Marco tells the story of how he became a Mac enthusiast, indie app developer and tech podcaster, covering his work on Tumblr, Instapaper, Overcast and Accidental Tech Podcast, among other projects. He also explains why he thinks it's so important to maintain the open Web and podcasting through RSS, in the face of more exclusive publishing platforms and audio hosts.

Podcast case study: Accidental Tech Podcast (producer)

Find Marco at marco.org.

Read a transcript of the episode as a styled PDF or in plain text.

Links and Show Notes

The Stronghold of Podcasting 00:00:00

• This Week in Tech (TWiT)
  • This Week in Tech (podcast)
  • MacBreak Weekly
• The Word Nerds (Archive)
• Tumblr
• You Look Nice Today
• Ricky Gervais
  • The Ricky Gervais Show
• Stack Overflow
  • The Stack Overflow Podcast
• Joel Spolsky
• Jeff Atwood
• Accidental Tech Podcast (ATP)
• CD-R
• MP3
• CD player
• iPod
• The iPod Video was the fifth generation of a product line that is now collectively referred to as the iPod Classic.
• iPhone
• This American Life
• COVID-19 pandemic
• Audiobook
• Cable television
• Leo Laporte
• AM broadcasting
• Talk radio

Self-taught 00:09:11

• Videocassette recorder (VCR)
• Microsoft Paint
• BASIC
• 3-2-1 Contact Magazine was an American educational television show about science that aired on PBS from 1980 to 1988, with an adjoining children's magazine, and which can now be found in the Internet Archive.
• Windows 3.1
• Disk operating system (DOS)
  • MS-DOS
• QBasic
• Visual Basic (classic)
• C (programming language)
• Unix
• Solution stack
• Sun Microsystems
  • Scalable Processor Architecture (SPARC)
  • SPARCstation
  • Solaris
• Segmentation fault
• Mac (computer)
• IBM PC compatible (now more of a historical term that relates to our current usage of the term ‘Windows PC’)
• Vivísimo
  • Yippy (originally developed and released as ‘Clusty’)
• Computer memory
• Version control
• Software bug

Tumblr 00:20:24

• Craigslist
• Tumblr
• Software development
• Indie (disambiguation)
• West Coast of the United States
• Amazon (company)
• Bloomberg L.P.
  • Bloomberg Technology
• Davidville
• David Karp
• PHP
• Shard (database architecture)
• Twitter
• Content management system (CMS)
• Microblogging (The first micro-blogs were known as ‘tumblelogs’.)
• Myspace (formerly known as MySpace)
• Facebook
• LiveJournal
• WordPress (content management system)

A Great Time to Be a Mac User 00:33:02

• Apple, Inc.
• Desktop computer
• Windows Update
• Digital Visual Interface (DVI)
• Vim (text editor)
• Terminal emulator
• Linux
• Server (computing)
• Ruby on Rails
• TextMate
• MacBook (2006–2012)
• PowerBook G4

A Better Audience 00:38:13

• Web development
• 5by5
• Weblogs, Inc.
• Engadget
• Gizmodo
• Lifehacker
• RSS
  • News aggregator (or in certain cases or implementations, RSS reader)
• Digg
• Reddit
• Hacker News
• Dan Benjamin
• Instapaper
• iPad
• Build and Analyze was a weekly news and discussion show about technology by Marco Arment and Dan Benjamin, which can now be found in the Internet Archive.
• YouTube
• Overcast (app)
• Merlin Mann
• John Siracusa

Accidental Tech Podcast 00:49:43

• Neutral
• Casey Liss
• Accidental Tech Podcast (ATP)
  • Membership program
• Relay FM
• John Roderick (musician)

Overcast 00:58:16

• Overcast
  • Overcast (app) (further information)
• Music (software) (The app to which Marco refers was originally known as the iPod app on iPhones.)
• Downcast (app)
• Android (operating system)
• Pocket Casts
• Apple Podcasts
• Stitcher
• App store
  • App Store (iOS/iPadOS)
• TikTok
• Instagram
• Proxy server

How the Internet Is Supposed to Work 01:05:06

• World Wide Web
  • Web standards (redirecting from ‘open Web’)
  • Decentralisation
• Comcast
• Verizon Communications, Inc.
• UUNET
• Internet Protocol (IP)
• Walmart
• Monopsony
• Google
• Amazon Kindle
• Spotify
• Trade magazine
• Eddy Cue

Credits

Recorded and edited by Martin Feld, using Audio Hijack and Ferrite Recording Studio

Original podcast theme music by Alex Canion

Contact

• Website: rsspod.net
• Email: martin@loungeruminator.net
• Mastodon: social.lol/@martinfeld
• Micro.blog: micro.blog/martinfeld

A Special Note

Martin is a paid subscriber of Marco Arment’s shared membership program for Accidental Tech Podcast; this did not influence any of the questions that were asked and did not place any expectations on Marco as a participant of this academic podcasting project.