Stephen Fry – the famous comedian, TV host, writer of brilliant novels, and all-round super clever and super-funny bloke – has started writing a weekly column on gadgets for The Guardian.

If you didn’t already know about Stephen, you might have seen lots of web writeups (like this one) a few weeks back when he ‘blogged spectacularly’ about smartphones.  

In addition to all his comedic and other talents, it seems Stephen is a real techie and gadget freak – talking comfortably about running 10 Macs as well as PCs running XP, Vista, Ubuntu and various other flavors of Linux, and saying he’s never met a smartphone he didn’t buy.

Last Saturday, he published his first entry in the new weekly columns for The Guardian, and it’s just as funny and witty and entertaining as everything else he does.

Read on for some quick samples and all the links …

Sick building syndrome exists, and so does sick hand-held device syndrome. Fiddly buttons, blocky icons, sickeningly stupid nested menus – these are the enemy. They waste time, militate against function and lower the spirits. They make the user feel frustrated and (quite wrongly) dense. Mechanisms so devilishly, stunningly, jaw-dropping clever as the kind our world can now furnish us with are No Good Whatsoever if they don’t also bring a smile to our face, if they don’t make us want to stroke, touch, fondle, fiddle, gurgle, purr and coo. Interacting with a digital device should be like interacting with a baby.

That’s just a little excerpt from that first Guardian column. And here’s how Stephen describes the territory he’ll cover:

Including, but not confined to: mobile phones, smartphones, music players, media players, cameras, electronic books, satnavs, computers, peripherals, TVs, games machines and any digital device or grown-up toy that may take my fancy. And not necessarily all that grown-up, either.

For me, these columns will be another reason to look forward to Saturdays. A must read and a guaranteed laugh each week.

If you’re curious about his comedy stuff, just do a Youtube search for his name, or for Blackadder (awesome sitcom also starring Rowan Atkinson) or A Bit of Fry & Laurie (his classic sketches show with Hugh Laurie).

Below are the links for his latest writings. I had not seen his blog before today, and it is also brilliant.

First Guardian column: Welcome to dork talk

Stephen Fry’s blog

Via: Mr. Mobile

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