David Pogue
Encyclopedia
David Welch Pogue is an American technology writer, technology columnist and commentator. He is a personal technology columnist for the New York Times, an Emmy
-winning tech correspondent for CBS News Sunday Morning
, weekly tech correspondent for CNBC
, and a columnist for Scientific American
. He has hosted numerous NOVA
miniseries on PBS, including “Making Stuff,” a four-part series that aired in early 2011. Pogue has written or co-written seven books in the For Dummies series (including Macintosh
computers, magic
, opera
, and classical music
). In 1999, he launched his own series of computer how-to
books called the Missing Manual series, which now includes over 100 titles covering a variety of Macintosh and Windows operating systems and applications. Among the dozens of books Pogue has authored is The World According to Twitter (2009), written in collaboration with around 500,000 of his Twitter
followers.
, the son of Richard Welch Pogue, an attorney and former Managing Partner at Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, and Patricia Ruth (née Raney). He is a grandson of aviation attorney L.Welch Pogue and Mary Ellen Edgerton. He is also a great nephew of Harold Eugene "Doc" Edgerton, a professor of electrical engineering
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
, and credited with transforming the stroboscope
from an obscure laboratory instrument into a common device.
He graduated from Yale University
in 1985, summa cum laude with Distinction in Music. He spent ten years working in New York, for a time in the office of Music Theatre International and also intermittently as a Broadway
musical conductor. On August 29, 2007 he received an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Music) from Shenandoah Conservatory of Shenandoah University
in Winchester, Virginia.
On May 16, 2011, Pogue and his estranged wife were charged with disorderly conduct after a domestic dispute turned physical. According to police, Mrs. Pogue entered his house and, while trying to record an argument, bit him on the forearm; she says that Pogue grabbed her phone and struck her with it . Mrs. Pogue's lawyer reported that "no one was injured." These charges were later dismissed.
from 1988-2000. His back-page column was called The Desktop Critic. Pogue got his start writing books when Macworld-owner IDG
asked him to write Macs for Dummies to follow on the success of the first ...for Dummies book, DOS for Dummies, written by Dan Gookin.
Since November 2000, Pogue has served as the The New York Times
personal-tech columnist; his column, "State of the Art," appears each Thursday on the front page of the Business section. He also writes "From the Desk of David Pogue," a tech-related opinion column that is sent to readers by e-mail. He also maintains a blog
at nytimes.com called Pogue's Posts.
Each Thursday, he appears on CNBC's "Power Lunch" in a taped, three-minute comic tech review, which then appears on the New York Times website, nytimes.com, as well as iTunes, YouTube, TiVo, and JetBlue.
In 2007, the HD Theater and Science
channels aired his six-episode series, It's All Geek to Me
, a how-to show about consumer technology.
He hosted a four-part PBS NOVA miniseries about materials science, called "Making Stuff," that aired on 4 consecutive Wednesdays starting January 19th, 2011 on PBS.
He also writes and hosts several segments each year for CBS News Sunday Morning
.
Pogue is a frequent speaker at over 50 educational, government, and corporate conferences per year, addressing such topics as disruptive technology, social media
, digital photography
, and why products fail. In 2009 he was the keynote speaker at the international Summit Conference of the Society for Technical Communication, the largest professional organization of technical writers and editors. Pogue also headlined the annual EduComm Conference, a nationwide gathering of higher education leaders pursuing breakthrough technologies with the potential to transform the college experience. He has performed three times at TED
, a conference in Monterey, CA: in 2006, a 20-minute talk about simplicity; in 2007, a medley of high-tech song parodies at the piano (or, as Pogue joked, "a tedley,") and most recently in December 2008, talking about cellphones, the cool tricks they can be made to do, and how the phones are often so much better than the companies that market them. In 2008, he performed at the EG conference, also in Monterey. He has also spoken at the 2008 and 2009 ASTD TechKnowldge Conference and expo as a keynote speaker. On March 16, 2009, he was the keynote speaker for the ASSET conference in Huntington, New York. Also on 2009, he gave a conference about Web 2.0 at Tecnologico de Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico. He discussed three trends in technology and also played his entertaining technology songs.
controversy. In a New York Times review of a hard drive recovery service, Pogue noted that the service, which can cost from $500 to $2,700, was provided at no charge for the purposes of the review; but when describing the service for National Public Radio's Morning Edition
program on September 12, 2005, he failed to mention this. NPR's Vice President of News Bill Marimow later stated that NPR should have either not aired the review or paid for the services itself. Ultimately, the Times paid for the service.
Also called into question was Pogue's impartiality on reviews of products for which he had authored a Missing Manual book. This controversy necessitated a response from Clark Hoyt, the Times Public Editor on Pogue's role as a freelance journalist with external obligations. In an op-ed
piece, Hoyt wrote "His multiple interests and loyalties raise interesting ethical issues in this new age when individual journalists can become brands of their own, stars who seem to transcend the old rules that sharply limited outside activity and demanded an overriding obligation to The Times and its readers." Of three ethicists consulted, each agreed Pogue's position created a "clear conflict of interest" and placed the paper on "tricky ethical terrain." In response, Pogue pledged to be more open with his conflicts of interest, and while he initially claimed that because he is not a journalist he is not bound by journalistic ethics, he soon recanted and agreed to offer a full "fanboy disclosure" on his website.
In June 2011, Pogue gave a presentation at the Media Relations Summit sponsored by Ragan Communications, in which he offered advice to PR professionals on how to successfully pitch him. The presentation caught the attention of Arthur S. Brisbane, The New York Times’ reader representative, because the paper’s ethics policy states that staff members and freelancers on assignment “may not advise individuals or organizations how to deal successfully with the news media.” Though Pogue is not a Times staff member and was not on assignment, an internal review determined that his presentation wasn’t appropriate. In an email to Brisbane about the matter, Pogue agreed “not to do any more speaking for Ragan or any P.R.-related event or organization” and added that in the future, “my speaking agent will now present every offer to my (Times) editor and me simultaneously. In other words, every single talk will now be approved in advance, as it’s supposed to be.”
, Jennifer Letitia O'Sullivan, the daughter of Dr. Renee Bennett O'Sullivan of Wellesley, Massachusetts
, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon. She graduated from Brown University
and received her medical degree from the Medical College of Pennsylvania and was a hand and plastic surgeon for four years in Stamford, Connecticut.
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
-winning tech correspondent for CBS News Sunday Morning
CBS News Sunday Morning
CBS News Sunday Morning is an American television news magazine program created by Robert Northshield and original host Charles Kuralt. The program has aired continuously since January 28, 1979 on the CBS Television Network, airing in the Eastern US on Sunday from 9:00 to 10:30 a.m...
, weekly tech correspondent for CNBC
CNBC
CNBC is a satellite and cable television business news channel in the U.S., owned and operated by NBCUniversal. The network and its international spinoffs cover business headlines and provide live coverage of financial markets. The combined reach of CNBC and its siblings is 390 million viewers...
, and a columnist for Scientific American
Scientific American
Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...
. He has hosted numerous NOVA
Nova
A nova is a cataclysmic nuclear explosion in a star caused by the accretion of hydrogen on to the surface of a white dwarf star, which ignites and starts nuclear fusion in a runaway manner...
miniseries on PBS, including “Making Stuff,” a four-part series that aired in early 2011. Pogue has written or co-written seven books in the For Dummies series (including Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
computers, magic
Magic (illusion)
Magic is a performing art that entertains audiences by staging tricks or creating illusions of seemingly impossible or supernatural feats using natural means...
, opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
, and classical music
Classical music
Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...
). In 1999, he launched his own series of computer how-to
How-to
A how-to or a how to is an informal, often short, description of how to accomplish some specific task. A how-to is usually meant to help non-experts, may leave out details that are only important to experts, and may also be greatly simplified from an overall discussion of the topic...
books called the Missing Manual series, which now includes over 100 titles covering a variety of Macintosh and Windows operating systems and applications. Among the dozens of books Pogue has authored is The World According to Twitter (2009), written in collaboration with around 500,000 of his Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
followers.
Early life
Pogue was born in Shaker Heights, OhioShaker Heights, Ohio
Shaker Heights is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States. As of the 2010 Census, the city population was 28,448. It is an inner-ring streetcar suburb of Cleveland that abuts the city on its eastern side.-Topography:Shaker Heights is located at...
, the son of Richard Welch Pogue, an attorney and former Managing Partner at Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, and Patricia Ruth (née Raney). He is a grandson of aviation attorney L.Welch Pogue and Mary Ellen Edgerton. He is also a great nephew of Harold Eugene "Doc" Edgerton, a professor of electrical engineering
Electrical engineering
Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
, and credited with transforming the stroboscope
Stroboscope
A stroboscope, also known as a strobe, is an instrument used to make a cyclically moving object appear to be slow-moving, or stationary. The principle is used for the study of rotating, reciprocating, oscillating or vibrating objects...
from an obscure laboratory instrument into a common device.
He graduated from Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
in 1985, summa cum laude with Distinction in Music. He spent ten years working in New York, for a time in the office of Music Theatre International and also intermittently as a Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
musical conductor. On August 29, 2007 he received an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Music) from Shenandoah Conservatory of Shenandoah University
Shenandoah University
Shenandoah University is a comprehensive private university located in Winchester, Virginia in the United States. It has an enrollment of approximately 3,800 students across more than ninety programs in six schools: College of Arts & Sciences, Harry F. Byrd, Jr. School of Business, Shenandoah...
in Winchester, Virginia.
On May 16, 2011, Pogue and his estranged wife were charged with disorderly conduct after a domestic dispute turned physical. According to police, Mrs. Pogue entered his house and, while trying to record an argument, bit him on the forearm; she says that Pogue grabbed her phone and struck her with it . Mrs. Pogue's lawyer reported that "no one was injured." These charges were later dismissed.
Career
Pogue wrote for Macworld MagazineMacworld
Macworld is a web site and monthly computer magazine dedicated to Apple Macintosh products. It is published by Mac Publishing, which is headquartered in San Francisco, California...
from 1988-2000. His back-page column was called The Desktop Critic. Pogue got his start writing books when Macworld-owner IDG
IDG
International Data Group is a technology media, research, event management, and venture capital organization.IDG evolved from International Data Corporation which was formed in 1964 in Newtonville, Massachusetts, by Patrick Joseph McGovern and a friend, Fred Kirch...
asked him to write Macs for Dummies to follow on the success of the first ...for Dummies book, DOS for Dummies, written by Dan Gookin.
Since November 2000, Pogue has served as the The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
personal-tech columnist; his column, "State of the Art," appears each Thursday on the front page of the Business section. He also writes "From the Desk of David Pogue," a tech-related opinion column that is sent to readers by e-mail. He also maintains a blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
at nytimes.com called Pogue's Posts.
Each Thursday, he appears on CNBC's "Power Lunch" in a taped, three-minute comic tech review, which then appears on the New York Times website, nytimes.com, as well as iTunes, YouTube, TiVo, and JetBlue.
In 2007, the HD Theater and Science
The Science Channel
Science is a United States cable, satellite and IPTV Television Network produced by Discovery Communications. Science features programming in the fields of space, technology, prehistory and animals.-History:...
channels aired his six-episode series, It's All Geek to Me
It's All Geek to Me
It's All Geek to Me is a television program created and hosted by David Pogue that is broadcast on HD Theater and Science Channel. It first aired on May 18, 2007....
, a how-to show about consumer technology.
He hosted a four-part PBS NOVA miniseries about materials science, called "Making Stuff," that aired on 4 consecutive Wednesdays starting January 19th, 2011 on PBS.
He also writes and hosts several segments each year for CBS News Sunday Morning
CBS News Sunday Morning
CBS News Sunday Morning is an American television news magazine program created by Robert Northshield and original host Charles Kuralt. The program has aired continuously since January 28, 1979 on the CBS Television Network, airing in the Eastern US on Sunday from 9:00 to 10:30 a.m...
.
Pogue is a frequent speaker at over 50 educational, government, and corporate conferences per year, addressing such topics as disruptive technology, social media
Social media
The term Social Media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0,...
, digital photography
Digital photography
Digital photography is a form of photography that uses an array of light sensitive sensors to capture the image focused by the lens, as opposed to an exposure on light sensitive film...
, and why products fail. In 2009 he was the keynote speaker at the international Summit Conference of the Society for Technical Communication, the largest professional organization of technical writers and editors. Pogue also headlined the annual EduComm Conference, a nationwide gathering of higher education leaders pursuing breakthrough technologies with the potential to transform the college experience. He has performed three times at TED
TED (conference)
TED is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading"....
, a conference in Monterey, CA: in 2006, a 20-minute talk about simplicity; in 2007, a medley of high-tech song parodies at the piano (or, as Pogue joked, "a tedley,") and most recently in December 2008, talking about cellphones, the cool tricks they can be made to do, and how the phones are often so much better than the companies that market them. In 2008, he performed at the EG conference, also in Monterey. He has also spoken at the 2008 and 2009 ASTD TechKnowldge Conference and expo as a keynote speaker. On March 16, 2009, he was the keynote speaker for the ASSET conference in Huntington, New York. Also on 2009, he gave a conference about Web 2.0 at Tecnologico de Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico. He discussed three trends in technology and also played his entertaining technology songs.
Controversy
In 2005, Pogue was the subject of a conflict-of-interestConflict of interest
A conflict of interest occurs when an individual or organization is involved in multiple interests, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation for an act in the other....
controversy. In a New York Times review of a hard drive recovery service, Pogue noted that the service, which can cost from $500 to $2,700, was provided at no charge for the purposes of the review; but when describing the service for National Public Radio's Morning Edition
Morning Edition
Morning Edition is an American radio news program produced and distributed by National Public Radio . It airs weekday mornings and runs for two hours, and many stations repeat one or both hours. The show feeds live from 05:00 to 09:00 ET, with feeds and updates as required until noon...
program on September 12, 2005, he failed to mention this. NPR's Vice President of News Bill Marimow later stated that NPR should have either not aired the review or paid for the services itself. Ultimately, the Times paid for the service.
Also called into question was Pogue's impartiality on reviews of products for which he had authored a Missing Manual book. This controversy necessitated a response from Clark Hoyt, the Times Public Editor on Pogue's role as a freelance journalist with external obligations. In an op-ed
Op-ed
An op-ed, abbreviated from opposite the editorial page , is a newspaper article that expresses the opinions of a named writer who is usually unaffiliated with the newspaper's editorial board...
piece, Hoyt wrote "His multiple interests and loyalties raise interesting ethical issues in this new age when individual journalists can become brands of their own, stars who seem to transcend the old rules that sharply limited outside activity and demanded an overriding obligation to The Times and its readers." Of three ethicists consulted, each agreed Pogue's position created a "clear conflict of interest" and placed the paper on "tricky ethical terrain." In response, Pogue pledged to be more open with his conflicts of interest, and while he initially claimed that because he is not a journalist he is not bound by journalistic ethics, he soon recanted and agreed to offer a full "fanboy disclosure" on his website.
In June 2011, Pogue gave a presentation at the Media Relations Summit sponsored by Ragan Communications, in which he offered advice to PR professionals on how to successfully pitch him. The presentation caught the attention of Arthur S. Brisbane, The New York Times’ reader representative, because the paper’s ethics policy states that staff members and freelancers on assignment “may not advise individuals or organizations how to deal successfully with the news media.” Though Pogue is not a Times staff member and was not on assignment, an internal review determined that his presentation wasn’t appropriate. In an email to Brisbane about the matter, Pogue agreed “not to do any more speaking for Ragan or any P.R.-related event or organization” and added that in the future, “my speaking agent will now present every offer to my (Times) editor and me simultaneously. In other words, every single talk will now be approved in advance, as it’s supposed to be.”
Personal life
Pogue married on September 16, 1995, at Woods Hole, MassachusettsWoods Hole, Massachusetts
Woods Hole is a census-designated place in the town of Falmouth in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. It lies at the extreme southwest corner of Cape Cod, near Martha's Vineyard and the Elizabeth Islands...
, Jennifer Letitia O'Sullivan, the daughter of Dr. Renee Bennett O'Sullivan of Wellesley, Massachusetts
Wellesley, Massachusetts
Wellesley is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. It is part of Greater Boston. The population was 27,982 at the time of the 2010 census.It is best known as the home of Wellesley College and Babson College...
, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon. She graduated from Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
and received her medical degree from the Medical College of Pennsylvania and was a hand and plastic surgeon for four years in Stamford, Connecticut.
Non-fiction
- Classical Music for Dummies (ISBN 978-0764550096)
- Crossing Platforms: A Macintosh/Windows Phrasebook (with Adam C. EngstAdam C. EngstAdam C. Engst is a technology writer and publisher who resides in Ithaca, New York, United States where he was born and went to college at Cornell University....
) (ISBN 978-1565925397) - CSS: the Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596802448)
- David Pogue's Digital Photography: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596154035)
- The Flat-Screen iMac for Dummies (ISBN 978-0764516634)
- GarageBand: the Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596006952)
- GarageBand 2: the Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596100353)
- The Great Macintosh Easter Egg Hunt (ISBN 978-0425160060)
- The iBook for Dummies (ISBN 978-0764506475)
- iLife '04: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596006945)
- iLife '05: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596100360)
- The iMac for Dummies (ISBN 0764504959)
- iMovie: The Missing Manual (ISBN 1565928598)
- iMovie 2: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596001049)
- iMovie 3 & iDVD: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596005078)
- iMovie 4 & iDVD: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596006938)
- iMovie HD & iDVD 5: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596100339)
- iMovie 6 & iDVD: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596527266)
- iMovie '08 & iDVD: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596516192)
- iMovie '09 & iDVD: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596801410)
- iMovie '11 & iDVD: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-1449393274)
- iPhoto: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596003654)
- iPhoto 2: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596005061)
- iPhoto 4: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596006921)
- iPhoto 5: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596100346)
- iPhoto 6: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596527259)
- iPhoto '08: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596516185)
- iPhoto '09: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596801441)
- iPhoto '11: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-1449393236)
- Mac OS 9: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-1565928572)
- Mac OS X: The Missing Manual (ISBN 0596000820)
- Mac OS X Hints (with Rob Griffiths) (ISBN 978-0596004514)
- Macs for Dummies (ISBN 978-0764503986)
- Macworld Mac Secrets (with Joseph Schorr) (ISBN 978-0764534157)
- Magic for Dummies (ISBN 978-0764551017)
- The Microsloth Joke Book: A Satire (editor) (ISBN 978-0425160541)
- More Macs for Dummies (ISBN 978-0764502675)
- Opera for Dummies (with Scott Speck) (ISBN 978-0764550102)
- PalmPilot: The Ultimate Guide (ISBN 1565926005)
- Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596004521)
- Tales from the Tech Line: Hilarious Strange-But-True Stories from the Computer Industry's Technical-Support Hotlines (editor) (ISBN 978-0425163634)
- The Weird Wide Web (with Erfert Fenton) (ISBN 978-0614262995)
- Windows Me: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596000097)
- Windows Vista: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596528270)
- Windows Vista for Starters: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596528263)
- Windows XP Home Edition: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596008970)
- Windows XP Pro: The Missing Manual (ISBN 978-0596008987)
- The World According to Twitter (ISBN 978-1579128272)
Fiction
- Hard Drive (1993), a techno-thrillerTechno-thrillerTechno-thrillers are a hybrid genre, drawing subject matter generally from spy/action thrillers, fantasy/war novels, and science fiction...
(ISBN 978-0441002559) - "Abby Carnelia's One and Only Magical Power" (2010, novel for middle-schoolers) (ISBN 978-1596433847)
External links
- Official website
- Making Stuff, 2011 NovaNOVA (TV series)Nova is a popular science television series from the U.S. produced by WGBH Boston. It can be seen on the Public Broadcasting Service in the United States, and in more than 100 other countries...
science series on PBSPublic Broadcasting ServiceThe Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia.... - David Pogue at O'Reilly MediaO'Reilly MediaO'Reilly Media is an American media company established by Tim O'Reilly that publishes books and Web sites and produces conferences on computer technology topics...
- Pogue's Posts blog