Lisa Napoli got a job straight out of college at CNN in its earliest days, which is a crazy startup story in it’s own right. But then she worked for a time at Delphi, which was an early online service and competitor to AOL and Prodigy that I don’t think we’ve covered much here before. And then she helped bring the NYTimes online with CyberTimes, which, as she said, is forgotten to history even by the New York Times. Then on to MSNBC, a crazy hybrid tech and media startup that I don’t think we’ve...
Jul 08, 2018•1 hr 6 min•Transcript available on Metacast Rosanne Siino has been on my list to talk to from day one of this podcast. As you know, I started by reaching out to Netscape folks and Rosanne was the head of communications for that very first dotcom company. She saw it all, she can give us her take on both the engineering side and the management side, since she was uniquely able to observe both. Rosanne and I were recently on a documentary series currently airing on A&E in the US, The Untold Story of the 90s. So, I reached out, and we rec...
Jun 24, 2018•1 hr 2 min•Transcript available on Metacast HUGE Podcast Announcement! Details on how to pre-order the podcast book! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Jun 16, 2018•3 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today we're going to go back to take a look at early journalism on the web. Karl Mattson helped launched one of the first political news websites, ElectionLine. He helped cover the 1996 election when covering an election on the web was a completely new thing. He then moved to AOL, helped run their news channels and has some amazing historical details about he era, especially the Clinton intern scandal. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information....
Jun 10, 2018•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast Claude Shannon was a mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer known as "the father of information theory." In the pantheon of cool people who made the modern information era possible, he’s right up there. Today, we’re going to talk about Shannon’s life with Jimmy Sony and Rob Goodman, authors of a great biography of the man called A Mind At Play, How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age . Especially you software engineers out there, if you don’t know who Claude Shannon was, g...
May 27, 2018•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast Summary: Robert Reid, the founder of Rhapsody, can be considered the Godfather (founding father?) of the streaming music reality we now live in. But guess what? That's only half of this episode! Because it turns out, Robert is the author of a book that was probably one of the biggest reasons I started doing this podcast. The book was Architects of the Web, 1000 Days that Built the Future of Business . It was one of the first books to come out about the history of the web era. It was publish...
May 13, 2018•1 hr 29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jason Kottke, of kottke.org fame, was one of the early bloggers, one of the first bloggers to go pro, and one of the few solo bloggers still going. If you know Kottke.org, then you love it. How could you not? If you’ve never heard of it, you can thank me later. This episode examines what it means to be a publisher on the web for 20 years as well as the discipline required to find cool stuff on the web every single day (almost). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out informatio...
Apr 29, 2018•1 hr 4 min•Transcript available on Metacast People have been yelling at me for years that I’ve not covered more technical aspects of the web’s history, especially things like Java. Specifically Java. The argument can be made that Java helped the web evolve into what it’s become. So, that’s why I was thrilled to sit down with Todd Sundsted, who is a developer who has been working with Java for more than 20 years. Todd walks us through the history of Java and why it is so important to the web’s general evolution. See acast.com/p...
Apr 15, 2018•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today, a man who needs no introduction: New York Times Technology Columnist Farhad Manjoo. This episode was recorded about two months or so ago, so we talk about the book leave Farhad is on that he only recently made public, but of course, we get into his whole career and his unique vantage point and views on the world of tech. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information....
Apr 01, 2018•59 min•Transcript available on Metacast No joke, this is one of my favorite episodes we've ever done. Eugene Wei was an early employee at Hulu, so we get some details on that company for the first time, and he also worked at Flipboard and Oculus, so we get some important context especially on the future of VR and the like. But the most fascinating stories you'll hear will be about Amazon, where Eugene was the first analyst in the strategic planning department. As you'll hear, Eugene had a unique perspective on Amazon's early strategy ...
Mar 17, 2018•1 hr 14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Claire Evans is the author of the new book: Broad Band The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet. This is the best tech history book I’ve read in a while and you know I read them all. Of special note, considering our 90s-heavy focus on this podcast, the book includes the stories of Word.com, which was a competitor to Feed.com (which we’ve previously covered) and Women.com which was a competitor to Ivillage (which, again, we’ve spoke at length about). But you also get an amazing portair...
Mar 04, 2018•1 hr 7 min•Transcript available on Metacast Podcast listener Thomas Ganter gives us a first person, anecdotal account of how the web came to Germany in the 1990s. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Feb 19, 2018•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast Gregg Spiridellis has been making things go viral on the web since before the term VIRAL was even a thing. His company, JibJab has been producing web videos since the dialup dotcom era, producing hits you might remember such as Elf Yourself, Nasty Santa and This Land Is Your Land. JibJab has survived the dotcom bust, the coming of broadband, the coming of YouTube, the coming of social media and the mobile internet. What you’ll hear today is absolutely a masterclass in pivoting, in adapting a bus...
Feb 05, 2018•1 hr 4 min•Transcript available on Metacast David Pakman is a well respected venture capitalist at Venrock, but also a lifelong musician and music fan. Earlier in his career he played a significant role in bringing music to the web. David tells us about cofounding Apple’s Music Group, his role in facilitating the first digital sales of music online at dotcom-era companies N2K and MyPlay, and competing directly against iTunes when he was at eMusic. As a bonus, he gives us some background on the more recent founding story of Dollar Shave Cl...
Jan 21, 2018•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast It gets my goat that these days, the history of ecommerce begins and ends with Amazon. There were so many companies and big ideas that got us where we are today, and one of the most important companies was Open Market. Jeff Bussgang is here to tell us the (today) often overlooked story of the earliest days of trying to sell stuff on the web. Today, Jeff is a General Partner at Flybridge Capital Partners. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information....
Jan 08, 2018•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast An exploration of what it was like to come of age in the early web era. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Dec 18, 2017•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast Plato was an online and interactive learning computer system developed in the 1960s at the University of Illinois. But in the early 1970s, Plato got truly networked, and the users took over. Plato had already pioneered such things as touch screen computing, but the kids introduced and pioneered concepts like forums, message boards, e-mail, chat rooms, instant messaging, multiplayer games and even emoticons/emojis were pioneered on the Plato system. Buy The Friendly Orange Glow See ac...
Dec 11, 2017•1 hr 9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Bob Stein was the founder of Voyager, publisher of the first consumer CDROM titles, and, far and away the leader of the CDROM industry in the late 1980s and early 90s. Bob was also one of the founders of the Criterion Collection, as well as the publisher of the first electronic books. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information....
Nov 27, 2017•1 hr•Transcript available on Metacast You might know him as Rob Malda, or you might know him as CmdrTaco, but he was the founder of the great geek social website Slashdot. Slashdot recently turned 20 years old, Rob commemorated this in a great Medium post, and so I reached out to him to tell us the story of one of the first great social media websites. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information....
Nov 12, 2017•1 hr 20 min•Transcript available on Metacast Dave Winer has been called the godfather of a lot of things. The godfather of blogging. The Godfather of Podcasting. One of the key people involved in the development of RSS. But as you’ll hear in this great and wide-ranging chat, Dave Winer is just a software developer who has never stopped tinkering, never lost his interest in coming up with new tools and new technologies. Dave was kind enough to sit down and go over his whole career, from the very earliest days of the PC era, to the present d...
Oct 30, 2017•2 hr 37 min•Transcript available on Metacast SUMMARY: Nicole Laporte has a cover story in Fast Company magazine this month about Giphy, potentially the next big story in online advertising and marketing, as well as… search? Read her profile of Giphy here . See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information....
Oct 16, 2017•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Om Malik is, of course, a legend. One of the first journalists on the “tech beat” in the 1990s, one of the first bloggers to “turn pro,” one of the driving forces behind the Web 2.0 time period, and one of the most trusted analysts of the technology industry in general, today he is a venture capitalist at True Ventures. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information....
Oct 01, 2017•1 hr 8 min•Transcript available on Metacast What is generally considered the worst merger of all time, and certainly the crescendo event of the dotcom bubble era, today we take a look at the AOL/Time Warner merger, again with the excellent guys at the podcast Acquired . See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information....
Sep 17, 2017•2 hr 46 min•Transcript available on Metacast David Shen was employee #17 at Yahoo, where he eventually had a hand in, not only the birth of advertising as the primary business model for the web but, eventually, the development of digital ads into their more modern, interactive form. As you'll hear, David recounts the early days of Yahoo, surviving the dotcom bust and taking advertising beyond the simple banner ad. And he recounts all of this in his recently published new book: Takeover! The Inside Story of the Yahoo! Ad Revolution &nb...
Sep 03, 2017•1 hr 5 min•Transcript available on Metacast Karel Baloun was the first senior software engineer hired at Facebook in 2005. This was after the Accel round of funding, when Facebook truly began to staff up and grow up. Baloun was only at Facebook for a year, from 2005 to 2006, but he provides some amazing insights about the company. What was Facebook’s culture like in 2005? What were the key innovations that ultimately let Facebook succeed where others failed? Would Zuckerberg make a good President of the United States? What became of Pokey...
Aug 13, 2017•1 hr 3 min•Transcript available on Metacast Just as last week’s episode posted, another great piece about SoundCloud was posted on Buzzfeed by the great Ryan Mac. So, in a rare attempt by me to be topical, today’s episode is with Ryan Mac, discussing his article, which fills in some of the details about what Christina and I were speculating on last week. Ryan’s article can be found here . See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information....
Aug 06, 2017•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Our friend Christina Warren is back for another analysis episode. Christina recently posted a tweetstorm about SoundCloud, and its prospects for the future. So she kindly agreed to come on the show, look at the history of SoundCloud as a company, and try to help me figure out why SoundCloud finds itself on the brink of oblivion. You all know Christina from her years at Mashable and most recently, Gizmodo. As you’ll hear toward the end, she’s at Microsoft now, and you can always hear her on the R...
Jul 30, 2017•1 hr 9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Don Melton is popularly known as the father of the Safari web browser or WebKit. He’s basically a web browser legend. Not only does Don tell us a lot of great stuff about Safari, WebKit, Apple and more, but he was also an early Netscape employee, so we get some more great details about that company, especially in its later stages. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information....
Jul 23, 2017•2 hr 50 min•Transcript available on Metacast The first text message (or, to be accurate, SMS message) was sent on December 3, 1992. It was sent by Neil Papworth, and it said, “Merry Christmas.” This is the story of that first text, recorded for the first time. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Jul 09, 2017•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast As promised, Mike Slade is back to tell stories from the period 1998 through 2004, when he was Special Assistant to Steve Jobs. Background details on the iMac, the iPod and the iPhone and more! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Jun 25, 2017•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
