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Skilled reviewer and feature writer with experience in appealing to a wide range of readers, from consumer to enterprise. Expert editor who can take highly technical and/or awkwardly written content and translate it into readable, interesting copy.
Look below for recent Features, Reviews, and Opinion & Analysis (in that order). If you want to see more, check out my complete portfolio at https://authory.com/BarbaraKrasnoff.
With traffic at a standstill and the environment a concern, cities are using new technology to improve buses, taxis, subways, and other public transportation options.
Features
Using insects as templates, researchers are buildings robots that are very small, very mobile-and very useful. Look down-that tiny creature you're about to step on may be a robot. We may think of robots as large, hulking, industrial-sized metal monstrosities, up-and-coming medical devices, or cute, humanoid helpers.
Our tech requirements are stressing today's fashion. Fortunately, a new generation of designers is looking to the future of tech-capable clothing.
In today's collaborative work environment, it's becoming increasingly likely that you're using video as an important tool for corporate meetings with colleagues or customers. You could be a remote employee sitting in on your company's weekly conference, or a salesperson who wants to promote your product to a potential client in another location, or a job seeker interviewing with an executive at a firm headquartered across the country.
Once relegated to the back-of-the-building art department, creatives are now front and center, in roles such as graphic artist, website designer, video artist, and virtual world creator. What are vendors doing to fulfill the needs of this new and important user category? What do creatives need to make them productive and happy?
There are still organizations that don't feel they need diversity in their IT staff. Here's tongue-in-cheek advice for companies that don't want to attract women, and practical, real advice for companies that do. Are you the head of a tech company with a now-traditional "boys will be boys" culture?
What do women want at work? Women IT workers who like their jobs explain what their employers do differently. The problem of toxic work cultures, especially in the tech industry, is very much in the news these days.
Reviews
These days, it's hard enough to keep your own life scheduled. If you're working with a team on a project (or several), it's nearly impossible to make sure everybody's doing each task at the right time - unless you have the right tool.
Traveling these days is a hassle, no matter why you're going, or where - and the necessity to track your expenses along the way just adds to the irritation. A good app, though, can make things a lot easier - not only during the trip, but afterwards as well, when you have to report it all to your (or your company's) accountant.
Privacy is one of the hardest things to find today - and one of the most prized, especially online. Most people, even those not technologically adept, are concerned about the amount of personal information that is being harvested by governments, corporations, third-party advertising agencies and/or unethical hackers.
Many e-commerce operations, especially e-tailers, still face brick-and-mortar challenges. While maintaining a smooth cyberspace operation requires smart choices for things such as website monitoring and payment gateways, there still remains the problem of converting all of that digital business into the physical products your customers have ordered.
If you are selling anything, from gifts and clothing to food and coffee or plumbing services, then you're going to need a point-of-sale (POS) system. These applications not only take the place of the old-fashioned cash register but they also add a wide range of important functions, including direct hooks to other back-end apps such as customer relationship management (CRM), inventory management, and more.
It may (or may not) surprise you to know that the battle among smartphone users isn't only limited to iPhone vs. Android. There is the audio jack vs. no audio jack argument, for example, which cuts across both operating systems. And, inside of the Android environment, there's the fans of the pure Android experience vs.
Having problems tracking team projects? Never learned how to use a formal project management application? You might want to try Trello. Atlassian's Trello can be described as a project-management tool for those of us who don't have the time or inclination to learn traditional project-management techniques.
If you're a salesperson, then you know you can't just sell to people you know, you have to start with a large number of unknowns and try to turn as many as you can into customers. These unknowns-the people and organizations that have been discovered through a variety of sources-are usually called "leads."
The latest flagship phones from Samsung are meant to erase the memory of the flammable Galaxy Note7 -- and they are in a fair way to do so. According to Dan Rosenbaum, the two phones -- the 5.8-in. Galaxy S8 and the 6.2-in. Galaxy S8+ -- are, by any measure, excellent.
Samsung's new DeX dock is really nifty, especially if you're a bleeding edge enthusiast. The small, puck-shaped docking station enables you to pop in a Samsung Galaxy S8 or S8+ and turn your sleek, mobile phone into a desktop system. These are indeed very snazzy devices -- and the phones they work with are as well.
Headphones, once a product mainly for music fans or audio engineers, are now a daily sight in the office and on the street. Not just for listening anymore, they not only let you take phone calls but help you keep your concentration in the noisy open offices so beloved by many companies.
As the owner, for over a year, of a Nexus 6P, I have to say that while I enjoy having a nice big screen, it does present a problem when I'm trying to shove the smartphone in a pocket or tap out a quick text message with one hand.
For the most part, Chromebooks -- laptops that use Google's Chrome OS -- have been marketed as either lightweight and inexpensive student systems or low-end secondary machines for travel or family use. With one or two exceptions (such as Google's Pixel), the emphasis was on cheapness of both price and materials.
First, let me admit that I don't have a lot of experience with presentation pointers. The few presentations that I've done over the course of my career did not involve PowerPoint slides -- or any other type of slideshow, for that matter. I've been lucky enough (so far) to be able to avoid them.
Opinion & Analysis
My first computer was a Compaq Portable, popularly known as the Compaq Luggable - for good reasons. It weighed about 28 pounds, had a 9-inch green screen display, and was beloved by salespeople and other travelers, who for the first time had a computer that ran a version of MS-DOS and that they could bring to a client with the software already installed.
Back in 2012, I wrote a blog for Computerworld titled A Posterous user wonders: Time to move? A platform that I had been using for several years for my blog had just been bought up by Twitter, and the writing was on the wall. It was time to find alternatives.
You might think that video conferencing would be an increasingly popular form of contact for companies - after all, it's a lot more informative to see the person(s) that you're speaking with than to deal with a disembodied voice.
Yesterday, I wrote a blog talking about how companies can sometimes get in the way of their own success - for example, Patreon's decision to change to its funding plan, a decision that resulted in such a strong push-back by its users that the company eventually apologized and said it would revamp its strategy.
I wonder if it's the holiday season that makes companies a little crazy about this time of year. Or perhaps they think that announcing unpopular decisions might go unnoticed in the annual shopping frenzy. Whatever the reason, I'm starting to see a pattern.
An article under discussion by a good number of my colleagues appeared in TheOutline recently. Titled "Bribes for Blogs: How Brands Secretly Buy Their Way Into Forbes, Fast Company, and HuffPost Store" and written by Jon Christian, it tells how various PR and content-supply companies bribe - or try to bribe - bloggers and journalists to incorporate favorable mentions of their clients into articles they write for these publications.
While I'm actively working as a freelance tech writer, I have to admit that, given the chance, I'd pick up a full-time, salaried, go-into-the-office-and-schmooze-with-your-colleagues job in a shot. (Well, a full-time, salaried job anyway; I'm perfectly happy to work at home and schmooze using Slack if I need to.)
It isn't unusual for software and cloud applications to be sunsetted - much to the dismay of their fans and users. Years ago, I used a database/note-taking software package called Ecco Pro to keep track of the 30 or so articles that I was responsible for as the executive editor in a popular tech publication.
For years now, there has been a popular storyline whose main thread was that consumer technology is invading the corporate office.
Readercon 26 July 9-12, 2015 Burlington Marriott, Burlington, Massachusetts. http://readercon.org/ 51. 3:00 PM G Women of Technology. Karen Burnham, Barbara Krasnoff (leader), Shariann Lewitt, B. Diane Martin, Fran Wilde. Current technology is the handmaiden of hard science fiction. What can SF literature learn from the women who have made a difference in tech today?