Hi, Laporte Report subscribers!

Some important news. I'm taking the month of June off to write the next
edition of the Almanac. The details are in my latest blog posting:

http://www.leoville.com/mt/archives/005525.shtml#005525

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It’s a beautiful day in New York City, a little breezy but a balmy 75
degrees. I just had brunch with my long time director, Chris Adair, and
her husband Marty. Chris directed both Call for Help and The Screen
Savers for years. She left us last November to take over NewsNight with
Aaron Brown for CNN. She’s doing so well in the Big Apple, like other
former TechTVers, Kate Botello, and our beloved booker, Casey Fisher.
It’s good to see that there’s life after TechTV. In Chris’s case a
pretty good life, too!

After brunch I visited the National Museum of National History – it’s
incredible. I can’t wait to take the kids there the next time I come
out.

I’m in town to do two pieces for World News Now, ABC’s overnight
newscast. I’ll tape both at around 11p tonight, one for air tomorrow
around 3am, the other for a month later. It looks like I’ll be doing
this every other month from now on. I brought some very cool new gadgets
to show including:

Panasonic SV-AV10 mini video camera
http://www.panasonic.com/consumer_electronics/ewear/default.asp

Sony, Clie NR70V Palm PDA with keyboard, MP3 player, and camera built in.
http://www.sonystyle.com/vaio/clie/nr70_index.shtml

POGO, Flipster, portable Windows media player
http://www.pogoproducts.com/flipster.html

Good Technology, G100 Blackberry killer
http://www.good.com/goodproducts/g100.html

Motorola, v70 cell phone beautiful new style with swivel cover
http://commerce.motorola.com/consumer/QWhtml/v70.html

Tomy, Bit Char-G mini RC Cars
http://www.sigmaautomotive.com/TechieMon/bitchar-g.html

Wave Industries, Olympia Soundbug turns any flat surface into a microphone
http://www.soundbug-us.com/

Handspring, Treo 270 color PDA/cell phone
http://www.handspring.com/products/treo270/index.jhtml?sub_nav_section=Overview&\
prod_cat_name=Treo270

Logitech, Pocket Digital credit card sized digital camera
http://www.techtv.com/freshgear/products/story/0,23008,3384303,00.html

This visit I’m trying a new hotel in the Upper West Side – closer to
ABC, and just across the street from the museum. I picked the hotel
because it claimed to have high-speed Internet access. Hah! Their idea
of broadband is Web TV. There’s no way to hook up my laptop.

Fortunately, I brought a little program along called MacStumbler,
http://homepage.mac.com/macstumbler/ , a port of the netstumbler program,
http://www.netstumbler.com/ . It searches out 802.11b or WiFi wireless
networks. I stuck my iBook out the window and found not one but two,
unprotected connections. You’d be amazed how many of these there are.
I’m finding that I can get online almost anywhere. I’m “borrowing” one
of the connections to post this. I have to sit near the window, but
otherwise it works great. I guess the hotel does have high-speed
Internet access after all!

I’m flying back tomorrow morning, but instead of going to the studio I’m
going home to take a one month sabbatical. That’s right, I’ll be off the
air until July 8! My publisher came to me last Thursday and asked to
move the publication date back two weeks to September 1, which means
they need a completed manuscript by July 1. I told them I could only do
it if I took the entire month of June off, never expecting that to
happen. But it turns out that the book is very important to TechTV, and
they really want to get the benefit of the promotion (and resulting
sales) that can happen if the book ships by 9/1, so they agreed to do
it.

I’ll be using two weeks of my vacation time, and a two-week sabbatical I
earned in 2000 but never took. In order to make the deadline I’ll have
to write about 7,000 words a day. This blog entry is just under 700
words so multiply by 10! Fortunately, I’m seldom at a loss for words
(have you noticed?) and much of the material comes from stuff I and
others have already written for the TechTV web site. It’s going to be
like pulling 30 consecutive all-nighters nonetheless. Come July 8 you’re
going to see a guy very anxious to get back on TV!

Well I’d better post this and give Mr. Hartmann back his WiFi
connection. I’ve got to run out and get a slice of pizza and then come
back and rehearse for my segment tonight. It’s my last day of freedom
before I have to get down to it and start writing. I’ll try to post once
in a while, but you’ll understand if you don’t hear a lot from me until
next month. Wish me luck!

Leo