Probably the largest influence I had growing up was watching (the now defunct) ZDTV/TechTV back when shows like The ScreenSavers, Call for Help, Silicon Spin, and Gamespot TV/Extended Play were on the air. I started watching around the time Leo Laporte and Kate Botello hosted The ScreenSavers, but I remember watching more shows with Leo Laporte & Patrick Norton. Eventually my cable provider dropped ZDTV shortly after it turned into TechTV.

These shows inspired me to persue a career in information technology. Everything from learning about HTML code to building my first custom PC, I owe to the crew over at ZDTV. There's still plenty of great tips/tricks/information on technology from these shows.

The hosts of the shows eventually moved on to other projects after ZDTV/TechTV got merged/canceled and are still out there today in the world of tech. The channel now exists as G4 but a good chunk of the crew work at Revision3 now.


I huge internet shout-out to the whole crew from ZDTV. I'd like to thank the following in particular for inspiring me the most: Roger Chang, Jessica Corbin, Yoshi DeHerrera, John C. Dvorak, Leo Laporte, Sarah Lane, Jim Louderback, Megan Morrone, Patrick Norton, Chris Prillo, Kevin Rose, Martin Sargent, Catherine Schwartz, Adam Sessler & Morgan Webb.


Leo Laporte has his own site called The TWiT Newscast network, operates a blog and has an archive of podcasts/radio shows @ TechGuyLabs.com:
http://twit.tv
http://techguylabs.com
http://leoville.com
http://www.amazon.com/Leo-Laporte/e/B001K8PZ3I/
http://twitter.com/leolaporte

Kate Botello operates a personal website, owns a theatre production company, a web design company, and runs a children's theater summer camp in Traverse City, Michigan:
http://www.katebotello.com
http://traversecitywebdesign.com/about

Patrick Norton currently hosts shows called HD Nation & Tekzilla on Revision3:
http://revision3.com/tekzilla
http://revision3.com/hdnation
http://www.twitter.com/patricknorton

The coolest nostalgia bomb that was dropped on me recently was when I re-discovered tons of old ZDTV clips online. You can check out a boatload of shows archived via these links or do a search online for more:

http://www.youtube.com/user/ZDTVMultimedia
http://www.livestream.com/desertbunker
http://www.youtube.com/user/zdtvfan

Bonus 1: Internet Archive of The ScreenSavers website:
http://discretionary.org/screensavers/index.php

Bonus 2: TechTV - How to build a website (hosted on archive.org)
http://www.archive.org/details/Daanbrg-TechTVHowToBuildAWebsite459