- Rob Bushway

In the two and a half years that GottaBeMobile.com has been toiling away in the mobile pc space, we've seen tremendous growth in our traffic and participation from our readers. In the past year alone, our unique visitors have grown by more than 100%. I think people enjoy what we are doing here, which is great, because we are enjoying it, too. The mobile pc space has certainly changed a great deal over the last two and a half years, but we have remained true to our calling: covering tablet pcs, mobile pcs, and the natural input technologies that tie it all together.

To bring you more indepth coverage and to help spread the workload that running an active site like GottaBeMobile entails, we've been expanding our writer base. In addition to the new contributing writers that joined our team several months ago, Craig Pringle and John Gannon, I am pleased to announce two additional contributing writers: Truc Bui and Matthew Dillon. That brings our total number of contributing writers to eight, five of which are Microsoft Tablet PC MVPs.

Many of you know Truc from the outstanding Screen Protector Shootout series that he has been compiling over the past month or so, and from his participation in our forums. I was very impressed with the work that Truc did on the series and saw a great fit for the site, the team, and our readers. Read more about Truc below.

Matthew Dillon is an educator and will offer a unique perspective on technology, education, gadgets, and more. Matthew is a self-described "do-it-yourselfer" and loves working with various OS's like OS X, Vista, Linux and more. You can expect some very interesting commentary from Matthew in those areas and more. Read more about Matthew below and on his blog.

Join me in welcoming Truc and Matthew. I'm sure you'll be hearing from them both in the next couple of days.


About Truc Bui:

I started my digital revolution in 2001 with the integration of a Handspring Visor into my photojournalism and freelance work. It was my last year of college (for my first degree) and I found that the Handspring, when hooked up to a Targus Stowaway folding keyboard, allowed me to take notes in class and sync it to my computer for much cheaper than any laptop on the market at the time.

Currently, I am in my last year of pursuing a second bachelor’s degree in Chemistry. After finding myself inundated with hundreds of pages of handouts, reference material, worksheets, and assignments, I needed a better way to stay organized. I couldn’t use a PDA anymore since Chemistry required hand-drawing of molecular structures and general trend graphs (and because my Dell Axim crashed out on me in 2004 and made me lose the data I hadn’t synced yet, causing much cursing and throwing of said PDA).

Since buying the Fujitsu T2010 tablet, the way I study, the way I stay organized, the way I collaborate with other researchers and fellow students has been forever changed. I can’t imagine life without my tablet now. It is my lifeline to my education.

From my perspective as a college student, I find that battery life, weight, durability, stability, and size are all very important. The current crop of ultraportables, or whatever is the phrase of the day is for these devices, is of particular interest to me. If I am not in need of inking, I’d rather take something that’s even smaller and lighter than my T2010. I hope to expand my knowledge base on both hardware and software, particularly cloud-based services, and report on it from a student’s point of view.

About Matthew Dillon:

I graduated from Miami University in 2003 with a BS in Secondary Education (7-12): Integrated Language Arts. After teaching one year of language arts and two years as the high school speech and communications instructor for St. Marys City Schools, I graduated from Wright State University in March, 2008 with a M.Ed. in School Counseling (K-12). School counseling runs in the
Dillon family. My wife is a middle school counselor, my father retired after 28 years as a school counselor and my mother is a therapist. I often joke that growing up I had few problems with so many counselors around. My other interests include tinkering with computers, playing ice hockey, lifting weights, public speaking, and learning. I enjoy spending time with my wife and family.