New York Times gadget reviewer David Pogue has signed a new contract with CNBC and is very proud of this. Here's our 100-word version of his video introduction:
Gadget reviewer David Pogue of the New York Times has run so short of ideas that he's recycling a decade-old idea: Criticizing the absurdity of today's Web 2.0 domain names. But in rehashing what everyone else already knew, Pogue reveals just how far behind he is. "These are all actual Web sites that have hit the Web in the last year or so: Doostang. Wufoo. Bliin. Thoof. Bebo. Meebo. Meemo. Kudit. Raketu. Etelos. Iyogi. Oyogi. Qoop. Fark. Kijiji. Zixxo. Zoogmo." Fark? Last year or so? Drew Curtis's Fark.com as a collection of interesting headlines has been around since at least 1999.
Got 30 seconds? Read my summaries of the early reviews of Apple's new operating system in Thursday's papers. Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg, New York Times reviewer David Pogue, and USA Today's Ed Baig agree: Time Machine backups, yay. See-through menus, boo.
New York Times gadget reviewer David Pogue got into an email back-and-forth with Valleywag after he was tricked into writing an article by advance misinformation on a pre-launch product. In theory, it's good for reviewers to test and write up products before release day, so consumers can make informed choices. In practice, Pogue and we wish the industry standard would change.
David Pogue of the New York Times wrote a humiliating column today correcting a huge pricing error in his last piece. He wrote about cellphone startup Cubic Telecom, which carries international phone calls over the Internet to give really cheap rates. Pogue listed off a bunch of rates to places like Greece or Iraq and excitedly wrote that "the appropriate world traveler's response ought to be involuntary drooling." Except the prices he quoted were just plain wrong. That'll stop up your salivary glands.
David Pogue of the New York Times questions the need for the popular business-oriented social network: "What I don't understand is: If somebody knows me well enough to e-mail me with an invitation to join, why doesn't he just e-mail me directly with whatever his problem or offer is?" [Pogue's Posts]
Hate to say it, but Jason Calacanis had it right: NYT gadget reviewer David Pogue's "iPhone: The Musical" was a trite, derivative, and boring piece of Apple propaganda. But a group of San Francisco webheads have come up with a pitch-perfect take on the iPhone phenomenon. Behold the glory that is "Dontcha Wish Your Cell Phone Was Hot Like Me?" — and after the jump, my take on why this spoof gets it right while Pogue's flopped.
New York Times technology columnist David Pogue is a not-very-critical critic — except, possibly, when it comes to his own biography. Pogue, or someone claiming to be him, is in fact editing his own Wikipedia entry. And every sign points to it, in fact, being Pogue: The poster's IP address, 67.86.88.246, has been removing anything negative about Pogue and making other curiously detailed revisions to the entry since June 30. Here are the details that suggest it really is Pogue.A search on IP2location.com reveals that the IP address belongs to Optimum Online, a broadband ISP, and is located in Norwalk, Conn. That's suspiciously close to the Stamford, Conn. address where Pogue has his domain name registered. And the Wikipedia user at that IP address has noted information about Pogue that's not easily verified, like the fact that he studied computer science at Yale. It's a major no-no to put information that can't be attributed to other sources on Wikipedia, whose users insist on linking only to publicly available information. It's also a major faux pas to edit your own Wikipedia entry; even Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales has gotten in trouble over such a move. The only remaining question: Could the thin-skinned Pogue really have made such a dunderheaded move?
PAUL BOUTIN — Wall Street Journal uber-reviewer Walt Mossberg replied at length to Valleywag's email inquiry yesterday, in which I asked why he mentions Apple's Mac OS X so many times in his review of Microsoft Windows Vista. He obviously thinks the Mac still whups Vista, yet doesn't tell his loyal readers to consider a Mac instead of the pricey new PC most will need to buy to run Vista's best features. Are they holding a gun to his head there, or what? The Sage of Potomac replied instantly, but his email got stuck in the tubes for most of a day. Walt's full response after the jump.See also: David Pogue calls Vista "a truck"
PAUL BOUTIN — Vista or OS X? The star reviewers at the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal both point out Microsoft's new operating system (a) requires a new, beefed-up PC to use its best features, and (b) seems like an inferior copy of Apple's Mac OS X. David Pogue and Walt Mossberg are both known Mac fans. Each spends a good chunk of his review praising OS X over Vista. It leaves a reader wondering: Should I buy a Vista PC or get one of those Macs, and why didn't they tell me which? Are Pogue and Mossberg appeasing Mac fanboys without actually advocating Apple? Were they ordered not to blurt out VISTA SUCKS GET A MAC? After the jump, Pogue takes the bait.
David Pogue, the friendly Bob Saget of tech journalism, got flak for last week's New York Times column, in which he explained why Macs will never dominate the business scene. One of his reasons was that IT pros would put themselves out of business by filling their companies with Macs. He got plenty of shit for that one. And under the pressure, he's cracked:
Somewhere deep in the New York Times stylebook is the rule that all shopping columnists must be "quirky." David Pogue, master gadget and software reviewer, is the William Safire of the genre, and he's even better on video. In his latest clip, Pogue pulls off the best cheesy joke telling in history — just like your dad did around your high-school friends.
TED, the futuristic conference that calls itself "a preview of Heaven" just released this year's keynote speeches online. Most of the clips from the February TED conference aren't geeky or funny enough. But New York Times personal tech columnist David Pogue is both. Forgive a few well-worn jokes and listen to his witty — if pedantically delivered — piano parodies. "The Bill Gates Song" is destined to be a summer jam.
For Memorial Day weekend, the Times' resident geek David Pogue attempted to install a portable GPS unit before he and his family took a road trip. The GPS device was a Christmas gift, given to him by a relative. Unfortunately, Pogue had some problems — tiny memory, no loaded map data, a "dog-slow" data transfer, outdated road maps, invalid authorization code, etc. Ostensibly, Pogue writes an 850-word review of the product's inadequacies, with some lessons learned:
We like technology, really we do. (Yay, technology!) But we confess that David Pogue's latest wet dream, recounted in today's paper, leaves us a bit flummoxed. It seems there's a new gizmo that, when hooked up in your house, allows you to watch your home TV anywhere you can get a WiFi signal to your laptop — or even a cell signal to your Treo. ("Now you can watch your home TV anywhere you can make phone calls — a statement that's never appeared in print before today (at least not accurately)," Pogue proudly proclaims.)
It just keeps getting harder for people working at the Times: Now the editors are even posting staffers' performance reviews on the web.
