Leo Laporte

File:Leo Laporte (August 2005).jpg

Leo Laporte holds a legitimate New York license plate that he had just autographed. This picture was taken at "Toronto Super Meetup Summit", an event held by TechPhile's Frank Linhares on August 11, 2005 that gathers former TechTV hosts, such as Kevin Rose, Alex Albrecht, Dan Huard, and current G4techTV Canada hosts Amber MacArthur and Andy Walker.

Leo Laporte (born November 29, 1956 in New York City, New York) is a technology broadcaster and author. He majored in Chinese History at Yale University and currently resides in Sonoma County, California with his wife and two children.

He is the host of G4techTV Canada's daily television show Call for Help, which airs in the USA, Canada and Australia, and a technology-oriented talk radio show on station KFI AM 640 in Southern California, doing most shows from his home studio. He appears semi-regularly on Showbiz Tonight, Live with Regis and Kelly and ABC World News Now.

Laporte has created, hosted, and contributed to a number of technology-related broadcasting projects, including Dvorak On Computers, Laporte On Computers, Internet!, and The Personal Computing Show. In 1997, he earned an Emmy Award for his work on MSNBC's The Site, a daily hour-long newsmagazine. He created The Site, to which he also contributed daily in the role of a computer-generated character named Dev Null. In 1998, he created and co-hosted The Screen Savers and the American version of Call for Help on the cable and satellite network TechTV. Laporte left The Screen Savers due to a dispute with TechTV's then-outgoing owner Vulcan Ventures over stock ownership.

Books

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Laporte's authored a number of technology oriented books writings such as: 101 Computer Answers You Need to Know, Leo Laporte's 2005 Gadget Guide, Leo Laporte's Guide to TiVo.

Laporte has also published a yearly series of technology almanacs: Leo Laporte's Technology Almanac and Rich Leo's Computer Almanac. Laporte's latest book is Leo Laporte's 2006 Technology Almanac (left).

Throughout his career, he has contributed to a number of periodicals such as Byte, Infoworld, and MacUser.

Audio and Video

Laporte hosts the weekly podcast This Week in Tech (aka TWiT) with several other former co-hosts of The Screen Savers. This show remains one of the most popular shows 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.

In August 2005, Leo created the podcast Security Now! with security guru Steve Gibson, which is dedicated exclusively to security in technology.

In November 2005, Leo created another podcast called Inside the Net with Amber MacArthur, dedicated to covering the latest trends on Web 2.0 technologies.

In December 2005, Leo Laporte also created Triangulation, a podcast featuring renowned columnist and broadcaster John C. Dvorak, in which a panel of three experts discuss a single issue of technological importance.

Leo refers to these additional podcasts as TWiT extensions.