Tag Archives: leo laporte

Mar 29

Old Man Periwinkle saves the day

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The netcasts from Leo Laporte’s TWIT network stream live on video, and you get to see not only the formal program but the casual conversation that precedes it. The other day, I was watching the lead-up to Tech News Today, TWIT’s daily news show, which is hosted by Tom Merritt and which doesn’t involve Leo (you’ll see why this is significant in a moment).

Somehow, the title “Match Game” came up, perhaps from someone in the online chat room, which the on-air talent monitors closely and responds to during this pre-show chit-chat.

The participants, all of them younger than yours truly (I will turn 49 in May), didn’t have a clue what “Match Game” was. At one point, they had it confused with the Chuck Woolery dating show “Love Connection.”

As I indicated, the hosts of the show weren’t part of the Match Game generation, and so it wouldn’t be surprising that they hadn’t heard of it — except for one thing. Dick DeBartolo, best known as a writer for Mad magazine, was also the writer of those funny, double-entendre fill-in-the-blank questions on “Match Game.” He is also a member of the TWIT family, as the host (along with Laporte) of “The Daily Giz Wiz,” a show where DeBartolo finds and demonstrates interesting or off-beat little gadgets.

I immediately jumped into the chat room and pointed this out, and Merritt took note of it. Then, yesterday, after reading a Twitter update from DeBartolo, I playfully tweeted him about the incident. I got this response:

@LakeNeuron Didn’t know what The Match Game was?? They must all be _____!

Cute. Now if only we had Charles Nelson Reilly, Brett Somers or Richard Dawson to fill in the blank ….

Jul 05

My five seconds as a TWiT

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Screenshot

TWiT screenshot

A Twitter contact of mine, Daniel Shearon, tweeted me today to ask if I knew I’d been on episode #254 of Leo Laporte‘s “This Week In Tech,” the video of which was live-streamed on June 27. I actually watched that show live, and I had no idea what Daniel was talking about. I figured that whatever it was, I must have been out of the room at the time not to have noticed it.

I finally tracked it down — and the screen grab is above. Leo and his guests were talking about the soon-to-premiere version of the site-recommendation service Digg, which will add a social-networking aspect, allowing you to follow the Diggs of specific people instead of (or in addition to) following the most popular sites recommended by the community at large.

Anyway, as part of a quick scroll-through, I popped up on a list of TWiT users available to be followed. Click on the screen grab above to enlarge it, and you should be able to see me, on the same page with Jason Calicanis, BoingBoing and Digg’s own Kevin Rose (who was Leo’s guest, demonstrating the new version). Rose, of course, use to be one of Leo’s colleagues on “The Screen Savers.”

At the time, as you may be able to see on the screen shot, I had zero followers. I’m up to four — but the new version of Digg isn’t really publicly available yet. Those who were watching that episode of TWiT live got to set up accounts with the preview version.

May 16

I, old guy

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I’ve been listening to / watching a terrific live video stream of Leo Laporte’s weekly netcast “This Week In Tech.” They’ve had a terrific discussion of some of the privacy concerns regarding Facebook, and if you’re not up to speed on that I strongly encourage you to go to the twit.tv web site starting on Monday and listen to the audio podcast of this week’s episode.

One of the panelists this week is web entrepreneur and investor Jason Calicanis, a frequent and always-interesting guest on the program. I subscribe to Calicanis’ occasional e-mail newsletter, and a few weeks back he offered what I thought was some really good advice for young people in the tech industry changing jobs. It had to do with some things that should be common courtesy towards your old employer but which some people have apparently overlooked.

I e-mailed Calicanis to tell him how much I appreciated the column. I wrote that I’d gone through that situation in my head before, and if I’m in the position of changing jobs in the future, I would certainly want to practice that kind of courtesy. I made very brief reference to no longer being young, because I assumed his remarks were more or less targeted to 20-somethings.

The good news was, he e-mailed me back to acknowledge my compliment. But his response included the line “it ain’t easy out there for the old guys, I know.”

I said I wasn’t young. I didn’t say I was an “old guy.” According to Wikipedia (caveat, caveat), Calicanis is all of eight years younger than me.

Still, it was sort of funny, and it was nice of someone of Calicanis’ stature to take the time to respond at all.

Feb 22

I was joking

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A couple of people took my post about podcasting a little more seriously than I intended it.

I was listening to Jesse Thorn’s “Jordan, Jesse, Go!” podcast at MaximumFun.org. I had previously heard Thorn’s interview series “The Sound of Young America,” which is both a podcast and, in some areas, a public radio program. I was unfamiliar with “Jordan, Jesse, Go!”, in which Thorn and co-host Jordan Morris, plus a guest, can ramble on at length, without worrying about the radio time slot (or, apparently, about a censor).

Of course, I’ve long been a fan of Leo Laporte and his podcasts at This Week In Tech.

I was just playfully saying that it would be fun to have podcasting as a job. I don’t have a good idea for a podcast at present, nor do I have the tech to do a professional-sounding podcast right now.

I grew up in radio, as many of you know; I worked at WHAL-AM starting at the age of 15, and I worked in radio for a year after college.

Some years back, I hosted a regular Wednesday night talk show on WZNG-AM (the successor to WHAL-AM). I enjoyed it, and would probably have kept doing it, but it became a burden to book guests — it seemed as if I was always coming down to the wire — and the owners of the station said they’d start paying me once they sold all four sponsor positions in the show, and it didn’t look like that was going to happen. I didn’t mind doing the show for free, and I didn’t mind having trouble booking guests, but I minded the two of them together.

I think I would enjoy doing a podcast at some point — but I’d have to have a focus for it, and a way of talking to guests, and some idea that anyone would actually listen to the thing. I’m not Leo Laporte, who has a wealth of tech information and can carry a show by himself — only he doesn’t have to, at least not on “This Week In Tech,” because he has so many contacts in the tech industry whom he can bring on as panelists.

May 26

Disqus redux

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More thoughts about the benefits of Disqus, including an interview with the CEO, are in this Leo Laporte-produced webcast.

A benefit I really didn’t explain earlier — because I didn’t really understand it yet — is that, as more and more bloggers start using this service, it makes it easier for you, the commenter, to keep track of where and on what you’ve commented. You, the commenter, can go to your own disqus page and see all of the comments you’ve left on disqus blogs.