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Editor's Blog: If you want to know about Microsoft-Yahoo!...
My advice? Ask a limo driver

By Steve Ranger

Published: Tuesday 12 February 2008

It's often the case, when a big tech news story impinges on the consciousness of the broadcast media, silicon.com gets called in to provide the industry experts who can explain what it all means. In three minutes or less.

And that's why in the past week or so some of the senior editors here have been spending time in TV studios, talking about subjects ranging from the problems with HMRC's website to the implications of the latest twists and turns of the Microsoft bid for Yahoo! in studios for Channel 4 News, CNBC and the BBC.

It's great fun to get out and tell a different audience what our take on these big stories is.

But I don't think I'll ever get used to doing an interview - as I had to do the other day - looking straight down the barrel of a camera, while the interviewer is miles away in another studio. Especially as their voice is being piped in through tinny little speakers behind me. Most disconcerting.

Perhaps it's a little bit of karmic payback for all the times I've asked tricky questions when I've been doing the interviewing. It makes me admire the skills of the news anchors who manage to do this every day and make it look easy - even with multiple screens in front of them flashing up headlines and a producer shouting in their ear.

One minor perk of these interviews is that you tend to get picked up by a car, giving you the chance to do a bit of last-minute swotting before the interview.

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And the last couple of times I've gone to be interviewed on Microsoft and Yahoo! the drivers have had at least as good a grasp of the subject as I had and have debated the issues with me as proficiently as the interviewers I was en route to - even on issues such as the integration of different instant messaging technologies.

Of course, it's just another reflection of how much a part of everyday life these once esoteric technologies have become and how deep and wide the audience for consumer tech is now.

It's also one of the interesting things about Microsoft's bid for Yahoo! - that the deal is less about technology and more about the audience that it can acquire. No longer is technology the domain of the technologists - nor should it be.

Still, I'm thinking that next time I have a producer on the phone asking for an expert comment, I might just direct her to the nearest taxi rank.