Editors

Carly Z – [Our resident eBook Goddess!] Carly blames her sense of humor on genetics and walking into too many things head first as a child. She developed a love of gadgets sometime in college and it has snowballed since then. She loves her MacBook, but cheats on it with a windows mobile phone (Samsung Epix). Her non-geek time is spent hanging out with her dog and patient and wonderful girlfriend, reading voraciously, and being a bum around the house. Occasionally she remembers to do her chores.

Carly majored in philosophy in college, a degree that while fun, is generally non-applicable to real life. However, she’s always available for discussions of whether a chair is really a chair, and whether your pinkie can be you if it contains your personality.

She lives in New Jersey, and is one of the few residents of the state who maintains there are good parts to it beyond being close to New York City.

You can peruse Carly’s Amazon Wish List, or send her an email.

Michael Anderson – [Our resident music authority and all-around Gaming Guru!] – Despite living in New York’s ‘Southern Tier’ (more precisely the ‘Crystal City’ of Corning) for nearly a year, Mike and his family still consider themselves Massachusetts natives. They love the vineyards and hiking and climbing offered by the Finger Lakes, but miss the Boston influence on arts and shopping. Mike made the move to work as a Statistician with Corning Incorporated, famous for products such as Pyrex and Corelle, but now the biggest maker of optical fiber, LCD flat panel glass and ceramic filters for car and truck engines.

Mike has been a techno-junkie for ages, mixing a love for gadgets, computers, electronic music making, and video games. From the Apple ][ to the HP 200LX to a new Macbook Pro powering Mac & Windows games and music software, he has had his fingers in nearly every generation of device ... except for phones, which have remained fairly utilitarian for him. This hasn't ben helped by restrictions at his last two employers, including a 'no camera' rule at Corning. His main gadgets right now are a new 15" Macbook Pro, a Lenovo s10 netbook, a Dell Axim x51v, a Nintendo DS, a Sony PSP and a Motorola Z6cx phone.

While not crunching numbers for Corning, Mike and the family enjoy spending time outdoors and generally doing stuff together - anything from hiking and biking to watching movies and playing board games or thrashing around playing Guitar Hero World Tour.

You can peruse Michael's Amazon Wish List, or you can send him an email.

Team Members

Joel McLaughlin - Joel is a system admin for a local college in Columbus, OH. He is married and has one son. These people also try to curb his techno gadget lust, but fail, most of the time! His passions in technology are Open Source, UNIX, Handheld computers of all sorts from the Nokia Internet Tablets to Pocket PCs and the new UMPC’s that are coming out.

He also tends to be pretty mobile. When he knows of an issue with one of his servers he wants to fix it NOW! Hence the propensity to go more towards mobile computing. Operating systems he uses are Windows XP, Mac OS X and Ubuntu Linux.

You can view Joel’s Flicker, peruse his Amazon Wish List, check out his Think Geek Wish List, or send him an email.

Jason Reese - Jason has worked in IT and telecommunications the last 12 years, focusing on wireless/mobile technology and applications for the last 5 -- which has become his passion. Mobile applications have become the "great new frontier" and our devices (don't call it a phone or pager) are now just beginning to live up to the promise we've been hearing about for so long.

A native of Johnson City, TN, Jason moved to Atlanta in '94 and has been there ever since. Jason was fortunate enough to support emergency teams sent to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina and was able to see how a wide scope of mobile devices and applications made a positive impact to not only restore services to families -- but even save lives.

When Jason isn't working to promote and support new technologies in the enterprise, he is spending time trying (key word) to pick up the latest updates in mobile application development -- working on Java/J2ME for BlackBerry, xCode for iPhone, and Android. Maybe one day he'll have enough time to get proficient and even add some more to the ever-growing list.

Jason lives in Atlanta with his wife, Stephanie and their dog. They enjoy traveling, cooking, spending time with family and friends, and -- of course -- technology.

You can peruse Jason's Amazon Wish List, or you can send him an email.

Christopher Gavula - Chris has been a COBOL programmer, a desktop support technician, network engineer, telecommunications manager, and even a professional musician. Currently, he is focused on deploying Voice over IP technologies in a large, corporate setting. He started working full-time at the tender age of 14, even before there were PCs, and will probably be working and trying to finish “just one more project” as he’s lowered into the grave.

Chris says “the great thing about this business is that it is always changing with new things to learn and do - but then that’s also the hardest thing about this business!”

You can peruse Christopher’s Amazon Wish List, or send him an email.

David Goodspeed - [Our resident automotive expert!] David is the editor of AutoworldToday and has been covering the automotive industry since 1998; he is also a webmaster and photographer.

David became AutoworldToday’s editor in 2002. On average, he drives some 100 new vehicles each year. He enjoys the great outdoors and as an avid fly fisherman, as is his girlfriend Tish. He especially enjoys nature photography and is inspired by the works of Ansel Adams.

You can send David an email.

Travis Ehrlich – [Blue Plates are his specialty!] – Travis has been a high school teacher and coach in a small South Texas town for eleven years.  His love for gadgets began at a very early age, and he has been a cross between a jock and a geek for most of his life.  He has two boys (ages 4 and 2), and a wonderful wife who lets him be a gadget freak.

In December Travis will graduate with a Masters of Education Administration from Lamar University.  He is a fairly new Mac convert and has drank the whole pitcher of kool-aid!  He is also an avid guitar player and turns handmade pens whenever he can find a spare moment.

You can peruse Travis’ Amazon Wish List, or send him an email.

Jeff Frantz – Like many geeks, Jeff’s interest in computers and technology began by watching too many Star Trek reruns after school. His first computer was a Timex-Sinclair, for which he had the 16K – yes, 16K – add-on pack. His current interest in gadgets was spurred on by the original Palm Pilot; from there it was a slippery slope to Pocket PCs, Archos media players, Sony Cliés, and various Apple products.

Jeff’s non-technology hobbies include listening to music, reading, playing golf very poorly, and spending time with his family. To fund his gadget hobby, he works as an environmental planner for a large engineering consulting firm.

Jeff lives in the Chicago area with his wife and daughter.

You can peruse Jeff’s Amazon Wish List, or send him an email.

Thomas R. Hall – Thomas is a mobile gadget and digital productivity junkie who is trying to find the perfect mobile device(s) to give him on-the-go productivity. Thomas currently is interested in Android, iPhone, and BlackBerry smartphones, eInk eBook readers, and Mac computers, among many, many other devices.

Thomas and his wife, Chotima, live in Indiana and enjoy travel of any sort (especially international) and the outdoors when time permits.

You can peruse Thomas’ Amazon Wish List or send him an email.

Doug Moran – Doug is a nerd from way back, falling for a Commodore PET at the age of 15, and never looking back. Riding the nerd wave, he got a Computer Science degree and entered the tech industry at a young age, deciding after a year and a half of front-line phone technical support that he should try something, *anything* else. He settled on technical writing, and has been cranking out documentation for companies like Unisys, SGI, Cisco, Juniper, and many others ever since. The fact that he commutes between his family in Austin and his day job in California is something that he is simply trying to live with.

A major PDA fan, Doug ran through every Palm from the Palm Pilot 1000 up to the Palm III before moving to a Handspring, a Tapwave Zodiac, and a brief flirtation with Windows Mobile via an unlocked HTC Universal, before settling on his current iPhone 4 32Gb. He loves eBooks, and has been lusting after and trying to squeeze aside money for the iPad ever since it was announced. Aside from his beloved Sami, “the fam” consists of Maggie, Joseph, two dogs, and five cats.

You can peruse Doug’s Amazon Wish List or send him an email.

Francis Scardino – Francis is a 30-year-old Technical Analyst living in Hatfield, Pennsylvania. He works for Deluxe Corporation, which probably makes your checks if you still use them. He is a 13 year veteran of the Army National Guard, where he just finished his third overseas deployment. He is a Network Administrator and Electronics technician for the Army, and he often gets to use the best the US Government has to offer in technology. He is still a big gamer and loves to build his own gaming systems. He is addicted to gadgets and anything tech, and he spends tons of time online — always looking for latest and greatest (often spending more than he should on new gadgets and phones).

Frances is always the one called when friends and family members’ computers need fixing. His gadget life goes way back to the days of his first 8088 machine, and running up the phone bill calling any BBS that would let him in. He can remember saving up about $400 one summer just to buy his first CD drive, which included the game “the 7th Guest”. He enjoys long walks at Best Buy and Micro Center, and his other interests include sport shooting, paintball, motorcycles, addicting TV series, working on his house, making fun of MAC users .. and he loves his Land Rover LR3.

You can peruse Francis’ Amazon Wish or send him an email.

Michael Siebenaler – From living in Blakeslee, Bowling Green, and now New Bremen, Michael has covered Northwest/Central Ohio throughout his media multitasking.  Since deciding he could write car model instructions for his Magnum P.I. Ferrari better than the manufacturers, Mike has loved analyzing what people experience through media and how they understand media, which has become his lifelong passion, especially since beginning on his Apple ][c then eventually publishing film reviews in 1993 and video game reviews in 1994. In 1995, Mike married his amazing wife. After 10 years and two technical writing degrees (1995 and 2005) in the college town of Bowling Green, they moved to New Bremen to start a family in 2005, which currently stands at three girls.

Mike loves video production, music, computer, video game, voice recognition, and various gadgets (he is a big James Bond fan). His main hardware gadgets include a Nintendo 3DS, VuPoint import camera, Dell Inspirion 530S, Amazon Kindle, Nintendo DSi, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, and Sony PSP with software staples like Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 and various video programs. Mike’s related expertise and experience includes instructional technology, non-profits, grantwriting, community relations, web production, public relations, trade shows, media research, and journalism.

Mike currently works full time as a technical writer/illustrator for Midmark Corporation, a medical equipment company located in Versailles, Ohio, and also teaches technical writing, English and other courses at Edison Community College in Piqua, Ohio as an adjunct faculty. Recreation time includes running, screenwriting, swimming, reading, family game nights, basketball, and editing/transferring family home movies.

You can peruse Michael’s Amazon Wish List or send him an email.

Chris Chamberlain: Chris Chamberlain is a food and drink writer based out of Nashville, TN where he has lived his entire life except for four years in California where he studied liberal arts at Stanford University and learned how to manipulate chopsticks. He is a regular writer for the Nashville Scene and their “Bites” food blog. He has also contributed to the Nashville City Paper, Nashville Lifestyles magazine, 2001 Edgehill, Her Magazine, NFocus and Gear Diary and Food Republic.

Chris enjoys traveling and eating all over the world, but he much prefers the food of his southern homeland. His restaurant/travel guide and cookbook “The Southern Foodie” will be published by Thomas Nelson in the fall of 2012. One of his favorite things in life to do is to put a shoulder on the smoker and watch SEC football all day long while waiting for his pork reach “pig-picking” temperature as slowly as possible.

You can peruse Chris’ Amazon Wish List or send him an email.

Bryan Eley: A senior software tester and network admin for a small hi-tech multimedia company that produces a number of online applications for several tech giants.

Bryan got his professional start in PC technology when he discovered research PhDs in his second job out of college were not very computer savvy. The one upshot of working in that lab is that he met his future wife there, a fellow science geek as well. Bryan has been hooked on computers since his Commodore 64 days, when absurd amounts of was spent entering pages on machine language code for equally absurd simple games. Back in 2005 Bryan received an Axim X51v as a Christmas gift and he has been fiddling with mobile tech ever since. He is currently in the Android camp where phones are concerned, but has dabbled with Blackberry, WebOS and Windows Phone OSes as well.

When not busying himself with tech-oriented tasks Bryan likes spend time cooking (he has over 90 cookbooks, yet still jumps on the internet to find culinary info), reading, working in his garden, calligraphy, and spending time with his two sons and two cats.

You can peruse Bryan’s Amazon Wish List or send him an email.