The Inside Mac Radio Show Podcast Feed (RSS 2.0/XML)

The Macintosh represents more than a computing platform among the tech-savvy, for many it's a way of life. Inside Mac brings the voice of experience to the people who live the Macintosh digital lifestyle. The show is currently syndicated every week across the country and around the world on terrestrial broadcast radio stations, Podcast, Audible, Macworld Magazine CD and streaming live on broadband web radio. Anchor Scott Sheppard and correspondents Desmond Crisis and Laura Burstein cover the latest tech stories with the Mac user in mind. Senior Mac Technologist Sam Levin keeps listeners updated on the latest products, and news correspondent Ken Ray brings it all into perspective with a regular roundup of the week's news headlines. Inside Mac is one of the most unique tech shows on broadcast radio today.

Subscribe to the Insiders Club - Inside Mac Radio
Insiders Club subscribers will be sent an announcement telling you about what's going on this weeks show and about future guests, contests, giveaways, downloadable show archives and special deals for Insiders Club subscribers.

The Inside Mac Show - January 1st 2005

LIVE 1-3pm Pacific - Call Us At 800-490-0058

Listen / Download the January 1st, 2005 Show

The Inside Mac Radio Show - January 1st 2005 Podcast Feed (RSS 2.0/XML)

Jeff Baudin & Seth Spitzer - Outspring

Stewart Copeland - The Police / Composer - Songwriter

"I'm more fanatic, more a complete gearhead, than I ever was before," says Stewart Copeland, co-founder and drummer of The Police, about re-entering the rock world after a ten-year hiatus during which he became an acclaimed film composer. "I'm doing it for the fun of it. I even love practicing. Every time I sit at the drums now, I realize it's a gift."

Beginning with a 2000 call from Primus leader Les Claypool to join Phish's Trey Anastacio in the jam band trio Oysterhead, and most recently an invitation from Ray Manzarek to help resurrect the legendary Doors, Copeland has stepped outside the film scoring studios and returned to the rock stage.

"Film composing is a better job than rock star," says Copeland, whose upcoming credits include the feature I Am David as well as Showtime's "Dead Like Me," for which he just received an Emmy nomination. "But there's nothing like the instant gratification of 50,000 people in a stadium yelling 'Yeah!'"

Copeland has of late also probed The Police catalog with what he has dubbed "derangements." "They are Police tracks lobotomized to concoct new recordings," he explains. Mixing live and studio versions, instrumental tracks of an original with the vocals from a later version, the jam from mid-"Roxanne" with the lyrics to "So Lonely," and so on, these derangements are expected to be heard as bonus tracks on new reissues following the 2002 release of The Very Best Of...Sting & The Police.

For the member of The Police, a band that exited the stage as the world's most popular--sales of more than 60,000,000 albums and winner of five Grammy awards--a homecoming of a more unusual nature involves The Doors. "I'm in the bullseye of The Doors' fan base. 'Strange Days' transformed my life. When I sat in to rehearse, I already knew all the songs. Playing 'L.A. Woman' and 'Light My Fire,' I'm 13 again trying to master John Densmore's licks."

Even before The Police went into hibernation as a group in 1986, Copeland had begun to move beyond the rock arena by creating the memorable score to Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 film, Rumblefish. Copeland thus became one of the first rockers to move into film composing. Earning a Golden Globe nomination for Best Score, he has since gone on to write some of the most innovative and groundbreaking music on screen.

His adventurous style, fed by a lifelong interest in exotic music (he was raised in Egypt, Lebanon, England, and California), brought him to the attention of Oliver Stone, for whom he scored Wall Street and Talk Radio. He has enjoyed successful collaborations with other acclaimed directors as well, including Bruce Beresford (Silent Fall), John Hughes (She's Having A Baby), John Waters (Pecker), Ken Loach (Riff-Raff, Hidden Agenda, Raining Stones) and Bruno Barretto (Four Days In September). He has also been heard with cutting edge scores to Wide Sargasso Sea, Rapa Nui, and Fresh, and on recent films from Deuces Wild to She's All That to Very Bad Things. While he does studio films, Copeland notes his niche is art movies: "A Robin Hood policy of taking from the rich and giving to the poor."

Copeland has also ventured into other musical worlds--opera, ballet and orchestra. "The success of The Police was an enabler," he says, "encouraging and empowering me to explore more original music. It never bothered me that I was learning in public; perhaps that's the best way to learn because you don't fit into a box. It wasn't so much thinking outside the box," he adds with a laugh, "but 'What box?'"

He composed King Lear for the San Francisco Ballet and Holy Blood And Crescent Moon for the Cleveland Opera, performed by a 90-piece orchestra and 60-member chorus. He penned the new Horse Opera, commissioned and broadcast by the U.K.'s Channel 4, and wrote the music for the one-act opera Cask Of Amontillado, based on the short story by Edgar Allen Poe, and Ballet Oklahoma's Prey.

In 1993, Copeland made his first appearance as a Featured Guest Percussionist with a major symphony orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, performing original compositions including a world premiere entitled Solcheeka and an excerpt from The Stars That Played With Luck Joe's Cards. In 1995, a collection of his compositions was recorded with the Albany Symphony Orchestra under the direction of David Alan Miller and with Miller's avant-garde ensemble The Dogs Of Desire. Between those two efforts, he headlined a national tour featuring a diverse group of musicians including UAKTI from Brazil, Percussion de Guinea, Vinx, and Ray Lema, supporting his solo album The Rhythmatist. (His other solo album, under the pseudonym Klark Kent, was 1980's eccentric Music Madness From The Kinetic Kid.)

Copeland also performs worldwide in the format called orchestrali, for which he travels on tour and to festivals where a 20-piece orchestra plays his arrangements of original opera, ballet, etc. Additionally, he has delved into interactive media by scoring the PlayStation series Spyro The Dragon.

For more than a decade, however, he put aside his rock 'n' roll drumming. "You do less and less and eventually none at all," he says. Then came Oysterhead. When they first convened, he was "completely blown away with their virtuosity and that we were all on the same musical wavelength." The 2001 album The Grand Pecking Order and a one-month tour followed.

"In film, you're no longer the artist, the director is, so you serve someone else's vision. That's fine; I'm a team player and since your collaborator is not a musician you get to do all the music yourself. But bands are intense experiences. The tour was a blast of fun, energy, and excitement. When you're a kid you have to take on the world. But with this I could just keep my head down and bang away on the drums." An album follow-up is likely in the near future, as is an album from the new Doors.

From the very beginning, says Copeland of The Police, "we assumed we would achieve world domination. We wouldn't have done it otherwise." Accomplishing that, the band's success has helped propel Stewart Copeland's own original work onto the classical stage and the silver screen, creating one of the most fascinating bodies of work of any modern musici

Harvey Stone - Brenthaven - Business Development and Strategic Alliances

Harvey has been a Mac fan since the early days of the Homebrew Computer Club in Menlo Park, where he ran the Whole Earth Truck Store and Catalog (does that date me or what!). He became an owner of Brenthaven about 10 years ago, at which time they were focused entirely on Wilderness and Mountaineering products. They shifted the focus to notebook carrying cases and, well, the rest is history. They are consistently rated #1 in the press for being the most protective, lightest and most comfortable of any case on the market. Apple asked us to develop a line of cases that were custom fit to the PowerBook and iBook and in the two years working together, we remain the leading products in the category. Harvey now have the enviable position in the company as Business Development and Strategic Alliances, working with companies like Apple to develop and promote their products. Additionally he supports there sales team as they expand there business into other channels. Their largest channel is selling cases to the IT departments of large companies who provide notebook computers to their field force. Among the Fortune 10000 companies who have selected Brenthaven as their choice for carrying cases are Bank of America, Intel, GE and Deloitte and Touche. Of all the companies they deal with, Apple remains the most fun and creative corporate culture.

Scott Sheppard - Executive Producer / Anchor

Scott Sheppard is the founder and editor of the VERY popular Macintosh Web Site, http://www.OSXFAQ.com/. He is the Executive Producer/Anchor of the nationally syndicated broadcast radio show "Inside Mac" and a Contributing Editor for Macworld UK. Scott has been using Apple computers for more than 25 years, as well as spending many years as a Wintel user, giving him the unique perspective of having spent a lot of time on both sides of the computer fence.

Scott Sheppard previously hosted the Inside Mac Show broadcast by CNET radio.

Desmond Crisis - Correspondent

If you look in the Cyberpunk Handbook, you'll find Desmond Crisis.

Having founded the Otaku Patrol Group in 1993 he quickly found his way to the front lines of emerging technologies. One of the pioneers of technology television, Desmond was the anchor of CNET Television's "Cool Tech" and correspondent to "CNET Central", "The New Edge", and "The Web" seen on USA Network, Sci-Fi Channel and international stations. He has also hosted the "The Desmond Crisis Program" a daily call-in talk show on the CNET Radio Network, including terrestrial AM stations coast-to-coast and one of XM Satellite Radio's launch channels.

Before he got his press badge, Desmond was a game developer and part of the team that produced several titles including "Zero Tolerance", the first 3D behind-the-gun shooter which was also the first multi-console networked game for the Sega Genesis. When not broadcasting, Desmond volunteers his time and skills to various homeland security agencies. He is an avid communications enthusiast holding both a General Mobile Radio Service license as well as the amateur radio callsign KC6VHG

Desmond Crisis has been called "the cult leader of the cyberpunks"

Laura Burstein - Correspondent

Laura Burstein is a Silicon Valley native with more than a decade of combined experience in broadcasting, writing, and new media.

Laura graduated with a degree in journalism from San Jose State University. Before and during college, Laura worked at local radio and television stations around the Bay Area.

Laura was a Web Producer at ZDTV (later TechTV) in early 2000. Eventually, Laura appeared on-air as an Interact Host on the network's daily news show, Tech Live and occasionally filled in as co-host of Call for Help.

Laura also co-wrote Leo Laporte,s 2003 Technology Almanac, which sold more than 50,000 copies worldwide.

Today, Laura,s love of tech can only be rivaled by her love of food.

Sam Levin - Correspondent

Sam Levin Co-Founded the Stanford Mac Users' Group in 1985, and has worked with leading Macintosh developers on business development, licensing, and strategic market development. Sam Directed licensing and business development initiatives for leading companies such as Axio, Virgin Interactive, Broderbund, Chronos, Mattel, Connectix, IBM Multimedia, IXLA, iSkin, Jiiva, Keyspan, Microsoft, MYOB, MacMice, Fathom Pictures, LandWare, Nova Development, Totally Hip Software, Y-E Data and more.

Sam has been using Macs for 20 years, as well as tied into the world of handheld and digital imaging, providing him a special angle on personal computing and consumer electronics.

Ken Ray - Director Of Engineering

Ken Ray has worked both sides of the radio mic for over ten years. He has written and produced comedy bits for an alternative station in Boston, anchored two and half hours of news daily on TechTV Radio, was morning drive personality on an FM country station in the middle of nowhere, was operations director for an AM in Boston, was operations director for an AM in San Francisco, and has logged countless hours in production studios, tearing out everything from down and dirty :30 spots that need to hit the air yesterday to agency spots to long-form infomercials and even longer-form CD projects. Writing news, spots, promos and interstitials also fits somewhere in his repertoire. And he runs a mean radio board for in studio as well as remote broadcasts.

Outside of radio, Ken wrote for the magazine Global Technology Business.

He also makes a darn good bread pudding.

Greg Douglas - Director of Network Operations

Gregory Douglas has fifteen years of experience in the radio, television and computer- related areas. He was the Director of Network Operations for Personal Achievement Radio, which included responsibilities for the production, operation and distribution of the "PAR" format. As the primary individual in charge of the on-air sound for "PAR", Mr. Douglas interacted with the motivational authors, Nightingale-Conant, ABC Radio Networks, PAR O & O's and affiliates and the broadcast talent. He pioneered the transition to digital for the flagship PAR studios. In addition, Mr. Douglas was M.I.S. Manager for Douglas Broadcasting Inc. where he was responsible for the traffic and business computer functions as well as the computer networking of DBI/PAR radio outlets.

Previously, he was the General Manager of DBI's Seattle operation and Station Manager at WBPS-AM in Boston. Also, Mr. Douglas has been involved in almost all areas of broadcasting, including traffic, business, engineering, production and sales.