Top 10 Reasons Why There’s No TWiT Live Today
June 13, 2008
10. I did 20 hours of video in the past two days and I’m exhausted.
9. It’s time to give someone else a chance on Stickam.
8. My Energizers finally ran out.
7. There’s no more room under my desk to store the pee.
6. It’s been a month since I’ve answered my email.
5. My wife is coming home and I’ve got some ’splaining to do.
4. I’m paraskevidekatriaphobic and I’m planning to run for the cure.
3. It’s half-price day at Keny’s Donuts.
2. Metal Gear Solid 4 beckons.
and the number one reason I’m taking today off…
Sometimes a guy’s just got to sit around naked.
The Horror
June 13, 2008
Thanks to George who sent me this JibJab mashup. It’s very funny but be warned - it’s kind of gory and a little adult, definitely not for the little ones.
TWiT Goes To Math Camp (PG-13)
Can you identify all the TWiTs in this video?
(24 votes, average: 4.21 out of 5)UGM 2008
May 19, 2008
Ten years ago we launched ZDTV (which later became TechTV) and The Screen Savers, its most popular show. We wanted to begin with a bang, so Kate Botello and I decided to build the “Ultimate Gaming Machine” basing it on Lloyd Case’s design from Computer Gaming World. In 1998, that meant a PII 400 Mhz, 128 MB of RAM, and a fabulously expensive widescreen Sony CRT (and a price tag of over $10,000). Here’s what it looked like back then…
There have been 9 UGMs built since then, the most recent for Attack of the Show in 2005 (which cost around $6000 and was a lot faster). Since I’m launching TWiT Live 10 years later I thought it would be fun to see what the UGM would look like these days. Only this time, we’re going to let you build it.
Starting Friday, June 6, we’ll be inviting you to pick the parts for UGM 2008. From processors, to motherboard, to video and sound system, the choice will be yours. We’ll spend a couple of hours debating the merits of each component, with expert commentary to help you decide, then when we reach consensus we’ll buy it. At the end of the month we’ll assemble our creation and then give it away to some lucky TWiT Live viewer.
I’m not sure exactly how we’ll give it away. I know I mentioned this on TWiT and proposed a crazy scheme to get me more followers on Twitter. All I can say is I must have been drunk. It won’t be necessary to follow me, or Dvorak, and it definitely won’t be necessary to unfollow Kevin. I’m going to check with the legal department and find a fair way to do this that doesn’t require anyone to join Twitter!
We’ll kick things off Friday, June 6, at 3p Pacific, 6p Eastern, 2200 UTC with a processor showdown. AMD or Intel, which will it be? I’ll have experts on both sides then I’ll ask you to decide. June 13 it’s Motherboards and Memory. June 20th, video cards and monitors. June 27th storage and peripherals. We’ll finish the machine on the 4th of July, choose the best five games for it, and award it to a lucky winner.
So join us Fridays starting in June as we recreate one of the most loved bits we ever did on The Screen Savers. It should be a lot of fun, and who knows, you could walk away with UGM 10!
TWiT Live Update
May 14, 2008
We’re inching along with TWiT Live, my attempt to turn the humble Tech Guy Labs into an Internet TV station. If you saw the earlier pictures or video tour you wouldn’t recognize the place. It’s turned into a bustling hub of activity and an actual workplace.
To start with we have an office manager and bookeeper, Frédérique (now I’m not the only person with acute accents around here).
Frédérique is an old family friend who comes in every morning to make sure things are running smoothly.
Colleen is our new studio manager and resident geek. She is helping me build the studio and has been invaluable in getting the wires connected.
Her latest feat is putting in this guerilla lighting rig. It’s handy having a welder on staff.
It’s very weird having employees. The guy from ADP came in today and we set up payroll, taxes, worker’s comp, benefits, and so on. I incorporated TWiT as an LLC some time ago - now the chickens have come home to roost. I’m really am the Chief TWiT now (although I still can’t bring myself to put that on official papers).
I’ve promoted Dane to President and Biz Dev guy. He’s been my invaluable right arm for more than a year now, and without him TWiT would never have grown past a handful of poorly edited shows. He’s still doing all the editing and posting but I’m looking to hire an in-house part-time editor to free Dane up to do more high-level planning. Which frees me up to do 20 hours of streaming video a week.
We even have a water cooler around which we can gather and gossip.
As far as the studio goes, we’re almost done. We’ve got the lights in, thanks to Pat Grosswendt and litepanels.com. They have already made a huge difference.
We are installing our new Tricaster Studio on Friday so I’ll finally have more than one camera online. The Tricaster will let me switch between up to six cameras (we have four Canon XL-2s and will probably buy another) and several computer screens (so you can finally see our Skype callers, hosts, and guests). When the Tricaster comes online the fun really begins. It’ll be just like the Gerry Todd show…
I’m pleased to announce that our streaming host for all this will be Stickam.com. They’ve really stepped up to help us make this work. Today they put us on a dedicated server cluster which should help us scale to more viewers without slowdowns. We’ll be using the Flash Media Encoder on our end (once we get the new Tricaster 2.0 software) to improve quality, and we hope to start sending the show in widescreen 16:9 soon.
We’ll be using the integrated Stickam chat to get viewers on the air so sign up for a free Stickam account now and request friendship with Leo Laporte so we can put you on. Stickam is helping us design a better page at TWiTLive.tv, too.
I turn on the cameras every day except Monday and Friday from 11a-4p Pacific (2-7p Eastern, 6-11p UTC). You can subscribe to our production calendar using RSS, ICS, or HTML:
If you subscribe using Google calendar, Outlook, or iCal the calendar should get updated automatically (shows are often being moved or added). Turn on time zone support in your calendaring program to convert the times to your local time. I also post changes and updates to the TWiT Live account on Twitter, and Stickam can send you SMS, Email, or IM notifications when we turn on the cameras.
As for content, it might not be as jazzy as the Gerry Todd Show, but I do hope to keep the pipeline filled with interesting information. To start with you’ll be able to see all the TWiT show being produced. They’re all audio shows (and don’t worry, they’re going to stay that way) but we’ll add video elements to most of them. At the very least you’ll be able to see Dvorak’s, Steve’s, Amber’s, Megan’s, Cammy’s, Paul’s, Dick’s, Andy’s, Alex’s, Scott’s, and Merlin’s shining faces via Skype video.
Whenever possible we’ll get our contributers into the studio for the shows, too. I think we’ll be able to do live in-studio versions of TWiT and MacBreak Weekly at least once a month.
People tell me that some of the most interesting stuff happens in-between shows. I hope you caught Scott Bourne’s fascinating impromptu tour of his bird photos after MacBreak Weekly last week. That’s the kind of thing we’re going to do a lot more of. When something extra interesting happens I’ll capture it and put it out as downloadable high-quality video. We’ll be creating a new netcast of these Best of TWiT Live pieces later this month. It will be available on iTunes, Apple TV, Miro, and Stickam.
Meanwhile, I better go pay some bills, as Gerry Todd says. Thanks for your support, and a special thanks to the numerous TWiT donors who are making this possible. We couldn’t do it without you!
Dave Mora Interviews Me
May 12, 2008
Video podcaster Dave Mora did this interview with me after the KGO Live event last weekend. He recorded it with a Flip camera. Thanks, Dave!
Dave’s Web site is eunknown.org and he does a great job. Gives away a lot of stuff, too!
Dipity Do!
May 12, 2008
Tomorrow on net@night (watch live at 4p Pacific/7p Eastern/11p UTC at TWiTLive.tv) Amber and I will be talking with Dipity - a new and very cool web service that turns your feeds into a timeline quickly and easily. You supply links to your Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Wordpress blog, or other feeds and Dipity automatically turns them into a timeline or flipbook of your life.
Here’s my Dipity timeline from the past year or so.
I wish this had been around 20 years ago - I’d love to go back that far. But then, 20 years from now I’ll have this!
Tasmania Animoto Style
April 22, 2008
Amber and I interviewed Brad Jefferson of Animoto.com tonight on net@night. It’s a very cool site that auto-generates a video using pretty advanced software and your own pictures and music. During the interview I whipped this up with about three clicks of the mouse.
(44 votes, average: 4.43 out of 5)
Loading ...KGO Live
April 22, 2008
I’ll be speaking at a free event in San Francisco: Saturday, May 3 at 3p, at the Concourse Exhibition Center, 8th & Brannan.
My San Francisco radio affiliate, KGO Newstalk 810, does this every year. KGO Live is an all day event, 11a-4p, featuring Dr. Dean Edell, Ronn Owens, Gil Gross, Len Tillem, Joanie Greggains, Gene Burns, Michael Finney, Rosie Allen, Ed Baxter, Lynn Jimenez, Karel, Bill Wattenburg, and me.
They tell me they’ve set out 400 chairs for Dean Edell and around 40 for me. I’d really love to show them that there are more than 40 geeks in San Francisco, so please come out and say hi.
There are more details, including information about the wine tasting that will also be going on, at KGO’s web site.
This Old Post
April 18, 2008
I love the “This Day on Leoville” section of this blog. Not because I enjoy pouring poring over my old semi-literate posts, but because it’s a time machine that takes me back to a magical era when TechTV was new and the sweet scent of possiblity was everywhere. Or maybe that’s just the smell of popcorn burning in the microwave.
I was looking at my post from this day in 2001 and I found the following in the comments (often the best part of these old posts). Seven years later it’s pretty funny and teribbly sad. I don’t remember the name of the disgruntled ex-employee who wrote it and snuck it onto the TechTV web site, but I do remember buying him a drink a few days later. He was very kind to me, if mean to everyone else.
Many of you remember TechTV from this era with fondness. I certainly do, but even then, only three years into its six year run, there was trouble on the horizon. I don’t agree with everything he says, but in hindsight, the author of this acid post was prophetic, and obviously one of the very funny and talented people who got crushed by the TechTV steamroller. I’m very grateful that it got saved here.
(And if the actual author is reading this - say hello! You were spot on. TechLive was, in fact, the beginning of the end, even though it took three more years for Uncle Paul to actually tire of the channel and kill it by selling it to the chop shop known as Comcast.)
UPDATE: Tom Merritt reminds me it was Josh Green! Wonder where he is now.
18 April 2001
Many people shrug their shoulders about TechTV, they sit there and say,
“Hey, it’s just like any other company, terrible managers, dysfunctional
organizational structures, bad communication. Whaddya gonna do?” But these
people are mistaken. TechTV is far, far worse than most companies for the
simple reason that the people at the top - namely Larry Wangberg, Greg
Drebin, Glenn Farrell, and on the Web side, David Miller and Lynn Weiss -
are in various ways incompetent, arrogant, strategically moronic and
completely inept at keeping employees happy and motivated.
So here’s my Top Ten list on why TechTV will likely be out of money by this
time next year:
10. The driver’s asleep at the wheel. CEO Larry Wangberg can barely put a
sentence together. Here are a few examples of his handiwork when he sends an
e-mail to “ALL” -
“If you aren’t sleeping right now I hope that you are standing very tall.
What a lifetime memorable world class day.”
Or
“Sets are looking great, most of our technical infrastructure is working,
and it is great to see the rehersals. Know that there is a lot that still is
getting pulled together and that you are working very hard.”
Not exactly the words of rocket scientist, nor someone who knows how to
spell “rehearsals.”
9. The TechTV concept made sense - TWO YEARS AGO. Of course technology isn’t
going away, and of course people are still interested in it. The question is
how much do they care RIGHT NOW. Management chose to put all their eggs in
one basket: Tech Live (a.k.a. Tech Dive), a 9 = hour block of programming
that is currently driving most faithful TechTV viewers away from the
channel. They launched this flagship product at the precise moment when the
market was at its lowest, when NOBODY in their right minds is investing in
tech stocks, and when we are in the middle of a recession (or whatever it
is) during which people have far less money to buy tech products. Nice move.
Should’ve stuck with Leo TV and renamed it the Help Channel.
8. Target audience doesn’t exist. TechTV wants to become the destination
channel for all those sophisticated technology professionals and financial
market guys who are watching TV in their cubes. Um, yeah. Here’s the big
problem. Those guys don’t EXIST, because the only people who have TVs in
their cubes are TechTV employees. The financial guys are all tuned in to
Bloomberg and CNBC. To believe that these guys would turn away from these
channels to watch Carmine Gallo or Pam Krueger fumble over the day’s tech
market news is not just laughable, it’s pathetic. They should have been
happy with TechTV’s original audience: horny teenagers harassing female
talent, shut-ins who use the Internet as their only form of social
interaction, and techie geeks who count their mothers among “women they’ve
kissed.”
7. “Business strategy” is a term that makes people at TechTV snicker. Most
people employed at TechTV know that the content and business strategy at
TechTV is likely to change every few weeks. Of course, I didn’t know that
when I was hired in October under a system that had the site divided into
five stand-alone zones, each with an executive producer. The five-zone
system lasted about three months. The funny thing is, most of the “new”
strategies that the braintrust comes up with are actually old strategies
that didn’t work revisited. Is it any wonder that the latest “business plan”
for the Web constructed by gurus (or idiot savants, depending on how you
look at it) David Miller and Glenn Farrell was taken with a grain of salt?
This was the FIRST business plan for the Web side, and it came nearly four
years after the site launched.
6. The best people at the company are either laid off or kept in menial
positions. Damn right I’m talking about me. But really, that’s not the whole
picture. There are definitely smart, talented people at TechTV - the problem
is that they are in no position to have an impact on the direction of the
product, company or anything else. We have two terms for the people with an
“associate” or even “producer” title: web monkey and gerbil. The verbs, “to
web monkey” or “to gerbil (gerbiling)” also have common usage. These mean
the same thing. People are trained to get on their wheel and wrestle with an
archaic publishing tool eight hours a day to get stories up on the site. In
the meantime, their talent and creative power goes circling down the drain.
5. The company is chocked full of, and run by, TV people. For TechTV to
claim it is remotely a Web or technology company is, again, a big joke. It
is a TV station, run by TV people, with a TV focus, and the Web, as a friend
once told me, is and always will be the “red-headed stepchild.” I don’t want
to stereotype here - well, wait a second, yes I do. TV people are in general
more stupid, shallow and less pleasant professionally than anyone I’ve ever
worked with. I think this is because of the medium they work in - which by
its very nature is superficial, stimulating without being intellectual, and
sometimes outright boring. They don’t call it the boob tube for nothing. I
just wish the boobs had stayed away from TechTV.
4. The Audience of One. Everyone at TechTV knows what this means. Whether
you know him as “Uncle Paul,” “The Man,” or simply “God,” he’s the only
reason TechTV even exists. When rich guys have visions, strange creatures
are born. When extremely rich guys have visions, really screwed up, mutant
monster-freaks are born. Hence TechTV. Content on the channel and the site
are geared to please Paul, and nothing else, no matter what management tells
you. Simple reason: if you don’t please the guy who’s cutting your paycheck,
it’s all over. But having an audience of one is extremely dangerous - when
the One gets bored and gets up to walk out of the theater, the show’s over.
Paul Allen loves the idea of TechTV - but even he, with his abyss-like
pockets, won’t keep this charity case afloat forever.
3. Lying to employees. Though nobody in upper management would ever admit
it, there’s a serious trust problem within TechTV. It’s all about the now
infamous “need-to-know” policy, meaning information is only shared at the
exact moment when you need to know (which is always too late). This
translates to a top-down decision-making process: a few idiots assemble for
“off-sites” (oh, be very afraid when that happens), people and structures
are moved around like toy soldiers on a battlefield chart, and stupid
decisions are handed down a week later, after rumors have already destroyed
the credibility of the managers. Employees and their input are completely
ignored in this process, so it’s no big surprise that paranoia, low morale
and a “cover-your-***” approach to everything are par for the course at
TechTV.
2. B-Grade talent (OK, maybe C-Grade). Channel and program loyalty is built
on personalities. Ted Koppel and Peter Jennings made Nightline. Willow Bay
made Moneyline (at least for me). And the only guy who TechTV viewers love
is Leo Laporte, who I’ll grant has a real personality that touches people.
TechTV’s response to this was to move him off his show, make him read the
news and be less funny, and reduce him to occasional help tips on Tech Dive.
And then there’s the rest of the talent. Um, yeah. In the TV world, second
or third-tier cable channels are just launching pads to bigger and better
things. Problem is, nobody at TechTV, with the possible exception of
Michaela, Erica Hill and a couple others, has a chance at the big time.
Nothing against them, they try hard, but attempting to do ad lib on Tech
Live for people who aren’t used to thinking original thoughts is like
throwing a cat into a swimming pool.
And the No. 1 reason TechTV will fail:
Over-ambition: We’re not “all experts” on technology. This is a mantra that
Jim Louderback likes to throw out there. But there are a couple of harsh
realities to face: First, TechTV does a couple things well. It puts out
product reviews as soon as new gadgets are released, and it (or I should
say, Leo) does a great job with techie help questions. Had TechTV stuck with
what it knew, namely those two strengths, maybe a niche for it would have
been found. But no, TechTV has to be the “CNBC of tech.” We have to explode
everything into some big supernova of tech programming, because we’re all
“experts” and can provide so much more insight into the tech world than
multimillion dollar media giants on cable, network TV and the Web.
But you can’t build a mansion with toothpicks. Anyone with an ounce of
knowledge about technology can watch five minutes of Tech Live and see that
TechTV is following the news, not breaking it, and it is speaking down to
the lowest common denominator Grandma-who-just-got-email, not up toward the
digerati of the Valley. Trying to break news is admirable, but you have to
be realistic about what resources you have to actually do it. And it doesn’t
help that TechTV has as much name recognition among tech sources as a small
community weekly newsletter.
Right now the best “up-to-the-minute” stuff the network can do are things
that happen in San Francisco and are technically easy to cover (see Napster,
ad nauseum). Have a story break somewhere else and you’re looking at a
couple hours of arguments on renting crews, trucks and feeds, and then more
delays in getting those things to actually work. You only have to look at
the digitizing process - namely, actually having to physically bring a tape
over to some poor slob in the dig room, who takes several hours to manually
run it through (welcome to broadband) - to realize that TechTV overstepped
its bounds. It will never match the quality of news coverage that other
cable channels can give, and for management to think that we can do “more,
with less” was just a pipe dream. Maybe that’s all it ever was, a whimsical
dream from the imagination of old Uncle Paul.
– Anonymous
As a number of us old TechTVers launch into the next generation of IPTV, this time working for ourselves, it’s worth re-reading this old screed, if only to make sure we don’t make the same mistakes all over again. Thank you acid-penned masked man, wherever you are.
Oh, and by the way, four years to the day after this was written, TWiT was launched.
Ego Surfin’
April 18, 2008
It’s pretty unseemly to make a big deal of how many Twitter followers (or Facebook friends, or Tesla cars) one has, but I have to confess that lately I’ve been spending a lot of time refreshing the Top 100 list on Twitdir, especially as I started to pull ahead of Scoble and Calacanis in the race for the most followers on Twitter.
It’s a stupid thing to care about, I know, but I have an ego (really? no kidding), and knowing that over 21,000 people are following me is kind of cool. Knowing I’m second only to Barack Obama is humbling. Trying to come up with a way to keep all those people entertained is terrifying.
Thanks to @jbulava who made me this graph on Trendrr:
I now know that I will never catch up with Barack (I’m fine with that), that Calacanis can’t overtake me no matter how much stuff he gives away (ha ha), and that Scoble will probably drink both our milkshakes sooner or later (sigh).
I wonder if I could get more followers if I wore a flag pin?
I’d love to pretend that the numbers don’t matter to me. It seems crass to worry about how many people follow me on Twitter, but in my business numbers are all that matter. Shows survive or get cancelled depending on the numbers. Advertisers pay by the numbers. Most importantly for me, I need an audience. It’s what motivates me. It’s much more fun preaching to a full house than a bunch of empty pews. My wife says I’m not fully awake unless there are thousands of people watching or listening. I’m afraid she’s right. So while I know I’m not supposed to care how many people are following me on Twitter, I’m actually glowing inside. Especially since Twitter is the flavor of the month.
A lot of ink has been spilled trying to explain Twitter. If you’re in the dark about why this odd little service has captured the attention of the digerati, CommonCraft’s video explanation, Twitter in Plain English, or Zappo’s CEO Tony Hsieh’s Quick Start Guide are good places to start.
Part of the difficulty in explaining Twitter is that it can be used in many different ways. Some use it as a sort of IM service. This is, I think, the least interesting spin and I generally don’t follow those folks. Others, like Scoble, Calacanis, and even Obama, I guess, use it mostly to promote what they’re up to. I call it personality spam, and it’s not terribly offensive as long as the personality is doing interesting things. A talented few, like Merlin Mann, use Twitter to entertain the troops, bless ‘em.
I, like most folks, use Twitter as a mini-blog with an admittedly funky commenting system. It’s easier to write four or five 140 character blog posts throughout the day, than to actually think through a larger post. That’s how I write to Twitter, but I also read Twitter to keep up with what’s going on. I follow about 300 folks, mostly web mavens, not for social reasons, but to stay on top of fast breaking ideas in tech, politics, and society. Twitter has become my primary source of information about these trends. That’s one of the interesting things about Twitter - you can read it for different reasons than you write to it. And everyone who subscribes to Twitter can customize the service to make it what they want it to be.
I realize that many people don’t care about Twitter. That’s why I segregate my Tweets from the rest of the blog, but because it’s my most common form of posting I also preserve those Tweets here. There’s also a group, like Steve Gillmor, who believe that Twitter is the most important social network out there. More important, even, than Facebook. I agree. But I’ll try not to spam you with my opinions on that score. Unless you’d like to help me stay ahead of Scoble and Calacanis. In which case, join Twitter and follow me at:
http://twitter.com/leolaporte
To keep from spamming people on that account, I’ve also set up a TWiT Live account where I’ll be posting information about upcoming video feeds for the new TWiT TV channel:
http://twitter.com/twitlive
I won’t offer you a Macbook Air, but I do promise to do my best to post interesting, useful stuff.
Other Twittering TWiTs worth following:
- John C. Dvorak - already quite fascinating
- Patrick “one post” Norton
- Kevin Rose (he usually simul-posts on Pownce)
- Amber MacArthur
- Andy “the Wombat” Ihnatko
- Scott “iPhone Vest” Bourne
- Alex “Pixel Corps” Lindsay
- Dane “My Boswell” Golden
- Tom Merritt
- Molly Wood
- Veronica Belmont
Anyone I’ve left out?
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