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I really enjoyed this discussion on Web 2.0 and Wall Street from ETech with Bill Janeway and Peter Bloom. There are some interesting parallels and some great discussion from a couple of financial jocks who clearly get technology and, especially, the 'Net. Recommended.
Tags: itconversations web
I'm still trying to make sense of the news that Comcast is buying Plaxo (reported value of the deal between $100 and $200 M). I can't tell you how happy I am for Plaxo and especially Joseph Smarr who I have great respect for (see our Technometria interview with Joseph Smarr here).
Still, the discontinuity between what Plaxo is and what Comcast does is jarring--at least on the surface. I believe there is a fundamental conflict o interest between a company that does both transmission of traffic and sells other Internet services. Yeah, I know they all do it, but if the FCC wants to do something useful, they ought to separate those functions.
The fact that they have little real competition leads to problems like not treating customer fairly and throttling BitTorrent. That's a problem--but one that I believe will work itself out with more competition--and that's going to come one way or another. But the real problem is that Comcast offers many services that directly compete against the traffic they carry. Do we expect them to act in an unbiased manner in that regard? Sorry, I don't. Where's the Anti-Trust Department when you need them?
Tags: media internet itconversations
 IT Conversations redesign! (click to enlarge) |
Doug Kaye has been working for months to redesign the infrastructure for the Conversations Network, including It Conversations. Much of that work hasn't been visible to IT Conversations listeners, but it's made the management of the network and production of shows much nicer. Now, that hard work is showing on the site as well with today's launch of the new IT Conversations.
The new design is cleaner, brings lots of features, like ratings and playlists, out to the homepage, and automates things like "current series" and "topics" so that they're more up to date. Ratings are also more reliable in the new system--I'm already seeing more meaningful ratings data come through. The old Personal Program Queue has been updated and is now called a Personal Playlist (under "My Programs" on the top menu bar).
With all the great changes to the homepage, you might be tempted to stay right there, but take time to click through to the program detail pages. They've also been reworked with better ways to comment and share programs with your friends. Also, the new recommendation box on the right hand side shows other programs you might like.
As with any launch, there will undoubtedly be things that don't work. Be sure to let us know and we'll try to get things fixed as soon as we find out about them.
Tags: itconversations
In doing this month's top ten for IT Conversations, noticed two things:
First, since Doug put in our own code for ratings, the number of ratings per show is way up. I think with the new homepage design (oops! Did I let that slip?!?) we'll see even more ratings. We've not had enough in the past for me to put a lot of confidence in them, but that's changing.
Second, the number of overall downloads is down. We recently had to update the feed URL and this didn't get propagated correctly in all feedreaders and podcatchers. Please take a minute to check right now and make sure you're still getting IT Conversations on your MP3 player. The correct feed URL is:
http://feeds.conversationsnetwork.org/channel/itcOr just head to feed subscription page and resubscribe.
The following is the list of the top ten shows on IT Conversations (by number of downloads) for April 2008.
Phil Libin was the CEO of CoreStreet when he appeared as the first guest on Interviews with Innovators. Now he's back as CEO of EverNote, a company that aims to build the memex, or personal outboard memory, that Vannevar Bush famously imagined in his 1945 article "As We May Think."
Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Scott Sigler, who talks about his bioterror thriller "Infected." While it's based on the premise of a biological weapon on the loose, he's actually a modern day Charles Dickens.
Well-designed buildings not only conserve energy and reduce costs but also create conditions for better health and wellness. Amory Lovins, founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, uses several examples to show how the right mix of materials, resources, and expertise can create structures that celebrate living. From MAP.
Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Journalist Wagner Au, who embedded himself in the virtual 3D online world, Second Life, and talks about its incredible growth.
There has been a lot of talk about the difficulties of parallel programming, but Intel has decided to do something about it. Intel representatives announce the open sourcing of Threading Building Blocks, a product used to simplify parallel development. TBB has been around for several years as a proprietary tool, and Intel hopes that by opening it up, it will reach a broader audience and be adapted to more situations.
Despite amazing strides, computers are still relatively poor at performing high level activities that come naturally to the human brain. Co-founder of Palm, Inc., Jeff Hawkins, describes recent breakthroughs in the modeling of brain functions based on the theory of Hierarchical Temporal Memory. New insights into how the neocortex supports cognition, inference and prediction can be applied to a variety of problems using Hawkins' Numenta computing platform.
Matt Zimmerman delivers exactly what his title promises: a technical roadmap of where Ubuntu has been and where it is going. He discusses the collaborative development process, an overview of past and future releases, the expansion of Ubuntu from the desktop to server and mobile environments, and what's next for Ubuntu. Highlighting key features of the latest releases, this presentation will be of interest to existing Ubuntu users as well as anyone considering migrating to this popular linux-based operating system.
Developers are increasingly using Amazon, not only as a source of technical books, but also as a web services platform to build robust and scalable infrastructure. Amazon CTO, Werner Vogels, reveals how to make the most of the popular S3 service and uncovers some of the features underpinning the new EC2 (Elastic Computing Cloud) service. As a bonus for Conversations Network listeners, there's even a cameo appearance from our own Doug Kaye, who explains how Gigavox Media is exploiting the web services functionality Vogel describes.
Technology is becoming more entrenched in every part of our life, and we need to be aware of where that might lead us. Jamais Cascio gives four possible scenarios based on whether technology is used to augment or simulate reality and whether it is internally or externally focused. Because of the human bias inherent in any technology, he argues that we need to democratically include all of the world's stakeholders to avoid having these scenarios become dystopias.
Today a complement of new energy technologies exist, but are they economically feasible? Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Fred Krupp and Miriam Horn, from the Environmental Defence Fund, about their new book, "Earth: The Sequel."
Tags: itconversations
A few weeks ago, I talked to Roberto Ostinelli and David Orban, founders of OpenSpime.org, an open source infrastructure that supports spimes, small objects that can be tracked in space and time (hence, "spime"). Bruce Sterling coined the word.
You can hear the interview or read it, if you'd rather thanks to David making a transcript available.
Tags: itconversations spimes
Below are the titles and descriptions of the top ten shows on IT Conversations for March 2008.
Michael Lenczner is one of the founders of Ile Sans Fil, Montreal's community wireless network which comprises over 150 hotspots and serves almost 60,000 registered users. By any standards the project is a huge success. On this episode of Interviews with Innovators, host Jon Udell asks Lenczner whether Ile Sans Fil has really enhanced community life in the ways the founders hoped it would.
Raph Koster, author of the book "A Theory of Fun for Game Design", describes the grammar of fun. He gives a checklist of ways to make social media more fun based on his work in online games. Most important is to give users context and feedback for every action they take, and that fun comes at the edge of failure.
Adrian Holovaty recently launched EveryBlock.com, a service that generalizes ChicagoCrime.org's style of hyperlocal news to other cities and to a broader range of data types. Six months into a two-year project funded by a Knight Foundation grant, he discusses EveryBlock's accomplishments and aspirations.
As more companies examine the issue of environmentally friendly products, it is not surprising that the concept of green computing would grow in importance. IT professionals are examining power consumption, the hazardous materials used in manufacturing computers, as well as how best to recycle older devices. Jeremy Faludi, a product designer currently working for Project Frog, discusses the subject with Phil and Scott. He talks about the issues in general, as well as how companies are working to keep up with the problems.
In the last few years, telephony prices have dropped to ridiculously low levels and today, one doesn't need a telephone instrument to receive or make calls. Personal services are disappearing from the landscape while technology rapidly replaces them, albeit with a divide between what a customer wants and what he gets. What change is behind this revolution? Moshe Yudkowsky, President of Disaggregate, offers his theory on why emerging telephony is revolutionary.
WiMAX, a new wireless broadband standard, is coming, and the buzz is growing. How is it different from what is available today, and where will it take wireless broadband in the future? These and other questions are answered by Tim Sanders, a leading industry expert and champion for this new wireless technology.
Phil Windley regularly holds CTO meetings where IT professionals discuss current events in technology. In this show he talks with four individuals who work in and write about computing. The group reviews the current status of Twitter, whether companies are using blogging in useful ways, and other similar topics.
Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Jigsaw's CEO, Jim Fowler, about keeping an online, global directory with millions of business contacts up to date.
"Practice safe VoIP," is Dan York's appeal to the new entrants in the digital telephony landscape. In a spicy, fictional anecdote, CISSP's Director of Emerging Communication Technology cleverly reveals the possible security vulnerabilities VoIP networks are amenable to. Like all happy tales, in the end, the bad guys lose; VoIP security tools are to the rescue. But in real life, Dan warns, the potential threats are only increasing.
On this edition of Interviews with Innovators, host Jon Udell speaks with wiki inventor Ward Cunningham, who discusses the two most recent phases of his career. At the Eclipse Foundation in 2006, he pioneered a transformative new approach to making software-supported business processes transparently understandable both to developers and to users. Now, as CTO of aboutus.org, he's helping to create a new wiki culture for companies and organizations to explain themselves to the world.
Tags: itconversations
Clifford Thomson sent me a link to a talk Dan Solove gave at Google on his new book The Future of Reputation. I interviewed Dan on Technometria a while back about his earlier book The Digital Person.
Dan's a very interesting speaker and raises important issues in his books and in this video. This is well worth watching if you're interested in the intersection of privacy and reputation in the Internet age.
One of the consequences of IT Conversations leaving Gigavox Media and returning to the Conversations Network fold is that eventually we needed to remove 'gigavox' from the feed name. Unfortunately, Feedburner will only forward a feed for 30 days and many RSS readers don't seem process permanent redirects well (change the URL permanently, not just follow it).
As a result, you might not be seeing updated IT Conversations shows in your favorite podcatcher. So, take a few minutes and make sure you're using this URL in your feeds:
http://feeds.conversationsnetwork.org/channel/itc
I checked the feed URL on my copy of iTunes and it seems to have dealt with the permanent redirect just fine (click on the "i" icon at the far right of the podcast name in iTunes to see info related to that podcast).
Tags: itconversations
Yesterday I posted Jane McGonigal's talk from ETech 2007 on creating alternate realities. This is the first show on IT Conversations that features our new slideshow tool for playing audio sync'd with the slides. For some talks this can make a real difference in the quality since they rely on the visuals so much. In the past we've sometimes not published good content because it relied too much on the slides. No more! Check it out and let us know what you think.
Tags: itconversations etech
I thoroughly enjoyed Jon Udell's interview with Ward Cunningham on IT Conversations. They talk a lot about Ward's efforts at the Eclipse Foundation to build transparent workflow systems. That is, as Jon puts it:
But what if you could find out, before pressing the Save button, what's going on in that black box? And what if your way of finding out wasn't by reading bogus documentation, but instead by probing the system itself using its own test framework?From Ward Cunningham's Visible Workings « Jon Udell
Referenced Thu Mar 20 2008 08:42:43 GMT-0600 (MDT)
You'll want to read Jon's description of Ward's visible workings along with the podcast to get the most out of it. Better yet, I'd love to have a screencast of the system at work.
At one point Jon and Ward talk about how this might apply to eGovernment. Think about a button you could push at any point that would tell you how your current interaction with a government Web site was likely to proceed. I'd love to see it.
Tags: testing programming workflow itconversations egovernment
 Saul Griffith (click to enlarge) |
This morning's opening keynote at ETech was Saul Griffith who ran down the steps he used to calculate his own carbon footprint and then what he had to do to put himself on a "carbon diet." It's not pretty. Doing the calculation is relatively straightforward in terms of the math, but gathering the data isn't easy. I'm hoping that we can get his slides when we put the audio up on IT Conversations because there's some great data there.
Speaking of IT Conversations, a recent IEEE show has a section on home co-generation. You can buy a furnace for your home right now that generates electricity to create the heat. You get power and heat from the same plant, making it much more efficient than buying power separately. You're still burning a hydrocarbon, but you're essentially getting the electricity for (close to) free. Retrofitting an existing home isn't a problem.
On a similar topic, today I put up the latest Technometria show on green computing. The guest is Jeremy Faludi, an expert in green computing. We talk about the carbon footprint of various parts of the computing industry and also mention where computers can help by reducing carbon use.
Here are the top ten shows on IT Conversations (ordered by number of downloads) for February 2008:
Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and author of "Creating a World Without Poverty."
At British Telecom, VoIP technology and the Internet are seen to provide some exciting opportunities to grow new business models. Jerry Thompson, Chief of Applications at British Telecom, talks about BT's transition from being a traditional voice-based telecommunications enterprise to a VoIP-based service provider.
Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Harvard professor Steven Pinker, who talks about how words relate to thinking, and how they also don't.
Technical skill is just one piece of the open source consulting puzzle. Business skills are also crucial. Will Glass-Husain puts it all together in this popular tutorial on running a successful software consultancy. Combining business philosophy with practical tips and case studies, he highlights principles of customer service, time management, sales and pricing to help guide aspiring consultants manage their own business.
Dr. Joel Selanikio is the co-founder of DataDyne, a non-profit consultancy dedicated to improving the quantity and quality of public health data. He works mainly in developing countries where the dominant computer is the cellphone, and the dominant network protocol is SMS, a phenomenon that he calls "the invisible computer revolution."
ITConversations executive producer Phil Windley, who teaches computer science at Brigham Young University, has worked with students to develop a general framework for online reputation. In this conversation with Jon Udell he discusses the goals and status of the project, and explores ways in which online and offline reputations are both similar and different.
Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. It is also one of the hottest websites in today's world, and is having a major impact on career and business. Jesse Stay, co-author of the upcoming book "I'm on Facebook--Now What???" joins Phil and Scott to discuss the book and the current status and future of Facebook, both as a social networking site and a place for business.
Bill Buxton, a principal researcher with Microsoft Research, is the author of Sketching User Experience. In this conversation he talks about design thinking -- a way of producing, illustrating, and winnowing ideas about how products could work.
How close are we to the era where intelligent machines will make decisions for us? As systems become ever more autonomous, machine decisions may outstrip our ability to predict them, creating the need for an artificial morality. Yale bioethicist Wendell Wallach takes the role of friendly skeptic in this deeply thoughtful and balanced look at the promises and perils of artificial intelligence, computational ethics and the singularity.
From the Tech Nation archives: the 1993 interview with Sir Edmund Hillary, who together with Tenzing Norgay in 1953 was first to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
It looks like Interview with Innovators and TechNation take the prize this month with three shows in the top ten each. Good work!
Tags: itconversations
I was listening to Jon Udell's interview with Valdis Krebs on IT Conversations and Valdis tell the story of seeing hotels guests self-organize to deal with hotel management about the awful Wi-Fi service. He says:
Hotels are used to dealing with disconnected customers -- hotel guests who do not know each other. They can tell these guests anything. Since most guests do not talk to each other, nothing is verified, no action is coordinated. In terms of social network analysis: the hotel staff spans structural holes between the guests -- occupying the power position in the network.
When INSNA arrived, the hotel guests were no longer disconnected -- many people in INSNA know each other and after initial greetings started to talk. The conversation soon went to the lack of connectivity in the hotel -- no one could get a connection out of the hotel to the internet. Not only did everyone discover they were having the same bad experience, but they discovered they were receiving the same lie from the hotel staff -- "everything is fine, no one else is complaining". Being lied to made "being disconnected" all the more infuriating.
From Network Weaving: Connected Customers
Referenced Sat Mar 01 2008 13:36:21 GMT-0700 (MST)
Valdis goes on to make the point that power dissipates when people in a hub-and-spoke network start to talk to each other.
I think this kind of insight has huge ramifications for government. Doc recently wrote about US 2.0. How will this happen? I think it happens when the disconnected nodes that have formerly been only hearing what the middle (government, big media, corporations) has to say start talking to each other. Britt, with OrgWare (disclaimer: I'm an advisor) and other ideas he has is starting down this road with real commitment (i.e. dollars).
I've said, and still believe, that eGovernment--focused on how we run things in between election cycles--is at least as important as eDemocracy--focused on how we run the election cycles. eGovernment has been seen primarily as the responsibility of government. "Give us an online vehicle registration system!!!" we say and government complies. "Yeah!!! eGovernment!!!" and everyone's happy.
But as Valdis points out, we can effect much greater change when we start to talk about how we want the government run. Power dissipates when we're all connected. The power becomes us--government "by the people." Social networks are the real future of eGovernment and eDemocracy. For the first time, we may have the ability to really make that a reality. I think it's inevitable.
I'm sick and after lecturing for two hours this morning, I had no voice left. Unfortunately, when I recorded the program intros this week, Jon Udell's latest show wasn't ready so I needed to record it today before I published it. I came home tonight and tried to record an intro, but it sounded awful--just think "frog." My wife, Lynne, said "let me do it." You can hear the result in the intro to Jon's interview with Valdis Krebs. My fear is that now that you've heard her, you won't want to hear me anymore!
Tags: itconversations
As I listened to Udi Manber, the head of core search team at Google, I was impressed by something that most of us understand in a different sense: engineering matters at Google. Most of us think about this in terms of the other things we know about Google; like the one day a week people get to work on their own project, or the fact that they build their own custom servers.
Manber talked about making search queries meaningful--understanding intent rather than just doing text matching. He outlines a number of upgrades to Google search that I've noticed over the years but never thought much about. These all require a commitment to engineering and constant product development.
A simple example of this that I thought of while he was talking is internationalization, or i18n. Google has deployed search engines in myriad languages and countries. Anyone who's done i18n knows it's not glamorous, it's not easy, and there's little you can do in the way of innovation to leverage technology. It just comes down to a commitment to good, solid engineering and working it out.
Of course Google isn't alone in doing i18n. Lots of companies do it. But plenty of companies put it off because they can't afford or don't want to afford the commitment that it takes. In general, no one's giving Google press over the increased utility of their search. Lots of stuff gets the media attention before that. But it's core to Google's business and it's clear it gets the engineering attention it deserves.
Tommy Weir of Tiny Planet wrote a nice review of IT Conversations. In particular he enjoyed the interview with Billy Hoffman about AJAX security. He says:
If I had to pick one tech podcast and discard the rest it would be the originator of the species, IT Conversations. This blend of different shows has a wide-ranging remit from biotechnology to web development. They have a number of presenters who interview innovators and leading technologists, and they also put out recorded presentations from top conferences, which can be especially valuable. They're all free and available via iTunes.
I listen to them regularly, good meaty discussions which can be satisfying in the midst of the other more newsy, gossipy fluff that fills the tech podcast world. Sure, a lot of it is not for me, I usually have my thumb poised, ready to click through to the next one, there's a lot in the feed so you have to be selective.
But quite frequently you hear something that's well informed, interesting and current, covering an aspect of technology that you don't really see discussed anywhere. So I thought I'd point out ones that have ticked those boxes as I come across one. So, that's why I have a #1 up there in the title, it's going to be the first in a series.
From IT Conversations - pick #1: Ajax Security : TinyPlanet.eu
Referenced Thu Feb 21 2008 11:21:06 GMT-0700 (MST)
Tags: itconversations technometria
Here are the top ten shows (ordered by number of downloads) on IT Conversations for January 2008.
More and more Web sites are being rewritten as Ajax applications and traditional desktop software is rapidly moving to the Web via Ajax. But, often, this transition is being made with reckless disregard for security. Ajax developers desperately need guidance on securing their applications. Billy Hoffman, co-author of Ajax Security, joins Phil and Scott to discuss the book.
Phil regularly holds a meeting that he calls the CTO Breakfast. It is an opportunity for people who work in technology to discuss current issues. In this episode, Phil holds an online version of the meeting. The group review such topics as the recently released Amazon SimpleDB, MIT's open courseware project, and how LinkedIn just open their site to developers. They also discuss the status of open source social networking and the problems of monetization. The group finishes with their predictions for early 2008.
Neil Giarratana, president of a small web software firm called Lucidus, is bucking a demographic trend. According to the United Nations, 2007 was the tipping point for world urbanization, and migration to big cities is expected to be a huge continuing trend in the 21st century. But Neil moved from Fairfax, VA to Keene, NH to combine high-tech business with small-town New England life.
In a keynote presentation from the 2007 O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference, Brian Murray, Group President for HarperCollins Publishers, provides a textbook business strategy analysis of dealing with rapid change. During his presentation, Murray provides details of the 6 step process HarperCollins used to react to the dramatic changes in the publishing industry.
From the start, phones have been a point-to-point communication method: pick up the receiver, dial a number, hope for an answer. Jyri Engestrom's microblogging app, Jaiku, changes all that by interfacing your mobile phone with pervasive internet connectivity. What we get is a handset that is used increasingly less for calling and more for sharing what you're doing, where you're going, who you're with, and the photo you just took. These microposts broadcast a river of rich presence information about you: from one-on-one to many-to-many.
Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with John Kao, the former Harvard Business School professor who believes America is losing its innovative edge.
When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Stuart Smolkin's conveyor belt manufacturing company, Intralox, had no disaster plan in place. Although central operations weren't decimated, the company had to deal with the disruption of electricity, phones, and computer systems in order to organize evacuated employees into recovery teams. How did Intralox handle this challenge and get running in a mere 30 days? Smolkin offers lessons on preparedness for businesses faced with disruption.
The O'Reilly Media founder and CEO presents one of his regular Radar updates, with the focus this time squarely on open source software. The world in which open source now operates is very different from the world in which it started. O'Reilly believes that the problems of scaling caused by the growth of the web and large on-line applications means we need to examine the freedoms we associate with open source in a new light. It's more important than ever that we rediscover the freedoms we care about and learn how to protect them in new and more relevant ways.
In this talk, Giovanni Gallucci, a search engine optimization and social media expert, a speaker, blogger and co-founder of Dexterity Media, spills out the secrets of a successful online marketing philosophy that leverages the communal strength of social networks such as MySpace, Facebook, etc. He contrasts social media against traditional marketing by providing case studies of companies that succeeded as well as those that've failed at it.
OpenIDDevCamp was a gathering to develop web-based applications that use OpenID. Attendees included web designers, developers and testers all working together over the weekend to enable OpenID on their sites or just learn more about this technology. Scott joined Phil to discus the event as well as the OpenID concept.
 Adding your IT Conversations profile to Action Streams (click to enlarge) |
The more you use sites on the Web for keeping track of our online lives and sharing things with friends, the more you'd like to have a place on your blog to gather them all together. I've had my del.icio.us feeds on my blog for a long time. I also used to put my tweets on my blog. I experimented with a Flickr widget and gave it up.
Now Mark Paschal has released a plugin for Movable Type called Action Streams that does that all nicely. There are dozens of services that you can add. I've included all that I use. You can see the result on the right side of this page under the "What I'm Doing" heading.
I also created a page about what I'm doing around the net that's an expanded version of the sidebar.
Mark has made it easy to add services. I created a plugin to add my personal program queue from IT Conversations in about 15 minutes. If you'd like to do the same, I've made a tarball and some instructions. Now whenever I add a program to my personal program queue, it will show up on my homepage automatically. I like automatic.
A while back Jon Udell interviewed me for his Interviews with Innovators podcast. We talked about reputation.
In the old days, you could reference a section of audio in an IT Conversations program using a handy tool that Doug Kaye created. Jon Udell was among the most frequent users of that service, but others, including yours truly, used it as well.
Then, IT Conversations started auto assembling so that the show always had fresh sponsorship promos in every show--even those from long ago. The problem is that this created variable length intros and so the excerpt, which was measured from the start of the MP3 file moved around. Not good.
Doug has fix that with a new technique: basing the excerpt timing on the start of the show body. Of course this means that the MP3 file has to care metadata about when the body starts. Doug's done that using EXTO frames inside the MP3 file. Doug's documented the process. Anyone who needs to tag variable length MP3 files will be interested.
For those not interested in the details, here's how you create a URL that points to a portion of an IT Conversations show:
The start and stop times are relative to the beginning of the show body. You'll have to calculate that yourself just find the start and stop times on your player and then find the start of the body and subtract it. Enter the resulting times in the form and you're good. From then on, the excerpts will be right no matter how the intro changes. This excerpt FAQ will help with anything I've missed.
Tags: itconversations
My pick of the week on IT Conversations is Dark Matter: Are We Missing the Real Internet Economy? from Supernova 2007. The discussion, about money made on the Web--from exploiting inefficient ad networks using arbitrage to the downright illegal, offers a fascinating look at the dark underbelly of e-commerce.
Tags: itconversations pickoftheweek
Here's the list of the top ten shows on IT Conversations (by number of downloads) for all of 2007:
Recently, Google released from beta its Google Web Toolkit. Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is an open source Java software development framework that makes writing AJAX applications like Google Maps and Gmail easy for developers who don't speak browser quirks as a second language. Phil and Scott talk to Bruce Johnson, one if its co-creators. In addition to discussing its development, Bruce gives a number of examples of projects that took advantage of GWT.
People lie. We lie to each other, we lie to ourselves, and these deceptions cause no end of problems for human society. In this talk from Pop!Tech 2005, biologist Robert Trivers discusses the biological basis for deception in humans and other species. He shares the evolutionary imperatives that created the skills necessary to deceive others and also explains why self-deception has a biological basis.
Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with author Maryanne Wolf about how human brains have adapted since we invented writing and along with it reading.
Rich in linguistic play and delivered with both wit and panache, Eben Moglen's talk is an intellectual delight. Beginning with a look at the history of memory from the public recording of England's 11th century Domesday Book, Moglen leads us through the private memory palaces of 14th and 15th centuries to the problems of privacy that started with photographic technology. Convincing us that we have willingly given away our data and that those who now possess it have the right to use it, Moglen proposes voluntary data collectives as the answer.
For many years, only very large businesses could afford to create and deploy innovative voice applications, such as looking up account balances or tying voice applications into their existing business applications. Now, with Asterisk and other open-source applications, the field is wide open for businesses of all different sizes. Jared Smith, Community Relations Manager of Digium, the creator and primary developer of Asterisk, the industry's first open source telephony platform, joins Phil and Scott to discuss the present and future of open source telephony.
On this episode of Interviews with Innovators, Beth Kanter describes the strategies she uses to teach digital immigrants in non-profit organizations how to use Web 2.0 strategies to communicate and collaborate more effectively.
Guy Kawasaki has a long history working in technology, both in established companies and as an entrepreneur. He worked for Apple at the time of the development of the Macintosh and later returned as an Apple Fellow. In this keynote speech, he gives what he believes are the important stages towards successful innovation. He presents the steps in both a humorous and intelligent way, showing what companies must do to be successful.
Some technology companies founded and headquartered in the United States aren't outsourcing to India and China, but are spreading technology centers around the world instead. Rob Levy, CTO of BEA Systems Inc., explains to Dr. Moira Gunn how BEA is making things work when their staff works in wildly different time zones.
On this edition of IEEE Spectrum Radio listen to Google's Chief Internet Evangelist Vinton Cerf speak about his favorite work of fiction. Also, hear about Spectrum's Senior Editor Tekla Perry's cell phone shopping experience , and why an old shoe box might be better storage than your hard drive. Finally, Spectrum interviews the Swedish mobile technology engineer Stig Nordqvist on his vision of future news reading.
Dick Hardt, founder and CEO of Sxip Identity, has been working with the Canadian government on a new virtual ID card that will streamline online interaction among government agencies, public-sector organizations, and citizens. In this conversation with Jon Udell, Hardt explains how this new program will work, and offers perspectives on a variety of online identity issues.
I was pleased that one of my shows made the number one slot. There's a lot of interest in the Google Web Toolkit and this was a fun show to do and Bruce was a great guest.
While I don't release actual download counts, you wouldn't be surprised to know that it's a power law distribution. After the top ten or so, the rest aren't that much more popular that most shows.
Tags: itconversations
Here are the top ten shows on IT Conversations (by number of downloads) for December 2007:
While the Internet is quickly becoming an indispensable part of our lives and business, it still remains a challenging environment to achieve a secure and private experience. In this moderated panel from the Trust Online Conference, Lise Buyer leads an insightful discussion of trust with the help of an extremely qualified panel. Scott Charney, Mozelle Thompson, and Dr. James Ransome share their experience while addressing some of the fundamental challenges of managing risk on the Internet.
Matt MacLaurin, who works for Microsoft's Creative Systems Group, is developing a game -- and game-development platform -- called Boku. On this episode of Interviews with Innovators, host Jon Udell asks Matt about his own early experiences writing software for systems that invited hacking.
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Bob Drogin talks with Dr. Moira Gunn about the person and the sham perpetrated by the source, presciently code-named "Curveball." The result? The idea that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
Has artificial intelligence failed? Eliezer Yudkowsky, from the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, humorously examines the three leading schools of thought concerning the singularity and considers AI's successes, failures, and ways to actually judge artificial intelligence.
As online fraud continues to grow as a major issue, enterprises are trying to come up with new ways to reduce the problem. Unfortunately, we have traded convenience for strong authentication, so other methods must be used. Dan Lulich, Vice President of Technology for iovation, joins Phil and Scott to discuss the concept of end-user machine reputation as a way to establish identity. He talks about how authenticating the device is a better method to identify users.
Avi Bryant is a Smalltalk developer who joined the Ruby community in its earliest days. He is the author of Seaside, a web-application development framework for Smalltalk, and of Dabble DB, a user-friendly web-based database developed with Smalltalk. In this address, he weighs Ruby against Smalltalk, pleading similarities between the languages and arguing that Smalltalk provides lessons that the Ruby community can learn.
What started out as a search for different quality experiences for Gigi Sage, has become a life long pursuit to create harmony in all area of her's life and how to make all kinds of relationships work. In this interview, Sage pulls from over twenty years of teaching and working with women to offer help for men and women everywhere who are looking to build harmonious personal and professional relationships.
Everyone is leaving an electronic slime trail behind them on the internet, according to Bob Lucky. On this edition of IEEE Spectrum Radio, Bob Lucky shares his thoughts on the records we're all creating on the internet, and Spectrum takes a look at the Homebrew Computer Club's illegitimate child: the Homebrew Cellphone Club.
Exploiting Online Games takes a frank look at controversial security issues surrounding MMORPGs, such as World of Warcraft and Second Life. The book comes fully loaded with code examples, debuggers, bots, and hacks. Co-author Gary McGraw joins Phil and Scott to discuss this important topic. Of interest to gamers, developers, and security professionals, Gary talks about how gamers cheat, as well as why software companies are slow to combat the problem.
How many buildings do you know that can produce oxygen? William McDonough, the man Time magazine recognized in 1999 as a "Hero for the Planet," has designed buildings for clients such as Ford and Gap that can do just that. McDonough -- architect, industrial systems designer, and proponent of eco-effectiveness -- urges his audience of business school students to set goals not toward an efficient bottom line of doing the wrong thing less badly, but rather toward the effective top line of doing the right thing.
Interestingly, the top two shows show "No rating yet." Actually, that's not quite accurate. They've been rated but not by enough people that I consider it credible. I have a threshold that has to be met before I report a rating.
Tags: itconversations
Here's the top ten shows, by download, for IT Conversations during November 2007. I'm late because some recent server changes means that I didn't have access to the logs for a bit. Also, unfortunately, we lost 11 days worth of logs, so this data is based on 19 days of November 2007.
As described on its website, Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web. It is designed to help young people As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design. Phil and Scott discuss Scratch, along with a number of other current technology topics.
The next evolution of Rails isn't going to be a unicorn, according to David Heinemeier Hansson. In this keynote address at the 2007 RailsConf, Hansson talks about what the Rails community has and where it's going, and the gradual improvements Rails will see in the coming years.
On this episode of Interviews with Innovators, Jon Udell's guest is Beth Jefferson, the founder of BiblioCommons. Her company's new software aims to transform public libraries' online catalogs into environments for social discovery of resources that are cataloged not only by librarians, but also by patrons.
In the keynote presentation from the 2007 Singularity Summit, Rodney Brooks, Panasonic Professor of Robotics at MIT, explores many possible singularity futures based on decades of experience researching, inventing, and commercializing robots. During this presentation Dr. Brooks examines why we need robotics and AI as well as how the singularity will not be like it is portrayed by Hollywood.
On BioTech Nation, Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Dr. Norma Nowak, who looks at some interesting new discoveries which could some day replace amniocentesis. David Ewing Duncan returns with Bio-Issue of the Week.
Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with science writer David Bodanis, author of "Passionate Minds", about the scientist Emilie du Chatelet and the Poet Voltaire.
Dick Hardt, founder and CEO of Sxip Identity, has been working with the Canadian government on a new virtual ID card that will streamline online interaction among government agencies, public-sector organizations, and citizens. In this conversation with Jon Udell, Hardt explains how this new program will work, and offers perspectives on a variety of online identity issues.
Amory Lovins continues his discussion on energy efficiency in transportation by presenting the business case for lighter, more slippery vehicles. However, despite the superior economics of fuel efficient vehicles, there remains a lack of will on the part of automobile manufacturers to fully embrace the radical changes necessary to transform the commercial transportation industry. From MAP.
On this edition of IEEE Spectrum's Cooking with Engineers series, Spectrum's Suzan Hassler speaks with Brian Young, the Executive Chef at New York's Tavern on the Green. Young discusses his task as architect at a restaurant serving over a thousand diners for lunch and dinner, and the immense logistics involved in getting food onto the tables.
The internet has opened up previously unimagined space for innovation, but unintended consequences befuddle our ability to assess risks on the technological frontier. Denise Caruso and Clay Shirky launch Supernova with a lively rethinking of risk, serendipity, and the power of love in a socially networked world.
I'm disappointed that we don't have better rating data on shows. I wish there were a way to get the ratings data while people listened instead of requiring them to come back to the site to rate shows. Too much friction and not enough kinetic energy.
Tags: itconversations
Here's the top ten shows, by download, for IT Conversations during November 2007. I'm late because some recent server changes means that I didn't have access to the logs for a bit. Also, unfortunately, we lost 11 days worth of logs, so this data is based on 19 days of November 2007.
As described on its website, Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the web. It is designed to help young people As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design. Phil and Scott discuss Scratch, along with a number of other current technology topics.
The next evolution of Rails isn't going to be a unicorn, according to David Heinemeier Hansson. In this keynote address at the 2007 RailsConf, Hansson talks about what the Rails community has and where it's going, and the gradual improvements Rails will see in the coming years.
On this episode of Interviews with Innovators, Jon Udell's guest is Beth Jefferson, the founder of BiblioCommons. Her company's new software aims to transform public libraries' online catalogs into environments for social discovery of resources that are cataloged not only by librarians, but also by patrons.
In the keynote presentation from the 2007 Singularity Summit, Rodney Brooks, Panasonic Professor of Robotics at MIT, explores many possible singularity futures based on decades of experience researching, inventing, and commercializing robots. During this presentation Dr. Brooks examines why we need robotics and AI as well as how the singularity will not be like it is portrayed by Hollywood.
On BioTech Nation, Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Dr. Norma Nowak, who looks at some interesting new discoveries which could some day replace amniocentesis. David Ewing Duncan returns with Bio-Issue of the Week.
Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with science writer David Bodanis, author of "Passionate Minds", about the scientist Emilie du Chatelet and the Poet Voltaire.
Dick Hardt, founder and CEO of Sxip Identity, has been working with the Canadian government on a new virtual ID card that will streamline online interaction among government agencies, public-sector organizations, and citizens. In this conversation with Jon Udell, Hardt explains how this new program will work, and offers perspectives on a variety of online identity issues.
Amory Lovins continues his discussion on energy efficiency in transportation by presenting the business case for lighter, more slippery vehicles. However, despite the superior economics of fuel efficient vehicles, there remains a lack of will on the part of automobile manufacturers to fully embrace the radical changes necessary to transform the commercial transportation industry. From MAP.
On this edition of IEEE Spectrum's Cooking with Engineers series, Spectrum's Suzan Hassler speaks with Brian Young, the Executive Chef at New York's Tavern on the Green. Young discusses his task as architect at a restaurant serving over a thousand diners for lunch and dinner, and the immense logistics involved in getting food onto the tables.
The internet has opened up previously unimagined space for innovation, but unintended consequences befuddle our ability to assess risks on the technological frontier. Denise Caruso and Clay Shirky launch Supernova with a lively rethinking of risk, serendipity, and the power of love in a socially networked world.
I'm disappointed that we don't have better rating data on shows. I wish there were a way to get the ratings data while people listened instead of requiring them to come back to the site to rate shows. Too much friction and not enough kinetic energy.
Tags: itconversations
Scoble is doing a video column at Fast Company called Scoble on Tech. Interesting format: Scoble and Ed Sussman from Fast Company are chatting on video. There's pretty high production value--it's edited down so that you see each person when they talk and there are out takes to sites they talk about and graphics.
I just heard about it from Brad Baldwin while we were meeting about Podcamp SLC (Jan 26--more later). I watched the show on Open Social and learned some things. There's definitely meat here.
Still, I'm not convinced that lots of people are going to take the time to regularly watch video. Do you watch much video online (besides the funny YouTube videos people send you in email, I mean)? Really? Doing something like Scoble on Tech is considerably more expensive than an audio podcast. I'm reticent to make that kind of time commitment without a compelling reason.
Tags: itconversations podcasting
The Gillmor Gang is back and still the same. If you loved if before, you'll still love it. I laughed out loud twice in the first 15 minutes of show II.
It's only on Facebook, so you'll have to join if you're not already a member. If you do, feel free to add me as a friend.
Tags: podcasts itconversations
Laurianne McLaughlin has an excellent article in CIO magazine about security threats in virtual machines and what you can do now to mitigate them. One that caught my eye was No. 4, "Understand the Value of an Embedded Hypervisor". The reason I was tuned into that was a conversation I had with Gregory Ness on a Technometria podcast where he went into some detail about the role of a hypervisor in VM security.
As an aside, am I the only one who finds the interstitial page ads that IDG is placing in this online magazines completely annoying? I wouldn't mind so much if it wasn't the same ad, over and over again. I don't mind them having ads--after all, I write for InfoWorld, another IDG publication. Maybe its because I do write for them that they bother me so much. I suspect that 90% of the people will never tunnel through the interstitial to the second page.
Tags: security virtualization technometria podcast itconversations
Feedback on my interview with Bruce Johnson on the Google Web Toolkit led to ParenScript, a little language for Lisp that generates JavaScript. From the intro:
ParenScript is a small Lispy language that can be compiled to JavaScript. It also comes with client-side HTML and CSS generation libraries. This approach simplifies the development of web applications by enabling all components of the application to be written in Lisp, so that HTML, CSS and JavaScript code can all be generated with the full power of Lisp and its macros.
At the same time, ParenScript strives to produce maximally readable JavaScript with the absolute minimum overhead for advanced Lisp features, which sets it apart from other JavaScript generation tools. This enables straightforward, surprise-free debugging in tools like Firebug, and painless integration with JavaScript libraries such as Prototype.
From ParenScript
Referenced Mon Nov 12 2007 09:11:03 GMT-0700 (MST)
One neat feature: ParenScript comes with it's own macro definition form defpsmacro for creating ParenScript macros. A big step forward in user extensibility. Another is it's SEXP to JSON translation.
Tags: lisp gwt itconversations javascript
This week, I published shows on IT Conversations from two new series: the Singularity Summit and RailsConf. Here are the show descriptions.
Rodney
Brooks - The Singularity: A Period Not An Event - In the keynote
presentation from the 2007 Singularity Summit, Rodney Brooks,
Panasonic Professor of Robotics at MIT, explores many possible
singularity futures based on decades of experience researching,
inventing, and commercializing robots. During this presentation
Dr. Brooks examines why we need robotics and AI as well as how the
singularity will not be like it is portrayed by Hollywood.
David
Heinemeier Hansson - Rails 2007 Keynote - The next evolution of
Rails isn't going to be a unicorn, according to David Heinemeier
Hansson. In this keynote address at the 2007 RailsConf, Hansson talks
about what the Rails community has and where it's going, and the
gradual improvements Rails will see in the coming years.
There are many other new conferences, including Supernova and Defrag that will be coming along in the next few weeks and months. Watch for them--they're sure to give you something to listen to on those long winter nights.
Tags: itconversations rails singularity
Here are the top ten shows on IT Conversations (by download) for October 2007:
Recently, Google released from beta its Google Web Toolkit. Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is an open source Java software development framework that makes writing AJAX applications like Google Maps and Gmail easy for developers who don't speak browser quirks as a second language. Phil and Scott talk to Bruce Johnson, one if its co-creators. In addition to discussing its development, Bruce gives a number of examples of projects that took advantage of GWT.
People lie. We lie to each other, we lie to ourselves, and these deceptions cause no end of problems for human society. In this talk from Pop!Tech 2005, biologist Robert Trivers discusses the biological basis for deception in humans and other species. He shares the evolutionary imperatives that created the skills necessary to deceive others and also explains why self-deception has a biological basis.
Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with author Maryanne Wolf about how human brains have adapted since we invented writing and along with it reading.
Guy Kawasaki has a long history working in technology, both in established companies and as an entrepreneur. He worked for Apple at the time of the development of the Macintosh and later returned as an Apple Fellow. In this keynote speech, he gives what he believes are the important stages towards successful innovation. He presents the steps in both a humorous and intelligent way, showing what companies must do to be successful.
How do young people view the online experience? What are the implications of how life will be for people who have spent their entire lives online? Phil, Scott, and Ben discuss this and other topics related to recent conferences attended. Besides the whole issue of Millennials, they also assess the status of flash-based applications versus Ajax, as well as other methods available to make desktop based online applications.
Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with movie critic Leonard Maltin, who explains how movies have changed over the years, and how they're changing today, all thanks to technology.
Ned Gulley is a software designer at The Mathworks and the architect of the company's semi-annual MATLAB programming contest. Since 1999 he's watched contestants exhibit a unique blend of competition and cooperation. On this edition of Interviews with Innovators, host Jon Udell asks Gulley why winning solutions are woven from the contributions of ten or more players.
Social networking can transform communication and build powerful connections, but getting it right in the enterprise takes a special touch. David Bankston shares his experience as a technologist and entrepreneur in this lively discussion of ways in which software-as-service and social media can help businesses manage customer feedback and build brands and communities on line.
Dmitri Williams is an academic at USC Annenberg School for Communication, who studies the social dynamics of online games. On this episode of Interviews with Innovators, host Jon Udell speaks with Williams and George Vickers, who reflect on the ways in which leadership and organizational skills can be developed in an online multiplayer game.
If you ask the average person for an example of an appliance, he or she would mention a toaster. However, David Link, CEO of ScienceLogic, would give you a completely different example. He joins Phil and Ben to discuss technology appliances. In addition to defining them, he talks about how they are developed and why enterprises find them particularly useful. The group also assess how appliances can be used in a virtual environment, as well as the importance of technology monitoring.
I'm in Denver at Defrag. Eric Nolan, Brad Feld, and Phil Becker have organized it to discuss "the internet-based tools that transform loads of information into layers of knowledge, and accelerate the "aha" moment. Defrag is about the space that lives in between knowledge management, "social" networking, collaboration and business intelligence."
I missed Dave Weinberger's keynote. I didn't want to--he's an engaging speaker and this performance must have been great: I walked in as someone commented that she never expected to come to a tech confernce and cry in the first sessions. But to make it I would have had to fly out yesterday and as much as I love Dave, I love being with my family on Sunday evenings more. Sorry Dave.
Flying out this morning did allow me to see the Moon-Venus conjunction that Doc showed on his blog this morning. Very clear skies and a beautiful morning.
The good news is that IT Conversations will get the audio, so while I didn't hear it live, I'll hear it none-the-less. If you're not here, look for the audio in a few months. I'm sure it's going to be very interesting based on the speakers and topics.
Defrag has all the marks of an engaging, early-stage conference: a smaller-sized crowd that makes for more intimate, honest conversation, not too many vendors to drive the agenda, and lots of familiar faces who I know are interesting to listen to.
Tags: itconversations conferences travel events social+networking information+overload defrag
Guy Kawasaki was in Utah speaking on the Art of Innovation. Guy is a humorous speaker. I enjoyed it in spite of the fact that I've heard the talk several times before--on IT Conversations. I listened to the talk twice as we were getting ready to publish it and so I could finish most of Guy's sentences. Nothing wrong with that.
There were a few unique elements to the talk that Guy threw in and he responded well to some technical difficulties with the mic. It was a shame that it happened, but didn't detract too much. I also enjoyed seeing the slides--mostly to see how he used his slides. I like seeing how other people give keynote talks.
Guy's message is a variation on this post on his blog from 2006. He's modified it some. Here's the ten he gave today:
Guy had some book recommendations:
Tags: utah events itconversations
Social Innovations is a sister channel to IT Conversations. They have a 10 part series of lectures by Amory Lovins, the Cofounder, Chairman, and Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute. The series is a from set of five lectures he delivered at Stanford earlier this year.
I'm cross posting the Lovins lectures on ITC. The first lecture (see part I and part II) is on energy efficiency for buildings. This lecture has been highly rated by SIC listeners and I think ITC listeners will enjoy it too.
The second lecture, on energy efficiency in buildings (see part I, part II, and part III), has also been well received.
Many people I talk to are put off my environmentalism because it seems to always be telling them that they should "suffer" for the earth's sake.
