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.
The retirement of the Cingular name sends Dr. Dave back to his own migration from AT&T to Cingular and now toward AT&T again. He sees the BellSouth purchase and rebranding as part of a striking reversal in which the pieces separated by the telephone divestiture begin consolidating under the old name decades later.
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After watching a program about eBay, Dr. Dave marvels at the infrastructure and at small sellers who turned personal interests into businesses from home. On Independence Day weekend, he calls eBay a powerful convergence of technology, capitalism and American opportunity.
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Soon after the Canadian iTunes Store opened, Dr. Dave and Evil Steve compare song prices in Canada, the United States, Europe and Britain and wonder whether an American listener could simply shop through the Canadian store.
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Dr. Dave admits that he rarely takes a cheerleading position but wants Palm and WebOS to succeed, while the brothers weigh whether a long period of secrecy and anticipation will help the launch or exhaust its audience.
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Dr. Dave remembers becoming skilled with AT&T Unix and Microsoft Xenix because clients used Radio Shack’s powerful, comparatively inexpensive multi-user systems. The recollection connects his early consulting work directly to a largely forgotten chapter of small-business computing.
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Dr. Dave explains that Skype let him hold long conversations with clients in South Africa and Australia without enormous international telephone bills. He pairs his enthusiasm for the sound quality and reach with a newly disclosed software flaw and prompt update, preserving both the promise and the risks of early Internet calling.
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Reviewing a list of consequential software, Dr. Dave explains that early personal computers were largely programming tools or toys until VisiCalc let nonprogrammers produce something useful for business. Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Excel then built on that change.
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Early Internet-calling adoption, a client’s delighted report of a call to South Africa and predictions of converging services. Skype and the shift away from conventional telephone networks make this broader history, not a minor-service advertisement.
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Satya Nadella's appointment as Microsoft chief executive lets Dr. Dave connect a current corporate transition with people he remembers from the industry's early years. He contrasts young Bill Gates' intensely technical evangelism with Steve Ballmer's exuberant salesmanship, then considers how a cloud leader might guide a company that had expanded from software into services and hardware.
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Asked about using distant software and servers instead of owning a full computer, Dr. Dave contrasts the idea with old mainframe terminals. He says personal computers became revolutionary because people could customize, move and change their tools without waiting for someone in a central computer room.
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A report about the survival of mainframes leads Dr. Dave to a larger idea: older technologies do not always vanish when something new appears; they evolve into a different role. He immediately applies the lesson to terrestrial radio and argues that misunderstanding what radio actually offers could cause management to hasten the decline it fears.
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After a difficult year for Microsoft, Dr. Dave wonders why rivals are not showing more competitive instinct. Apple is making progress, but he says the deeper secret behind Microsoft's success is that everyone else keeps lying down; rather than merely complain, somebody should give the company a real run for its money.
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Dr. Dave and Evil Steve imagine a future in which a single connected device changes shape instead of making a person carry a phone, tablet and laptop, then jokingly claim the new phrase “origamic technology” on the air.
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At a live appearance, a listener hands Dr. Dave a November 1993 issue of Southern Arizona's Computer Guide containing two of his articles, including one asking whether readers should wait for the still-delayed Windows 95.
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Dr. Dave opens the pre-Halloween edition as the scariest high-tech show in America, credits Evil Steve and asks whether Evil Steve noticed the jack-o-lantern emoticon placed on DaveMason.com. The passage preserves a seasonal example of the brothers designing and discussing the original site during the broadcast.
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Dr. Dave and Evil Steve reflect that a program named Computer Talk can no longer stay confined to computers because digital technology now reaches phones, television, cameras, Internet calling and much of daily life. Their solution is jokingly to rename it a show about everything.
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Gina suggests asking listeners who hear Computer Talk on Wednesdays or other unexpected days to identify their stations. Dr. Dave explains that affiliates sometimes take the satellite feed without reporting it, leaving the family to discover the show's reach through emails and phone calls after the fact.
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On the tenth anniversary of Windows 95, Dr. Dave and Evil Steve remember attending a satellite launch presentation with Jeff. They recall the event as exciting and world changing and connect it with the beginning of the Internet boom that followed.
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The line that every hard disk becomes too small if one waits long enough takes Dr. Dave back to IBM AT computers with 20-megabyte Seagate drives. Geeks with half-full 10-megabyte drives asked who could possibly need so much space, much as a 20-terabyte drive would have sounded extravagant in 2008.
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A discussion of excessive video effects reminds Dr. Dave and Evil Steve of early desktop publishing, when people used a different font and color in every sentence simply because computers suddenly allowed it.
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Dr. Dave carries more than a gigabyte of flash storage in his pocket while Evil Steve wears a drive around his neck. They joke that portable storage has already moved from a geek accessory to a matter of survival and appreciate a new sliding connector that solves the ordinary problem of lost caps.
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Dr. Dave and Evil Steve compare the rise and fade of MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, concluding that Facebook’s practical ability to connect friends, relatives and clients gave it value even to older relatives who were newly coming online.
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Dr. Dave remembers learning through early copy-protection experiments, then describes a recent conversation with an IBM veteran about choosing between 20 and 40 megabyte hard drives for the IBM AT.
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Dr. Dave and Evil Steve realize the program has grown beyond computers, improvise a transition to “common sense technology” and then describe the original DaveMason.com layout with its two blog links, portrait and signature.
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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.
