NerdTV now officially on the air

[Brian]

The first episode of NerdTV, Robert X. Cringely's weekly downloadable TV-show-and-podcast where he interviews notable nerds, is now officially available for download .

What is NerdTV?

NerdTV is a new weekly online TV show from PBS.org technology columnist Robert X. Cringely. NerdTV is essentially Charlie Rose for geeks - a one-hour interview show with a single guest from the world of technology. Guests like Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy or Apple computer inventor Steve Wozniak are household names if your household is nerdy enough, but as historical figures and geniuses in their own right, they have plenty to say to ALL of us. NerdTV is distributed under a Creative Commons license so viewers can legally share the shows with their friends and even edit their own versions. If not THE future of television, NerdTV represents A future of television for niche audiences that have deep interest in certain topics.

In Bob's first episode, he interviews Andy Hertzfeld, the first Macintosh programmer. Andy talks about the history of the Mac and what led him to embrace Open Source Software.

NerdTV is available in MP4 video format, and MP3, Ogg Vorbis, and AAC audio formats.

[Bob Russell]

Very nice! And the alternative formats are great. I am downloading the mp3 file to listen to on my commute.

[Brian]

Originally Posted by BobR

Very nice! And the alternative formats are great. I am downloading the mp3 file to listen to on my commute.

I forgot to mention that there is a transcript of each episode too for all of you MobileReaders out there, perfect for Sunrise and Plucker.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/nerdtv/transcripts/001.html

It's great to see a technology pundit embrace open/standard formats and use the Creative Commons license for his content.

Brian

[Colin Dunstan]

Thanks for the link. Very entertaining show!

[Brian]

I just finished watching Episode 03. Bill interviewed Bill Joy the author of BSD and co-founder of Sun.

I found this episode very interesting for a number of reasons. Bill is now a partner in the venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers. As you can see in my current signature, I'm listening to eBoys, a book about venture capital firms and how the very important role they play in driving technology and entrepreneurship. It's a real eye-opener, and we really have these entrepreneurs and the venture capitalists who back them to thank for many of the breakthroughs in technology and the internet. As Bill mentions in the interview, the venture capitalists' rolodex is as important, if not more important for startups than the financial backing they provide.

Bill talks about the history of computing, how computers got faster and smaller, and how handhelds and smartphones with small screens and thumboards, have now reached a level of computing power that is significant because you can have a computer with you all of the time.

And the personal computers kept shrinking and/or getting more powerful for very long period, maybe 20 years. And then suddenly what happened was we passed a threshold where the miniaturization allowed suddenly a phone, cell phone had the power of what your computer used to be but now if fits in your pocket and a little tiny keyboard, little tiny screen and is always connected. That's very different. So the computers on the information side are becoming less recognizably kind of morphologically, kind of the same shape just shrunk and slightly altered as they were 30 years ago. They're becoming more invisible. They're having different ways of interacting with them by talking to them or touching them or having them always with you as opposed to something that's in your bag which you don't always have with you.

This discussion leads into Bill's mention of Jeff Hawkins, his book On Intelligence, his theoretical neuroscience research, and how if he is correct, it will be an incredible breakthrough in computing.

Jeff Hawkins has a new book that's very interesting on intelligence and talks about his theory of this and if his theory's correct that would be an advance. But simply having a fast computer doesn't mean we'll know how to make it intelligent. It certainly helps to make a smart computer if it can go faster.

Bob Cringely then mentions James Surowiecki's book The Wisdom of Crowds, another one of my favorite books.

For Bill Joy (a venture capitalist as well as a leader in computing) to mention the significance of smartphones, handheld computing and Jeff Hawkins' cortical intelligence research within the same discussion , it is in my opinion very important.

Check out this episode.