Reporters' Roundtable Podcast

This week on the Roundtable: air travel and technology. As we all get ready to spend lots of time in airplanes, and quite likely more time in airports waiting for airplanes, I thought it'd be appropriate to bring in experts on the topic of modern air travel. And we have two great guests for this show.

First, in the studio, Evan Konwiser of Flightcaster, a new service that will tell you if your flight is going to be delayed before the airline will tell you. I saw this product pitched at an Under the Radar start-up conference I moderated and it made me want to learn more about airline scheduling.

Second, via phone from Boston, we have Patrick Smith, author of one of my favorite lunchtime reads, the great Ask the Pilot column in Salon. Patrick has been a commercial pilot for nearly 20 years, and his column is a great read if you're at all curious about how the air transport industry works from the inside.

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Reporters' Roundtable #12: Air travel tech ... Read more

Why is it that as Thanksgiving approaches, when we should be focusing on the good things in our lives, journalists take the opportunity to talk about what's bad? I don't know, but I do know that I'm not immune to the trend.

This week on the Reporters' Roundtable: tech business turkeys! Unlike the Real Deal podcast Thursday in which Tom Merritt and Brian Tong tried to steer you away from turkey products, in this episode, we discuss the turkey business decisions and business models that we've seen in tech over the years.

My guests are both co-workers. First, in the studio, Charlie Cooper, executive editor at CBSNews.com and author of the column Coop's Corner. Before moving to his highfalutin' job at CBS News, Charlie worked in the CNET newsroom as an editor and columnist, and he ran a great daily video podcast called the Daily Debrief.

Dialing in from our Boston bureau is Jim Kerstetter, executive editor of CNET News. Jim is responsible for all the news coverage on CNET, and he covered tech prior to that at BusinessWeek. When I approached him about this roundtable topic, he said, "I think I covered all the bad businesses already."

By the way, right after we stopped recording, and my guests left, the live chatroom pointed out that we had neglected to mention perhaps the most heinously derelict tech business decision in the history of personal computing. They were right. I could tell you what it was--or leave it up for ongoing discussion in the comments, which is what I'm going to do.

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Reporters' Roundtable Podcast 11: Tech biz turkeys ... Read more

Humor is serious business. This week, we have two entrepreneurs who prove it: Ben Huh, CEO of the Cheezburger Network, the company behind Failblog, ICanHazCheezburger, ThereIFixedIt, and other sites you've probably wasted your lunch hours on; and Ryan Dolan, previously in business development at The Onion, now making a go of it with his own business, 30Watt, which sells funny products like those at PrankPack.

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Reporters' Roundtable #10: Funny business ... Read more

This week on the Roundtable: the App Store revolution. Something funny has happened to software. While the model we all grew up with for the distribution of software was mostly to buy it through retail channels or other resellers, or maybe direct from manufacturers, another model emerged and has proven successful by Apple: the App Store. In this model, there is one and only one outlet for software, and it's run by the people who make the hardware. And, critically, you can't get a product into the store unless the hardware maker approves it.

The app store concept is spreading to other mobile platforms and may become a part of general-purpose computing and game platforms as well. It's changing how software is made, sold, distributed, and priced. To discuss these and related topics: Sebastian Rupley, editor in chief of the GigaOm network, which publishes, among other things, a great tech analysis site. Via remote from our New York office, CNET Senior Writer Maggie Reardon, who covers mobile and Web-based businesses.

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Reporters' Roundtable #9: The app store business ... Read more

This week: Books, future of. With the success of the Kindle and its store, and the announced upcoming release of the Barnes & Noble Nook, there are very interesting question for consumers and publishers: What is the future of the book? To discuss this on the Roundtable I have two experts on digital media. First, from CNET, executive editor David Carnoy, who has reviewed the latest e-book readers and who's an e-published author -- see "Knife Music" on Amazon, a 5-star rated book. And joining us from O'Reilly Media - Andrew Savikas, VP of Digital Media Initiatives and a well-known thinker on the print-to-digital transition.

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Reporters' Roundtable #7: The future of the book ... Read more

This week we are covering the dangers of cloud computing. Get it? With the major loss of consumer data for the Sidekick smartphone users--the Sidekick is made by Danger, a Microsoft company--the whole idea of "cloud" safety has been brought front and center for consumers.

Businesses, likewise, are wondering if they are exposed to similar risks when they put their apps and data in the cloud.

Can we trust the cloud?

Our guests to discuss this topic are CNET senior writer Stephen Shankland and Christofer Hoff, author of the Rational Survivability blog, which is about this very topic. Hoff is director of cloud and emerging solutions at Cisco System and thus has a vested interest in keeping the cloud safe and profitable.

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Reporters' Roundtable #7: The dangers of the cloud ... Read more

Is Windows 7 just Vista done right, or is it a real departure for Microsoft? This week on the Roundtable, we discuss what Windows 7 means for the industry as well as its impact on vendors like Apple and Google--with special guests Farhad Manjoo of Slate and Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet.

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Reporters' Roundtable #6: What Windows 7 means

We are days away from the launch of Windows 7. There is, to put it mildly, a lot riding on this release. Vista never lived up to expectations. Even today, three years after release, Vista has less than 19 percent of market share, and it's declining, according to Net Applications. Many people never upgraded from XP or got a machine with XP instead of Vista. Some are even abandoning Vista for the not-for-sale-yet Windows 7 through various pre-release programs. What can Windows 7 really do for Microsoft, and the tech industry? Click past the jump for the full show notes for this episode of Reporters Roundtable and for the full content, play the podcast, above.

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Next year will probably see new tablet computers from Apple and maybe even Microsoft. What do these companies know that our panel does not? Featuring Ryan Block and Harry McCracken.

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Reporters Roundtable # 5: Tablets' uncertain future

It's the obligatory Tablets edition of the Roundtable, this time with even more great and smart tech journalist entrepreneurs from Gdgt (Ryan Block) and Technologizer (Harry McCracken). Watch or listen for the content. Click to the full story to see the notes we used when recording. ... Read more

Should you launch your product at a trade show like Demo or CES, or should you try to drum up interest on your own? This week on the Roundtable, Revision 3 CEO Jim Louderback and Stage Two Consulting's Jeremy Toeman discuss successful and doomed strategies for introducing new products to the market.

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Today, we're talking about product launches. The reason we're doing this show now is that the Demo conference just ended, a week after the TechCrunch50 conference. One hundred and twenty products were launched at these shows. Is that smart? Is this how products should be launched? Is there a better way? To talk about this issue in some depth, I have two great guests....

As usual, watch or listen to the podcast for the content. The notes below are for those keeping score at home.

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