Archive for July, 2005

We get at least a half-dozen donations and messages of praise every day, and I can’t recall that I’ve ever posted any of them to my blog, but I just liked this guy’s style:

Dear Mr. Kaye,

I am IT Conversations’ biggest fan. Others may claim this title, but in truth they are second fiddle to me. I am writing to say thanks for putting together this great collection of programs. I have found them both educational and entertaining. Now before I get to my ultimate point I’ll give you a little background on me. My wife and I run Kipe and Associates which is a small IT services firm based in Beaverton, Oregon. The Oregon Business Journal recently recognized us as the 9th fastest growing private company in the state of Oregon. We provide staff augmentation and application development services to mostly large conservative businesses and we usually do things like J2EE, .NET, and database development. My wife really runs the business and I write code for a living.

Now before you delete this email out of boredom, I’ll get to my point. I would be thrilled if you would visit my website. You don’t have to read anything, click on any links, or anything like that. I would just love to be able to tell my friends that Doug Kaye has seen my website. If you do visit my site, I’ll make a $50 donation to IT Conversations. And don’t worry this isn’t an advertising ploy and I’m not going to write about this is in a blog or anything like that.

Unless you object, I would like to add a link to the IT Conversations website on my evolving “developers” page so that my employees and other visitors will know about the great resource you provide. My website link is below. Its safe and you won’t be asked for any information, nor will any cookies be placed on your computer.

Thanks,
Frank Sampson
Kipe and Associates, Inc.

http://www.kipeassoc.com

We received $50 from Frank, today via PayPal.

It has been a long-standing rule here at IT Conversations that we don’t conduct interviews over Skype, but recent improvements in Skype as well as additional experience has caused us to revisit that restriction. I’ll be publishing more detailed guidelines shortly, but here’s a summary:

• Record on an external device, not the same computer running Skype.
• Record the two sides of the conversation on separate tracks, then mix them in post-production. This allows you to match the levels and equalization and to eliminate single-track noise with gates.
• Shutdown all other applications on the computer running Skype. The worst offenders are those that use network resources such as email and IM clients, but anything that can take resources from Skype must be halted.
• Have exclusive access to a broadband connection. Another computer or a VOIP phone using the connection can adversely affect the quality.
• Use a standard cardioid microphone, not the noise-canceling type that are part of most headsets.

The figure below illustrates a hardware configuration that works quite well.

• The mixer can be an inexpensive one such as the Behringer UB502 ($35 street price) .
• The pan pots on the mixer are set such that the microphone signal is fed only to the mixer’s left output while the PC’s audio output (audio from the remote speaker) is fed only to the right channel.
• Only the left channel from the mixer (with only your mic’s signal) is fed to the computer’s line input.
• Yes, you need a line input, not a mic input, on the computer.
• Your voice will be recorded on the left track, and the other person will be recorded on the right.
• Likewise, you’ll hear yourself in your left ear and the other person in the right.
• As always, the headphones are connected as late as possible in the audio chain in order to detect as many problems as possible.

Note that this may work well using SkypeOut, which would allow you to conduct interviews with non-Skype users that sound as good as if you have an $800 telephone hybrid. I haven’t tested this to a great extent, so let me know how well it works for you.

Update: Here’s another variation.

Rob Walch interviewed me for the latest edition of Podcast 411. (mp3)

I’m starting to write the specifications for the new project’s software. We’ve got some interesting things to build:

1. a specialized content-management system
2. a show-assembly system that combines audio files according to scripts
3. content-distribution interfaces (our CDN, BitTorrent, Internet Archive, etc.)
4. a membership-management system
5. extensive ratings, reputation and personalization features
6. event/engineer matching system

I plan to build most (if not all) of this in PHP, based to some extent on the existing code written by yours truly. Almost everything will be open source, and I hope to send out the word for interested developers within a month.

But in the meantime, I need advice from one or two people who have built successful large-scale projects in PHP. I wouldn’t call what I’ve written to date spaghetti code, but I’m sure I didn’t organize it the best way. For example, here are some questions I have:

1. What’s the right way to organize source files in terms of common/include files for parameters, common functions, etc?
2. What’s the best way to manage database connections? My current code sometimes opens and closes the database multiple times per page rendered because of the moudularity of the source files.
3. Can you provide a link to an open-source PHP project that you think is well organized and architected? I’d like to read some source code to look for best practices.

At this point, it would be great just to get #3: some links to well-designed code. But if you’re interested in doing more, just send me a message. (doug@rds.com)

Mike Dunn wrote: “Try starting w/ (guess what) your customers – what are they already doing and how can you morph to accommodate their desires.” This is in the context of Mike’s review of a CBS News story about an annual retreat of media execs in Sun Valley.

There are a few fundamental principles that have driven me to start a new non-profit to capture, produce and distribute spoken-word events worldwide. I didn’t discover these on my own. Far from it. In fact, it has taken a long time for the implications to really sink in from reading and talking to the Lessigs, Lasicas, Weinbergers, Doctorows, Kahles and Searls of the world. I’m sure I still don’t understand all of the ramifications. Two of them are:

1. Free content is more valuable than paid content. When content (or whatever you choose to call it) can be freely linked to, blogged, reviewed and remixed, its value to the world (and hence to its creator/owner) escalates dramatically. Conversely, if you put your content behind a toll gate or hinder its access or reuse in any other way, you drastically reduce its value.
2. Listen to your customers/readiers/viewers/listeners. I was at a party in New York a few weeks ago and found myself arguing with a film producer. First of all, he didn’t get that large-scale pirating of movies in Asia is any different from individuals sharing files. To him it was all theft, and damnit — it was his content and he was going to decide who could see it, where, when and how. I tried to explain that his viewers were trying to send him a message. They want to see his films when and where they want, and that they’d be willing to pay for that privilige. They want it so bad, in fact, that they’re willing to steal his films. If only he would listen and provide a solution to meet his viewers’ need rather than fighting with them, at least this ‘problem’ could be solved. This guy’s wife got it right away. He’s blind to it.

Regarding my thread on decommissioning the IT Conversations AAC/M4B feeds, I think it’s important to consider that there’s no reason Apple and other MP3-player manufacturers can’t support bookmarkable MP3s. If that’s what users want, they should let the manufacturers know or buy products that do support bookmarks for MP3s. It doesn’t make sense for publishers/podcasters to create twice as many files and feeds, doubling storage requirements, to support a feature that’s really a client-side issue.

But given that lots of people already have iPods and wish they could bookmark MP3s, here’s a recommendation and a request to the Apple developer community: Can someone please write a script (or two: one for Windows, too) that periodically looks at the files in a playlist (such as “Podcasts”) and converts all the MP3s in that folder to AACs? That would solve the problem for everyone and move it to the client side where it belongs. Now I know you’re going to tell me that AACs from MP3s won’t sound as good as a directly created AAC. True, but it’s damn hard to hear the difference. Do the tests yourself as I have.

This isn’t as good a solution as Apple supporting MP3 bookmarks, but it’s a heck of a lot better than requiring podcasters to create two types of files, at least when you take a step back and view the entire podcasting ecology.

Odeo is open for business:

So…we’ve opened the doors. After months of hard work, we’re proud to welcome you to Odeo. We’re still very much in beta, so we appreciate your feedback (and patience). But please look around, listen to some stuff, subscribe…have fun.

IT Conversations is the second most-popular feed, at least for now. Congratulations to Ev, Noah, and the entire Odeo team!

(Hear the MP3 version with additional commentary in beautiful monophonic audio.)

New Programs This Week

Listed in increasing order of listener rating. For descriptions, visit the IT Conversations home page.

• Shane Robison – Software 2005 (rated 2.8 by our listeners). Companies are still spending up to 70% of their IT budgets on infrastructure and application maintenance, which is impacting their ability to support new business opportunities. Shane Robison, Chief Strategist for HP, shares his company’s views on enterprise software and tells what they’re doing to support the adaptive and real-time enterprise. They are investing in open source software, web services and utility computing.
• Sir Christopher Evans (3.0) On last week’s Biotech Nation segment, Moira Gunn spoke with Professor Sir Christopher Evans, a microbiologist and the Founder and Chairman of Merlin Biosciences, the largest BioTech venture capital fund in Europe.
• Brendan Eich – Web 2.0 (3.1) If you’re not a Firefox user yet, listening to this Web 2.0 session may get you to switch, and if you are a user, you might discover many of Firefox’s greatest capabilities most people are unaware of. Brendan Eich, creator of the JavaScript language and one of the first people at Netscape, now at the Mozilla foundation, speaks about Firefox’s greatest capabilities, how Windows Longhorn might impact Firefox, and what the future versions of Firefox are likely to hold, such as the tag.
• Seltzer & Schultz – Endangered Devices (3.1) Add devices, gizmos and gadgets to the endangered species list. This presentation by Wendy Seltzer and Jason Schultz of the Electronic Frontier Foundation highlights technologies threatened by a climate hostile to innovation. Learn about the legislation that is threatening technology developers and find out what can be done to fight back.
• Stephane Maes – palmOne (3.2) Portable media is the new personal computer. With the PSP, iPods and Smartphones/PDAs taking over the world, people like to do everything on a handheld device: listen to music, talk to their girlfriends, play games, check their e-mail, and even watch movies. Host Larry Magid speaks to Stephane Maes, Director of Product Management for Handhelds at palmOne all about portable media.
• Mark Ramsey – Mercury Radio Research (3.3) In conversation with Rob Greenlee, Mark explains his vision for the coming Digital HD Radio platform and whether it fills a need in the radio market. He also talks about whether the improved sound quality of AM Digital Radio broadcasts are really needed and why broadcasters are deploying it, and he considers how podcasting will be embraced and how it will impact broadcast radio. Mark is a terrestrial broadcast radio consultant and audience researcher.
• Harry Dent – The Next Great Bubble Boom (3.4) Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Harry Dent, the author of "The Next Great Bubble Boom." He sees another boom coming, and he says that technology and the Baby Boomers are behind it!
• Cory Doctorow – Author, Blogger and Internet Activist (3.7) What does free WiFi have to do with revenge? And what can you do with last year’s high-tech gizmo that is worth less than a dollar today? Science fiction author, blogger and Internet activist Cory Doctorow speaks with Dave Slusher about wireless community networks, high tech art made from trash, free speech and his brand-new novel, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town.
• Tom Standage – Technology Editor, The Economist (3.9) Moira also speaks with Tom Standage, the science and technology editor for the Economist. They’ll talk about what makes the Economist unique, as well as his new beat: The Technology Quarterly.

This week’s Doug’s Favorite from the IT Conversations archives:

• Tim O’Reilly on Open Source (4.0) This week’s Doug’s Favorite is a great session from last year’s OSCON. Tim looks at the deep trends underlying open source, and some of the cool projects and ideas that are keeping folks at O’Reilly up at night. He also presents the results from O’Reilly’s recent market research efforts, combining information from book sales patterns with other indications of technology adoption and interests. OSCON 2005 starts August 1, so register now. We’ll see you there.

I don’t normally comment on individual IT Conversations shows here on my blog, and it’s even rarer for me to take exception to what one of our guests has to say, but I found Rob Greenlee’s interview with Mark Ramsey of Mercury Radio Research so fascinating that I can’t help myself. In less than 45 minutes Mark managed to highlight almost everything that big-media broadcasting doesn’t understand about participatory media. I don’t want to pick on Mark, who I’ve never met and who is probably very good at what he does, but some of his quotes are true classics of a way of thinking that will ultimately be the demise of traditional large-scale media. Consider, the following from this show:

“[Podcasts should be] original, unique and broad-based, compelling content…Star content is what drives everything…If I podcasted with any zeal…my greatest hope and desire would be that I would be discovered by radio and put on a radio station or a network that has reach and distribution. That’s what it’s all about.”

This guy needs to read about the long tail and get a clue what makes most of us tick.

“Just because you can do desktop publishing on your laser printer doesn’t mean you’re going to replace the local newspaper.”

Don’t be too sure about that!

“Even the worst TV network doesn’t…take voluntary contributions from the audience.”

Maybe they should re-think that strategy. Listen to Rob Curley and Dan Gillmor.

We need a name for the new project. I’m one of those name-challenged people. When it comes to naming things, my imagination goes to zero. As proof, here are two names I came up with, both of which make my wife’s eyes roll just before she groans: Vox Publicus and CommonsCast. Yeah, groan.

Can you do better? If so, email me your ideas. Don’t post them as comments, because as soon as there’s a good one, some domain jumper will grab it and try and extort money for it. Instead, email your suggestion directly to me at doug@itconversations.com.

I’ve had a few recommendations such as Audiopedia, but I don’t want to limit the vision to audio. We’ll be adding video when the time is right. And think big. This is a global initiative, not limited to IT or even technology.

Even before all this talk of non-profits, I wasn’t doing a particularly good job of finding sponsors or underwriters for our programs. Having only limited sponsorship revenues wasn’t a problem for me, but we have some amazing hosts at IT Conversations who are true professionals and make their livings by producing shows for us and broadcast radio: Moira Gunn (Tech Nation), Larry Magid (Larry’s World), and Rob Greenlee, just to name our regulars. And then there are our semi-pros who host shows less frequently such as Halley Suit (Memory Lane), Phil Windley (Technometria), Scott Mace (Opening Move), Ernest Miller (The Importance of the Law and IT), Denise Howell (Sound Policy), and Dave Slusher (Voices in Your Head). Heck of a list, ain’t it?

We have a terrific stable of hosts and programs and they deserve some income commensurate with their efforts, the quality of their shows, and the size of their audiences, and to achieve that goal, we need the help of a part-time salesperson. So if you’re an independent sales professional and you’d like to sell underwriting slots for what many people believe is the #1 high-end (broadcast quality in every way) podcasting network, here’s a chance. I don’t think there’s yet enough income from IT Conversations alone to feed your family, pay the morgtgage, and make the payments on the Ferrari, but if you start with IT Conversations, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to represent some other high-end podcasters, too, and maybe make a pretty decent living at it, let alone corner the market for podcast ad sales. Interested? Email me at doug@itconversations.com.

As I threatened, I’m slowly disabling the M4B/AAC feeds for IT Conversations. My goal is to get rid of them altogether. Yes, I know all you iPod users love your bookmarks, but producing and hosting 2x files is going to become a significant issue in the future.

Now the word is that with the new iPod software, you can bookmark MP3s in the same manner as you could with the M4B files. If that’s not the case for you, please let me know the model and software version of your iPod.

In the meantime, I’m sorry that this change has also cause the re-loading of files from the RSS feeds. This was unavoidable since iTunes reasonably suspects that the files are in fact different and new.

Okay, all you identity gurus. (And I know you’re reading!) Here’s today’s challenge for you. For the new project we need to make sure we have authorization to record and publish tens of thousands of events every year from all over the world. How can we be reasonably certain that the person who gives us such permission is who they say they are and that they’re authorized to grant such permission?

It’s easy on the relatively small scale of IT Conversations. We have a written contract with each of the events we publish. But that’s not scalable worldwide and with the volume we anticipate.

I thought of one way we could do this, based upon the technique that Technorati uses to allow someone to claim an RSS feed. To demonstrate that the person has some association with an event, we could require that they add some invisible unique string to the HTML of one of the web pages associated with the event. We parse the HTML, find the secret string and close the authentication loop. The only problem is that we’re then limited to events with an on-line presence.

Got any better ideas for this one?

Scott Loftesness writes about the future of public radio and how it might be affected by satellite radio and podcasting. The future of public radio instantly became clear to me when I realized I had no interest in getting my local NPR station to carry Chris Lydon’s new show.

In a flattering blog post, Darren Paul Griffith comments on a segment of my interview with Cameron Reilly. But I should point out that my example of The New York Times’ $49/year policy and how that relates to the remixability of content, came from listening to Halley Suitt’s interview with veteran blogger, Meg Hourihan. Meg really gets it.

(Hear the MP3 version with additional commentary in beautiful monophonic audio.)

New Programs This Week

Listed in increasing order of listener rating. For descriptions, visit the IT Conversations home page.

• Jeff Cove – Flat-Panel Television (rated 3.3 by our listeners) LCD or Plasma? High definition or rear projection? Should you wait for another year to buy a bigger, brighter, cheaper set or get out your credit card right away? The choices are overwhelming. Host Larry Magid speaks to Jeff Cove, VP of Strategic alliances at Panasonic, about such visual media advancements and what to look for, then go for.
• Dr. David Coy (3.4) On this week’s Biotech Nation segment, Moira Gunn interviews Dr. David Coy, Professor of Medicine, Tulane Health Sciences Center, about how their research may unexpectedly help a very common condition: macular degeneration.
• Dr. Alva Noe (3.5) Moira also speaks with Dr. Alva Noe, professor of philosophy at UC, Berkeley and the author of "Action in Perception." They talk about the nature of perception, and how philosophy is quickly meshing with cognitive science.
• Joel Garreau (3.5) Moira interviewed Joel Garreau, the cultural revolution correspondent to the Washington Post. They talk about GRIN: genetics, robotics, Information and nanotech.
• MGM v. Grokster (3.7) Host Ernest Miller along with Denise Howell and Charles (C.E.) Petit disect the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling overturning a District Court in the case of MGM v. Grokster. The decision says Grokster could be found guilty of an "act of inducement" by encouraging (or not discouraging) its users to share infringing files. The panel considers the implications for publishers, software developers and manufacturers, and looks specifically at the outlook for BitTorrent.
• Scott Cook on Customer Relationships (3.8) Customers and customer relationships are fundamental to the growth of any business. So why is it that as a business grows it moves further away from its cutomers? Instead of walking a mile in their shoes they discard them. Scott Cook, co-founder of Intuit, understands the importance of customer-driven innovation and credits it for the success and perpetual growth of his company.
• Rob Curley – The World Company (4.4) Since the dot-com days, nearly every newspaper in the world has made use of the Internet and now has a website where readers can get their news faster than they can get the hardcopy paper. But just having a website is one thing. Doing it right — which is what Rob Curley is known for — is another. Hear Rob’s fascinating keynote presentation from the Integrated Media Association’s New Media Summit in which he gives examples of how he and his web-development team at the Lawrence Journal-World continue to do it right.

We’re all thankful to Apple for increasing the awareness of podcasting and bringing us more listeners, but perhaps it’s no surprise that things are still a bit rough around the edges.

DailySonic suggests that iTunes may be caching MP3 files, a definite no-no. [Source: Dave Winer]

The default scan in iTunes is once a day and only retrieves the single most-recent program. That may be fine for most podcasts, but here at IT Conversations we release as many as three programs per day. So unless you change these settings in iTunes, you’re going to miss some of our best programs.

One advantage of becoming a non-profit is that when people keep asking me, “What’s your business model?” I can just smile and say, “I don’t have one.” (That’s how I’ve answered the question for the last two years, anyway.) Of course, even non-profits need revenues to pay for expenses, so here are my plans for revenue generation in the new venture.

1. Quick-Delivery Conference Audio. Shortly after a major event (1-2 weeks, depending on the number of sessions) we’ll release all of the audio online for a fee. It might cost, for example, US$5 per presentation or US$100 for all 30+ sessions from a complex conference. We’ll split the profits 50/50 with the event producers. Note that we’ll still publish the conference sessions at the rate of one show per week like we’ve always done, but if you’re in a hurry you can pay a few $$ for the privilege.

2. Membership. This will be modeled after public radio. Membership will not be a gateway to the content. The content will always be free with the exception of the quick-delivery option above. Membership may get you special web-site features or thank-you gifts, but it will primarly just be a way for you to support our on-going operations.

3. Grants. Ideally, the above will cover all our expenses, but we may seek private (non-governmental) grants for special projects, to help us ramp up, or to launch new programs or series on specific topics or in new parts of the world.

Here are a few paragraphs — the long elevator pitch — I’ve written about my new non-profit venture:

Every day there are scores or even hundreds of fascinating and important conference sessions, lectures or other presentations that are lost. They simply evaporate because no one captures or records them. Some of these presentations are by the greatest and most inspiring minds of our time, and many could be important to people in the far reaches of the planet, if only they could hear them.

My new project is to capture (record) all of these presentations, post-produce them, and make them available worldwide for free.

To record tens of thousands of events each year, we will appeal to the social conscience of the worldwide army of podcasters – 10,000 today, and 25,000-50,000 within a year – who I believe will be enthusiastic about the opportunity to give back to their communities and to the world. As a side benefit, these “podcaster stringers” will hone and extend their skills and build their reputations in ways that could benefit them financially and otherwise.

We will build an online “dating service” that will match podcasters with events in their communities. Likewise, we will recruit volunteer writers and producers to create and edit the metadata and descriptions that accompany the recordings. Content will be managed, and quality will be maintained, by a Wikipedia-like system and community. High-volume content will be delivered by a combination of BitTorrent and partners such as the Internet Archive.

We will cover not just IT or even technology, but literally every topic about which someone speaks and another person finds it valuable enough to capture.

More to follow over the days and weeks to come.