Inspired by bradjam’s “Celebrities online - anyone met?” thread, does anyone know of any nerdy celebrities? Like a rock star who built and maintains his own web site, or an actor that does online chats without needing someone else type for him?
One person I can think of is Will Wheaton (“Star Trek:TNG,” also the movie “Stand by Me.”) He has his own site and even posts on Slashdot, whose motto, of course, is “News for nerds. Stuff that matters.”
I also remember listening to Howard Stern one morning in the mid-'90s while he was ranting about how there are too many file formats for the same types of media. He mentioned JPEGs, GIFs, WAVs, and even AU files, IIRC. (This was in the days before MP3.)
Porn star Asia Carrera constructed and runs her own website (I can’t link to it for obvious reasons, but its’ very simple to find). I’m not much of a computer person, but it looks and runs pretty well to me.
Curt Schilling is a massive geek. He’s an EverQuest addict (his character is a level 49 monk named Scythehands Voxslayer). Apparently, he’s been messing with them since the original AAPLs in the early 80s. He also keeps video of all of his pitches and several scouting videos of over 450 hitters burned on CDs. Every pitch he’s thrown since 1997 is it’s own MPEG file and they’re indexed so he can see every first pitch he’s thrown to a certain batter, or every fastball away, or whatever.
I believe the comedian Sinbad is an Apple & MacIntosh fanatic.
I also believe Sandra Bullock is very much involved with computers, the Internet, etc. (Don’t know anything more specific about her computer interests though).
I believe that Andy Giddings, the current keyboardist (and occasional squeezy-thingist) for Jethro Tull, is still the webmaster for that group. Their website has always been top-notch.
Supposedly some tech journal was interviewing Carrera about her website and apparently doubted she was as computer proficient as she claimed. So when she showed up for the interview they asked her to install a new hard drive in a demo computer. Carrera was able to do the installation and had the computer running in a matter of minutes.
Todd Rundgren is very big on digital media, and has been messing with computer music since the 80’s when he used an Amiga.
At least two of the members of Radiohead use computers extensively as tools for recording. In the past, I’ve read that they’ve actually written some of the software they use to make albums.
Thomas Dolby has been a technical innovator in the music industry for many years as well as founding his company, beatnik.com. Not the biggest name famewise, but technology savvy isn’t even the tip of the iceberg in his case.