Tech History Today

Tech History Today – Dec. 12, 2013

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In 1896 – Guglielmo Marconi amazed a group at Toynbee Hall in East London with a demonstration of wireless communication across a room. Every time Marconi hit a key a bell would ring from a box across the room being carried by William Henry Preece.

In 1973 – Founder of LinkExchange, CEO of Zappos, and promoter of customer-centric business, Tony Hsieh was born.

In 1980 – Apple’s stock was initially offered for sale. Regulators in Massachusetts prohibited individual investors in the state from buying the stock, as it was deemed too risky.

In 1991 – Paul Kunz set up the first website in North America. It searched particle physics literature at Stanford.

Like Tech History? Purchase Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.

Tech News Today, Ye Olde Stuff

TNT 900: Stairway to Spotify

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Tech News Today

Hosts: Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Iyaz Akhtar, and Jason Howell

Will Microsoft kill Nokia’s Android phone? How you can get Led Zeppelin on Spotify, Twitter competing with SnapChat, and more.

Guest: Danny Sullivan

Download or subscribe to this show at twit.tv/tnt.

Submit and vote on story coverage at technewstoday.reddit.com.

Check out the full show notes for today’s episode.

We invite you to read, add to, and amend the wiki entry for this episode at wiki.twit.tv.

Please take the TWiT Audience Survey at http://twit.tv/showsurvey. It only takes a few minutes and we’d love to know what you think.

Thanks to Cachefly for the bandwidth for this show.

Running time: 52:31

Tech News Today

Tech History Today – Dec. 11, 2013

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In 1910 – Georges Claude, the first person to apply an electrical discharge to a sealed tube of neon gas, displayed the first neon lamp to the public at the Paris Motor Show.

In 1967 – The Concorde, a joint British-French venture and the world’s first supersonic airliner, was unveiled in Toulouse, France. Bigger news than the speed of the jet was the announcement that it was finally agreed that the British and French planes would both be spelled with an “e” at the end.

In 1972 – Apollo 17 became the sixth and last Apollo mission to land on the Moon.

In 1998 – The Mars Climate Orbiter was successfully launched on a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Station in Florida. However, the probe disappeared on September 23rd before reaching Mars, apparently destroyed because scientists had failed to convert English measures to metric values.

Like Tech History? Purchase Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.

Shows, Sword and Laser

S&L Podcast – #154 – A Natural History of Dragons

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It’s a very dragon-filled episode, as we kick off our December pick, A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent, actually by Marie Brennan. Also Temeraire. And Paul and Storm steal our idea but we decide we like them anyway. 

WHAT ARE WE DRINKING?    
Tom: Kilbeggan Irish Whiskey, bitters and a brandied cherry    
Veronica: Hot Toddy with Bulleit Rye

    
QUICK BURNS    
    
Samuel R. Delany Named 2013 Damon Knight Grand Master Recipient    
George R.R. Martin shows what happens when dragons go to war    
Paul and Storm do an anthology with everyone you love    
Young adult readers ‘prefer printed to ebooks’    
Website Launch: THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH Edited John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey

CALENDAR 

    
TV, MOVIES AND VIDEO GAMES    
    
SHANNARA to become a TV series at…MTV?    
The climate of Middle Earth    
First scientific paper to be released in Elvish, Dwarvish and English    
Original Ballantine book cover concept art for J.R.R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings on eBay

   
Book Kick-Off    
    
A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent (but actually by Marie Brennan)    

Alt pick: His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik    
    
BARE YOUR SWORD    
    
Tom and Veronica, 

I’ve been listening to the podcast for a few months now and am 
really enjoying it. I’ve backfilled a good number of the past 
episodes and watched most of the video shows. I listen to a 
fair number of podcasts, but S&L always skips to the front of 
the queue. 

I really like that it is both relaxed and professional at the 
same time. The quick burns are excellent. The show lengths 
are about right. I wouldn’t mind if the frequency of episodes 
was a little higher. 

Also, thanks for keeping the language clean. The amount of 
swearing in many podcasts makes me uncomfortable with sharing 
them with my daughters. This is especially lossy when the content 
would be interesting to them. I am aware that the school yard is 
full of colorful speech, but I am trying to promote a more varied 
vocabulary. 

I haven’t been able to follow along with any of the book club reads. 
The queue is already too long (and getting longer (curses S&L!)), but 
I still enjoy listening to you talk about the books. 

Originally I hated the theme music, but it is growing on me a little. 

Thanks (or curses) for the heads-up on the information about the 
non-attending member benefits of WorldCon (more things to read). 
I don’t understand you S&L was not in the running for a Hugo this 
year. Is it not eligible for some reason? 

Thanks for a wonderful podcast! 

–paul
    
Voicemail from Chris from Maine. Thanks!
    
ADDENDUMS    
    
We are proud members of the Boing Boing Podcast Network   

Borderlands Meetup Jan. 20 

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Writing

The Return of Current Geek!

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image

My first new show of 2014 has a name. And it is Current Geek.

In 2009 Scott Johnson and I, looking for an excuse to podcast together started a three times a week show talking about stuff that geeks liked but wasn’t tech so it wouldn’t conflict with my day job at CNET. Then while looking for an excuse to do a show on TWiT, we started doing a version called Current Geek Weekly, still with the same restriction. When I left CNET in 2010 we kept doing Current Geek Weekly and the original Current Geek for awhile. Eventually though the Weekly faded out, and the original was folded into The Morning Stream.  Finally, even that last version was replaced by Tom’s Tasty Tech Time.

The problem with Current Geek was that restriction. That problem is gone.

So I’m VERY happy to let you know that our new weekly show on Frogpants will be called Current Geek. Scott and I have yet to nail down the exact format, but our goal is cover all the things the Frogpants crowd cares about, including gadgets, tech, movies, comics, TV shows, books and more. Each week we’ll be joined by different folks from around the Frogpants network and beyond.

More details and launch dates to come as we try to figure out how to make it all work?

Like to help?

We could do a kickstarter to help get the show off the ground. There’s nothing wrong with that. We could have just taken donations. But Scott and David had a grand idea. What if people had a way to help fund the show but they got something out of it, and they didn’t have to wait 30 days in the bargain.

Presenting the Frogpants store Current Geek show pack You can get prints, posters or the Tech History wall calendar and help kick us until we get the show started. Which will be soon.

So go do that if you can. If not, we’re still making the show, so don’t fret. We got you.

Tech News Today, Ye Olde Stuff

TNT 899: Pupu Platter of Content

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Tech News Today

Hosts: Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Iyaz Akhtar, and Jason Howell

Qualcomm open sources the Internet of Everything, MS might bring back Start MENU, Chromecast gets more app support, and more.

Guest: Justin Robert Young

Download or subscribe to this show at twit.tv/tnt.

Submit and vote on story coverage at technewstoday.reddit.com.

Check out the full show notes for today’s episode.

We invite you to read, add to, and amend the wiki entry for this episode at wiki.twit.tv.

Please take the TWiT Audience Survey at http://twit.tv/showsurvey. It only takes a few minutes and we’d love to know what you think.

Thanks to Cachefly for the bandwidth for this show.

Running time: 54:11

Tech History Today

Tech History Today – Dec. 10, 2013

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In 1815 – Ada Byron was born in London, England to the poet Lord Byron and Anne Isabelle Milbanke. She would later marry William King and take on his title as Lady Lovelace. But she is best remembered as Charles Babbage’s friend, and writer of the first program for his Difference Engine. She is considered by many to be the first computer programmer.

In 1942 – Germany conducted the first powered test flight of a V-1 Rocket, launched from beneath an Fw-200.

In 1944 – Paul Otlet died. His theories presciently described a global interlinked “web” of documents, presaging the World Wide Web almost 50 years before its invention.

In 1993 – John Carmack and friends at iD Software released the video game Doom. It would launch a million mods and make the first person shooter the dominant form of video game for decades.

Like Tech History? Purchase Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.

Frame Rate, Ye Olde Stuff

FR 152: Fire in the Hole!

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Frame Rate

Hosts: Tom Merritt, Brian Brushwood.

Netflix’s war on mass culture, ugly numbers behind unbundled cable, rumors of a Google Nexus set-top box, and more.

Download or subscribe to this show at twit.tv/fr.

We invite you to read, add to, and amend our show notes at wiki.twit.tv.

Thanks to Cachefly for the bandwidth for this show.

Please take the TWiT Audience Survey at http://twit.tv/showsurvey. It only takes a few minutes and we’d love to know what you think.

Running time: 1:12:11