All Things Digital

WSJ Online’s Tech Diary vlogger Andy Jordan visits a gadget bazaar in Thailand, where freedom rings with unlocked iPhones and pirated DVDs.

WSJ.com’s Tech Diary’s Andy Jordan attends one of the geekier get-togethers ever–a LAN party, playing video games all night.

Exciting? Not!

How did we miss this video of WSJ.com’s Tech Diary vlogger Andy Jordan getting Tasered by a leopard-skin device at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this past week?

Fun!

Here he mistreats an animatronic dinosaur, which calls for more Tasering:

And here Jordan checks out tricked-out trucks at CES:

Andy Jordan of WSJ.com’s Tech Diary visits Smokey and the High-Tech Bandit!

Favorite quote when Jordan asks a trucker if he has a laptop and is misheard: “Lap Dancer? No, I’m married.”

It’s certainly a long way from CB radio–10-4, good buddy.

Andy Jordan of WSJ.com’s Tech Diary makes sure the cabbies in Manhattan don’t take him the long way around. New Yorkers react to taxis with GPS and other gadgety doodads:

Oh, the places Andy Jordan of WSJ Online’s Tech Diary gets to visit!

This time, it’s a collective of technologists and artists who are creating robotic musical instruments out of slime and other odd materials.

Ew! (Except for Slinky music, which is brilliant, as are all experiences one might have with what is arguably the greatest toy ever invented.)

Andys find each other online. There is a harmonica in this chapter of WSJ.com’s Tech Diary. Riveting!

The WSJ.com’s Tech Diary vlogger Andy Jordan visited the Digital Life gadget show in New York last week and gets digitally altered (including elf ears!), sees his facial hair too close up and meets way too many robots.

Here’s the video:

The WSJ.com’s Tech Diary video blogger Andy Jordan tags along with one of the members of Best Buy’s “Geek Squad.”

“I’m an actual geek!” he tells one of his customers. Printer disaster! Too-hot laptop. Clip-on tie, white socks and black shoes! Fun!

Ok, here is my personal nightmare: Having a stranger sitting next to me on an airplane chattering endlessly throughout a flight, when all I want to do is read, watch a movie or sleep.

Now, horror of horrors, there is a service on Virgin America where passengers can do seat-to-seat chatting. WSJ.com’s Tech Diary video blogger Andy Jordan tries it out and finds most people really don’t want to be bothered, although that does not seem to stop some from bothering anyway.

Also a problem: the touchscreens irk the people in front of the chatter, what with all the poking (which is icky enough on Facebook).

See for yourself:

Here is our email from WSJ.com’s Tech Diary video blogger Andy Jordan about his how-people-use-free-wireless post this week: “Weird wacky fun in the park. Rats and opera singers.”

That would be land-mine-finding rats and job-seeking opera singers!

Well, how can we resist posting that? And so we will not!

Here’s yet another new video blog effort in the tech space, this time from Morgan Webb in an awfully enthusiastic offering called WebbAlert.

Besides the daily video, she also does a short blog post on the report with links from around the Web. Given only the first one to comment on, I would say Webb is a bit–how shall we put this delicately–excitable in her delivery (she seems to almost squeal several times and no one can get that animated about Apple’s three billionth iTunes song sale).

But she plows on through with admirable fortitude, and it looks great production-wise. I also like the scrolling notes running below her, even if they are slightly too cute.

Of course, who is BoomTown to talk? While I love to make videos from the various visits to Web moguls and companies, my production values are less, well, polished and that jiggly camera effect is not on purpose, as much as I would like to claim I am an artist. Yes, I know, I am flip to the point of annoyance to some. One plus: You never have to see my face!

All kidding aside, you could quibble with all the nascent online video efforts in the tech space. But, in general, the new Web video offerings are relatively good, and I expect there will be many more to come.

We have already been posting new WSJ.com tech video blogger Andy Jordan’s Tech Diary, for example, as well as noting the entry of Om Malik into the online video space with a new weekly interview show.

Still, none are as snarky as as our very own John Paczkowski of Digital Daily with his daily video on tech news. It must be said: His arched eyebrow and puppetry skills remain unequaled.

Here is Webb’s first video, followed by John’s latest (complete with scary Rupert puppet):

While we here at BoomTown are trying to corner the market on funny tech videos–often completely by accident–here’s a new technology reporter at WSJ.com, Andy Jordan, who is also using his camera and wit to see how people and technology interact, often with bizarre results.

Here is his explanatory video podcast and his first post about whether an iPhone can improve your social life. Apparently not, in the mean streets of Manhattan, although if you were in Silicon Valley, you would be inundated with geek love.

(FYI: It can also make you a lot of friends here in Europe for sure, as I have found this week, since the iPhone has not arrived here, so it is super exotic.)

Welcome, Andy!