Archive → November 9th, 2008
I’m a TWiT!
As many of you know, I am a big fan of Leo Laporte and his podcast This Week in Tech, or TWiT. As with most podcasts, this one is not only in audio but also streams video via twitlive.tv. If you are not familiar with this program or who Leo is, I have to give you a little history. In the early 2000’s and late 1990’s there was a satellite television channel that was called ZDTV that later became TechTV. This channel was very popular among computer enthusiasts like myself. This channel had several people that were on various programs and Leo Laporte was one of them. Some of these shows were Call For Help, The Screen Savers, and Silicon Spin among others. When TechTV was taken over by G4, a gaming company, they shut down TechTV and all its programming. Many were devastated to lose the computer programs and were left with a void. Leo and many other personalities from TechTV joined together and put together a podcast called Revenge of the Screen Savers. I heard that G4 told them they were not allowed to use the name because they had the rights to The Screen Savers name. Since many of the TechTV’s personalities are from the same location, they often do there podcasts via Skype. After several renditions, Leo eventually settled on TWiT and that became the main podcast on the website. Later, he and other former TechTV personalities put together other podcasts that are on the same page.
Now TWiT has nearly a quarter of a million listeners to the podcast each week. Leo Laporte has enjoyed a tremendous success with radio shows such as The Tech Guy that syndicates nation wide on weekends. With all the success of TWiT, Geoff Smith put together the video above. It is a very good representation of the podcast. I ran across it and thought it would be worth posting on my blog. Although TWiT is supposed to be a technology related podcast, they often discuss politics with a liberal slant. If that does not bother you, it is likely you will love listening to the podcast. If you have never listened to it, go to http://www.twit.tv to listen or you can catch them on video during the recording on Sunday afternoons at http://www.twitlive.tv. I think you will enjoy listening to them.
White Space Internet?
I usually like to learn about new things in the technology world and this past week we had a big one come to pass. This story went virtually unnoticed because of all the news surrounding the US presidential election. It appears that the FCC has voted to allow the space given up by analog television stations to be used for broadband Internet. As most of you know on February 17th 2009 all American television stations will stop broadcasting in analog leaving only digital signals on different frequencies. Once this transition takes place, these television stations will be required to give up their channel that is being used on to transmit analog signals. With the FCC allowing this band to be used for Internet transmissions, this will tremendously improve the capability of Americans to obtain wireless Internet virtually anywhere that currently receives a television station. I say this is way overdue as the Internet has become a way of life in the world. The United States ranks 26th in the world for having broadband Internet available to its citizens.
With the onslaught of digital television and other Internet Protocol television (IPTV) systems becoming widespread, there is a commercial market for more Internet. I think this is huge and I for one think it is about time to come up with a wireless standard for high power Internet transmissions. The current wifi, or 802.11a,b,g,n are all being used on the crowded 2.4 GHz band. I had to change out my wireless telephone to a 5.8 GHz band because it was completely knocking out my wifi. As you know, with our IRLP, and XBox 360 in the house, that becomes a very big issue. Coming up with other alternatives besides broadband over powerline (BPL) are very necessary if we are to compete with other countries. As you know, BPL was found to not be a viable option because it radiates off powerlines in the high frequency (HF) bands virtually wiping out all shortwave radio including ham radio. Again, I think this is very good news.
I will be very excited to see this come to pass in the United States as we have been stuck at DSL, and Cable Internet for nearly a decade. There are still people in our own country that actually use dialup. Now that is scary! I have not used dialup in more than ten years. Keep your eyes open to the new inventions coming up in the near future. It will be interesting to see how this new band is going to be implemented. I know I will be paying close attention. I will certainly keep you up to date as these things come available.