TWiT Hosts and Contributors
Ant Pruitt Ant Pruitt is a technology professional-turned photographer, videographer, and content creator. Born and raised in South Carolina, Ant was an enterprise IT professional for more than ten years in North Carolina where he spent most of his adult life. Ant eventually turned his creativity into a small business, providing writing, photography, video, and post-production services. He handled a range of assignments, including portraits, event photography, social media marketing, and interview videos. He also worked as a freelance writer for TechRepublic, covering consumer tech, enterprise IT, and tips for beginner content creators. Aaron Newcomb Aaron is a regular co-host on FLOSS Weekly and has appeared on other TWiT shows including All About Android and The New Screen Savers. Rosemary Orchard Rosemary is an automation enthusiast and a fan of the mobile-device-first lifestyle. She is a podcaster and video tutorial creator, as well as a web developer. Sam Abuelsamid Sam’s the Car Guy on the Tech Guy Radio Show. Mike Elgan Between the late 1990s and 2003, Mike worked as chief editor for a variety of technology publications (including Windows Magazine), most of which he founded, co-founded or launched. For the past 10 years, Mike has written thousands of popular opinion columns that today collectively reach millions of readers each month. He has consulted for publishing companies (including Ziff Davis) and Silicon Valley startups on the development of innovative new content and media. Mike has moderated hundreds of technology panels and events; appeared as a guest on BBC, CNN, CNBC, FOX News among others; and has been quoted by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR and hundreds of other publications and media organizations. Jeff Jarvis Jeff Jarvis is the author of “What Would Google Do?” and “Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way we Work and Live”. He has blogged at Buzzmachine.com about media, technology, and life’s irritations since 2001. Jarvis directs the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. He writes occasionally for the Guardian and HuffingtonPost. In prior lives, Jarvis was creator and founding editor of Entertainment Weekly; president and creative director of Advance.net (online arm of Advance Publications); Sunday editor and associate publisher of the New York Daily News; a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner. Chris Marquardt Chris is the photography expert on The Tech Guy radio show. Paul Thurrott Paul Thurrott is a technology reporter, published author, podcaster, and the news editor for Windows IT Pro magazine. He regularly writes news, previews, and reviews for beta and completed Microsoft products, such as Windows 7, Windows Phone 7, Microsoft Office 2010, and other products. Mary Jo Foley Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for more than 30 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline. She has kept close tabs on Microsoft strategy, products and technologies for most of that time. These days, she hangs her hats at Windows Weekly and ZDNet’s All About Microsoft blog. Lou Maresca Lou is an expert engineer, software architect, and a polyglot programmer who has been developing enterprise and consumer software for over two decades. As a professional electrical engineer and software engineer, Lou has gained his experience from a diverse set of global companies from the Intel Corporation, Dana Corporation, Anheuser-Busch, Thomson Reuters all the way to the Microsoft Corporation. Lou is an expert in cloud services and client platform software architecture and development where he has numerous patents and global awards for his work in the field. Lory Gill Considered the “Joan of Arc” of tech help and how-tos by exactly no one, Lory spends her days writing about Apple at iMore.com and her nights playing video games. She fancies herself a bit of a rock star when no one is watching. When she’s not typing away at her keyboard, you can probably find her at Disneyland or watching Star Wars (or both). Florence Ion Florence Ion is a technology journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She covers Android smartphones and tablets and its various forks for PCWorld and Greenbot. She’s also written about a variety of other tech-related things for Ars Technica, Maximum PC, Mac|Life, PC Gamer, and Nintendo Power. Andy Ihnatko Andy Ihnatko is a tech writer for WGBH. He was The Chicago Sun-Times tech columnist for nearly twenty years and a Macworld columnist for more than two decades. Mikah Sargent Before joining TWiT.tv, Mikah was a contributor and senior editor at Mobile Nations and, previously, senior editor at Newsy. He’s hosted news and entertainment videos for various news outlets and covered news and tech for AOL, Mashable, iMore, and Tom’s Guide. Leo Laporte This is Leo’s section of the forum. Leave comments, questions, bouquets, and brickbats here. Jason Howell Jason Howell has been producing original video content for the web since 2005. During his five years at CNET, he produced the popular daily tech news show “Buzz Out Loud”, weekly shows “Gadgettes” and “Android Atlas Weekly”, and directed the company’s podcast operations. Since joining TWiT in 2010, Jason continued to elevate his approach to live video production as Technical Director, Producer, and eventually Host of “Tech News Today” as well as producing “This Week in Tech”, “This Week in Google”, and “MacBreak Weekly”. Jason has also stepped out from behind the control desk to co-create and host “All About Android”. He also created and hosted its short-format companion, “Android App Arena” and is one of the hosts of “Tech News Weekly”. High production value, a sense of humor, and a live experience that matches that seen in the final downloadable form are all top priorities that inform Jason’s productions. Randal Schwartz Randal was the host and producer of “FLOSS Weekly” from 2007 until 2020. He’s also an author, system administrator, and programming consultant. Brian Chee Brian J.S. Chee lives in Kaneohe, Hawaii with his family tracing back to the Kingdom of Hawaii. With a mechanical engineer father and a biologist mother, he of course avoided the “wet sciences” and went for a degree in Computer Science. One of the first ten Certified Netware Instructors in the world, he was directly involved with building some of the early Netware courseware. With a background in teaching Physics and Computer Science, Brian became the primary Netware instructor in Hawaii in addition to working as inside sales for PC distribution, and outside sales for products like X.25/SNA/SDLC/HDLC and other data communications test equipment. He served on the Coalition for Competitive Communications which achieved destruction of the Hawaiian Telephone monopoly a full year before the federal deregulation of the intraLATA communications market nationwide. Other jobs included a stop with Xerox as an interfacing specialist, a support manager for a Netware Value Added Reseller and eventually a stint as Senior Computer Scientist for the General Services Administration-Office of Information Security where he designed, built, and supported secure data/video/voice communications systems around the globe. Fr. Robert Ballecer Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ was born and raised in the Silicon Valley. In 1988 he started working with “R&A Professional Consultants”, one of the first computer consultation firms in the valley. After undergraduate work at Santa Clara University he entered the “Society of Jesus”, a religious order of the Catholic Church also known as “The Jesuits”. Jono Bacon Jono Bacon is a leading community strategist, speaker, author, and podcaster. He is the founder of Jono Bacon Consulting which provides community strategy/execution, workflow, and other services. He previously served as director of community at GitHub, Canonical, XPRIZE, and OpenAdvantage. His clients include Huawei, GitLab, Microsoft, Intel, Google, Sony Mobile, Deutsche Bank, Santander, HackerOne, Mattermost, SAP, FINOS Foundation, The Executive Center, data.world, Creative Commons, and others. He is the author of the critically-acclaimed The Art of Community, a columnist for Forbes and opensource.com, founder of the Community Leadership Summit and Open Collaboration Conferences, and co-founder of Bad Voltage. He is an advisor to AlienVault, Moltin, data.world, Mycroft, Open Networking Foundation, and Open Cloud Consortium. Stacey Higginbotham Stacey Higginbotham is a host of “This Week in Google” and blogs about chips, broadband and the internet of all the things. Amanda Alden Ham Nation co-host. @K1DDN Matthew Cassinelli Matthew is a writer, podcaster, and YouTube video producer, primarily focused on Siri Shortcuts but covering Apple-adjacent technology overall. Previously a team member on the app Workflow before it was acquired by Apple, Matthew spends his time sharing everything he knows about what is now Apple’s Siri Shortcuts.