NerdTV Plays Only On The Web

The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) Wednesday debuted "NerdTV," an Internet-only series of interviews with ultra-geeks, technology innovators, and company executives ranging from Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak to mouse inventor Doug Engelbart.

The Web-only broadcasts, which PBS characterized as "Charlie Rose for geeks," began with an interview of Andy Hertzfeld, the original Macintosh systems programmer. New interviews in the 13-part series will be posted weekly.

Among the upcoming targets of host Robert X. Cringely's interviews will be Linus Torvalds of Linux fame, former Apple chief scientist Larry Tesler, and TCP/IP inventor Bob Kahn.

Viewers can download all or part of the whole program -- available in MP4 video with and without captions for playing in such software as Apple's QuickTime -- and/or retrieve audio-only podcasts of the interview in formats suitable for iPods, the WinAmp player, and MP3 portable music players.

All NerdTV programming comes with a Creative Commons license that allows anyone to download and copy the shows, share them with friends, and re-post them on their own Web sites.

NerdTV is available on the PBS Web site.