I had the opportunity to conduct a delightful, insightful, and entertaining interview this afternoon with David Pogue, New York Times columnist and blogger, Emmy-winning CBS news correspondent, and author of Windows Vista: The Missing Manual. My many thanks to David for taking the time to speak with me, and to his publicist Sara Peyton with O’Reilly Media for helping to arrange for the interview.
This was, hands down, the most interesting, humorous, and problem-laden interview I’ve done thus far, party funny ha-ha, part funny uh-oh. At first, it seemed that technology was conspiring against us. The battery in the digital voice recorder, that was fine earlier, was now dead. The microphone, that worked when tested, wouldn’t budge. Can’t do an interview without recording, right? But that’s OK, we can totally figure it out alright!
And then even further hilarity ensued, resulting in David’s funny jab at the interview as the “podcast from hell,” even though fun was had by all. ;D
Not to be thwarted by cranky technology, we tried recording directly through my laptop, but I think I’m still missing a few drivers (I’m rebuilding my computer from factory defaults, long, *painful* story), and the mic was still unhappy, so that didn’t work well.
David, one of the most patient and cooperative interviewees ever, offers up his Mac, which can run both Windows Vista Ultimate and Mac OS X (separately, not at the same time), for our recording needs. He tried Windows Vista, but the mic wouldn’t work, so he tried his mic, and that wouldn’t work either. Then he tried the Mac OS, and neither mic would work, so we ended up talking directly into the built-in mic just above the screen. Talk about cooperative, creative problem solving!
Near the beginning and middle of the interview, you will notice a very strange sound in the background. This was the world taking a turn at trying to thwart us with the sound of baloons being inflated with helium, making it sound like David has some sort of breathing problems.
At around 3pm, ended the interview with just in time for David to get to the Hilton for his presentation, and for me to post the podcast before hitting his session about 4pm. However, when I went to upload the file and post, it appeared that the site was down (we know now it wasn’t, and are trying to resolve the issue). My many apologies to Sara and David for the delay in posting, and for missing the 4pm session, I was so looking forward to it!
However, in the end, we triumphed over adversity. Enjoy this podcast, chock-full of information about the positive and negative aspects of Windows Vista, a small bit on the new iPhone, and so much more. Thank you again to Kathleen Hughes and Sara Peyton, as well as to the wonderul and funny David Pogue for such a good time!

PLA Blog: Interview with David Pogue [21:10m]:
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