Reporters' Roundtable Podcast

Reporters' Roundtable: RIAA defends SOPA in fight over content rights

Today we're discussing what's been called the end of the Internet. And the Great Firewall of America. Or, technically: SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, aka HR 3261, a law now wending its way through the House of Representatives.

This is a very controversial bill that would provide new powers to copyright holders and the government to sue, and take offline, sites that host legally protected content. The content industry says it's required to protect rights holders and their jobs. The technology industry says it will break the Internet and cost high-tech jobs.

To discuss, I have two guests. First, in the studio with me, our commentator Larry Downes, who writes on these topics for CNET and elsewhere. Larry has taught IP and computer property law at UC Berkeley.

And dialing in from the other side of the country, and the debate, is Mitch Glazier, senior executive vice president of the Recording Industry Association of America.

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Reporters' Roundtable: Can Nokia come back from the dead?

What happened to Nokia? This company once ruled the mobile phone business. But it never made a successful smartphone for the U.S. market. Instead, RIM and Treo grabbed the first ground in that market. And then Apple launched the iPhone. And then Google launched Android. And then Nokia sank into irrelevance as a major revolution in computing--the smartphone/tablet revolution--took off.

Earlier this week, Nokia released two Lumia smartphones running the Windows Phone OS, not its traditional Symbian OS, as well as three Asha smartphones running Symbian for less affluent countries. Can Nokia claw its way back to being a leader in mobile?

We're discussing that today with three great CNET experts: Jessica Dolcourt is from the CNET Reviews team, and has seen and used the new Lumia phones. Jay Greene covers Microsoft and Google for News.com. Roger Cheng is our mobile reporter and wireless expert.

Bonus: Click past the jump for a behind-the-scenes look at what it took to record this episode.

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Reporters' Roundtable: Frontiers in search

Go ahead and raise your hand if when you want to search for something on the Web, you think of Google. Yup, it's most of you. But upstarts are always trying to chip away at Google. From Microsoft to MC Hammer, search is the holy grail for many startups.

Yes, that's right, MC Hammer has a search startup, called WireDoo.

Today we're talking about different approaches companies are taking to take on search, with:

Paul Sloan, the executive editor in charge of startups for CNET.
Harry McCracken, editor of Technologizer and a columnist for us and for Time.
Jim Lanzone, president of CBSi and therefore the boss of everyone else on this show. Jim is also former CEO of Ask.

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Reporters' Roundtable: Bring your own computer to work

Today we're going to be talking about one of my favorite topics: how to sneak personal technology into your workplace. Or, put more respectably, the "Consumerization of Information Technology," or CoIT. Yes, there's an acronym for that.

For end users, CoIT is great. It means you can use your iPhone for company e-mail instead of the crappy 3-year-old BlackBerry the company wants to give you. But for IT managers? It can be a nightmare of security problems and support headaches. Or, if managed right, it can be a big cost saver and a giant morale booster.

Today we're talking about this topic with two experts. First, Fritz Nelson, editorial director of Information Week and editor at large at Byte on the Web. We also have an interview I did previously with Tom Gillis, vice president and general manager of Cisco's security technology group.

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Reporters' Roundtable: Guy Kawasaki on what we learned from Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs, the founder and CEO of Apple and of Next Computer, and the CEO of Pixar, passed away this week. So for this Roundtable, we will start with that, and look forward from here. There are several life lessons in the way Steve Jobs started Apple, then left, came back, ran the company, launched products, and disrupted several industries. All of us in technology--or indeed in any business--can learn from them. The good and the bad.

To have that discussion, I can think of no better person to talk with than my guest for the Roundtable today, Guy Kawasaki.

Guy was an early employee at Apple, and he worked on marketing the original Macintosh in 1984. He's best known as a tireless tech evangelist. Still a venture capitalist at Garage Ventures, he brings that zeal to his portfolio companies. Guy is also a well-known speaker and the author of 10 books. His latest is Enchantment, The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions. He has made his first book, The Macintosh Way, available as a free download (PDF link).

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Reporters' Roundtable: Amazon fires new Kindle at Apple

This week, Amazon launched three new Kindles, including the Fire, the company's first Android-based color tablet. Next week, on October 4, Apple is having a big press announcement to talk iPhone 5, and maybe other stuff. These are two major companies battling it out for the same customer, media sale, and hardware niches. So let's discuss.

Our experts today are all CNET writers on these topics: Donald Bell, David Carnoy, Roger Cheng, and Josh Lowensohn.

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Introducing the new CNET Live podcast schedule

We're here to announce our all new CNET Live lineup beginning September 26th! Everyday we'll be bringing you the best Live CNET content from 9 a.m. to noon Pacific Time at cnet.com/live. CNET Live will always be your place to get the best analysis, live coverage of events, and perspective covering the hottest tech happenings. Plus, we'll throw in a few laughs for you too. In addition to the new revamped schedule there's plenty of new shows and content we're working on so watch it all at CNET Live. Check out the schedule below and we'll see you on the internet!

CNET TV Live Schedule

Day 9am 10am 11am 12n

Monday The 404 Dialed In CNET Labscast

Tuesday The 404 Rumor Has It Crave PreGame

Wednesday The 404 Android Atlas

Thursday The 404 Buzz Out Loud Car Tech Live / Roadside Assistance

Friday The 404 Reporters' Roundtable

Reporters' Roundtable: Netflix, Dish, Facebook rewrite video marketplace

It has been a huge week for video and streaming media on the Web.

First, Netflix split into two companies, and that's after raising rates and losing the Starz library.

Then at Facebook's F8 developers' conference, the social platform company launched the timeline and the "lightweight engagement" model that will change how people find out about media to watch.

And then just today, Dish, which bought Blockbuster about five months ago, announced the Blockbuster Movie Pass, which the company appears to be pitching as a Netflix competitor.

Looming in the background of all this: the "cord cutters," people just itching to dump their traditional cable subscriptions and move their TV and movie viewing to Internet services. So we've got a lot to discuss on this show. Our guests to help sort it all out: Ryan Lawler, a writer at GigaOm; and Andrew Wallenstein, TV editor for Variety.

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Reporters' Roundtable: Sit up straight! Exercise more!

On today's show we're covering an emerging tech trend: The Quantified Self movement, or the collection of data streams about what we do, how we feel, how we move, and so on. Why? That's one of the big questions. The best answer is probably: to live better lives. And today we're talking with two entrepreneurs who are working on a subset of the quantified self movement: body monitoring. Both their companies have the goal of making us more aware of ourselves. Using that knowledge, hopefully, we can live more healthy lives.

Our guests are Monisha Perkash, CEO of Lumoback, which I covered this week from the Demo conference, and Jef Holove of Basis, which I wrote up in July.

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Reporters' Roundtable: How 9/11 changed technology forever

Ten years ago, our world changed. Terrorists in hijacked jetliners brought down the World Trade Center towers in New York and crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. A fourth hijacked plane was forced down in Pennsylvania. A total of 2,819 people were killed. Since then, politicians and technologists have tried to create systems, products, and procedures to make sure we're never attacked this way again. Or if we are, that we can save lives affected by such an attack. There are positive results from this effort in how we react to all kinds disasters, but also downsides relating to privacy and money diverted from other programs.

To discuss the effects that 9/11 had on the development of technology, we're joined for this show by Jason Pontin, the editor and publisher of MIT Technology Review. Jason and I were both working at Red Herring on 9/11/01.

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