Coordinates	33°55′31″N18°25′26″N
Name	Leo Laporte
Birth name	Léo Gordon Laporte
Birth date	November 29, 1956
Birth place	Manhattan, New York City
Show	Approx. 20 shows on the TWiT netcast network, also The Tech Guy through Premiere Radio Networks
Station	TWiT TV LLC; Premiere Radio Networks
Timeslot	Saturdays and Sundays Live at 11:00AM PST
Website	http://www.leoville.com/ http://leoville.squarespace.com http://www.techguylabs.com http://www.twit.tv }}

Léo Gordon Laporte (; born November 29, 1956 in Manhattan, New York City) is an Emmy Award winning, American technology broadcaster, author, and entrepreneur. A former resident of Providence, Rhode Island, he now lives in Petaluma, California with his wife Jennifer and two children, Abby and Henry.

Background

Laporte studied Chinese History at Yale University before dropping out in his junior year to pursue his career in radio broadcasting, where his early radio names were Dave Allen and Dan Hayes. He began his association with computers with his first home PC, an Atari 400. Leo has often told his radio and internet audience about how he purchased his first Macintosh in 1984, for $2000, from Macy's. He operated one of the first Macintosh-only bulletin board systems, MacQueue, from 1985 to 1988. In addition, Leo is highly skilled in martial arts. He has a black belt in Karate and Taekwondo.

Television and radio

Laporte has created, hosted, and contributed to a number of technology-related broadcasting projects. He created and co-hosted ''Dvorak On Computers'' in January 1991 (co-hosted with computer pundit John Dvorak), and hosted ''Laporte On Computers'' on KGO Radio and KSFO in San Francisco. In addition, Laporte also hosted ''Internet!'' on PBS, and ''The Personal Computing Show'' on CNBC. In 1997, he earned an Emmy Award for his work on MSNBC's ''The Site'', a daily Monday through Saturday hour-long newsmagazine he helped create and appeared on in the role of a computer-generated character named Dev Null.

In 1998, he created and co-hosted ''The Screen Savers'' and the original version of ''Call for Help'' on the cable and satellite network ZDTV (later ''TechTV''). Laporte left ''The Screen Savers'' in 2004, and then later left the network following a dispute with TechTV's then-outgoing owner, Vulcan Ventures, over stock ownership and the cancellation of ''Call for Help''. His contract ended on March 31, and his absence from ''The Screen Savers'' on April 1 was originally believed to be an April Fool's Day joke.

Laporte has also pursued acting, playing Uncle Charlie in the movie ''Phoenix Rising''.

Laporte was the host of the daily television show ''The Lab with Leo Laporte'', recorded in Vancouver, Canada. The program had formerly been known as ''Call for Help'' when it was recorded in the U.S. and Toronto. The series aired on G4techTV Canada, on the HOW TO Channel in Australia, on several of Canada's Citytv affiliates, and on Google Video some weeks after initial broadcast. On March 5, 2008, Laporte confirmed on ''net@nite'' that The Lab with Leo Laporte had been canceled by Rogers Communications. The HOW TO Channel refused to air the remaining episodes after it was announced the show had been canceled.

He also hosts a weekend technology-oriented talk radio program show titled ''Leo Laporte: The Tech Guy.'' The show, once an exclusive to KFI AM 640 (Los Angeles), is now syndicated on nearly 140 North American radio stations through Premiere Radio Networks, and on XM Satellite Radio. Laporte appears semi-regularly on ''Showbiz Tonight'', ''Live with Regis and Kelly'', ''World News Now'', and briefly with Bill Handel on Friday mornings on KFI. He has also been a guest technology expert on numerous talk radio programs in local markets across the U.S. and Canada.

Books

Laporte has authored a number of technology-oriented books such as ''101 Computer Answers You Need to Know'', ''Leo Laporte's 2005 Gadget Guide'', ''Leo Laporte's Guide to TiVo'', ''Leo Laporte's Guide to Mac OS X Tiger'' and ''Leo Laporte's PC Help Desk''. Laporte has also published a yearly series of technology almanacs: ''Leo Laporte's Technology Almanac'' and ''Poor Leo's Computer Almanac''. Laporte's latest and last book is Leo Laporte's 2006 Technology Almanac.

Throughout his career, he has contributed to a number of periodicals such as ''BYTE'', ''InfoWorld'', and ''MacUser''. Laporte announced in October 2006 that he will not renew his contract with Que Publishing and has retired from publishing his long series of books. He said, "Writing books is hard work and, love-starved groupies aside, the compensations are scant. I’ll put my energies into something I love to do, talking for a living."

In 2008, Laporte did the voice narration for the fable ''The True History of Little Golden-hood'' by Andrew Lang which was made available through Audible.

Netcasting

Laporte currently owns and operates a netcast network, TWiT.tv. The name is derived from the network's award-winning flagship podcast ''This Week in Tech'', or TWiT, which is hosted by Laporte along with a rotating panel of guests usually made up of several other former TechTV employees. This show remains one of the most popular podcasts on iTunes and other podcast subscription services, as evidenced by winning an award at the November 2005 Podcasting Expo in California for the year's best podcast and by its over 280,000 weekly downloads. Laporte claims TWiT earns $1.5 million annually on a production cost of only $350,000.

Laporte prefers to call his shows "netcasts," saying "I've never liked the word podcast. It causes confusion … people have told me that they can't listen to my shows because they 'don't own an iPod' … I propose the word 'netcast.' It's a little clearer that these are broadcasts over the Internet. It's catchy and even kind of a pun." With the addition of TWiT.tv's live video feed, the shows are no longer audio-only.

Twit network "netcast" formats include

Security: ''Security Now!'' with Steve Gibson

Macintosh: ''MacBreak'' and ''MacBreak Weekly''

Windows: ''Windows Weekly'' with Paul Thurrott

Open Source software: ''FLOSS Weekly''

Google and the cloud: ''TWiG'' (This Week in Google) with Jeff Jarvis and Gina Trapani

Android: ''All About Android''

Daily tech news: ''Tech News Today''

iPad: ''iPad Today''

Amateur Radio: ''HamNation'' with Bob Heil (K9EID), Leo Laporte (W6TWT) & guests.

others: '' The Weekly Daily Giz Wiz'' (formerly known as ''The Daily Giz Wiz'') with Dick DeBartolo, ''The Social Hour'' with Amber MacArthur, ''Roz Rows The Pacific'', and the ''NSFW Show'' with Brian Brushwood and Justin Robert Young.

By December 2010, his 23 shows were downloaded over 5,000,000 times a month.

Recent publicized events

On March 14, 2010, Leo Laporte made the World Record for the longest live-streamed Crowd-Surf, as recognized by URDB World Records, which he performed during a live episode of Diggnation at the SXSW Interactive event in Austin Texas.

In May 2010, Leo publicly deleted his Facebook account live on the air after frequent recommendations from other co-hosts. Laporte later re-activated his Facebook account to try out Facebook Places. He frequently pointed out in his shows that his attitude towards Facebook did not change, but that for being a journalist he needs to know what is happening on this important platform.

TWiT Live

Leo now hosts an online tech-oriented video stream ''TWiT Live''. It is currently broadcast through two BitGravity streams, as well as an audio only stream, a Justin.tv channel and a Ustream channel which are all live every day from about 11AM to 7 PM PST. A complete, official programming schedule can be found on Google Calendar for TWiT Live

On July 11, 2008 Laporte produced a special 24-hour show about the release of the iPhone 3G. It received 500,733 views, with a peak of over 100,000 concurrent viewers.

The TWiT network's broadcast content was added in November 2009 as a free channel on the new Roku streaming media device and can also be viewed on many internet-enabled televisions.

On January 27, 2010 Laporte hosted over 180,000 concurrent viewers as he provided in-depth coverage including live video and audio feeds from Apple's January 27 Event, where Apple's iPad was first revealed by Steve Jobs.

In January 2011 Laporte signed a new lease for a warehouse space in downtown Petaluma which became the new TWiT headquarters in July of 2011. This former furniture factory is a large facility that has more room for various studio setups and audience seating. The facility that houses the new TWiT Studios has been many former businesses including a drug store (one that Leo once even took his children to), a furniture factory, and the main building for Bias Audio. The first broadcast of TWiT from there took place on July 24, 2011 and featured John C. Dvorak, Kevin Rose, Patrick Norton, and Steve Gibson.

References

External links

leolaporte Twitter feed

Leo Laporte's official website

Leo Laporte's ''The Tech Guy'' radio show notes site

''This Week in Tech'' Netcast/Podcast Network official website

''The Lab with Leo Laporte'' official website

Leo Laporte's ClaimID page

Leo Laporte Stickam

Leo Laporte, Patrick Norton at a CompUsa meet and greet event

TWiT Army

Category:1956 births Category:Living people Category:American bloggers Category:American podcasters Category:American talk radio hosts Category:American television personalities Category:Canadian television hosts Category:TechTV Category:People from Sonoma County, California Category:People from Manhattan Category:American Internet personalities

fr:Leo Laporte ru:Лео Лапорте sv:Leo Laporte

Coordinates	33°55′31″N18°25′26″N
Name	J. Michael Arrington
Birth date	March 13, 1970
Nationality	American
Occupation	Blogger, entrepreneur
Website	TechCrunch
Footnotes	}}

J. Michael Arrington (born March 13, 1970 in Orange, California) is the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a blog covering the Silicon Valley technology start-up communities and the wider technology field in USA and elsewhere. Magazines such as ''Wired'' and ''Forbes'' have named Arrington one of the most powerful people on the Internet.

In 2008, he was selected by ''TIME'' Magazine as one of the most influential people in the world. Wired magazine also included him in a flowchart of "internet blowhards" citing his obsession with "Web 2.0".

Biography

Arrington grew up in Huntington Beach, California and Surrey, England, attended the University of California, Berkeley and graduated from Claremont McKenna College with a major in economics. He went on to Stanford Law School and graduated in 1995. He practiced corporate and securities law at O’Melveny & Myers, and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

Arrington left the practice of law to join Real Names, which failed after raising $100M. Arrington was co-founder of Achex, an internet payments company, which was sold to First Data Corp for US$32 million and is now the back end of Western Union online. "I made enough to buy a Porsche. Not much more," he says.

His other entrepreneurial endeavors include co-founding Zip.ca and Pool.com, acting as chief operating officer for Razorgator, and founding Edgeio. He was also more recently on the board of directors for the startup Foldera which was designing a software as a service organizational tool.

TechCrunch

Arrington rose to internet prominence with his Silicon Valley blog, TechCrunch. TechCrunch covers internet startups and news.

Controversy

Arrington has been known to advocate dropping out of college, stating at the 2010 UC-Berkeley Distinguished Innovator Lecture Series that “the best thing in the world is to go to Harvard for a year and drop out. Everyone knows you were smart enough to get in”.

See also

CrunchPad

Notes

External links

Profile at CrunchBase

Index of Michael Arrington's writings on uFollow

"TechCrunch Site Makes Arrington A Power Broker", ''Wall Street Journal'', 2006-11-03

"The makings of a media mogul: Michael Arrington", ''Elias Bizannes's blog'', 2008-12-26

Category:1970 births Category:American bloggers Category:American Internet personalities Category:Claremont McKenna College alumni Category:Dot-com people Category:Living people Category:People from Orange County, California Category:People from Surrey Category:Stanford Law School alumni

cv:Майкл Аррингтон de:Michael Arrington fr:Michael Arrington ru:Аррингтон, Майкл