Chris Pirillo is an American entrepreneur and former television personality. He is the founder and former CEO of LockerGnome, Inc., a now-defunct network of blogs, web forums, mailing lists, and online communities which are now closed. He is best known as the former host of ''Call for Help,'' a call-in tech support show which, at the time, aired on

TechTV TechTV is a defunct 24-hour cable and satellite channel based in San Francisco featuring news and shows about computers, technology, and the Internet. In 2004, it merged with the G4 gaming channel which ultimately dissolved TechTV programming ...

. He hosted the show from 2001 to 2003.

Career

Pirillo began his career in 2000 as the host of a call-in technical support show on

WHO (AM) WHO (1040 kHz "Newsradio 1040") is a commercial AM radio station in Des Moines, Iowa, United States. The station is owned by iHeartMedia and carries a news/talk radio format. The radio studios are on Grand Avenue in Des Moines. WHO broadcast ...

Des Moines Des Moines () is the capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Iowa. It is also the county seat of Polk County. A small part of the city extends into Warren County. It was incorporated on September 22, 1851, as Fort Des Moines, ...

Iowa Iowa () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wisconsin to the northeast, Illinois to the ...

. The following year, TechTV hired Pirillo to host ''Call for Help.'' LockerGnome began as a technology mailing list in 1996, offering tips and tricks for operating systems and applications, software suggestions (with an emphasis on public domain and

shareware Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer ...

software), and web site recommendations. Several mailing lists are now provided, offering technology advice and tips and other content syndicated from LockerGnome's blogs for IT Professionals. A web forum for help with and discussions about technology was run from 2002 to 2015. Pirillo along with Jake Ludington, created a BitTorrent server at vistatorrent.com "to help Microsoft get Windows Vista Beta 2 in users' hands" in 2006. According to ''

Information Week ''InformationWeek'' is a digital magazine which conducts corresponding face-to-face events, virtual events, and research. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California and was first published in 1985 by CMP Media, later called Informa. The p ...

'', Microsoft had "reported problems in delivering Beta 2 electronically recommending that users order the DVD rather than download the 3.5–4.4GB file". Microsoft sent a

cease and desist A cease and desist letter is a document sent to an individual or business to stop alleged illegal activity. The phrase "cease and desist" is a legal doublet, made up of two near-synonyms. The letter may warn that, if the recipient does not dis ...

e-mail, and the pair complied. Pirillo is the author of several books, including ''Poor Richard's E-mail Publishing'', ''Online! The Book'' with

John C. Dvorak John C. Dvorak (; born 1952) is an American columnist and broadcaster in the areas of technology and computing. His writing extends back to the 1980s, when he was a regular columnist in a variety of magazines. He was vice president of Mevio ...

and Wendy Taylor. In March 2015, Pirillo announced he was resuming

Gnomedex Gnomedex was a single-track technology conference hosted by Chris Pirillo, the owner of Lockergnome, LLC and was produced by Chris Pirillo and his staff at Lockergnome. Pirillo was the co-host of the show Call For Help on the former cable tele ...

, but providing more of a fair or festival experience than as a single-track conference. In 2019, Pirillo joined

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

as a community advocate.

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Pirillo, Chris Living people American bloggers American writers of Italian descent Writers from Des Moines, Iowa People from Issaquah, Washington Writers from Seattle TechTV people University of Northern Iowa alumni 21st-century American non-fiction writers

YouTubers YouTubers are people mostly known for their work on the video sharing platform YouTube. The following is a list of YouTubers for whom Wikipedia has articles either under their own name or their YouTube channel name. This list excludes people wh ...

Year of birth missing (living people)