DaveMason.com
ComputerTalk with Dave Mason
The official archive of all available ComputerTalk with Dave Mason radio shows. Spend some time with Dave. Listen to a full show or explore clips by topic.
3,475 unique clips. Each clip appears in one section. Historical conversations, not current advice. Full episodes remain available separately by date.
562 clips, strongest first.
Before the acquisition announcement, Dr. Dave and Evil Steve discuss reports that Google may buy YouTube. Dr. Dave explains that Google already has video technology but YouTube has built the community, making the audience rather than immediate profit the central source of value.
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Dr. Dave and Evil Steve examine Google’s new online spreadsheet while the product is still in beta. They describe immediate saving, simultaneous collaboration, Excel importing and browser based access, then measure the early limitations against the familiar desktop spreadsheet.
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Dr. Dave reports that Detroit radio was being used to test Google’s AdSense for radio and predicts that automated ad brokering could change how radio and print advertising were sold. He also describes radio as a traditional industry in which new ideas face resistance until someone proves they work.
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Samsung’s Orion announcement gives the brothers a view of phones gaining multicore processing, high-definition output and capabilities once associated with full computers.
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Before solid state storage became ordinary, Dr. Dave and Evil Steve explain a coming notebook drive that combines flash memory with a spinning platter. They anticipate fewer spin ups, lower power use, less heat and noise and a design intended to work closely with Windows Vista.
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Days before Macworld, Apple has said nothing about the rumored iPod phone, so Dr. Dave, Evil Steve and station engineer Larry examine half a dozen speculative designs. Their preference for a pearly iPod-like body with a large screen and slide-out keyboard preserves how even informed observers imagined the device immediately before Apple revealed something very different.
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For Indianapolis 500 weekend, Dr. Dave describes racing cars transmitting telemetry, voice and video over a hardened Wi-Fi network to engineers and crew. He emphasizes that much of the underlying technology resembles equipment ordinary computer users already knew, adapted for heat, vibration and racing conditions.
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Dr. Dave describes Intel’s quad core announcement as a return to the processor competition after AMD had held the performance lead. He welcomes AMD’s price cuts and says renewed competition is good for people buying computers.
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A discussion of the Pagani Huayra leads Dr. Dave back to racer and engineer Jim Hall. He describes an active wing that flattened on the straight and changed under braking, then marvels that modern cars were revisiting an idea Hall had explored decades earlier.
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Dr. Dave reacts to Intel’s demonstration of a light-based laptop connection that promised to move far beyond USB speed and serve storage, displays and other devices.
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On August 25, 2012, Dr. Dave marks the twenty-first anniversary of Linus Torvalds's original Linux announcement. He looks back at repeated predictions of the year of Linux on the desktop and sets up a broader history of how the platform actually grew.
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Dr. Dave discusses Microsoft’s newly announced Longhorn schedule, the delayed WinFS file system and his advice not to install a major Windows release immediately.
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Major Windows release expectations, including Avalon, Indigo and WinFS, capture what listeners were being told before release rather than a minor product promotion.
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As Apple moves to Intel processors and a hobbyist site receives a copyright notice, Dr. Dave says determined experimenters will find ways to run Mac OS X on conventional Intel computers simply to prove it can be done. He sees the restriction as a missed opportunity and predicts that heavy handed prevention will not stop the effort.
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Dr. Dave and Evil Steve react to Microsoft officially naming its new iPod rival Zune. They describe the promised combination of a hard drive and WiFi, including speculation that owners could share music wirelessly with other Zune devices.
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As Windows Phone 7 reaches code completion, Microsoft employees hold a mock funeral for the iPhone and BlackBerry, capturing the confidence—and competitive pressure—surrounding the company’s attempted mobile comeback.
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Dr. Dave explains that push email, once a revolutionary reason to own a BlackBerry, is no longer unique. Using his Palm Treo experience, he highlights control over when mail arrives and the possibility of stopping work email for a weekend, even as Evil Steve jokes that Dr. Dave himself will always keep checking.
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Looking ahead to Windows 8, Dr. Dave argues that iOS, Android, WebOS and tablets had finally created enough scale to pressure Microsoft to rethink a desktop interface paradigm rooted in keyboards and mice.
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Reporting an FCC workshop, Dr. Dave explores a future in which shared physical routers and circuits host multiple virtual networks with different purposes and rules. He finds the idea powerful because flexibility could grow without duplicating the entire internet.
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Dr. Dave reacts enthusiastically to Google placing government newsreels and documentaries from the National Archives online at no charge. He explains that the average person rarely reaches the physical archives and calls this kind of access exactly what the Internet was made for.
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Dr. Dave marks the end of one of the Internet's founding software technologies after AOL announces that Netscape browser development and support will stop. He explains the security consequence of using software without future patches and advises devoted users to move on, even if a Firefox skin preserves the familiar appearance.
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Before Nintendo’s Wii name and final controller design were known, Dr. Dave responds enthusiastically to the Revolution controller’s motion sensors. He imagines players standing, waving and eventually running and jumping rather than remaining still on a couch, recognizing physical interaction as a promising new direction for games.
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Dr. Dave calls the show archive one of the original website's most popular and frequently referenced areas. He and Evil Steve correct the available span from an initial eight or nine months to six, emphasizing that every broadcast segment was posted unedited for later listening or download.
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Dr. Dave reports that United States online spending passed one hundred billion dollars in 2006 and that holiday spending rose sharply. He also challenges the growing legend that Cyber Monday must be the year’s largest online shopping day, capturing electronic commerce as it entered the mainstream.
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Browse by year, then month, to find the episodes from that month.
442 proposed broadcast dates, plus 2 undated entries. Dates are based on archive filenames and may be approximate. Some broadcasts survive as separate parts or incomplete recordings.
