About this Episode

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
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

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

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

Martin’s edit in Ferrite

Original podcast theme music by Alex Canion

Contact

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.