Rob Pegoraro tries to make sense of computers, gadgets, the Internet, apps, and other things that beep or blink. He covers tech policy at Yahoo Finance, writes a tech-help column for USAToday.com, offers telecom and gadget guidance at Wirecutter and has contributed to such sites as Consumer Reports, Are Technica, PCMag.com, Boing Boing, VentureBeat, and Discovery News. You can also find him on radio, TV, podcasts and the occasional panel.

Until the spring of 2011, Pegoraro wrote a consumer-tech column and blog for the Washington Post during a 17-year stint that saw him write for almost every section of the paper, survive five CMSes and appear on the front page all of three times.

Pegoraro has a degree in international relations from Georgetown University (meaning, zero academic credentials to cover technology), has met most of the founders of the Internet and once received a single-word e-mail reply from Steve Jobs.

You can follow him on Twitter at @robpegoraro.