Providing Semi-Regular Product Reviews, Articles & Commentary Contributions

Aura Mae - One of the few people who can claim to have lived upwind of where they make Tabasco Sauce and to have attended Death Valley High School (Go Scorpions!) Aura Mae now lives in the Seattle area. She owns a small salon and is a beauty industry educator. Constantly on the prowl for ways technology can help keep her small salon on a level playing field with the big boys, Aura shares her finds with other small salon owners in a workshop called Getting and Keeping the Clients You Want.

She is the author of the world’s first advice book (Get Some Hairapy - A hairdresser’s prescription for happiness) written from a hairdresser’s perspective. Aura has two teenagers, two Great Danes, a passion for small electronics and small leather goods, and no time for nonsense!

Jack Cook - Jack spent 35 years teaching mathematics, worked as a Dean of Students, and completed his career as a Principal of a suburban school just outside of Boston, Massachusetts. Throughout his years in public education, the computer field has always sparked an interest in him.

In his early years as a teacher, he became proficient with computers by teaching himself “BASIC” with an old HP card reader. Handheld computers soon became his passion where he eventually focused his attention on the HP iPAQ.

Always the teacher, Jack participates in several discussion groups and is currently serving as Senior Editor on Mobilitysite, participates in the Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine Blogs and maintains his personal site, Experience Mobility. Jack brings to the mobile device community, news, events, and reviews that generate the same passion in handheld’s that he has had.

Retirement has not slowed Jack down, he finds himself busier today than ever before. Traveling between Massachusetts and Maine, he is continually writing, reading and working with his iPAQ. In addition, Jack serves on the board of advisors for SCOTTEVEST.

Bjenk Ellefsen - Bjenk is a Canadian social researcher in the fields of urban, youth and work studies. He is currently a Postdoctorate fellow at the Australian Youth Research Center, University of Melbourne and visiting scholar at McGill University.

Before pursuing his passion for academic social research, he was an entrepreneur in IT. In his spare time, Bjenk enjoys reading, playing video games and studying traditional cabinetmaking.

Stan Lau - Stan is a Gadget Geek who works in banking in New York City, managing his work week and personal life with a Samsung i730 from Verizon Wireless.

with a friend at the Midsummer’s Night Swing

He can’t decide whether to upgrade to the Samsung i760 in June, or switch to AT&T and buy an iPhone. (He bought an iPhone!)

Larry Liaw - Since Larry was a child he has always been curious about the world of electronics. Right after reading the biography of the greatest inventor, Thomas Edison, he made up his mind to become a person with a high-tech background that would be capable of inventing the greatest products in the world; it’s not only a goal, but also the dream of his life, a dream that has never died.

Larry has spent a lot of time and interest in researching PDA technologies. Besides, keeping up with and studying them, Larry is an administrator of the popular Taiwanese site Palm Is Life (which has well over 36,000 members) and he also has a PDA hardware DIY web site.

Larry is always looking for ways to improve the electronics devices, consumer products, even the vehicles he owns, trying to make them even more functional and convenient. He believes that this is the spirit which a high-tech person must have.

Jerry Raia - Jerry Raia is a full time Airline Captain when he is not playing with all the latest gadgets he can get his hands on. He is also a Certified Flight Instructor (CFI-AIM). His primary interests are with Smartphones and more recently, Photography. He was a Unix programmer in the 1980s and wrote assembly for HP proprietary handhelds like the HP71B.

His interest in handheld devices led to being a beta tester for Windows CE (Pegasus), the first incarnation of the Windows Mobile operating system. He is also a Contributing Editor on Smartphone Thoughts. Jerry’s interest in handheld computing goes all the way back to the HP25 calculator that came out in the mid 1970s and was one of the first programmable calculators.

William Rodriguez - Will was born in San Angelo, TX, he has since stayed there… and completed high school. He is currently a freshman at Angelo State University with a major in Management Information Systems. He is the administrator of a technology blog (and other stuff) called Cyberevolutions. He has been a gamer as long as he can remember, having played his first video game on an old Commodore 64, before he could even read. Since then, he has moved on to bigger better video games. He considers himself a recovering hardcore gaming addict. He will soon be a Network Technician in the ASU IT department, and is an all around computer nerd.

Yes, Will is friends with the famous Avah

Some people have called him a computer enthusiast; however, he denies this, preferring the title of extremist. He has a bad habit of overclocking every computer he intends on touching more than one time a month, and on his main computer has pushed its limits so much that every warranty on it instantaneously burst into flames.

When he’s not doing homework you can often find him playing the latest and greatest… free online game. He has a strange addiction to MMOs and enjoys long rants about computer hardware and software. Expect him to keep you informed of cheese and silicon.

Torturous Trevor the Technoholic - Likes: Computer Magazines, operating manuals and quantum mechanics. Dislikes: Permissions, long release cycles and sunlight.
Hobbies: Collecting comics, Renaissance Fairs and perplexing people with trivia.

“Mmmmm Bluetooth.”

Yes Trevor is a strange one.

Now working for a large industrial company Trevor has been involved in the world of Mobility for almost 10 years now, in a business sense of course, looking to always get the latest device to see how it could benefit the company and their sales folks. Everything from laptops to tablets to Mobile devices of all kinds have made their way into his hands. Needless to say phone porn has become a way of life for Trevor, never traveling with less then 8 devices at a time, not including laptops of course.

Yes Trevor is a strange Office Archetype, but he loves his technology.

Providing Occasional Product Reviews, Articles & Commentary Contributions

Molly Antos - Molly is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis. She currently lives in Chicago, IL, working as a public relations account executive.

She likes going to Cubs games and rooting for the Bears in season. She loves her boyfriend and her adorable puggle puppy, Penny.

Ellen Beeman - Ellen is a videogame producer with over twelve years of game design, writing, and project management experience. Prior to her game development career, Ellen was a children’s television scriptwriter, and has published four novels and many short stories.

She serves on the advisory boards for Women in Games International and Game Developer magazine.

Debra Brown - Debra is the Executive Director of The Children’s Advocacy Center, a position she has held for over twelve years. She enjoys playing poker and computer adventure games.

Debra has been married for twenty-four years and has a twenty-year-old Texas Tech student.

Stephen Dean - Steve grew up in a small southwestern Virginia town called Gate City, where he graduated from Gate City High School. He joined the United States Army where he served for 11.5 years as a Military Policeman, specializing in juvenile investigations. He then became a civil servant working for the Department of Defense in Germany where he remained for 15 years.

Steve’s full time job is now with the Joint Task Force’s Global Network Operations as a network defense analyst in Washington DC. He is an avid Boy Scout leader and loves camping and being outdoors and traveling the world over. Steve has always been known as the gadget guy, always having the newest, best handheld or gadget. Tech toys have always been his biggest weakness (right next to movies).

Catherine Fitch - From her early days, Catherine has been exposed to the complexities of technology from her parents, and it has definitely rubbed off. Catherine is a high school junior, and as such brings a unique teen perspective to her reviews.

David Fried – David was born and raised in the bustling town of West Bloomfield, MI. In high school his pursuits included athletics, illustrated by his participation in track and field (throwing discus and 400 meter dash). He was the cinematographer and director for numerous films, and his efforts garnered him several semi-prestigious awards. He is a self-taught ruby on rails, html and C++ coder, and robotics club further channeled his love of technology. He is currently an undergraduate student at Michigan State University majoring in journalism or possibly medicine.

His fervor for technology stems in part from his father’s fascination with everything electronic. And his lack of coordination which ruled out any form of serious sports-based endeavors. When not writing code, listening to music, or making movies with friends, David enjoys the great outdoors. His numerous hiking and canoeing trips to the U.P illustrate this facet of his personality. He is fluent in English and Hebrew, as well as knowledgeable in Spanish. He is a committed Super Smash Brothers player, using the great ape himself, “Donkey Kong”. He is also a self-proclaimed Lawn Gnome connoisseur whose collection currently stands at a hefty zero. Gadgets he uses on a daily basis are; his iPod chock full of goodies such as David Bowie, Andrew Bird and Sublime, a Macbook (White), and the Nokia N800.

Adrian Leibas - Adrian is 27 years old and lives in Newark, Ohio with his wife Katie, 2-month old son Cooper, and two cats Tyson & Samar. He is a claims adjuster for State Farm Auto Insurance, and he has also worked in their systems department. He was a computer science major at Mt. Vernon Nazarene University, where he also played baseball. He quickly realized that he did not like writing code or script, which is why he changed both majors and schools, graduating from Franklin University with a BS in Business and minor in HR Management.

Adrian has been a gadget enthusiast as far back as he can remember, and his wife might say that he spends more time in Best Buy than he does with her. In his spare time he likes to spend time with his new little family, reading, watching baseball, and assistant coaching on his high school varsity baseball team. He is also in the process of deciding if he is ready for the transition from PC to Mac, as he’s sure many of you can relate.

Sean Sheehan - Sean is an Air Force kid, and as such he has traveled all over the world. In fact, he has been to more countries than most people might travel to in their lifetime. A gamer since playing classic Mario on the first Nintendo, nothing has really stopped him from growing into the lifestyle and playing all the newest, biggest, and best games. His most current beat list includes every Half-Life and Portal; his next game to deal with will be Bioshock, although he’s had it for longer than the others.Sean stands by his statement that Bioshock will be Game of the Year 2007. He works two jobs, one as a radio D.J. for Sonic Radio, and one at a local Specialties store. A lot of his free time is used for gaming, developing his new web-site, and painting his Warhammer 40,000 models. Not to mention his dabbling in 3-D animation.

Sean is, in other words, a Gamer Multi-tasker. Also an avid comic reader, he is seen here with Brian Denham, the artist for Iron Man: Hypervelocity and Nova.

Lex Strickland - L e x works for an international pharmaceutical company and serves on the technology committee for his division. His ‘fun passion’ is playing drums at church and in a band.

He’s interested in personal fitness, using weights and a mountain bike, but not at the same time. He’s married to Kate and is Dad to Allison and Amy.

Rob Tripp - Rob is just a regular guy living north of the Red River. He is not a caffeine addict, but will tell you that black coffee is the Nectar of Life: pure, simple and easy.

He likes his technology easy too. Kodak cameras, HP computers, and Canon printers get along well with him.

echo has been covering all things tech for more than a decade - and he’s been playing with gadgets for even longer.

echo writes about his passions including: mobile devices, video on demand, mechanical gadgets, video displays, and pretty much anything hardware or software related.