Seeing as this is the new year and all, I figured today's column would concentrate on the future. My original plan was to write extensively about what television will become following the detonation of the Yellowstone supervolcano -- who's ready for static?! -- but in the spirit of Hope (tm), I scratched that in favor of something a bit more positive.

My guess is that the numbers break down this way: 90% of you have no idea at all who Leo Laporte is, 7% kinda sorta remember him from the ill-fated ZDNET cable channel, and 2% of you are TWitTs like me. (The other one percent? Spambots worried about my "girth").

It's time to get to know Leo, because over the last year he has single-handedly created a brand-new paradigm for how TV is going to be viewed on the net ... kinda.

I never watched TechTV, despite having worked for on-air host Chris Pirillo and his Lockergnome venture for a couple of years. Don't ask me how I wound up at Lockergnome, because even I'm not sure. I'm not a computer or tech geek and hiring me to work there was like asking Jabba the Hutt to play the piano*. The channel began as ZDTV and then became TechTV, and then later G4. Pirillo is teaming up with Leo LaPorte, another on-air personality, to launch (eventually) a Website called UndoTV where talent from the now-defunct channel can upload their own content. Pirillo sees it as an obvious step in a changing television industry that has become more and more infatuated with how the Web can reach people. I have no idea if such an idea could work, but it seems to make some sense in this case, considering the kind of people who were into TechTV were already denizens of the internet to begin with. I wonder if other failing niche networks would be able to accomplish something similar. The idea that something that failed on TV could have new life online is a nice one, but is it overly optimistic?

[via Lost Remote]

*He has short arms and he's very fat, so I imagine it would be physically impossible for him to play the piano. Also, it's an Earth instrument so he probably wouldn't even know how to play it, or the proper scales and whatnot. Though I suppose he could play a wall of keyboards, and if you labeled the keys he could probably pound out something by Yes. I think the point is that my similes need work.