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The safety payoff of the big business of gun training
Great story, but I didn't hear the two most important things in firearm safety. A gun is ALWAYS loaded, and don't point a gun at...
JerryCPP | May 22, 2013 Three life rules from Donald Rumsfeld
Journalism: Practiced. Excellent interview. Thank you.
Annapolis57 | May 17, 2013 Three life rules from Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Rumsfeld's interview on Marketplace today was absolutely unbelievable. Really. Is one of his rules not to believe your own spin? I...
jgrothues | May 16, 2013 Three life rules from Donald Rumsfeld
Ryssdal's interview with Rumsfeld was breathtakingly inappropriate. "Marketplace?" If Ryssdal wants to promote his obvious biases...
rcd43 | May 16, 2013
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Michael Dell on his first computer and the dawn of PC's
A photo showed up in my phone the other day. It was an image of a blue screen where I could just make out the letters: “Commodore 64 Basic V2, 64 K Ram System.” The subject line of the accompanying text: “It’s Alive.” The Commodore 64 was one of earliest mass produced personal computers. My 23-year-old son, Nick, had apparently obtained two broken Commodores from 1982 and put them together to make one working model. After an interview on more substantive matters with Michael Dell, the chairman and CEO of Dell, on Friday, I asked him about his first computer -- and no, it was not the C64. What was your first computer? Tell us in a comment below.#WomenInTech get the hashtag treatment
We're looking at a question that Marketplace Tech will visit regularly: Who is tech? This week we're talking with women in the tech world, learning about the issues they face and the changing landscape of the tech workplace. Of course, we're far from the first people to start this conversation. Last November, the hashtag #1reasonwhy started an international conversation on Twitter about sexism in the video game industry. Soon after, today's guest on our show, Rhianna Pratchett, a veteran video game writer who has just finished an overhaul of "Tomb Raider", started the hashtag #1reasontobe. And if you're looking for even more inspiration, check out hashtag #1reasonmentors. Do you work in the tech world? If so, could you distill the issues facing women in your industry into one tweet or one hashtag? Tell us in a comment below.What's the big deal? Working from home stinks
I <3 U: Best and worst romantic texts and tweets
Zombies attack Montana, wait, what?
And, this fall marks the 75th anniversary of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast that caused people coast to coast to freak, believing the drama was real. The question becomes whether people would fall for something like that today. No way, my friends argue, people are so media literate, you'd never fool 'em now. Hackers this week got into the computers of a Montana TV station and put out a fake emergency broadcast alert warning of a zombie attack. Fake fake fakety fake, right? Yet, here in 2013, some alarmed viewers called Channel 3 in Great Falls just to check if zombies were attacking. Guess it never hurts to check.Wake 'N Shake, the merciless alarm clock app
Take the principle of multiplayer online games and use it to get your sorry tush out of bed. The app is called Wake 'N Shake, and its victims can accumulate points by competing with other snoozers in a race to shut off their smartphone's alarm. Not just any alarm. One of the choice is a profoundly disturbing, funhouse-style maniacal laugh. Thing is, with this app, you have to shake the phone repeatedly like its a spray paint can to turn it off Just the way to start your day: out of your mind.Pope Benedict XVI is following 7 versions of himself on Twitter and no one else
Yes yes, we all know, the Pope will officially start tweeting today. But who does he follow? Not God -- not on Twitter at least. (Must...not...make..."direct messages from God" joke....here). The Pope follows only seven people, which are actually seven other versions of himself. It's part of the Vatican's strategy -- explained in part to me for today's show by the company's Claire Diaz-Ortiz -- to get the message out in 8 different languages. Maybe the non Italian or non English-speaking versions of the Pope all retweet the original? Or they want people like me to look at the users that the Pope is following (which totally worked), and follow some of the Pople clones (which didn't work). We can assume different popular Twitter users take entirely different approaches when it comes to choosing who to follow. I find it interesting that the Pope follows no one but other versions of himself. At least he's more discerning than President Barack Obama, right? In all seriousness, it'll be interesting to watch how one of the most famous religious leaders of the world -- and his people -- take to the social media. I hope even the Holy Father gets to toss out some good Pope jokes in the stream.Petition to White House: Please build a Death Star like the one in 'Star Wars'
A few thousand people have signed a White House petition to get the government to build a Death Star that blows up entire planets, like in 'Star Wars.' It's one of many petitions on the We the People website where the Obama Adminstration encourages people to get their voices heard. Texas secession after the presidential election is a popular one with more than 100,00 signatures. Immediately deport anyone who signed an online secession petition has 25,000 supporters.Petraeus’s storied career lives on in Call of Duty
Not that it needed it, but there's an additional selling point for the new video game "Call of Duty: Black Ops II." In the supposed year 2025, the digitized Secretary of Defense has a familiar name: Petraeus. Looks just like him too. No avatar for the Petraeus biographer, though. Does this mean it will some day be a collector’s item? Probably not, since the game is incredibly popular and far from a “limited release.” Plus, the games maker has already hinted that it won’t be doing any damage control, noting that it is, after all, just a game.Who's winning Twitter: Twitter's Political Engagement Map
With the election looming on Tuesday, the polls are coming fast and furious. Something we learned from Nate Silver a few weeks back: Social media and the Internet is playing a larger roll in polling all the time, partly because so many of us are dropping our regular phone lines and using only cell phones in our households, and partly because online is just where we spend our time now. Twitter, which earlier this year rolled out the Twindex, is hoping to use some of its giant amounts of data to give us an interesting look at how candidates' tweets are playing around the country. It's called the Political Engagement Map, and it shows you how users are interacting with certain tweets on certain topics, state by state. At this point, a curiosity, but I'd be interested to see some of the comparisons of candidates' tweets after the election. There might be some interesting parallels when we know the winner.Pages