But working as a tech writer and editor is different, a chance to share my passion and bring others into the world of ones and zeros with me, where the right laptop makes your life easier, not more complicated. Digital Trends has become a powerhouse in tech reporting, with reliable, accessible product reviews and round-the-clock news. The staff is just as obsessed with technology as I am, and able to distill the bits and bytes into just the information you need.
I spent almost five years at FoxNews.com, working with some of the smartest people in news. Because the site had such a broad, general audience, I had to fixate on how to explain tech topics both complex and mundane to a wide audience that didn’t necessarily care as much as I did about the latest update to Windows, or the newest processor from Intel or AMD. Digital Trends does a wonderful job doing just that, whether it’s the latest smartphone to awe the tech savvy, video game to suck up your time, or British speedster to take your breath away.
And the company will take this plain-English approach to technology to new places in the coming months, including the growing smart-appliance sector. Sure, Samsung and GE want people to Tweet with their white-box goods, but should you buy them? Let us review them for you, taking the guesswork out of the equation.
DT is also a community, and as such we need your feedback, your reviews, your opinions. So stick with us as we build and grow. We’ve got amazing plans.
