Internet History Podcast
206 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 363 ratingsA History of the Internet Era from Netscape to the iPad
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Episodes
(Feed Drop) Command Line Heroes
October 31, 2020 15:53 - 34 minutes - 31.5 MBSearch for Command Line Heroes anywhere you listen to podcasts. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
202. The del.icio.us Story With Joshua Schachter
October 23, 2020 19:06 - 1 hour - 55.8 MBJoshua Schachter, founder of del.icio.us, is someone I’ve wanted to talk to from the very first day of this podcast. As we’ll discuss, del.icio.us was such a standard bearer of the web 2.0 era. Of user generated content. Of sharing long before Facebook or Twitter or any of that. If my email chain is to be believed, this episode has been four years in the making, and I’m glad Josh and I found the time to do this episode and bring the podcast back. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and op...
201. The History of Audible With Angelika Fuellemann
August 11, 2019 20:03 - 25 minutes - 24.1 MBAngelika Fuellemann is a designer who worked early on with BookSense.com, then got hired by Audible early on, so this is the early story of Audible. It’s funny… audio, streaming music, podcasts, audiobooks, it seems so obvious now, but it really is funny to look back and think about how off the wall this seamed before the smartphone. You mean books on tape will be a thing? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
200. Professional Blogging Pioneer Josh Marshall
July 14, 2019 17:55 - 1 hour - 71.5 MBJosh Marshall is one of the key people who brought blogging into the realm of serious, award winning and respectable journalism. The story of his blog/publication, Talking Points Memo, or TPM is the story of blogging becoming legit and serious, but also the story of modern media over the last 20 years of digital disruption. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
199. Is Tech Making Us- Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid?
July 01, 2019 07:04 - 40 minutes - 36.9 MBIs technology really rotting our brains, destroying our society... or is that what everyone has always worried about with every technological advance, going back to tv, or telephones, or even writing letters? The new book, Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid: Changing Feelings about Technology, from the Telegraph to Twitter tries to look at this question from a historical perspective. Is it really different this time? But more importantly... to what degree has technological change impacted how we t...
198. Inventor of the Hashtag, Chris Messina
June 16, 2019 14:38 - 1 hour - 69.5 MBWell, as we say in this episode, he’ll always be known as the inventor of the hashtag, but Chris Messina has been central to so many things in tech over the last 20 years or so. Helped Mozilla launch Firefox. Founded BarCamp where so much Web 2.0 goodness happened and was launched. Cofounded the first co-working space in San Francisco. Helped Google try to grok social with Google+. Oh, and that hashtag business. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
197. The Internet Bookshop Story With the Tech Business History Podcast
June 02, 2019 05:28 - 50 minutes - 46 MBI’ve said before I wish I could cover technology history beyond just North America, more… Well, Charles Miller has started a great podcast in Britain called Tech Business History. Charles used to report on the tech business as a BBC documentary producer. In the first series of his podcast, he’s exploring the dot com boom in the UK with some of the people he met when he was filming for the BBC back in 1999. It’s a fantastic show that I’ve fallen in love with, so what I want to do is play you ...
196. Google, Twitter and More With Karen Wickre
May 18, 2019 18:43 - 1 hour - 82.7 MBEveryone knows Karen Wickre, because she’s one of those classic connectors. Once we finally got in touch, I wasn’t surprised to learn we knew about half a dozen of the same people though we had never remotely crossed paths. But Karen knows everyone because she’s popped up Zelig-like in a bunch of interesting places over the course of tech history over the last 30 years or so. Early tech journalism. Planet Out. Early Google employee. Early blogger. Early tweeter. Editorial Director at Twitter...
195. Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott
May 04, 2019 17:07 - 1 hour - 78 MBKevin Scott is the current Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft. We talk about his entire career, how being an academic seemed to be his path before he transformed the ads system at Google. Then he revolutionized the entire advertising industry at AdMob; is credited by some people by saving LinkedIn from technical rot; and now, today, oversees Microsoft's efforts in AI, VR/AR all the future things. Fantastic conversation. Kevin's podcast is: Behind the Tech See acast.com/privacy for p...
194. The History of the ISP Industry With Sonic's Dane Jasper
April 20, 2019 17:42 - 1 hour - 79.2 MBToday we continue my efforts to preserve the history of the ISP industry. Today it feels like the Internet is simply all around us all the time, but there are amazing entrepreneurial stories about how that crucial infrastructure was laid. Today we talk to Sonic founder Dane Jasper, who can not only give us the history of the industry, but the present day as well, as Sonic is still a thriving and important independent ISP. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
193. The Home Page Film With Doug Block
April 06, 2019 22:33 - 1 hour - 55.3 MB20 years ago, the acclaimed documentarian Doug Block released a landmark film, Home Page. Doug’s documentary accidentally chronicled the birth of blogging, featuring several people we’ve talked to on this very show, including Justin Hall. But the documentary also captured a moment in time, the web going mainstream, the beginnings of the dotcom bubble, the early days of Wired, Hotwired and Suck and also so many of the things I ask people about on here regularly. How people learned to live onl...
192. Hulu's Founding and Digital Design With Dan Maccarone
March 23, 2019 17:01 - 1 hour - 56.3 MBDan Maccarone is a digital design veteran, websites, products, strategy. He's got some amazing stories about the dotcom bubble, about the aftermath, and the rise of Web 2.0. He shares some unique design lessons but also, the story of the birth of Hulu, which I don't think has really been covered anywhere before. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
191. Bringing The WSJ Online With Rich Jaroslovsky Part 2
March 10, 2019 16:11 - 45 minutes - 41.7 MBPart two of the WSJ's online adventures intersect with several other stories we've covered on here over the years. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
190. Bringing The WSJ Online With Rich Jaroslovsky
February 25, 2019 01:22 - 45 minutes - 41.7 MBWe’ve had a couple of people come on here to discuss how the New York Times got online, but the spiritual yin to their yang is the Wall Street Journal and we haven’t done enough to explore their path to embracing the internet. It’s worth doing that because they embraced a different model from basically day one. Almost alone among the web media pioneers, the Journal went the subscription route. So, we’re going to talk to Rich Jaroslovksy, who headed the team that brought the Journal online, t...
189. A Legal History of the Web Era With Richard Chapo
February 10, 2019 19:02 - 54 minutes - 50.2 MBIt’s bothered me for a while that over the 5 years or so of this podcast, we haven’t focused very much on some corners of the history. For example… the legal side? Copyright law? Intellectual property law? How much have we talked about disruption and piracy and filesharing and all that stuff? So, I spoke to Richard Chapo, who has been doing Internet Law since the web went mainstream. We talk about the Napster era, we talk about how much of an influence the adult industry had on digital law, ...
188. TheGlobe.com Story With Stephan Paternot Part III
January 26, 2019 19:53 - 37 minutes - 34.6 MBPart three of our epic conversation with Stephan Paternot. Here's what happens when you've been through the wringer. When you've been to the top of the rollercoaster and also down to the bottom. Here's how you take stock of your life, how you reinvent yourself, re-find you entrepreneurial spirit... I feel like there are so many lessons in these three episodes. Lessons for entrepreneurs today. Lesson for... I dunno. People in the crypto space? My thanks to Stephan Paternot for an insanely gre...
187. TheGlobe.com Story with Stephan Paternot Part II
January 06, 2019 20:12 - 1 hour - 59.4 MBOk, part 2 of the Stephan Paternot mega-episode right now. This is where we get into the meat of it, the good stuff, the whole crazy roller coaster ride of being the hottest startup of the dotcom era. And I was going to make this the last episode, but as I was editing this, I realized that after we get done with this story, Stephan talks a lot about what happens after... what happens after you've been on a crazy ride like this. How you have to reinvent yourself, and your life, and your caree...
186. TheGlobe.com Story with Stephan Paternot
December 24, 2018 00:34 - 50 minutes - 46.2 MBI said in the book, I think TheGlobe.com was the quintessential dot-com company. We spoke to one of the cofounders previously, Todd Krizelman. Todd was great, but he was time constrained and he didn’t quite get as personal about the story as I would have hoped. Well, I finally got to talk to the other founder of TheGlobe, Stephan Paternot. And Stephan was… AMAZING. He shared the whole story, the whole wild ride, from a historical angle, from a business angle, from an entrepreneurial angle an...
185. Ripple's David Schwartz
December 10, 2018 00:52 - 39 minutes - 36.5 MBDavid Schwartz is the Chief Technology Officer at Ripple, the company behind the cryptocurrency XRP. What is it like to start, build and build out a crypto startup? Is it different than the web and internet startups that we’ve covered on this show for years? What is Ripple? How is it unique in the crypto ecosystem? What is it trying to do for the world? All of this… and yes, why is crypto so tribal… and yes… where is the crypto space even at in this moment in time (December 9th, 2018, btw, f...
184. GV's Ken Norton
November 25, 2018 16:34 - 1 hour - 73 MBKen Norton is a partner at GV, Alphabets venture capital arm, but before that, he was a product manager at Google, where he led the development of products like Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google Mobile Maps. But he was also early at JotSpot which became Google sites, was a product manager at Yahoo, was an early employee at CNET and was CTO of Snap, a company probably none of you have ever heard of but I’ve been dying to talk about for years. No. Not snapchat. The original Snap. The dot...
183. Selling the First Facebook Ads, With Matt Britton
November 11, 2018 19:23 - 28 minutes - 26.3 MBMatt Britton not only sold the first ads to and for Facebook, way back in 2004, he gives us a really insightful and, frankly, unbiased look at what Facebook was like as a company in its very earliest days. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Emergency Podcast Announcement
November 02, 2018 21:35 - 1 minute - 2.39 MBEmergency Podcast Announcement Link to Amazon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
182. Google's Matt Cutts @mattcutts
October 28, 2018 20:33 - 1 hour - 56.7 MBI figure most of you should know who Matt Cutts is, but if you don't, let's just leave it at this: he's about to give you the best, most behind-the-scenes oral history of early Google we've gotten so far on this podcast. He was the head of Google's web spam team for nearly 15 years. He's also the current head of the USDS, so if you what to know what YOU can do for your country—if you're in technology and you want to make the government work better—listen to this episode! See acast.com/p...
181. (Ch. 7.5) The Story of craigslist
October 13, 2018 23:43 - 22 minutes - 20.5 MBSUMMARY: The history of Craig Newmark, craigslist and other odds and ends that didn’t make the book! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
180. Part 2 With John McCrea
September 30, 2018 18:46 - 1 hour - 83.6 MBSimple enough: Part 2 with John McCrea. More on SGI, more on doing battle with Microsoft in the 90s. And... interesting stuff on VR and the future... See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
179. On Silicon Graphics with John McCrea (Pt. 1)
September 17, 2018 00:43 - 1 hour - 65.5 MBJohn McCrea is a Zelig-like personality who pops up in so many of the narratives we've already covered: Apple. Netscape. Doing battle with Microsoft. This is part one, mostly about Silicon Graphics, a company I had been thinking about doing an episode on for a while now, to really rejuvenate that company’s reputation, historically. For reasons that will be obvious when you listen. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
178. On Google's 20th Birthday - The History of Google
September 01, 2018 22:20 - 1 hour - 87.1 MBOn Google's 20th Birthday (September 4th) a re-cutting and re-airing of my comprehensive history of Google, from it's inception through its IPO. Happy Birthday, Google! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
177. NandO.net with Fraser Van Asch
August 19, 2018 19:53 - 37 minutes - 34.2 MBNando.net was not only a very early experiment in bringing journalism to the web, it was also one of those local ISP's that flowered in the era of the early 1990s. Fraser Von Asch was not only one of the key players at The News & Observer (thus, "NandO") who brought the project to life, he is another person who has straddled the media industry between the print and digital eras and can give us some amazing insights into the transitions therein... or lack thereof. See acast.com/privacy f...
176. The Epic Fail of Digg V.4 With Will Larson
August 06, 2018 12:04 - 49 minutes - 45.8 MBThis story has gone down in Silicon Valley lore as the ultimate cautionary tale. Digg was the earliest high flying startup in early social media. But then, other startups like Facebook and Twitter started to steal the limelight. So Digg tried to keep up by launching the infamous Digg version 4. And… it’s a disaster. Users hate it. So much so, that many people feel that the reason Reddit is Reddit today is because the Digg community fled their en-masse. Digg Version 4 has become a much cited ...
175. How the Internet Came to Pakistan With Imran Haider
July 22, 2018 17:00 - 41 minutes - 38 MBToday, we're going to continue our occasional project of getting oral histories and personal anecdotes about how, exactly, the Internet and the web came to various places around the world. On this episode we're going to look at how the Internet came to—and is still in the process of coming to—Pakistan. Imran Haider is a listener to the show, works in the tech industry, and analyzes the south asian tech scene at his blog, arkito.co. Today, he tells us how the digital revolution came to Pakist...
174. Bringing the NYTimes and MSNBC Online With Lisa Napoli
July 08, 2018 18:13 - 1 hour - 30.3 MBLisa 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 w...
173. Netscape's Rosanne Siino
June 24, 2018 19:22 - 1 hour - 42.5 MBRosanne 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...
HUGE Podcast Announcement
June 16, 2018 16:03 - 3 minutes - 2.27 MBHUGE Podcast Announcement! Details on how to pre-order the podcast book! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
172. How Politics Came to the Web With Karl Mattson
June 10, 2018 20:28 - 53 minutes - 36.9 MBToday 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.
171. Claude Shannon, Father of Information Theory
May 27, 2018 12:55 - 59 minutes - 41.3 MBClaude 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...
170. The Godfather of Streaming Music, Robert Reid
May 13, 2018 23:01 - 1 hour - 61.4 MBSummary: 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 publishe...
169. Kottke.org's Jason Kottke, @jkottke
April 29, 2018 23:00 - 1 hour - 43.9 MBJason 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 information.
168. The History of Java With Todd Sundsted
April 15, 2018 22:10 - 42 minutes - 29.2 MBPeople 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/priv...
167. NYTimes Tech Columnist, Farhad Manjoo @fmanjoo
April 01, 2018 23:10 - 58 minutes - 40.4 MBToday, 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.
166. Amazon, Hulu and Oculus with Eugene Wei
March 17, 2018 18:49 - 1 hour - 50.8 MBNo 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 strat...
165. Claire L. Evans, Author of Broad Band- The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet
March 04, 2018 19:09 - 1 hour - 46.2 MBClaire 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 por...
164. How the Web Came to Germany, With Thomas Ganter
February 19, 2018 12:51 - 52 minutes - 36 MBPodcast 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.
163. The History of Online Video with JibJab's Gregg Spiridellis
February 05, 2018 14:36 - 1 hour - 44.2 MBGregg 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...
162. Venrock's David Pakman on Apple's Music Group, N2K, eMusic and Dollar Shave Club
January 21, 2018 18:45 - 41 minutes - 28.7 MBDavid 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 Shav...
161. Jeff Bussgang on Open Market and early eCommerce
January 08, 2018 02:06 - 39 minutes - 27.1 MBIt 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.
160. Growing Up With The Web With Desiree Garcia @thedezzie
December 18, 2017 00:31 - 46 minutes - 32.1 MBAn 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.
159. The Forgotten Story of PLATO, with Brian Dear
December 11, 2017 00:15 - 1 hour - 47.3 MBPlato 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 acas...
158. Bob Stein of Voyager and The Criterion Collection
November 27, 2017 15:09 - 59 minutes - 41 MBBob 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.
157. Rob Malda (@cmdrtaco) on SlashDot and Social Media
November 12, 2017 00:11 - 1 hour - 55.3 MBYou 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.
156. Dave Winer on The Open Web, Blogging, Podcasting and More
October 30, 2017 00:33 - 1 hour - 67 MBDave 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 prese...