Blogarithms

I’m at the Duke University Podcasting Symposium this week, and according to some sources, the event will be streamed live. I’m not convinced that’s true, but you might want to check it out for yourself. Go to http://isis.duke.edu/events/podcasting/casts.html. The event is 9/27 (8:30am-4:50pm Eastern) and 9/28 9:45am-3:pm). My session is one of the first, Tuesday, 9:15am010:35am Eastern.

At the very least, you’ll be able to get the timeshifted podcast edition.

Update: I’ve updated the above URL. Apparently you couldn’t get to the streaming servers on Tuesday from outside of Duke’s firewalls. We’ve been told this has been corrected and that you should now be able to listen.

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

News and Housekeeping

• Updates: The Way You Like ‘Em. Did you know that there are three ways you can receive these weekly announcements? This is the blog version, but you can also subscribe to email announcements, the IT Conversations ‘Everything’ or ‘Info-Only’ RSS feeds, or listen to the audio version.

Upcoming Events

• EuroOSCON. O’Reilly Media’s EuroOSCON is 17-20 October in Amsterdam, and through our contacts there, we’ve arranged for a 25% discount. Go to the URL below and use the code "euos05itc."
• Pop!Tech 2005. And our most popular of all events from last year, Pop!Tech, will be held again this year in Camden, Maine, October 16-19. Talk about rubbing elbows with some of the most influential people on the planet — this is the place to be.

New Programs This Week

Listed in increasing order of listener rating.

• Suffragette Journalists at BlogHer 2005 (3.0). The discussion about whether bloggers are journalists is one that inspires heated opinions. In this conversation from BlogHer, several blogger/journalists discuss the relationship between blogging and so-called traditional journalism. Moderator Lisa Stone asks Anastasia Goodstein, Chris Nolan and Evelyn Rodriguez to share their experiences of the relationship between independent online publishing and traditional media.
• Jakob Nielsen on Larry’s World (3.1) Designing websites is different from traditional media such as print and television. In spite of the usability guidelines being fairly well known, some of the common mistakes recur even on popular sites. Designers need to be careful and follow these guidelines to improve a website’s interface. Web-usability guru Jakob Nielsen speaks with Larry Magid about designing websites that capture and sustain the user’s attention.
• Alan Ganek - Autonomic Computing Systems (3.4) In a new collaborative business climate, there need to be connections between technologies and between people. IBM is creating "autonomic computing systems" and IBM Vice President Alan Ganek discusses how to develop an ecosystem of technologies and relationships to support collaboration between applications and corporations. In this talk from Supernova 2005, learn about how to ensure that your company and its applications are ready to be part of something bigger.
• John Warfield Simpson (3.5) Dr. Moira Gunn spoke with John Warfield Simpson, Professor of Landscape Architecture and Natural Resources, Ohio State University, and the audhor of "Dam! — Water, Power, Politics, and Preservation in Hetch Hetchy and Yosemite National Park." He related the technical — and political — tale which enabled the tiny city of San Francisco to dam an entire mountain valley some 200 miles away, a sister valley to the famous Yosemite — all in the name of progress.
• David Bornstein on Globeshakers (3.6) David Bornstein is a leading expert in the global rise of "social entrepreneurism." In this program, host Tim Zak asks how we would even know a social entrepreneur if we saw one on the street. More important, why should we even care? Who invests in social enterprise and what is at stake for our world if we don’t?
• James Powell (3.7) Moira Gunn also interviewed James Powell, Executive Director, National Physical Science Consortium, and the author of "Grand Canyon — Solving Earth’s Grandest Puzzle." He tells us about the controversy around the beginnings of the Grand Canyon, and the present and future of its now-aging Glen Canyon dam.
• Anders Zachrisson (3.8) And on Biotech Nation, Moira spoke with Anders Zachrisson, Senior Vice President, BioGaia, about the scientific studies testing "pro-biotics." He tells us about the scientific studies looking at probiotics, which are increasing in popularity today from Scandinavia to Asia.
• Tim O’Reilly - The Where 2.0 Application (3.8) The increasing availability of free map and imagery data and services comes at a time when GPS and other location sensors are becoming ubiquitous. This has brought geospatial applications programming within reach of a growing number of developers and the results, exciting in themselves, point the way to a fully network-enabled future. Tim O’Reilly’s talk identifies trends in mobile and location-based applications, while drawing parallels with other software markets.

The O’Reilly Pick of the Week:

This week’s IT Conversations/O’Reilly Pick of the Week is a great program from our archives:

• A Dinner Conversation with Mark Cuban (3.7) From last year’s Web 2.0 Conference: After Mark Cuban made a billion or so selling his company to Yahoo! during the height of the Web 1.0 craze, he decided to buy a basketball team. Fortunately, he bought the Mavericks, a team whose name suits his style: brash, out there, and unconventional. Now he’s back in the media business with HDNet.

Don’t miss this year’s Web 2.0, October 5-7 in San Francisco.

Thanks to Podscope, we’ve added audio search to the IT Conversations archives. Check it out on the top of the left-hand column on any IT Conversations web page.

In next week’s Business Week (9/26/05) IT Conversations is listed as one of three Editor’s Picks for Best of the Web (Podcast). Cool!

If you really want to help kick-start our new project, ask your lawer friends if they or someone they know would be willing to help with our 501\(c\)3 not-for-profit status filing here in California. I’ve put this off for too long, and it’s now going to be something that slows our progress. I had a few “sure, I’d like to do that for you” promises, but none of them panned out.

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

News and Housekeeping

• Updates: The Way You Like ‘Em. Did you know that there are three ways you can receive these weekly announcements? This is the blog version, but you can also subscribe to email announcements, the IT Conversations ‘Everything’ or ‘Info-Only’ RSS feeds, or listen to the audio version.

Upcoming Events

• EuroOSCON. O’Reilly Media’s EuroOSCON is 17-20 October in Amsterdam, and through our contacts there, we’ve arranged for a 25% discount. Go to the URL below and use the code "euos05itc."
• Pop!Tech 2005. And our most popular of all events from last year, Pop!Tech, will be held again this year in Camden, Maine, October 16-19. Talk about rubbing elbows with some of the most influential people on the planet — this is the place to be.

New Programs This Week

Listed in increasing order of listener rating.

• Stephen Lawler - Microsoft Virtual Earth (rated 2.5by IT Conversations listeners). Wouldn’t it be great if you could get information about the nearest and best restaurants and cafes when you find yourself in a new locality? It would be useful, too, if advertisers could use location-based services to target potential customers more accurately. Microsoft Virtual Earth provides APIs to do both of these things - and more. In this lively presentation, Stephen Lawler of Microsoft Corp. introduces us to the potential of MSN Virtual Earth.
• Daniel Liebowitz (2.6). On Tech Nation, Dr. Moira Gunn intereviewed Dr. Daniel Liebowitz, author of "The Last Expedition: Stanley’s Mad Journey through the Congo." He talks about Henry Stanley, famous for his line "Dr. Livingston, I presume," and relates the story of Stanley’s Last and Questionable Expedition to Africa, what he calls his Mad Journey through the Congo.
• Marc Benioff at Supernova (2.9). Salesforce.com is well-known for its hosted Customer Relationship Management (CRM) service, and its on-demand customer service offering, Supportforce.com. But Salesforce.com has set its sights higher than hosted CRM and Customer Service for small companies. In this conversation with Supernova host Kevin Werbach, Salesforce.com Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff outlines the company’s larger strategy.
• Lisa Williams and Ryanne Hodson at BlogHer 2005 (3.0). The time is right to explore your own Internet TV or radio station. Get ready to reach out to the world through podcasting and video blogging. Listen to Lisa Williams and Ryanne Hodson discussing "Get Your Word Out: Audio/Video-casting" at the BlogHer 2005 conference.
• George Gilder on Larry’s World (3.0). "Many people still have this nostalgic belief that China somehow continues to be Communist, when in fact, in their constitution in 2003 they incorporated a provision upholding the sanctity of private property." Gilder believes that China has become a consumer country by building 60 nuclear plants. The Chinese government uses science and technology in a realistic way because China is run by engineers, not lawyers. This is just one of the controversial subjects touched on by Magid and Gilder in this interview.
• Kim Polese - Do-It-Yourself IT (3.3). How is the open-source software world slowly moving from do-it-yourself (DIY) to do-it-together (DIT)? Which companies have identified the challenge, and why is testing a barrier to the growth of the software industry? Kim Polese answers these questions and talks about her new startup, SpikeSource, in this presentation from OSCON 2005.
• Asa Dotzler - Linux on the Desktop (3.4). Why isn’t Linux ready for the desktop, and what can the developer community do to increase adoption? (For that matter, can Linux ever make it big on the desktop or is it only an impossible pipe dream?) Asa Dotzler, the community coordinator for several Mozilla projects, tackles all these questions in this insightful talk from ETech 2005.
• Bob Wyman - Legalities of Syndication (3.4). Should websites and online businesses be liable for the actions of their users? Can syndication and reuse of content available via RSS and Atom feeds attract copyright-violation lawsuits? Why can’t the Creative Commons (CC) license be used as a basis for Digital Rights Management (DRM)? In this edition of Sound Policy with Denise Howell, Bob Wyman speaks about technical and legal aspects of syndication.
• Anders Zachrisson (3.8). On Biotech Nation, Moira Gunn spoke with Anders Zachrisson, senior vice president of BioGaia, on the science of "pro-biotics," the flip side to antibiotics.
• Sig Solares - Surviving Katrina with DirectNIC (3.9). With his team of brave and resourceful techies, Sig kept open a lifeline to their datra center, their customers and their city, all the way through Hurricane Katrina and its horrific aftermath. The crisis is far from over, and the smell of sewage, death and diesel generator fumes still fills the facility; but Sig kindly found time to talk with Doc Searls about a DIY-IT project which, for years to come, will serve as a crowning example of problem-solving in a real-life Worst Case Scenario.
• Andrew Fraknoi (4.3). Moira also spoke with Andrew Fraknoi, the chairman of the Astronomy Program at Foothill College, who explained why we’re finding all those new planets, and the big fight about what’s a planet and what isn’t.
• Jason Fried - Basecamp (4.3). Ride with Jason Fried of 37signals as he takes us through the lessons learned while building Basecamp, a hosted project management tool that is extremely popular among its thousands of users. Jason shares his experiences about what works and what doesn’t in web development and how the unconventional development methodologies followed by 37signals give it an edge. From the advantages of working as a team with members in different continents to getting the word about your product out effectively, Jason covers it all.

The O’Reilly Pick of the Week:

This week’s IT Conversations/O’Reilly Pick of the Week is a great program from our archives:

• Scott Ambler - Are You Agile or Are You Fragile? (3.8). A presentation by Scott Ambler at the SDForum Distinguished Speaker Series in 2003 entitled "Are You Agile or Are You Fragile?" The software industry is shifting from large-scale, prescriptive processes that mandate rigorous procedures and policies to lighter, more agile methodologies. Are these agile processes appropriate for your organization? If so, which should you consider adopting?

Earlier today, I wandered over to Noonan’s Bar and Grill, about two miles from my home here in Marin County, California. The reason: to join the great Leo Laporte and the other folks who bring you This Week in Tech, without a doubt *the* most popular tech podcast, if not the most popular in all categories. Leo is a true pro in every way, and one of the nicest and most sincere guys you’ll ever meet. Since Leo has decided to do his show every week from Noonan’s, I think I’ll make a point of heading over there on Sundays at 4pm whenever I can, even if it’s just to heckle John C. Dvorak who unfortunately couldn’t make it for today’s show.

Update: The video is now avaialble as a .mov file. ButTorrent download only. Sorry that the audio mix is poor. The levels between the speakers vary greatly.

We’ve changed the content-delivery architecture for IT Conversations, and one unpleasant side effect is that the URLs for our audio files have changed. (Hey — we warned you not to link directly to the MP3s!) Unfortunately, this also means that you may receive duplicate files if you’re subscribing to our RSS feeds. It’s a one-time problem, and you won’t be receiving duplicates on an on-going basis, however. Only the most-recent 20 URLs exist in both the old and new forms in the feeds.

Pop!Tech 2004 was arguably the most-popular event ever published on IT Conversations, and this year’s event looks even better. But if you can’t make it to Camden, Maine, October 19-22 — the event is nearly sold out — have we got a deal for you:

Through the extraordinary cooperation of the folks at Pop!Tech and Limelight Networks, we’ll be broadcasting a free live audio stream of the entire event. That’s right, I’ll be geting up at 5am Pacific time each day and dragging myself into Studio 2 to host the program via the remote ISDN feed from the Camden opera house.

But wait — there’s more!

During the breaks, we’ll bring you the greatest music of all types from the Podsafe Music Network, hosted by the various musical hosts of the PodShow Music Shows inlcuding the host of Accident Hash and the Manager of the Podsafe Music Network, C.C. Chapman.

Mark those dates on your calendar, and check back here (or subscribe) for details.

My most-recent book had nearly all 5-star reviews until two weeks when some Bozo rated it 1-star. How do I know he’s a Bozo and not a legitimate reviewer? Because there are many factual errors in his comments: the references to page numbers, for example.

I’ve spoken to other authors of books about web services, and they believe this is the work of one author of a competing book, and that he’s pusposely sabotaging the ratings of the other books.

Is there any solution to this problem? Is it a common one on Amazon? Should we treat Amazon reviews like those sporting events in which the system throws out the highes and lowest ratings, then averages those that are left? (Should Amazon do so themselves?)

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

News and Housekeeping

• The Benefits of Registration. If you haven’t already done so, please become a registered member of IT Conversations. Doing so will give you access to personalized features of our web site such as Personal Program Queues, SmartBrowse, and more. Just look for "Register" in the yellow menu bar on any IT Conversations web page.
• iTunes Users. Don’t forget that if you’re subscribing to our feeds using iTunes, you may be missing many of our programs! By default, iTunes only checks for new shows once each day and then downloads only one show. We’re publishing 2-3 great programs every day, so unless you go into the Settings section on the Podcast page (see the button in iTunes’ lower-right corner), you’ll be missing as much as half our programs.

New Programs This Week

Listed in increasing order of listener rating.

• Julie Hanna Farris - Scalix (rated 2.8 by IT Conversations listeners) 20 years ago at Bell South, Julie designed a distributed-computing mail system for 100,000 employees. After helping Lotus with its messaging strategy around cc:mail and Lotus Notes, as well as several startups, she founded Scalix Corp., a leading provider of Linux-based email. Learn about the new Scalix Community Edition, a free, unlimited-use version of its Scalix Enterprise Edition, and about interoperability issues between Scalix and Microsoft Exchange, and why Farris doesn’t lose sleep worrying about Microsoft.
• Jon Bostrom - Mobile Computing on the Edge (3.0) Jon Bostrom tells us how Nokia is moving mobile computing to the edge of the network. How are the different development platforms based on C++, Java and Python changing the mobile user experience? What are the different possibilities which multi-channel phones have opened up? It’s another great session from ETech 2005.
• Policy Panel Workshop at Supernova 2005 (3.1) Who owns the Internet? No one, of course. But without some knowledge of the arrangements under which packets are moved from one network to another, the foundations of the global infrastructure remain hidden and consumers have no way of knowing the commercial factors that frame the accessibility of bandwidth. This is one of many policy questions discussed in the Policy Workshop Panel from Supernova 2005.
• Devin Akin - Wireless Security (3.1) What’s new in wireless security? How mature are wireless intrusion detection systems? What are the three most important factors to consider for companies trying to secure their wireless infrastructure? In this interview with Sondra Schneider, Devin Akin answers these questions and tells us how to secure wireless networks.
• Peter van der Linden - Linux (3.3) Peter van der Linden is an author and software consultant who specializes in Linux and open source. He discusses his new book "Peter van der Linden’s Guide to Linux", written about how to use and set up a Linux based desktop or laptop computer. He also talks about the history of the Linux operating system and its future obstacles and growth opportunities as a competitive desktop and laptop operating system.
• Play by Today’s Rules or Change the Game? (3.4) In this discussion from BlogHer, women bloggers question whether they need to compete with male bloggers on the men’s terms, or if their goals and needs are fundamentally different. Charlene Li and Halley Suitt spark a debate about how women bloggers define and achieve success.
• Craig Newmark - Craig’s List and Hurricane Katrina (3.4) It may have his first name in its title, but the service founded by Craig Newmark is more the result of its community of posters and readers than it is of those who run it. Now in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, that community has found ways to utilize this amazing resource to help the victims. Craig’s List is now one of the best ways for people in the Gulf Coast region to find places to stay and ways to get there. The site is also helping displaced and relocated people locate one another.
• Michael Frumin (3.5) From the Where 2.0 conference, Michael Frumin of Eyebeam talks about Fundrace.org, which mapped the amount of contributions made by people to the candidates in the presidential race. He describes how he got the idea and the media frenzy that followed when all this public data was represented in a geospatial way on Fundrace.org.
• Daniel Imhoff (3.5) On Tech Nation, Dr. Moira Gunn spoke with Daniel Imhoff, the Executive Director of Watershed Media and the author of "Paper or Plastic: Searching for Solutions to an Overpackaged World." You’ll think twice the next time you pick up a blister pack of pills.
• David Sretavan (4.0) On Biotech Nation, Moira spoke with Dr. David Sretavan, Professor, Opthamology and Physiology and Program in Neuroscience at UCSF who returns to tell us about the knife that cuts nerve endings one-fiftieth the width of a human hair.
• Doug Kaye — That’s Me! (4.4) Here’s a twist! This week, Moira interviewed me. We talked about the history of IT Conversations and this new phenomenon of Podcasting.

The O’Reilly Pick of the Week:

This week’s IT Conversations/O’Reilly Pick of the Week is a great program from last year:

• William Gibson on Tech Nation (3.3) This week’s O’Reilly Pick of the Week is a popular interview with William Gibson by Dr. Moira Gunn from last year. Listeners know him best through his novels, including his first, Neuromancer, where Gibson coined the word "cyberspace."

In one post, Bruce Sharpe, Team ITC audio engineer extraordinaire, manages to explain what IT Conversations is all about, why he likes working on our shows, and why podcasting is working for him:

I used to be a big fan of the CBC. Now I walk past their big grey building with my MP3 player, the size of a pack of gum, plugged in and listening not to the radio but to a collection of really interesting podcasts hand-picked by me to suit my tastes and interests. I haven’t tuned in to the CBC for … months?

It works for Charssun, too.

Team ITC member Tom Parish continues his interviews with other volunteers on his Talking Portraits podcast. This time it’s one of our top website producer/editors, Arun Tanksali (MP3) in Bangalore.

Tuesday evening I’ll be sharing the stage with Dan Klass in a discussion entitled Podcasting: Media Evolution or Revolution as part of the BayCHI monthly meeting. Join us at Xerox PARC’s George E. Pake Auditorium, 3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto, Calicornia at 7pm.

Like everyone, I’ve been reeling from the horrors of the disaster in the southeastern U.S. I go back and forth between feeling for the thousands of Americans who continue to suffer and die, and outrage at the lack and lethargy of the federal response. And like everyone I know, I wonder, “What can I do?” My wife and I have made one substantial (by our standards) donation already, and I’m sure we’ll contribute more.

We all do what we can, and partially in reaction to other ideas floating around, I thought that I and others could put together something online — something done in audio. One idea was a podathon: a live audio stream with call-in and feeds from other podcasters. I’ve got the facilities here in Studio 2, so I queried a few friends and associates to get some feedback.

But after 48 hours of consideration, I’ve decided it’s not such a good idea after all. Yes, it might make me feel better for doing something in this situation, but would it really help those in need? I think not. If anything, it might divert attention from activities that are more likely to benefit them. For example, Webcasters.org has a page of links to the audio streams of Gulf Coast broadcasters, many of whom are offering direct informational services to those in the area. I’d like to encourage everyone to support the broadcasters and emergency-response organizations that can really make a difference.

Update: Kevin Devin has posted a Call to Volunteers on his blog:

According to SANS - Internet Storm Center, the Red Cross has put out a call for volunteers for SysAdmins, Network Engineers, and InfoSec Specialists.

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

News and Housekeeping

Not much new to report this week. We’re in the midst of a heavy-duty conference season, so we’re ramping up to 12-14 shows per week for the rest of the year. Yeah, I hear you. It’s too much for us, too. The volunteers of Team ITC have been doing an awesome job, but we’re stretched pretty thin. We can’t take on any new volunteers at the moment, unfortunately, because our content-management systems are a bit of a mess and our mentors can’t take on any more newbies for now.

However, I do want to tell you a bit about what’s coming up. There are some terrific conferences this fall, and you may want to try and attend one or more of them in the flesh so that you can experience the great networking that each of these provides.

• Accelerating Change 2005. One of our most popular conferences from last year will be held in less than two weeks. Accelerating Change 2005 will be at Stanford University, September 16-18, and we’ve arranged for a $75 discount if you register with the code "AC2005-ITC" .
• EuroOSCON. O’Reilly Media’s EuroOSCON is 17-20 October in Amsterdam, and through our contacts there, we’ve arranged for a 25% discount. Use the code "euos05itc."
• Pop!Tech 2005. And our most popular of all events from last year, Pop!Tech, will be held again this year in Camden, Maine, October 16-19. Talk about rubbing elbows with some of the most influential people on the planet — this is the place to be.

And here are two requests for help we’ve received:

• Nature Conservancy Wants Help. If you’re an expert in podcasting in the Washington, DC, area, the Nature Conservancy would like to hear from you. They sponsor lunchtime sessions on a variety of topics, and they’d like to have a podcaster come and tell them what this thing is all about. Interested? Just drop me a note at doug@itconversations.com.
• Stringer Wanted. We need someont to record a great session at UC Berkeley on the evening of Tuesday, September 20, when Hank Barry, Pamela Samuelson and Denise Howell will will discussing the MGM v. Grokster case. Again, if you can help record this, let me know by email.

New Programs This Week

Listed in increasing order of listener rating.

• Werner Vogels on Memory Lane (rated 2.8 by IT Conversations listeners) Now ten years old, and with 975,000 independent vendors, Amazon.com is one of the classic long-tail online companies. Its new CTO, Werner Vogels, talks openly with Halley Suitt about the company, its policies for making data available to others (while protecting customers’ privacy), and the state of search engines. Werner says that search is still in its infancy, but it’s like dancing bears: the novelty alone makes it look pretty good. He explains how they’ve used their customers’reviews to build a large-scale network of shared intelligence.
• J.C. Herz - Military ETech (2.8) What does the military see in emerging technologies? The military wants to remix technologies to allow the soldiers on the edges to communicate with those in the center. J.C. Herz looks at two specific technologies that the military is attempting to remix into a viable reapplication of code for their benefit. It’s not always easily accomplished. Four misunderstood lines of code destroyed a missile during launch to the tune of $1 billion.
• Andrew Zolli on Globeshakers (3.1) It’s another great series from IT Conversations: Globeshakers with Tim Zak. Here’s our first show. What are the major demographic forces driving the economies, the industries, the families and the ecologies of the 21st century? What emerging technologies hold promise in light of these grand challenges? Andrew Zolli, chief curator of Pop!Tech and prominent futurist, points to some key trends lurking over the horizon.
• Distributed Business at Supernova 2005 (3.3) What is a distributed business - is it having employees from all corners of the globe, clients or consumers in many markets or suppliers from various areas? According to this panel from the 2005 Supernova conference, distributed business is all this and more. Learn how any business, large or small can take advantage of new technologies and philosophies to become more successful.
• Nat Torkington and Tim O’Reilly - Open Source Trends (3.5) We kick off our coverage of OSCON with Nat and Tim bringing us up-to-date on the cool things happening in tech world: the commoditization of software, software as a service, and products that threaten to change the way the web works and influence the everyday lives of ordinary people.
• David Rumsey - The Past and Future of Mapping (3.6) What do historical maps show and what do they hide? How were the cartographers over the centuries biased? How can these old maps be used, superimposed and blended with current maps to show the changes in topography over the centuries? How can old maps be "remixed" with current information to reveal interesting information about cities? David Rumsey talks about the evolution of maps over the centuries and how they can be used to reveal interesting information.
• David Sretavan (3.8) On Biotech Nation, Moira spoke with Dr. David Sretavan, Professor of Opthamology and Physiology and Program in Neuroscience at UCSF. He told us how we might actually fuse severed nerve endings back together — nerve endings one-fiftieth the width of a human hair.
• Robert Shelton (3.8) Moira also spoke with Robert Shelton, Managing Director for Innovation at Navigant Consulting and the co-author of "Making Innovation Work." While anyone can readily spot a breakthrough product and know that innovation has occurred, what can be puzzling is how it happens.
• Leslie Berlin (3.8) Finally, Moira interviewed Leslie Berlin, Silicon Valley Archivist at Stanford University and author of "The Man Behind the Microchip" about the life of Robert Noyce, the man who co-invented the integrated circuit, the essential technology behind every little chip in your life today.

The O’Reilly Pick of the Week:

This week’s IT Conversations/O’Reilly Pick of the Week is a great session from last year:

• RFID at SofTECH (3.5) RFID — Radio Frequency Identification — is transforming the way companies track inventory, artwork and even law briefs, but some fear it could be used for more "Orwellian" pursuits. A panel of leading technology developers and pioneer end-user corporations explores this promising and yet maligned emerging technology that both empowers consumers and raises privacy issues.

Just how does a $79 Studio Projects B1 microphone compare to the $2,700 Neumann U-87? You’ll likely find some surprises in an excellent test of podcast- and broadcast-suitable microphones at Transom.org. And make sure you read the comments, too.