The Techie Sound of Music

5:40 PM -- Seeing someone burst into song is the last thing you would expect during a technology presentation, but not when David Pogue is in town, apparently.

A press release this week heralded the tech columnist's forthcoming appearance at the American Library Association's midwinter meeting in Seattle. Tomorrow Pogue will serenade the lucky librarians with "an original song or two" about Microsoft's Vista operating system.

The columnist, who, according to his Website., is a former arranger of Broadway shows, is planning to turn 50 million lines of code into some form of musical event. Sadly, the release did not say whether this will be a grunge-fest along the lines of legendary Emerald City bands Nirvana or Pearl Jam.

I think more techies should take a leaf from Pogue's book. Vendors, for instance, could ditch their PowerPoints and turn to hip-hop when they want to get their message across to jaded journalists.

That really would get my attention. In fact, there's a Byte and Switch T-shirt up for grabs if anyone has got what it takes to brief me in song.James Rogers, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch