Robert Cringley from PBS has launched NerdTV as a Creative Commons licensed weekly online TV show complete with video, audio (in various formats: AAC, ogg vorbis,MP3) and even has a transcript for each show:

Bob: What do you think NerdTV is?
Andy: Well you described it to me as Charlie Rose for nerds, an interview show focusing on technical issues of the day, maybe a little bit of history.

Bob: We couldn’t afford the table, but otherwise it is the same.

Bob: You are best known for doing system software for the Macintosh. For the viewers who don’t know you can you give us a short resume of where you came from and what you do?

There is even an advance schedule of guests which includes tech heavyweights like Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak (September 27), Google CEO Eric Schmidt (November 22), O’Reilly publisher Tim O’Reilly (October 4), computer mouse inventer Doug Engelbart (October 4) and more. The show is not just a weekly video, but plans to be (?) a podcast too. I couldn’t locate an RSS feed to link to, anybody else see it? Still, there is a significant amount of production going into this online TV show.

I’m listening to the first show which contains an interview with Andy Hertzfeld, the original Macintosh systems programmer (the first Mac programmer). The show launches with no fanfare, simply a message that says: “This program is made possible by a grant by the corporation for public broadcasting.” It then digs right into a geeky interview involving lots of Mac history.

Update 5:03am PST: There are a couple juicy historical tidbits that Hertzfeld remembers about Bill Gates (from transcript):

Bob: He tried to low-ball you.

Andy: [Bill Gates] tried to get me to brag about how fast I could write the program so then he could apply some dollar-per-hour value and come up with a low price for it

And then later on Gates apparent “lack of taste” opinion by Steve Jobs and a call early in the Microsoft days.

Steve couldn’t help himself, he said, “You know it’s true, it’s true you have no taste.”

And Bill Gates responded to him, saying “Steve, I may have no taste, but that doesn’t mean my entire company has no taste.”

So Bill admitted he had no taste, but thought it was an unfair slur to say that MICROSOFT had no taste.

Gotta love it!

Did this post make you go hmm?

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