The top technology news, views, interviews and reviews!
Archive for January, 2012
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Ep. 257 – 9 Algorithms That Changed the Future
Jan 25th
TOPIC: Dave and Mike have a great time, joined by John MacCormick discussing his new book “9 Algorithms That Changed the Future”! John breaks down the basics of everything from Euclid’s algorithm to modern day cryptography, web search and compression and somehow makes it accessible and easy to understand. If you’ve ever been mystified and impressed by all the goings-on that must be happening in that electronic box you stare at all day, this is the show to listen to!
Jay Garmon jumps in gives us some great trivia too:
What Apollo 1 crew practical joke became accepted NASA policy as a tribute to the loss of that mission’s crew?
Coolsites of the week included:
- The evergreen TechTalk Facebook page http://facebook.com/techtalkwrlr (don’t forget to “like” us)!
- Hipmunk comes up again, and of course …
- You’ll want to find out more about John MacCormick’s fantastic book here.
Podcast only song is the smooth “Swim Until You Can’t See Land” by Frightened Rabbit off of their Winter of Mixed Drinks album.
Ep. 256 – Ride the Tech Buffalo!
Jan 16th
TOPIC: Left to their own devices, Mike and Dave take the opportunity to rant and rave about their pet topics! That includes blogger’s rights, PIPA and SOPA, Google troubles, technobuffalo.com, Mahler ringtone interruptions and more!
Jay “Encyclopedia Garmonica” deserts us this week, but that’s OK, there’s always more Jay to be found at jaygarmon.net (check it out!). We do get in some cool sites of the day however, and some good ones they are too!
- TheReStartPage – All the greatest restart buttons and startup routines from the past 20 years!
- GraphWords – Like a mindmap for your thesaurus!
- Bib.Ly – Shorten and share bible verses and references; it doesn’t get any easier than this!
The podcast only song of the week is “Fences” by Wolfgang Amadeus Pheonix.
Ep. 255 – Reddit’s Erik Martin talks SOPA!
Jan 10th
TOPIC: You’ve heard Mike rant about SOPA often enough … it’s about time he got someone on-air knowledgeable about the darn thing! If you’ve been wondering what it is, or why we should hate it, Reddit‘s GM Erik Martin provides a much needed clear head and informed insight into the topic.
Not to let a show go without some sort of rant, Mike also gets his whine on about ereaders and newspapers and why they don’t combine forces offering low-cost ereaders with a subscription contract … which, judging by the news today somebody must have listened!
Jay Garmon joins us to answer last week’s geek trivia and present a great new one:
Who was the famous inventor that had the year 4000 exception suggestion to replace the leap year idea, and why was this suggestion not made into a rule?
We skip the whole coolsite of the week thing again (too much cool stuff going on with the show), but some places you should check out include:
- SOPA on Reddit – We discuss this on air, and it’s a great place to start for in-depth and current info about SOPA!
- Reddit.com – If you haven’t gotten there yet, well, it’s about time you did!
- TechTalk on Facebook – Don’t forget to “like” us if you’re a fan!
The podcast only song is the awesome “She Only Sleeps …” by David Byrne!
Special Report – Top Shows of 2011!
Jan 5th
It’s that time of year again when we start looking at the past year and thinking how great things were these last 12 months. Here at TechTalk HQ we’re no different, and have compiled our internal list of the “best of the best”!
We used a number of metrics to decide the listing, but however you slice it these shows were the ones we either kept going back to, were proud to have special guests on, or that listeners told us were their favorites directly or with the number of times they downloaded and listened to them!
Without further ado, and in no particular order, here’s the TechTalk Top 5 of 2011:
Ep. 249 – Klout Exec Megan Berry -=- This episode was far and away the most downloaded single show of the year. Not only was it a great interview, but we happened to nail the timing just right, with Klout showing up in the news in the weeks prior and after in a big way.
Ep. 247 – NYT Tech Writer Nick Bilton -=- Mike loves having smart people on-air, especially when they’re as interesting and hooked in as Nick is! This episode was a blast to record, and covers such a range of interesting material it had to show up on a best-of list somewhere!
Ep. 236 – Chip Bell is “Wired and Dangerous” -=- Great book, a great guest, what more can you ask for? If you’ve been feeling powerless over the retail sector (bought anything from Best Buy lately?) then this is the episode to cheer you up!
Ep. 235 – Matt Richtel’s “Idle Hands” -=- Matt needs to start writing more books. Not just so that we can read them, but so we can convince him to come on the show more than once a year!
Ep. 233 – VaporStream and IT Harvest -=- After episode 249 with Klout, this was the next most downloaded and listened to show in 2011 by a good margin. Although the security and social networking topic is a very serious one to listeners and corporations, our discussion with these execs is great fun, and worth listening to again if you haven’t for a while!
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
These were some great episodes too, and tough to not include in our top 5 … so we’re putting them here! If you missed ’em, this is a great second chance. Some of the news in the show might be dated, but the interviews and info are great.
Ep. 230 – Transhman much? -=- What does it mean to be human in an age when we do so little for ourselves? Mike and his guests take a good shot at an answer!
Ep. 217 – Facebook for Old Folks! -=- Mike Miller is a regular for a reason, and this show (and his book) confirm why!
Ep. 227 – LeBlanc Dishes on Jive -=- Jive is just a cool software company doing neat stuff … and Bryan LeBlanc tells us why and how!
Ep. 254 – The year in review (and other random stuff)
Jan 4th
TOPIC: Happy new years, listeners! Can you believe we’ve finished another trip around the sun so quickly? And that so much happened this last 12-months? We have a great and quite random discussion about this, talking about top stories of 2012 and spending altogether too much time discussing the loss of Steve Jobs.
Jay EncycloGarmonica does us the service of answering the previous question and provides a new and quite current “ripped from the headlines” trivia question for you:
Why is the US Government looking to rule whether the X-Men should be considered human beings or not?
No coolsites this week – but check our Facebook page http://facebook.com/techtalkwrlr for some “Best Of”‘s for 2011!
Podcast only song, after the break, is “Help, I’m Alive!” by Metric.
