Rojas has always been drawn to gadgets. As a child in the '80s, he worried about nuclear war and even asked FEMA for a Geiger counter so he could check for fallout. Today at popular tech gear Web site Engadget, he presides over some 4 million tech-obsessed visitors a month.

Thomas Claburn, Editor at Large, Enterprise Mobility

March 24, 2006

2 Min Read

rojas

Photograph by Sacha Lecca Peter Rojas
Editor in chief and
co-founder of Engadget
Interview by Thomas Claburn

1


GADGETOPIA
"I have six PCs on my desk. I'm the kind of person who likes to have lots of different stuff around. On a day-to-day basis, I carry a Treo 650."

2


CELLULAR IDENTITIES
"People will follow what's going on in the world of cell phones in the same way they follow sports. This is probably not a healthy thing: People are defining themselves more and more in terms of the brands in general and consumer electronics in specific."

3


ONLINE FAME
Forget about tricks and marketing. "What's really great about the blogosphere is it's very meritocratic. It's really hard for the good to hide, and it's really hard for the bad to hide. Just focus on doing your best work."

4


PRINT LIVES
Rojas still loves print publications and reading the paper, but he argues that those pubs need to focus on their strengths, like great photography and long essays. "When magazines try to do things that the Web does better, they're going to fail."

5


DREAM WRITER
"Who do I wish was writing about the iPod? That's really tough. I always assumed someone like [George] Orwell would be good at it. ... The way that he approached a lot of his writing was so granular that I always thought he'd be good at blogging."

About the Author(s)

Thomas Claburn

Editor at Large, Enterprise Mobility

Thomas Claburn has been writing about business and technology since 1996, for publications such as New Architect, PC Computing, InformationWeek, Salon, Wired, and Ziff Davis Smart Business. Before that, he worked in film and television, having earned a not particularly useful master's degree in film production. He wrote the original treatment for 3DO's Killing Time, a short story that appeared in On Spec, and the screenplay for an independent film called The Hanged Man, which he would later direct. He's the author of a science fiction novel, Reflecting Fires, and a sadly neglected blog, Lot 49. His iPhone game, Blocfall, is available through the iTunes App Store. His wife is a talented jazz singer; he does not sing, which is for the best.

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