IT Conversations

Charles Nutter - Meet The Sun You Don't Know

Sun, 7 Sep 2008 00:00:00 CDT

If you think that Sun Microsystems is that Java company, then you've a lot of news to catch up on. Charles Nutter, co-lead on the JRuby project at Sun, gives a quick round-up of a plethora of initiatives that Sun is working on, for the individual open source developer and the little start-up guy, besides bringing Ruby to the enterprise.

Lawrence Lessig - Coding Against Corruption

Sat, 6 Sep 2008 00:00:00 CDT

Government corruption affects all aspects of society. At the 2008 O'Reilly ETech Conference, Lawrence Lessig discusses government corruption, especially in the United States Congress. What does government get right, wrong, and where does dependence compromise effective government? Also, Lessig announces a new project designed to signal congress' support for reform, called Change Congress.

Kris Kimmel - The Idea Festival

Fri, 5 Sep 2008 00:00:00 CDT

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Kris Kimmel, founder of the Idea Festival, and what's coming up at IF 2008.

Michael Meyer - Last Days of Old Beijing

Thu, 4 Sep 2008 00:00:00 CDT

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Michael Meyer, author of "The Last Days of Old Beijing," about the transformation of a city.

Dr. Alan Sachs - RNA, not DNA

Thu, 4 Sep 2008 00:00:00 CDT

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Dr. Alan Sachs, about new medical treatments in development at Merck Pharmaceuticals based not on DNA, but RNA.

Episode 20 - StackOverflow

Wed, 3 Sep 2008 00:00:00 CDT

Joel and Jeff discuss deadlocks, logging philosophy, the value and risks of taking dependencies on your project, and why you want to work with people who don't always do what you ask them to. Really!

Daniel J. Solove - Understanding Privacy

Tue, 2 Sep 2008 00:00:00 CDT

Attorney Daniel Solove discusses his book Understanding Privacy. He gives an overview of the difficulties involved in discussions of privacy, one of the most important concepts of our time. He talks about how scholars, activists, and policymakers have struggled to define privacy, with many conceding that the task is virtually impossible.

Manolis Kelaidis - bLink: Connecting the Analog and Digital Worlds

Mon, 1 Sep 2008 00:00:00 CDT

Wouldn't it be amazing if you could hold a "book" in your hands which had hyperlinks? Why would that be amazing, you ask? Well, what if the hyperlink triggered a process that makes a nearby computer, for example, play an MP3 of animal sounds that match the story? In this keynote presentation from the 2007 O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing conference, Manolis Kelaidis introduces blueBook, his prototype that merges the analog and digital worlds of books.

Jimmy Wales - Open or Closed? The Future of Search

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 00:00:00 CDT

"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge." That is the goal of Wikipedia's creator, Jimmy Wales. He has set his sights on Google and the other corporate Search Engines with his new project "Wikia," a personal search engine-builder.

Joel Spolsky - The Three Ingredients Of Great Products

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 00:00:00 CDT

Joel Spolsky is a highly revered software pundit, an eminent author, the host of one of the most widely read blogs, the co-founder of New York based FogCreek Software, and a witty and intelligent person to listen to. He believes that the three key ingredients that make great software are: making users happy, obsessing over aesthetics, and observing culture code. In elaborating these ideas with plenty of examples, he doesn't spare his wonderful sense of humor.

Cliff Schmidt - The Talking Book Device

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 00:00:00 CDT

People learning to read will soon be able to use a handheld device to practice their reading skills when trained teachers and the Internet are not available. Using inexpensive hardware, Literacy Bridge plans to provide Talking Book audio players/recorders in developing nations starting this fall, with a goal of selling them for $10 per device or less. Listen to Cliff Schmidt describe the Talking Book and the benefits it will bring to people in far-flung locations.

Pete Blackshaw - Consumer Megaphones

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:00:00 CDT

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Pete Blackshaw, author of "Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends," about consumer megaphones -- the folks who get extremely displeased and upset with products or services.

Dr. David Lacey - Bone Loss Treatment

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:00:00 CDT

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Dr. David Lacey, Senior Vice President of Research at Amgen, who talks about a new treatment for bone loss, no matter what the cause.

Evan Prodromou - Identi.ca

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:00:00 CDT

Identi.ca is an open microblogging service. Users can post short messages about themselves to Identi.ca, which are then broadcast to friends in their social network using instant messages (IM), RSS feeds, and the Web. The product's developer, Evan Prodromou, joins Phil and Scott to discuss the project, including its open source license.

Episode 19 - StackOverflow

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:00:00 CDT

Joel and Jeff discuss scaling and social effects in Stack Overflow, how to handle growth and the launch in a controlled way, and answer listener questions about backups, database design, and maintenance programming.

David Recordon - Open Standards, Communities and Mobile

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 00:00:00 CDT

David Recordon, Open Platforms Tech Lead for Six Apart, pitches the telephony community on grassroots efforts as a means for the development of open standards. Grassroots community groups can serve as the catalyst for addressing challenges that corporate groups have chosen to ignore, and begin to bridge gaps between existing web technologies and mobile service providers.

Ben Goertzel - Nine Years to a Positive Singularity

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 00:00:00 CDT

"Nine years to the Singularity, if we really, really, try," says Dr. Ben Goertzel, chief science officer and acting CEO of Novamente. Is this really possible? Dr. Goertzel believes the path to the development of Artificial General Intelligence - a real thinking machine with human level intelligence and beyond - can be accelerated through the use of virtual worlds as incubators for nascent artificial intelligence systems.

Wind and Solar Energy Special - IEEE Spectrum Radio

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:00:00 CDT

On this edition of IEEE Spectrum Radio, explore the fascinating energy technologies of the present and future. Listen to specials on "Wind Energy," "Vertical Wind Turbines," and "The Solar Challenge" where the ups and downs of Europe's wind energy are discussed and futuristic vertical-axis turbines that you could fit on your property become a possibility.

David Huynh - Parallax: Searching Freebase

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:00:00 CDT

For MIT's Project SIMILE, David Huynh built an amazing series of web tools for exploring and organizing structured information. Two months into his new gig at Metaweb, he's done it again. On this edition of Interviews with Innovators, host Jon Udell asks Huynh about his Parallax prototype, which creates a powerful new way for users to click their way through related sets of information in Freebase. In essence, a Wikipedia-like database built on a semantic web foundation.

Dick Hardt - Sxipper

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:00:00 CDT

Sxipper is a free Firefox add-on that saves you time by keeping track of an unlimited number of usernames and passwords as well as the personal data you share every day over the web. Dick Hardt, founder of Sxip, joins Phil, Scott, and Ben, to discuss the product, as well as the entire issue of privacy and identity on the web, as well as how to market plug-ins as products.

Episode 18 - StackOverflow

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:00:00 CDT

In the eighteenth episode of Stack Overflow, we finally meet Michael Pryor, the co-founder of Fog Creek Software -- and discuss the progress of the Stack Overflow beta in some depth.

Paul Ehrlich - Human Evolution

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:00:00 CDT

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Stanford Professor Paul Ehrlich about his latest book, "The Dominant Animal," which looks at human evolution and the environment.

Dr. Ian Boddy - Livestock & Global Warming

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:00:00 CDT

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with AgResearch's Dr. Ian Boddy, about the contribution of livestock to global warming and what their biotech research center is doing about it.

John Voelcker - IEEE Spectrum Radio: Electric Cars

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 00:00:00 CDT

In this special green automotive edition of IEEE Spectrum radio, join John Voelcker at the LA Auto Show, the Electric Vehicle conference, and ride an electric motorcycle. At the LA Auto Show, all of the major car companies showed electric or fuel cell models. At the Electric Vehicle conference, there was tension between electric vehicle enthusiasts and car companies over the suitability of current battery technology. Finally, the Brammo Enertia is a new electric motorcycle, available for purchase today.

Kent Beck - Test Driven Development, Patterns and Extreme Programming

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:00:00 CDT

Relating anecdotes from the past, Kent Beck, the father of Extreme Programming and JUnit, reflects back on the impact his ideas have had in the last 20 years, especially with respect to the history of Test Driven Development (TDD), Design Patterns, and Extreme Programming (XP). According to him, good ideas take about that much time to mature and come to fruition.

Philip Rosedale - Open Source Second Life

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:00:00 CDT

Second Life is not a game - it is a social, interactive, 3D version of the Internet. In this talk from the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, Philip Rosedale, CEO and Founder of Linden Lab, discusses the implications of the virtual world Second Life, his company's move towards open source, and the value of open source as a business strategy in a network-effects market.

W. David Stephenson - Citizen-Government Relationships

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:00:00 CDT

On this edition of Interviews with Innovators, host Jon Udell speaks with W. David Stephenson, who reflects on how Web 2.0 technologies -- and mindsets -- are transforming the relationship between citizens and governments.

Episode Seventeen - StackOverflow

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 00:00:00 CDT

In this special "developer edition" podcast, Jeff and the Stack Overflow development team discuss the development processes and decisions that go into building a public community web site for programmers.

Britt Blaser, Doc Searls, Jon Udell - iYear - Technology and Politics

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 00:00:00 CDT

Independence Year is the year between the next two Independence Days. The fireworks began on July 4th, 2008 at iYear.US. Independence Year (iYear) is a new way to interact with your government at every level. It's where you can gather or join a crowd around your concerns. Britt Blaser, Doc Searls, and Jon Udell, join Phil and Scott to discuss the project.

Marten Mickos - Thriving in an Online World

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 00:00:00 CDT

What is the impact of the world going on line? By any measure, it's huge. In order to thrive, argues MySQL's Marten Mickos, we must preserve two key types of freedom: the freedom to do things, and the freedoms that protect us. Highlighting key attributes of Ubuntu and MySQL that reflect these ideas, he illuminates the potential for opens source developers to further transform software, and the world, in positive ways.