Grant Robertson’s press sheet in PDF format(50kb)
Updated 1/29/2008
Current
Grant Robertson is Lead Blogger of AOL’s Download Squad; Part of the Internet-leading Weblogs, Inc network which also includes Engadget, BloggingStocks, The Unofficial Apple Weblog, Autoblog and Joystiq.
Writing controversial, thought-provoking articles on technology and software, Grant’s work is wildly popular on community-driven sites such as Digg, Netscape, Reddit and Spotback; His editorials and opinion pieces have also been featured on editor-directed sites such as Boing Boing, Slashdot, Daring Fireball and PBS’ Mediashift.
Featured in Blogging Heroes (Wiley, 2007), a book by Michal A. Banks, Grant has also appeared as a guest on several popular nationally-syndicated radio talk programs including “Marketplaceâ€?, the #1 business show in North America, and New York’s long-running “Soundcheckâ€? aired on WNYC.
Professional Blogger
Grant has been a staple of the high-powered blogging machine that is Weblogs Inc since early 2006. Quickly rising through the ranks, he lead The Digital Music Weblog until that site’s retirement in February 2007. Grant now leads the team at Download Squad, a member of the exclusive club of 100 most popular blogs on the web, according to Technorati.
For Weblogs, Inc. Grant previously served as Lead Editor of The Digital Music Weblog; Increasing web traffic by 150% during his 6 month tenure. Grant has written for magazines as well, including Linux Magazine, and high-profile open-source community sites, Linux.com and Newsforge.com.
Contact Grant
Please feel free to contact me by phone or email to discuss your assignment or project:
Grant Robertson - (404)388-9797 / me@grantrobertson.com
More contact details can be found on the Contact page
History
Born a geek. Much has changed since, but the short version is essentially as follows.
I’ve worked in some really interesting places (Digital Equipment Corp., Hewlett Packard) during the rise of the public Internet, and started two companies as the Internet exploded. Offering custom development services and training on the Linux platform, I eventually settled on custom development for LAMP systems. The second company survived its incubation and was purchased by a publicly traded Windows/Linux development and consulting firm in the spring of 2005.
I’m most proud of the advocacy work I’ve done surrounding first Open Source Software, and later the Creative Commons family of licenses. I’m an advocate of open systems for computing as well as creative endeavors. Sometimes those two things collide, which was the case during the period in which I was Program Director of Freematrix Radio, a now defunct online radio station that ran entirely upon open source software and broadcast entirely creative commons licensed programming. My Creative Commons advocacy work forged relationships with New Media, and my experience writing for pre-New Media projects led me to my current position as Lead Editor of Download Squad.
I’ve worked in computers in one form or another since 1994. First in hardware, then network operations and finally software. I’ve written web applications on the LAMP platform since 1997. Back then it was unclear if PHP or MySQL would ever be widely accepted as a viable platform for heavy-lifting web applications. I think we all know how that worked out. I currently split time between producing new media text and video for AOL, and doing agile development work for a major wireless telecom.
I’m a self-educated computer scientist. Eschewing formal education for the on the job training (OJT) I’ve been fortunate enough to acquire at a handful of Internet focused companies. I returned to college in 2001, finished half of an English degree with a minor in Philosophy, and left in 2004 to live abroad in Canada for 2 years. Now back in the states, I’m fortunate enough to divide my livelihood between my two primary loves, software development and writing.
I’ve been a UNIX geek since a young age, first exposed through my mother’s employment with AT&T/Bell South. While most teenagers were busy tweaking their rice burners, I was busy scrounging pennies to buy my first UNIX machine, a SUN 3/60 running SunOS which I could scarcely afford, it was shortly thereafter replaced with a PC running Coherent. Soon after I built a PC to specifically tailored to Slackware, then bounced to Red Hat 4.0. Slackware returned shortly thereafter and I became a Linux-only zealot during several years in the late 90’s. I returned to Windows with the release of Winodws 2000, still advocating Linux servers while developing software on Windows desktops. First Debian, then Ubuntu switched it all around again and I’m now a Max OS X desktop nut, and still a strong advocate of Linux infrastructure.