The People Behind the Screens
Every explainer on this site passes through a small group of people who share one habit: they would rather try a setting than guess what it does. We write under pen names, partly to keep the focus on the articles and partly because none of us wants to be mistaken for a brand. What follows is an honest picture of who does what, without titles we have not earned.
Three writers, three corners
Calixta — screens and streaming
Calixta looks after the living-room side of the magazine: internet TV, streaming sticks, family profiles and the settings menus that hide behind every remote. Her test bench is an ordinary sofa and a TV that is not the newest model, because that is what most readers have. She wrote our guide to what a streaming stick does after setting one up on a screen that had stopped receiving app updates.
Brannoch — software, networks and games
Brannoch handles the quieter machinery: home networks, file formats, security habits and the gaming pieces. He is the one who runs a speed test in every room of a flat before writing a sentence about Wi-Fi, and who will happily spend an evening comparing TV picture modes for a few milliseconds of responsiveness. His recent work includes the explainer on password managers.
Zuleika — tools for work and the wider world
Zuleika covers the topics where technology meets business, money, property and travel: display boards, tool directories, AI for creative work and the pieces on lending, insurance and places to visit. She keeps those articles general by design and adds a clear note when a reader should talk to someone who knows their personal situation.
How the work is shared
Ideas come from reader emails, from questions we hear among friends and family, and from the gaps we notice in our own archive. Whoever knows the subject best drafts the article. A second member of the team then reads it as a newcomer would, marking every sentence that assumes knowledge the reader may not have.
Where steps are involved, we follow them ourselves on the hardware or software we have to hand. If something only applies to certain devices, regions or versions, the article says so instead of pretending the instructions are universal.
What we will not do
- Invent statistics, studies or expert quotes to make a point sound stronger.
- Present ourselves as engineers, lawyers, advisers or any other profession we do not hold.
- Recommend unofficial apps, unlicensed streams or shortcuts that put a reader's devices or accounts at risk.
- Leave a known error in place once a reader has pointed it out.
Keeping articles current
Technology changes faster than most subjects. Menus get renamed, features move and services change their plans. When we revise an article in a meaningful way, its date changes to show it. If you spot a step that no longer matches what you see on screen, tell us through Get a Message to Us; those notes are among the most useful we receive.
To learn more about the magazine itself and the topics it covers, visit About Riverview Studios Tech.
Behind the bylines
Why our bylines are not legal names
We would rather you judge an article by how clearly it explains something than by the name at the top. Pen names keep the attention on the work and let us write about our own homes and gadgets without turning ourselves into the story.
What we owe you in return is honesty: we say what we tested, what we could not check and where your device may behave differently.
Calixta, Brannoch and Zuleika
Our promises
What you can expect from each of us
The standards we hold one another to.
- We try the steps before describing them, on the equipment we actually own.
- We say plainly when something depends on your model, region or plan.
- We never pose as engineers, advisers or lawyers.
- We correct mistakes once they are pointed out and update the date.