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Leo Laporte

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Leo Laporte
BornLéo Gordon Laporte
(1956-11-29) November 29, 1956 (age 68)
Manhattan, New York City
Career
ShowApprox. 20 shows on the TWiT netcast network, also The Tech Guy through Premiere Radio Networks
Station(s)TWiT TV LLC; Premiere Radio Networks
Time slotSaturdays and Sundays Live at 11:00AM PST
Websitehttp://www.leoville.com/

http://leoville.squarespace.com
http://www.techguylabs.com

http://www.twit.tv

Léo Gordon Laporte (pronounced /ləˈpɔrt/; born November 29, 1956 in Manhattan, New York City) is an Emmy Award winning, American technology broadcaster, author, and entrepreneur.

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. Laporte said he purchased his first Macintosh in 1984. He operated one of the first Macintosh-only bulletin board systems, MacQueue, from 1985 to 1988.

Formerly of Providence, Rhode Island, as of 2007, he lived in Petaluma, California with his wife Jennifer and two children, Abby and Henry. On December 23, 2011, Laporte tweeted that he had been separated from his wife for a year.

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

Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur

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 often 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

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.

Website Hacked

On Sept 15, 2011, Laporte's site, http://www.twit.tv was maliciously hacked. It was restored within a day.

References

  1. Leo Laporte Information. TV.com
  2. On the Record...Online with Leo Laporte of This Week in Tech
  3. TwitLive Broadcast, after hours, 2008-12-09
  4. Focus On: Leo G4
  5. TWiT Episode 264 Transcript - September 5, 2010
  6. Leo Laporte (December 14, 2007). "Leo Laporte's Official Biography". Retrieved December 25, 2011.
  7. Leo Laporte (December 23, 2011). "Leo LaPorte's official Twitter". Retrieved December 25, 2011.
  8. imdb: Phoenix Rising
  9. net@nite episode 46
  10. Lab with Leo off TV in Australia - Let us See the Remaining Episodes
  11. Response from How-To Channel Australia Regarding The Lab with Leo
  12. Showbiz Tonight: Transcript for July 25, 2005
  13. Leoville: Live with Regis and Kelly
  14. Pete Cashmore. "Leo Laporte Makes $1.5 Million Per Year from Podcasting". Mashable. Retrieved 24 June 2011.
  15. The TWiT Netcast Network with Leo Laporte
  16. Jon Kalish (December 26, 2010). "Talking Tech and Building an Empire From Podcasts". NY Times.
  17. Longest crowd surf streamed live
  18. URDB World Records
  19. Crowd surf video on Youtube
  20. Crowd surf view from stage
  21. Crowd surf view from crowd
  22. http://knoifm.com/news/1569-facebookdisablesknoi.html
  23. Leo Laporte (Tech Guy) Disabled Facebook account in privacy policy protest - GOOGLE BUZZ
  24. More Web Industry Leaders Quit Facebook, Call For Open Alternative at readwriteweb.com
  25. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_y7mMlKgjY
  26. Twit Live Official Site
  27. BitGravity
  28. TWiT Live audio only stream
  29. Hopkins, Mark 'Rizzn' (2008-07-11). "Leo Laporte Does 24 Hours of iPhone to Over a Quarter Million Viewers". Mashable: Social Networking News. Retrieved 2007-07-15. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  30. TWiT Studios First Walkthrough
  31. http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/09/15/twit-tv-malware-infects-leo-laportes-website

External links

TWiT.tv
Podcasts
Hosts
Categories: