CastMedium » John C Dvorak

TWiT 222: 3 Dollah Coffee Pot

Jon Cole — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 04:15:19 +0000

This Week in Tech is down to a barebones cast, but that doesn’t mean there’s any shortage of news. The first point of discussion is the class-action lawsuit against Facebook and Zynga, due to their delivery of deceptive, scammy advertisement. Advertising is an oft discussed issue on TWiT, so it shouldn’t be surprising that nobody has anything nice to say about Zynga.

Both Leo and Becky are positive about the California ban on power-consumptive televisions, but John isn’t sold. Despite his typical antagonism, he manages to uncover some of the inconsistencies in the new provision and also brings up some of the misconceptions about comparative power consumption in LCD and plasma sets.

News that the Barnes and Noble Nook is sold out for the holidays gracefully segues into the final topic, Google Books. It’s a divisive issue, with Leo praising Google for making moves to preserve this media while John seriously questions their intentions and legal rights (or lack thereof) to claim royalities on their scans of public domain books.

Covered news and topics: Facebook/Zynga class-action lawsuit, in-tweet advertisement, Black Friday deals, Leo’s terrible Middle-Eastern/Arabic impression, Chrome OS, California bans power-hungry TVs, Nook sold out, Google Books, crowdsourcing

The trouble with advertising tweets, web loyalty ripoffs, and the problem with popcorn…

Runtime – 2:01:04

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TWiT 221: Get Off Of My Planet

Jonathan Downin — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:33:46 +0000

Leo rarely covered gaming topics on TWiT, but this is the second podcast in the last week in which Modern Warfare 2 has received some discussion. The issues surrounding the PC version are covered, as the the 1st day sales figures, and it shows how mainstream Infinity Ward’s latest game is.

Geocities is officially gone. The $3.6 billion acquisition by Yahoo turned out to be one of the worst investments of all time. Although this news is enough to make anyone in their mid-20s nostalgic, anyone much younger will never know how it used to be. The group spends some time reminiscing about how the internet was at its inception, and it is amazing how much has changed.

Advertising takes center-stage with a discussion about the effectiveness of different kinds of ads. It comes down to relevancy to the consumer and integration with the platform. The latest news of Apple winning the first battle against Psystar is the last discussion point this week.

Covered news and topics: Modern Warfare 2, Geocities, old media and ancient internet, advertising, Apple/Psystar

Modern Warfare 2 is the biggest media launch of all time but PC gamers are hopping mad, how come usability expert Jakob Nielsen’s site looks so bad, and so long Geocities…

Runtime – 1:17:27

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TWiT 218: Escape from Farmville

Jonathan Downin — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:21:13 +0000

Twitter continues to branch out with word that the teens are starting to control trending topics. Windows 7 is still the big news with everyone sharing their thoughts on the new operating system. It is almost impossible to find someone who is generally negative on Windows 7, and that’s about the biggest win any release of this magnitude can hope for.

Apple has done their best to steal some of Microsoft’s thunder by releasing a slew of new products last week, and issuing a few new highly targeted ads. Net neutrality is back in the news and this is a topic that Leo and gang never get tired of discussing.

Things move into company talk with the difficulty of IPOs taking the central point of the topic. Leo’s conquered addiction to Farmville gets some discussion and the show ends with salutations to GeoCities’s demise.

Covered news and topics: Twitter, Windows 7, Apple ads, Apple releases/earnings, net neutrality, Motorola Droid, IPOs and net companies, Farmville, Geocities

John C. Dvorak weighs the case for and against net neutrality, Dwight Silverman rates Windows 7 a winner, Leo kicks his Farmville addiction, and more.

Runtime – 1:44:26

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TWiT 217: The A.I. Spy Club

Jonathan Downin — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:09:09 +0000

It’s a joke-laden show this week, but they are not all winners. Comedian and host of the Science Channel’s Future of:, Baratunde Thurston, is on and adds a lot of energy to the mix. Twitter starts out the topics with the news that lists are being integrated into the service. It is not available to everyone yet, but all accounts should have the new feature soon.

Google is going into “offensive mode” with a round of hirings and acquisitions on the way. The guys discuss the use of peer bandwidth which essentially allows Google access to free data transfer. With the release of Windows 7 happening this week, it gets some discussion. Leo is still excited about his Windows 7 party and talks about the part pack again here. The Sidekick situation has almost been resolved, but the group gets some more jabs in.

The biggest topic this week is journalism ethics and how journalists should handle receiving free products, services and travel. Leo and Jim Louderback spearhead the argument that these things shouldn’t be accepted while John argues the other side. John states that this kind of code is often used by bigger publications in an attempt to corner coverage.

Twitter lists, Google ramps up, tech journalism ethics, Windows 7, TSA vs. mommy blogger, and more.

Runtime – 1:33:44

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TWiT 215: Who Needs This Crap?

Jonathan Downin — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 09:12:52 +0000

There have been reports flying around the web that Comcast may be in the market to acquire a controlling share of NBC. This could lead to some drastic changes in how easy it is to watch streaming TV shows over the internet with cable providers having a large interesting in driving package subscriptions. A play for NBC could be a way for Comcast to protect their traditional revenue streams.

The topic of advertising takes a big chunk of time this week. It is popular topic and the crew weighs in with their takes on viable strategies. Leo is a strong proponent of targeted and relevant advertising, but Wil has his own take on advertising and feels that content aggregation is the only viable road to success. Dvorak pipes in to say he hates it all and prefers to beg for money– public television style.

Newegg is setting up to be 1 of the first tech IPOs in years. According to Wil Harris, while their revenues are north of $2billion, with a margin of 1.4% they are in the double digit millions in actual profits. This makes an IPO somewhat questionable.

Comcast-NBC, podcasting money, Windows 7, Newegg IPO, 2 billion iPhone apps, and more.

Runtime – 1:41:39

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TWiT 214: Live From Caracas

Jonathan Downin — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:40:14 +0000

It’s back to the classic group of TWiTs this week with Patrick Norton and Kevin Rose. Google’s Sidewiki project is not getting a positive response from Leo. He argues that this is bad for site owners as they lose control of the discussion around their content. USB 3.0 and Intel’s Light Peak lead into a discussion about SSDs and Leo shares his experience. Tablet talk also sneaks in with Courier and the mythical Apple tablet.

Kevin talks about the code-share Digg has with Facebook using the open source project Casandra. Since Twitter is in Kevin’s realm of social networks, Leo throws it to him to talk about ad effectiveness, why Google might want to be them and where the service needs to go next. Kevin points out that many of less tech savvy people are Twitter refer to the service as their “web site.” This is an extremely interesting and insightful tidbit.

G4 has contacted Leo about wanting to create a video site that would feature all of the old Tech TV video. Kevin says that G4 had a Tech TV clip he linked to last week removed from YouTube and this may be why. Even though many tech subjects don’t age well, there is still some content that would be relevant today, hopefully this happens.

Google turns 11, Facebook browser, Twitter funding, Google Sidewiki, Photoshop disclosure, and more.

Runtime – 1:39:59

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TWiT 213: The Dog In The Bookcase

Jonathan Downin — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 08:41:57 +0000

This is a world-wide show this week with British programmer and blogger John Graham-Cumming and French blogger Patrick Beja are guests this week with the usual John C Dvorak. John Graham-Cumming has been in the news recently with his altruistic effort to get an apology from the British government over the persecution of early computer visionary Alan Turing for being gay. It’s a great story and shows how one person really can bring light to important issues.

Google’s efforts to digitize books is again the target of attack from the Department of Justice on issues of copyright. While TWiT group feels that these issues are somewhat understandable, governments have not stepped in to perform the necessary action in this increasingly digital world. The real problem ends up being the issue of rights which Google maintains for the scan of the digitized versions which Dvorak explains quite aptly here.

The U.S. health care system has been a topic of intense debate recently and some of the innate problems of the current system are exemplified here by a story involving famed movie reviewer Roger Ebert. After having throat surgery to treat his cancer, he was forced to find something to facilitate his communication and his insurance would only cover an $8000 specialized device which doesn’t work nearly as well as a Mac with text-to-speech technology.

The last big piece of news this week is Intuit, the makers of popular finance management software Quicken, have acquired Mint. Mint has been the talk of the technology world for over a year now with a service that is similar to what Intuit offers, only more robust and user friendly. While this was undoubtedly a smart move for Intuit, many are crying that Mint should not have “sold out.”

Turing apology, Google books, Medicare Macs, WIPO, Twitter verification, editorial ethics, and more.

Runtime – 2:05:51

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TWiT 211: The Dummy Contract

Jonathan Downin — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 06:36:20 +0000

Google has been known to add some flair to their search page graphic from time to time, but the most recent one was weirdly geeky and pointed straight at game fans. The graphic depicted one of the Os in their name being taken by a UFO with an accompanying twitter code that translated to “All your O are belong to us.” This is a reference to the classic, poorly translated Japanese game Zero Wing, which is famous for the line “All your base are belong to us,” and Google did this on the 20th anniversary of the release of the game. Weird.

An Apple store was broken into and thieves escaped in 31 seconds with 23 Macbook Pro 14 iPhones and 9 iPods. Gmail was down for over an hour on Tuesday and it lit the Twitter-sphere up with people wanting their mail. The only other big news this week was that Snow Leopard shipped with an old version of flash that overwrote newer version upon OS upgrade and has serious security issues.

Things are slow this week, but there should be plenty of news next week after Wednesday’s Apple event.

Google Os, Apple Store heist, Gmail crashes, Snow Leopard Flash, feature phones, and more.

Runtime – 1:34:37

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TWiT 210: Banned In Sweden

Jonathan Downin — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:09:09 +0000

Snow Leopard is the first topic this week and no one seems to be too happy about Apple’s latest release. Even Leo feels like the update may not be all it should have been. He speculates that it was probably more of a marketing idea to roll a lot of smaller updates into a bigger package to have an OS release to combat Windows 7.

There are a lot of government related issues this week including new texting while drivings laws and border control laptop search laws. There is a discussion about “false bottom” encrypted OS installs and how they can help you hide things from people who may search your computer. John isn’t buying any of it though, as usual.

Microsoft has gotten themselves into some hot water with a recent press shot for something which nobody can seem to determine. They used the same image for the American and Polish versions of their site, but they replaced the head of a black man in the shot with one of a white man in the Polish version. Weird.

Snow Leopard, Do Not Call list, adult tweeting, cybersecurity, driving while texting, and more.

Runtime – 1:32:52

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TWiT 209: Dvorak Shrugged

Jonathan Downin — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 06:42:15 +0000

It has been a somewhat light week in technology news, but that doesn’t stop Leo and crew from having some great discussions. Om Malik, of GigaOM fame, is on this week and it’s hard not to feel inadequate when listening to someone this intelligent. He’s a great guest and manages to be a great ying to Dvorak’s yang.

There is not too much hard news, but this allowed the guys to discuss more issue-based topics than usual. The conversation ranges from Google’s recent foray in digitizing “orphan” books to platforms for building web technologies. Stay tuned until as the topic swings to a story which Dvorak wrote about the incompetence of the of the current Chief Information Officer and Malik’s subsequent piece that took a bit of wind out of Dvorak’s sails. Don’t worry, they make up.

Dvorak delivers and absolutely classic quote this week as well. While talking about the only book has ever read in 1 sitting, he says “It’s really good so I thought I might as well get is over with.” There is probably no sentence that sums-up John C. Dvorak any better than this one.

The Apple-Google-ATT conspiracy, the US CIO babbles, and TWiT goes digital…

Runtime – 1:40:37

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TWiT 208: Hide The Boots

Jonathan Downin — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 07:52:05 +0000

It’s a boy’s club TWiT this week and Dvorak is back in fine, grumpy style. This is the kind of TWiT that long-time fans love, and understandably so. Get ready for a rowdy group covering lots of topics.

Symantec has released a list of the top 100 searched terms by kids and out of the top 10, only 4 are actual search terms. The remaining 6 were comprised of searches for actual url titles such as youtube, myspace and even google. Of course, sex and porn were among the actual searches.

Brian Brushwood proves that he is a great guest yet again with some comments about the recently released date and pricing details of the Zune HD. He also throws in some game talk and then gives some spoiler-free impressions of District 9. It nice to get some younger geek culture represented on the podcast and Brian does it without breaking the usual TWiT flow.

Dvorak’s US CIO dustup, Fred Figglehorn, Samsung TL225, XML patents, and more.

Runtime – 1:29:52

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TWiT 205: Step Up To The Guru Bar

Jonathan Downin — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 15:35:10 +0000

In the latest iTunes update Apple blocked the Pre’s ability to sync natively, but Palm has issued an update to their Pre software that re-enables the functionality. The war is on. This should get interesting very quickly.

This week Pete Cashmore, of Mashable.com, is on and the guys are talking about how MySpace is doomed. This doesn’t seem too timely as MySpace has been fading for a while now. The site is inundated with old code and doesn’t serve any audience too well. One good point here is that they should focus on the music aspect of the site and really make it a good music finding social network.

Microsoft continues to plan a launch of a nation-wide retail chain. This smacks of an Apple copycat move in so many ways and slides have leaked that show plans for a “Guru Bar.” Really, is that the most creativity that can come out of Microsoft? They can’t even use a different word than “bar?” This is not going to go well.

Apple charges a premium, Palm and Apple argue, Microsoft and Yahoo rumors, MySpace is fading, and more.

Runtime – 1:48:48

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TWiT 202: The Overeating iPhone

Jonathan Downin — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 18:53:11 +0000

With Leo out of the country in China, Dvorak gets hosting duties this week. He does a great job at keeping the group lively. Dvorak really is the only person on the level of Leo who can pull this off this well.

The topics are a bit all-over on this one, but the CrunchPad gets some time right of the top. This is a device that many would love to get their hands on and if the form-factor and engineering is up to snuff, it may just be a stealth hit.

Bing is also catching some people off guard. If you asked anyone in tech 6 months ago if Microsoft could launch an exciting new search engine, it surely would have been a unanimous no, but they seem to have done just that.

Covered topics: CrunchPad, Michael Jackson, Keyboards, Compuserve, ringtones, Bing, ads on Kindle, PR, overheating iPhone, gdgt.com

Sony Ericsson goes Android, Teledildonics, Compuserve, ringtone concerts, shoes, GDGT and more.

Runtime – 1:20:39

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TWiT 201: HI LEO LAPORTE FOR THROATBEARDS

Jonathan Downin — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:00:46 +0000

This week’s TWiT is a fun one. The smaller group of Leo, Dvorak and Brian Brushwood is perfect here. The guys play off each other extremely well. Hopefully John and Brian are on more often together.

The news that advertisers are now paying more for big shows on Hulu than on TV is very exciting. This is a great sign that advertisers are taking notice of the potential of online video and how the audience is much more valuable there as it is highly targeted. Expect to be able to watch what you want, when you want more from here on out.

The Windows 7 pricing has been announced and you can now pre-order you very own copy right now for half price. The half price deal is good until July 11th, at $49.99 it’s a steal, so go get it while you can.

Amazon vs. sales tax, some IPTV ads cost more than equivalent TV, Windows 7 Pricing, Yahoo stockholders meeting, and more.

Runtime – 1:14:48

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TWiT 200: Salad Daze

Jonathan Downin — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 08:36:14 +0000

It’s TWiT number 200 and to commemorate this milestone is the original TWiT crew of Leo, John C. Dvorak, Patrick Norton, Roger Chang and David Prager.

First topic this week is Twitter and how it has been used to such a great effect in Iran. It has been invaluable in giving the world a real view into what is happening to people on the streets protesting.

The RIAA is back in the news with their successful prosecution of a Minnesota woman who downloaded 24 songs and is being fined $1.9 million. They seem to be as clueless as ever and are doing a great job of getting people to hate them even more.

There is a big discussion about the recent story that Steve Jobs had a liver transplant two months ago in Tennessee. While there is still speculation at the validity of this story, Leo himself was tipped off about this a month ago so it is looking to be accurate.

For show 200, some of the original TWiTs talk about a $1.9 million fine for 24 pirated songs, Morro, Steve Jobs, and more.

Runtime – 1:32:40

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