This Week in Tech (also called TWiT or the TWiTcast) is a weekly podcast (Internet radio show) hosted by several former hosts and cast members of the TechTV television program The Screen Savers, including Leo Laporte, Patrick Norton, Kevin Rose, and Robert Heron. Special guests have included Roger Chang, Yoshi DeHerrera, John C. Dvorak, Sarah Norton, and David Prager. The term podcasting is a portmanteau of the words iPod and broadcasting. ... Web radio (or Internet radio) is a broadcasting service transmitted via the Internet. ... TechTV (May 11, 1998 - May 28, 2004) was a 24-hour cable and satellite television channel based in San Francisco, California, featuring news and shows about computers, technology, and the Internet. ... A television program is the content of television broadcasting. ... The Screen Savers (May 11, 1998 - March 18, 2005) was a live American cable and satellite television program shown on G4 (formerly G4techTV). ... Leo Laporte (born November 29, 1956) is a technology broadcaster and author. ... Patrick Norton (born June 26th, 1970 in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois) was co-host and managing editor of The Screen Savers, TechTVs interactive show geared toward the tech enthusiast. ... Kevin Rose Robert Kevin Rose (born February 21, 1977; better known as Kevin Rose) is co-host of Attack of the Show (formerly The Screen Savers), which airs on G4 (formerly G4techTV). ... Roger Chang was a segment producer and on-air contributor for TechTV. He appeared regularly on Call For Help, and sometimes filled in for host Leo Laporte. ... Joshua Yoshi DeHerrera is a television personality who resides in Los Angeles, California. ... John C. Dvorak is a well known columnist on technology, specifically that relating to computing. ...

The episodes consist of Laporte talking to the other hosts about topics that would have been discussed on the original TechTV version of The Screen Savers, and taking audio questions from listeners. They also discuss what jobs they are currently involved in, such as Rose’s The Broken and Systm, and Yoshi’s From the Shadows. Categories: Stub ... Systm Logo Systm is an upcoming online videozine from the creators of The Broken, Kevin Rose and Dan Huard. ... From the Shadows is an online videozine created by Tom Rowles and John Hering. ...

History

The show started when Laporte recorded a “roundtable” between himself, Patrick Norton, Sarah Norton, Kevin Rose, David Prager, and Roger Chang at Macworld Expo 2005, and posted it to his weblog. They came up with the idea to make this into a weekly show featuring more former cast members from The Screen Savers. The first episode was posted on Monday, April 18, 2005, and weekly episodes have followed. Patrick Norton (born June 26th, 1970 in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois) was co-host and managing editor of The Screen Savers, TechTVs interactive show geared toward the tech enthusiast. ... Kevin Rose Robert Kevin Rose (born February 21, 1977; better known as Kevin Rose) is co-host of Attack of the Show (formerly The Screen Savers), which airs on G4 (formerly G4techTV). ... Roger Chang was a segment producer and on-air contributor for TechTV. He appeared regularly on Call For Help, and sometimes filled in for host Leo Laporte. ... Produced by Boston-based IDG World Expo, Macworld Conference & Expo is a trade show dedicated to the Apple Macintosh platform with conference tracks occurring twice a year in the United States. ... 2005 is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The first use of the term weblog. ... April 18 is the 108th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (109th in leap years). ... 2005 is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Title

At first, the show was called Revenge of The Screen Savers, showing that it would be an outlet for the hosts to talk about technology after The Screen Savers was acquired by G4, turned into more of a variety show, and eventually renamed to Attack of the Show. However, to prevent trademark infringement, the show was referred to as ROTSS, Revenge of the Bleep, or jokingly, Revenge of These Green Saviors. After the first episode, Laporte received a cease and desist letter from G4 for illegally using the name The Screen Savers. In the second episode, Laporte announced a contest in which the viewers could suggest a new name for the show. One listener suggested This Week in Geek, giving rise to the final name This Week in Tech. Official G4 logo G4 is a cable and satellite television channel geared toward viewers aged 12-34 and devoted to the world of video games and the people who play them. ... Logo Attack of the Show (previously named The Screen Savers) is a live American cable and satellite television program shown on G4. ... The Bass Red Triangle, was the first trademark registered in Britain in 1876. ... Cease-and-desist is a legal term meaning essentially stop: It is used in demands for a person or organization to stop doing something (to cease and desist from doing it). ...

Production and distribution

Laporte talks to the other hosts through an Internet audio chat. Since he records the show at his home, he records his own voice with a professional radio microphone. The other hosts' voices are not recorded until they are sent over the Internet and output on Laporte's computer, and therefore are of noticeably lower quality. Up to episode three, Laporte used Skype to talk to the other hosts. In episode four, Teamspeak was used, but Skype was used again in episodes five and six. A microphone with a cord A microphone, sometimes called a mic (pronounced mike), is a device that converts sound into an electrical signal. ... Skype (pronounced to rhyme with ripe) is a peer-to-peer internet telephony (VoIP) network, founded by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, the creators of Kazaa. ... Teamspeak is a voice communications software. ...

Starting with episode seven, the hosts plan to record their input audio individually, and send them to Laporte, who will then edit them together. This will greatly increase the production time needed to prepare each episode, but Laporte still plans to release a weekly episode every Sunday night. They have also talked about doing video chats through iChat in the future, and releasing both audio and video versions of the show. iChat is a AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and Jabber client for Mac OS X. Using a Jabber-like protocol and Apple Bonjour for user discovery, it also allows for LAN communication. ...

Listeners are encouraged to download the show via BitTorrent to reduce the demand on the official server. The show is available in four formats: 64 kbit/s MP3, 32 kbit/s MP3, AAC, and Ogg Vorbis. BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer (P2P) file distribution tool written by programmer Bram Cohen and debuted at CodeCon 2002. ... The term web server can mean one of two things: a computer responsible for serving web pages, mostly HTML documents, via the HTTP protocol to clients, mostly web browsers; a software program that is working as a daemon serving web documents. ... A kilobit per second (kbps or kbit/s) is a unit of data transmission equal to 1,000 bits per second. ... MP3 is a popular digital audio encoding and lossy compression format. ... Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is a lossy data compression scheme intended for audio streams. ... Vorbis is an open and free audio compression (codec) project from the Xiph. ...

Other details

Laporte announced in the third episode that the show will always be free, and will never include advertising. Listeners can donate via Paypal to fund the show. Paypal Logo PayPal is an Internet business which allows the transfer of money between email users, avoiding traditional paper methods such as checks/cheques and money orders. ...

All episodes are licensed under the Creative Commons share-alike license. Version 2 of Some Rights Reserved logo Some Rights reserved logo No Rights reserved logo The Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others to legally build upon and share. ... A share-alike copyright license clause requires that any improved version of the work be shared on like terms with everyone else—that is, share and share alike. ... Creative Commons, some rights reserved. ...

In episode four, Yoshi announced that he is soon to be married, and is expecting a child. In episode six, he announced that the child will be a boy.

Also in episode four, Rose announced that he will be leaving G4 to focus on his two internet videozines, The Broken and Systm.

External links

• This Week in Tech official website (http://thisweekintech.com/)
• Leo Laporte's blog (http://www.leoville.com/blog/)
• Systm (http://systm.org)
• The.Broken.Organization (http://thebroken.org)