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.
Dr. Dave welcomes a renewed browser war and describes Opera’s ambition to run across desktop computers, mobile devices and game systems. He contrasts Opera and Firefox with the coming Internet Explorer 7 and connects better developer tools with broader adoption.
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Opera founder Jon von Tetzchner describes building a browser inside Norway’s telecommunications research organization in the early 1990s and negotiating to take the software out as a company. The memorable turning point comes after waiting months for Mosaic to add printing and copying, only to receive an update that still said the commands were not implemented.
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PayPal prepares to offer customers a small key fob that generates a fresh six-digit code every thirty seconds in addition to the ordinary password. Dr. Dave calls it another layer rather than a silver bullet, preserving an early mainstream explanation of two-factor authentication for online payments.
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A research announcement about processing with light leads Dr. Dave and Evil Steve beyond speed and heat limits to the more exciting prospect that a new technical capability can create discoveries nobody knows to ask for yet.
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Dr. Dave describes PHP as a simple language powering blogs, forums and automated web features, then says Java had grown toward the complexity it was intended to avoid. He cites the shift as an example of a simpler tool overtaking a more ambitious one because it solves the everyday job directly.
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Dr. Dave explains that websites often vanish when their owners run out of money, energy or purpose, then describes volunteers racing to preserve GeoCities, Friendster and FortuneCity. His invitation to explore old versions at Archive.org has special meaning inside a memorial project devoted to saving his own work.
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Dr. Dave describes a targeted search service for documents that ordinary engines did not index and reminds listeners that the Library of Congress can be searched online. The contrast captures an early effort to find specialized information beyond familiar web pages and a joke about needing a USB port to index one’s own mind.
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Friedrichs describes a Symantec and Intel effort to use processor virtualization so security software could run in a separate compartment below the guest operating system. Dr. Dave recognizes the potential advantage of protecting a computer from a level that malicious software would have difficulty reaching.
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Dr. Dave marks the anniversary of the 1988 Morris worm and explains how an experimental self-replicating program unexpectedly overwhelmed early internet-connected systems.
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Beginning with memory cards and an IBM enterprise system, Dr. Dave explains how large organizations pay the early cost of developing technology that later reaches ordinary buyers. He predicts solid-state storage will appear first in high-end laptops, spread to desktops and become mainstream within roughly five years, eliminating many mechanical-drive failures while never becoming literally perfect.
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Dr. Dave contrasts disappointing earlier speech recognition systems with a new release that could begin transcribing without a long training session. The brothers distinguish speech recognition from screen reading, joke about talking to the computer and discuss the performance cost of running many programs at once.
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Dr. Dave records Steve Jobs’s unexpected appearance for the iPad 2 launch, the importance Jobs placed on presenting it himself and the major hardware changes that made the new tablet both compelling and imperfect.
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Remembering Bill Gates devoting his 2001 Comdex keynote to tablets, Dr. Dave notes that the form did not become a broadly practical alternative until roughly 2011. He sees the long gap as evidence that technology companies must continually create interest in the next product, then predicts that a fuller convergence of smartphone and watch could become genuinely compelling.
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Facebook’s new download feature and application dashboard let Dr. Dave describe an early attempt to make a closed social network more portable and to show users how widely connected applications could share their information.
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Dr. Dave and Evil Steve describe how flat displays, digital video recorders and broadband were bringing television back to the center of computing and giving viewers more control over what they watched.
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Coherent vice president Mark Munch describes emerging terahertz laser work in cancer imaging and atmospheric ozone sensing while Dr. Dave connects it to the once-fantastical image of lasers becoming practical, even life-saving technology. The exchange captures the wonder and uncertainty of a field still moving from laboratories and clinical trials into public awareness.
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Asked to look beyond current products, Synaptics interface architect John Phelan predicts wearable displays, Minority Report-style gestures and people carrying their identity on a mobile phone, then docking into screens and keyboards wherever they go. Dr. Dave and Evil Steve hear what had been science fiction becoming practical technology.
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The hosts discuss reported correspondence in which Palm rejected Apple's proposed agreement not to recruit each other's employees, an early marker of the talent rivalry surrounding the iPhone and Palm Pre era.
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The hosts react to the unusual arrangement in which Hewlett-Packard sold Apple-branded iPods, capturing an easily forgotten moment in major consumer-technology history.
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In 2012, Dr. Dave explains that cloud was a newly compelling label for services delivered over the Internet. He identifies the practical advantage that made the model matter: the same service could work across Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iPhone and BlackBerry without a separate packaged version for each.
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Dr. Dave and Evil Steve introduce the Slingbox as a small personal television broadcaster that could send live or recorded home programming to a laptop over broadband, capturing place-shifting television before it became familiar.
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Dr. Dave remembers the enormous expectations around the AOL-Time Warner merger and traces how the relationship unraveled until the announced separation. His warning to people still paying AOL despite another internet connection captures a major transition in consumer internet history.
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Dr. Dave assesses the first HTC and T-Mobile G1 as a consumer-focused phone built around Google services, a tactile keyboard and an operating system designed for third-party expansion from launch. He contrasts that openness with the first iPhone's tight control but refuses to declare a winner before developers and early adopters reveal what the new platform can actually become.
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Dr. Dave introduces Intel's new Core i7 line, focusing on multicore performance, hyper-threading, heat and the move to an integrated memory controller. The excitement records a major processor transition rather than a minor bargain.
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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.
