About

What’s it All About?

June 24, 2009

With blogs springing up more quickly than acne on a teenager’s face the night before the prom, it occurs to me that someone might want to know who the heck I am to think I can do a technology blog. Fair question. All told, I’ve been writing about technology for almost 30 years. (I was paid $35 for my first published piece which appeared in Compute.)

Some of you may know me from the Hard Edge at Computer Shopper and, later, from aliceandbill.com. (If you’re real old, you might even remember my ///’s Company column in inCider!) When Alice Hill decided to go her own way and develop RealTechNews, it left me with some free time on my hands. Can’t stand that.

So I’ve been slowly building TechNudge to be fun and, hopefully useful. (“Slowly” because we’re all painfully aware that the 14 year old boys were never going to leave Alice. Hey, I don’t blame them.) If you need a more official bio, here it is in brief form:

Bill O’Brien is a PC Magazine alumnus –one of the founding Project Leaders at PC Magazine Labs, the writer of the original PC Labs benchmarks (the Printer benchmark was a killer!) and, afterwards, a contributing editor to PC Magazine through the early ’90s. He’s written a half a dozen books on computers and technology that are as mercifully out of print as they are out of date and he can be directly blamed for in excess of 2,500 articles on topics ranging from Apple ][ computers, to PCs, to Linux, to commentary on IT hardware decisions. With his ex-writing partner, Alice Hill, Bill jointly authored “The Hard Edge,” the longest-running technology column penned by a techno duo (1992 to 2004) for Computer Shopper. He’s been working for Shopper since it was a Patch Publication, based in Florida –which means he’s in his 21st year there. He’s also written Tech Edge for PC Magazine and a column called “Best Bits” for CMP Media.

As of right now, I don’t accept pay ads and I don’t have a newsletter. Some of that may change over time. I tend to like making a living. Not to worry, I won’t change no matter what. (Is that a positive?) Any other questions? Email me. See ya around. –Bill