BYTE's Columnist Bob Guccione Jr. Wins min's Best Online Column Award

BYTE's Award-Winning Columnist Predicted Facebook Downfall Before Stocks Plummeted and Most Recently Wrote About How the Sun May be Our Real Apocalyptic Threat

Nov 27, 2012

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 27, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- UBM Tech site BYTE (http://www.byte.com) today announces Bob Guccione Jr., a technology columnist has been honored with min's Best Online Column Award. Min presented its fourth Editorial & Design Awards at a breakfast in New York's Marriott Marquis Hotel earlier this month.

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Guccione's first column Why I Don't Have a Facebook Page won best online column for min's 2012 Editorial & Design Awards: Read here.

His contrarian views and fearlessness at voicing unpopular opinions were a hallmark of his magazines and make him the perfect columnist to kick a few sacred tech cows. Guccione is writing about technology for BYTE to shine light on the issues that impact humanity -- in words that most of the tech community is often shy to say.

Guccione is an iconic figure in modern journalism, having started SPIN and GEAR magazines and owned and edited DISCOVER. He has a reputation in media few other editor-entrepreneurs have ever achieved, nurturing courageous, muckraking, narrative-based journalism over the last 25 years.

"I love technology --- nobody believes that, but it's true," said Guccione. "I just think that, like everything else in life, there are gradations and complexities and every advance should be thought about thoroughly before we pass judgment, good or bad. I'm delighted to be doing this column because I want to explore the context of technological progress."

Guccione has written five columns for BYTE, (links below). Most recently, Guccione wrote about the threat of extreme solar activity on the power grid and our interdependent infrastructure. In Apocalypse Now (Here Comes The Sun), Guccione discusses science journalist Lawrence Joseph's new book, Solar Cataclysm, and his caution that we fail to take the sun seriously at our peril, describing "…how one particularly nasty belch from the sun could plunge most of the Northern Hemisphere into mass, death-causing, darkness."

Guccione is available for interviews, to discuss the future of media or to speak on how technological issues affect society.

Guccione's columns can be found here:     
http://www.informationweek.com/byte/authors/7165

About Bob Guccione Jr.

Bob Guccione Jr. is an iconic figure in modern journalism, who started SPIN and GEAR magazines and owned DISCOVER magazine. He has an international and domestic reputation in media. At 18-years-old, Guccione was the youngest publisher in the UK. After moving back to America, he founded Rock Superstars, a move that made Guccione the youngest ever publisher in the United States. In 1985, he launched SPIN to rival Rolling Stone. He helped define new journalism at a time when it was on the wane and more concerned with safe, mass appeal.  In 1997, Guccione sold SPIN to Vibe Ventures and launched Gear, a young men's lifestyle magazine. After Gear closed, Guccione bought Discover magazine. In just two years, Guccione's management brought in 20 percent more advertising to the magazine and increased its newsstand sales by 35 percent. 

About BYTE

BYTE is a historic magazine re-launched to cover the hottest trends in technology including bring-your-own-device (BYOD) and consumerization of IT (CoIT). CoIT is one of the most important computing topics of our times. CoIT is the introduction into the enterprise, planned and otherwise, of devices that were designed as consumer technologies: tablets, smart phones, and social media are classic examples. BYTE is here to examine technology in the context of CoIT. The subject relates closely to important IT issues like security and manageability. It's an issue that reaches both IT and users, and it's an issue where both groups need to listen carefully to the requirements of the other: IT may wish to hold off on allowing devices and software onto the network when they haven't been properly tested and can't be properly supported. But the use of these devices in the enterprise has the air of inevitability for a good reason. They make users more productive and users are demanding them. BYTE is part of the UBM Technology, the global leader in technology media and professional information, enables people and organizations to harness the transformative power of technology. UBM Technology is a part of UBM plc, one of the world's largest media businesses as a global provider of news distribution and specialist information services with a market capitalization of more than $2.5 billion.

About UBM Tech

UBM Tech is a global media business that provides information, events, training, data services, and marketing solutions for the technology industry.  Its media brands and information services inform and inspire decision makers across the entire technology market— engineers and design professionals, software and game developers, solutions providers and integrators, networking and communications executives, and business technology professionals.  UBM Tech's industry-leading media brands include EE Times, Interop, Black Hat, InformationWeek, Game Developer Conference, CRN, and DesignCon. The company's information products include research, education, training, and data services that accelerate decision making for technology buyers.  UBM Tech also offers a full range of marketing services based on its content and technology market expertise, including custom events, content marketing solutions, community development and demand generation programs. UBM Tech is a part of UBM (UBM.L), a global provider of media and information services with a market capitalization of more than $2.5 billion.

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For further information: Larry Seltzer, Larry.Seltzer@ubm.com, 516-562-7539