Blogarithms

I had the pleasure of meeting Tom Coates at FOO Camp ealier this year. Although he has just left the BBC, he was allowed to post this description of an awesome internal project he and others worked on to build an audio annotator in Flash and AJAX. Check out the demos linked to in his blog. [Source: Mitch Ratcliffe]

We need something like this for IT Conversations, don’t you think?

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

New Programs Last Week

Listed in increasing order of listener rating.

• Gary Flake - Yahoo!’s Research Lab (2.8) Yahoo!’s research department of scientists is busy creating new products and developing new ideas. At the time of this talk, Dr. Gary Flake was Director of Yahoo!s Research Lab, and he discusses the philosophy behind the Research Lab. He also demonstrates some of the new tools being developed a Yahoo!, including a collaborative prediction system (with prizes!) in which you can participate.
• Richard Monson-Haefel - Java Superplatforms (2.9) In this session from the Application Platform Strategies track at Burton Group’s 2005 Catalyst Conference, Richard Monson-Haefel compares J2EE "superplatforms" — application platforms packed with integration, deployment, and management frameworks. Richard gives advice on choosing a superplatform and lays out how Burton Group sees this market developing as superplatforms add still more features demanded by enterprise IT developers.
• William Terrill - WLAN Technology Update (3.0) In this session from the Network and Telecom Strategies track at Burton Group’s 2005 Catalyst Conference, Burton Senior Analyst William Terrill gives an overview of protocols and products for enterprise deployment of Wireless LANs. Quality of Service (QOS), security, and centralized management are all available now. New 802.11 suffixes will standardize features that are still vendor- specific, such as mesh networking. Bill gives recommendations for your enterprise wireless deployment.
• Eamonn Kelly (3.6) On Tech Nation, Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Eamonn Kelly, the CEO & president of the Global Business Network, and the author of "Powerful Times: Rising to the Challenge of Our Uncertain World." He takes us through the major impacts on the world today. It’s his contention that we are in the midst of a great leap forward, not unlike what history has called The Enlightenment.
• Vernor Vinge - Accelerating Change 2005 Keynote (3.7) The idea that a superhuman machine intelligence could be created within our lifetimes is one that captures the imaginiations and fears of many. How can we plan for something which, by definition, changes the world in unimaginable ways? Vernor Vinge is the populizer of the term "Singularity" to describe the point at which technological progress advances so much that we cannot predict anything beyond that point. He discusses how we could prepare for this type of event.
• Peter Ax - On-Line Pharmacies (4.0) Ever wondered about those on-line pharmacies? Drugs like Viagra and even narcotics prescribed without even a face-to-face office visit? Peter Ax is the CEO of KwikMed and claims it’s the only on-line pharmacy to have been granted regulatory approval in the U.S. (by the state of Utah in this case). Larry Magid presses him for the real story.
• Bindu Varghese (4.0) On BioTech Nation, Moira interviews Bindu Varghese, Graduate Research Assistant in Biochemistry at the Department of Chemistry, Purdue University. They talk about her research and new strategies for auto-immune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.
• Paul Graham - An OSCON 2005 Keynote (4.5) Paul Graham, popular essayist and Lisp programmer, discusses what business can learn from open source. According to him, it’s not about Linux or Firefox, but the forces that produced them. He delves into the reasons why open source is able to produce better software, why traditional workplaces are actually harmful to productivity and the reason why professionalism is overrated.

The O’Reilly Pick of the Week:

This week’s IT Conversations/O’Reilly Pick of the Week is a new program from 2004:

• Marc Fleury - JBoss (3.4) JBoss married J2EE to an open source business model and came up with something that revitalized the enterprise Java world. Scott Mace talked with JBoss Founder, Chairman and CEO Marc Fleury at JavaOne. Listen to Marc’s views on the push to open source Java, the importance of aspect-oriented programming, rich Internet clients, and much more.

We need one or two volunteers with MiniDV video cameras (with tripods!) to videotape the full day of sessions at the Podcast Academy on November 10 in Ontario, California. We’ll be recording the laptops, but we also want some talking-head video to intercut as well as shots of things that speakers hold up, etc.

If you have a good MiniDV camera, a solid tripod, you know what your’e doing and you’re willing to contribute your recordings to the non-profit Podcast Academy, I can offer to cover your $50 registration fee. Email me at doug@itconversations.com.

At the one-day Podcasting Academy event, we’ll have the usual presenters with their Windows and Apple laptops feeding a VGA projector. Here’s my challenge. I want to record the audio and video (screen video, not camera video) and create online archives of the presentations. I don’t need to see the talking heads, just the screens. I’m on a tight budget, of course; that’s a given.

What would you recommend in the way of software and hardware to (a) record the sessions, (b) edit the recording, and (c) encode the files in a format that’s pretty tightly compressed (for Internet download, not discs) and playable on both PCs and Macs by the largest number of people?

My first choice would be to record and edit on a PowerBook, but I could use a PC if necessary. I’ve got a fair amount of experience in the world of broadcast-quality video, but when it comes to images on little screens, I’m a newbie.

We’ve just added an Advanced Audio Editing class to be taught by Daniel Steinberg (O’Reilly Media) at the Podcast Academy on November 10. There are still some seats left in the 100-seat amphitheatre-style classroom. Only $50 and that includes refreshments and a box lunch.

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

New Programs Last Week

Listed in increasing order of listener rating.

• JC Herz - Flickr for Satellites (rated 2.4 by listeners) The military often uses overlays on top of satellite images for strategic purposes. However, the same images can also be used for civilian purposes, in cases such as monitoring reconstruction activity in regions hit by disaster. JC Herz discusses how these "Flickr for satellite" images are used in combination with geographic data-mining to extract enormously detailed area-specific information to save lives in war zones and rebuild towns in devastated areas.
• Eddy Cue — The Video iPod (2.4) It’s hard to know what’s more significant about Apple’s video iPod. Is it the hardware — thinner device, more storage, larger screen and video for the same price — or is it the deals that Apple struck with Disney/ABC for television content? Host Larry Magid grills Eddy Cue, the VP of iTunes at Apple, to try and find out what the secret sauce might be that has given Apple a 75% marktet share in portable audio players despite what should be competitive devices from other vendors.
• Richard Oste (2.8) On BioTech Nation, Dr, Moira Gunn interviews Dr. Richard Oste, Food Chemistry professor at Lund University. They talk about the widespread prevalence of lactose intolerance and the new science which offers an alternative for everything from milk to ice cream.
• Legal Tips: What You Can Get Away With (3.0) As blogging becomes more mainstream, bloggers need to be aware of the legal implications of their work. What are your rights as a blogger, what can you write about legally and what should you avoid? At BlogHer 2005, moderator Jennifer Collins speaks with Lauren Gelman and Wendy Seltzer about legal issues facing bloggers.
• John Smart - Accelerating Change 2005 (3.3) We are all ambassadors to the future — this is the guiding principle behind the Accelerating Change conferences. In this opening address, kicking off the IT Conversations of this terrific event, organizer John Smart introduces the speakers presenting and the ideas discussed at the conference. For early access to our audio files, see our new QuickCast service.
• Ray Kurzweil (3.4) Moira is on-stage with prolific inventor Ray Kurzweil. You know him best as the inventor of speech recognition systems and music synthesizers. In more recent years he’s moved his focus to artificial intelligence, human consciousness and biological intelligence. They talk about his latest book: "The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology."
• SDForum’s SearchSIG - Media Search (3.4) Audio is exploding on the internet, and now even video is becoming easier to create, download and view. However, finding the content you want to consume is still a challenge. Join IT Conversations’ own Doug Kaye as he talks with Evan Williams of ODEO, David Marks of Loomia, Eric Rice of Audioblog and Jeff Karnes of Yahoo! at SDForum about the current state of search for audio and video.

The O’Reilly Pick of the Week:

This week’s IT Conversations/O’Reilly Pick of the Week is a new program from OSCON 2005:

Paul Graham - An OSCON 2005 Keynote Paul Graham, popular essayist and Lisp programmer, discusses what business can learn from open source. According to him, it’s not about Linux or Firefox, but the forces that produced them. He delves into the reasons why open source is able to produce better software, why traditional workplaces are actually harmful to productivity and the reason why professionalism is overrated.

What can I say? Pop!Tech so far is everything I hoped it would be. Terrific and inspiring presentations and discussions. Try to join us on the live audio stream Friday, Saturday and even Sunday morning.

Ian Forrester has even found a way to listen on his Xbox.

Tomorrow (Thursday) through Sunday IT Conversations will be bringing you the free, live audio stream from Pop!Tech 2005 at the Camden, Maine, opera house. Even if you’ve got to work Thursday and Friday, make sure you tune on on the weekend. This is arguably the #1 event of the year.

Of course, we’ll publish the sessions for download over the next eight months, but if you can’t listen to the stream or can’t wait for teh free podcast, check out our new QuickCast™ service.

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

New Programs Last Week

Listed in increasing order of listener rating.

• Peter Marcus - Online Gambling (rated 2.2 by listeners) To most of us, online gambling means email spam and other annoyances. But to Peter Marcus and his customers it’s a $6 billion/year legitimate business that represents more than 5% of the total gambling market worldwide. You may be surprised at the legitimacy of this operation. (Did you ever imagine that they might be audited by PriceWaterhouseCoopers?)
• Highes and Keeler - Blog Design (2.5) You have started a blog and you’re writing great articles, but how do you attract and, more importantly, keep readers? According to Lynda Keeler and Gina Highes, a key aspect of your blog is its design. At BlogHer 2005, they share tips and tricks to take your blog from blah to bang!
• Daniel Blum - Managing Security (2.9) Every enterprise using information technology today needs to be concerned about security. As IT becomes more important to business, the number and severity of security threats also increase. Daniel Blum of Burton Group kicks off the Security stream of the Catalyst 2005 conference with this overview of topics in IT security.
• Wen Jiang (3.3) On Biotech Nation, Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Dr. Wen Jiang, Professor of Surgery and Tumour Biology and the Head of the Metastasis & Angiogenesis Research Group at the Cardiff University in Wales. He tells us how he developed a new predictive test for those with the unfortunate diagnosis of breast cancer.
• Kartik Subbarao - Enterprise IT: Open Source Powerhouse (3.7) How can enterprise IT organizations embrace open source but still meet their critical individual business requirements? This presentation from Kartik Subbarao at HP provides a successful framework illustrated with numerous real- world examples in production at HP.
• Jacqueline Winspear (3.8) Moira Gunn speaks with Jacqueline Winspear, the author of "Maisie Dobbs" and "Pardonable Lies." They discuss the social impact of The Great War on Britain, and medical breakthroughs which shaped a generation.
• Robert Kaplan (4.1) Moira also interviews journalist and author Robert Kaplan, who wrote "Imperial Grunts" about the vast reach of American military presence worldwide.

The O’Reilly Pick of the Week:

This week’s IT Conversations/O’Reilly Pick of the Week is a new program from OSCON 2005:

• Larry Wall - State of the Onion 2005: The core design of Perl 6 is largely complete, to the extent that the language is now being implemented in earnest. In Larry Wall’s ninth annual State of the Onion address, he explains Perl 6’s Five Year Plan, how Perl programmers are like spies (or vice versa), and how open source can learn from the intelligence community.

Here’s the preliminary updated curriculum for the Podcast Academy on Thursday, November 10, in Ontario, California:

Registration is still open: Only $50 for the whole day, including refreshments and a box lunch.

If you missed the awesome Accelerating Change 2005 conference last month and don’t want to wait to hear it as we release it one session per week on IT Conversations, you can now get access to all 25 of our recorded sessions for just $24.99. It’s our new service: QuickCast.

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

New Programs Last Week

Listed in increasing order of listener rating.

• Ramesh Jain - Experiential Computing (2.3) Most applications on the web today remain in thrall to the legacy of the written word: There remains a sense that everything on the web is really a document. Ramesh Jain believes that the new emphasis on ‘where’ is a first step to a radical change in perception which will lead to events becoming the most important aspect of what he calls Computing 3.0.
• David Gee (3.0) On Biotech Nation, Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Dr. David Gee, Commercial Director, MNL Pharma, Ltd., about how simple sugars might yield a therapeutic effect in the fight against everything from diabetes to cancer.
• Flame, Blame, Shame - BlogHer 2005 (3.0) Blogs are conversations, and like all discussions, sometimes the talk gets ugly. This panel discussion brings together mobile technology blogger mobile jones, computer science professor Ellen Spertus and journalist, novelist and blogger Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez with moderator Liza Sabater to discuss flames and how to deal with them.
• Peter Boatwright (3.1) Moira Gunn also interviews Peter Boatwright, professor, Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University, and the author of "The Design of Things to Come — How Ordinary People Create Extraordinary Products."
• Paula Le Dieu - Emerging Massive Media (3.3) The broadcasting media are competing with their audiences for attention. Every user is a potential broadcaster and content creator. Users are no longer watching content passively but are actively reusing and remixing content to fulfill their creative endeavors. Paula Le Dieu speaks on how the BBC is digitizing and making its archived content available online so that users can reuse, remix and share it under the creative commons license.
• Jonathan Schwartz at OSCON 2005 (3.4) Sun Microsystems’ COO Jonathan Schwartz is no stranger to controversy. At OSCON2005 we hear him answer some tough questions. Pulling no punches, he speaks about the value of free software being the answer to future and safe innovation and evolution.
• Ann Winblad and Laura Merling (3.5) Mora also speaks with Ann Winblad, co-founding partner of Hummer-Winblad Venture Partners and Laura Merling, CEO of SDForum. They discuss the global reality of both funding new software and then building it. Is it surprising? All roads lead to Silicon Valley.
• Tara Lemmey - National Security in the Information Age (3.7) In the post-9/11 world, security is a hot topic, and there’s no doubt that information technology has a significant role to play in security today. But exactly how does IT fit into security and how do we temper the need for security with the preservation of personal privacy? Tara Lemmey of the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age discusses how a group of top analysts imagine what security in the information age could look like.
• Brian Capouch - Asterisk Open-Source VoIP PBX (4.1) Asterisk is the open source Voice-over-IP solution that everyone’s talking about, and at OSCON Scott Mace talked to Brian Capouch, the author of the forthcoming Addison-Wesley book about Asterisk. Capouch discusses why Asterisk is spreading like wildfire, has hooks for video and presence extensions and why Skype is "evil incarnate."

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:

• Alistair Cockburn - Agile Software Development (3.8) This week’s pick is from last year: In 2001 Alistair and 16 other software- development heavyweights met to discuss lightweight methodologies, resulting in the Agile Software Development Manifesto. In this interview with Doug Kaye, Alistair explains how he uses games as a model for software projects, and how he discovered that "software engineering" was created on a whim. He also discusses the American and European aversion to copying: the not-invented-here (NIH) syndrome.

Yahoo! Podcasts was turned on within the past 15 minutes.

We’re close to finalizing the curriculum for the first in-person Podcast Academy to be held November 10 in Ontario, California.

If you’re thinking of attending, please take a moment and complete this very short survey. It will help us decide which courses to include.

In less than two weeks we’ll be bringing you the free, live audio stream from Pop!Tech 2005 at the Camden, Maine, opera house. If you can’t listen in at that time, we’ll of course bring you all of the sessions (as we always do) at the rate of about one per week. That’s about 33 sessions and 33 weeks, so we should be done by about…July 1, 2006.

But if you can’t listen to the live stream, or if you can’t wait until July to hear everything that Pop!Tech has to offer, we’ve got a terrific offer for you.

Through our new QuickCast™ service you will be able to download the recordings from Pop!Tech 2005 approximately 2-3 weeks after the event (estimated: October 10, 2005) for the following fees:

• Individual Sessions: $5.00 each
• All sessions: $100.00

The proceeds are shared with the producers of Pop!Tech. Our portion is used to help pay some of the costs we incur in bringing you IT Conversations. It’s a good cause, don’t you think?

From the Conversations Network Uploader Project specs:

This is an open-source project to create a client-side application for encoding, normalizing and uploading audio files to the Conversations Network content-management system’s FTP server.

If you’d like to volunteer your time to help with this project let me know. Turns out, it’s a required piece in order to achieve our larger goals.

We have lots of details yet to work out, but as part of our new not-for-profit project, we’ll be launching the Podcast Academy at the Portable Media Expo and Podcasting Conference in November. Most of the Podcast Academy’s activities will be online, but we’re taking advantage of this most-important podcasting event of the year to conduct a full day of face-to-face training.

The conference starts officially on Friday, November 11, but if you show up one day early on November 10th, you’ll learn tips, techniques, strategies and tactics from some of the world’s experts in podcasting. The full curriculum and list of instructors will be announced shortly. The cost of attending the all-day Podcast Academy is $50 per person, and includes refreshments and a box lunch. Attendance is limited to the first 100 people who register.

This first in-person session from the Podcast Academy will be held in conjunction with the Podcast and Portable Media Expo, November 11 & 12 in Ontario, California. The Podcast Academy’s all-day curriculum will be held the day before the Expo on Thursday. November 10th at the Ontario Marriott (across the street from the Convention Center). The Podcast Academy is a not-for-profit project of IT Conversations. This event is underwritten by IT Conversations and the producers of the Portable Media Expo and Podcasting Conference.

Update: The curriculum is not yet full, so if there’s a topic you’d like us to cover or an intructor you think we should invite, please let me know.

You can watch the video of the Business and Monetization panel I shared with Richard Lucic, Tim Bourquin, John Federico and Michael Geoghegan at Duke University last week. Here are videos from all the sessions. A well-organized and valuable event.

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

News and Housekeeping

• Accelerating Change 2005 QuickCast: This was supposed to be the day that we delivered the QuickCast editions from the Accelerating Change 2005 conference. You may recall that QuickCast is an experiemnt in which you can download all of the recordings from a conference for a fee rather than wait for us to publishing them for free at the rate of one session per week. As I said, it’s an experiment, and we’ve had a few bumps along the way. First, we didn’t have all our permissions lined up in advance, so that put us on hold for a few days. Then we discovered that although we tried to plan ahead, we didn’t really have the post-production capacity to crank out 25 programs in a hurry in addition to our usual daily publishing, which is already at the rate of about 12 shows per week since we’re in the midst of conference season. It looks like it will be about another week before we have all the sessions from Accelerating Change 2005 ready for the QuickCast download, at which time you’ll be able to get the entire set for $24.99. The money will go to good purposes: Half will go to the non-profit Acceleration Studies Foundation, producers of the event, and the other half will go to pay some of our own infrastructure expenses. Use the link below to be notified immediately when the AC2005 QuickCast is available.

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.
• Podcast and Portable Media Expo: This is turning out to be *the* major podcasting event of the year, and I along with many members of Team ITC will be there. I’ll be delivering a session on "Audio Production at IT Conversations" at 10:30am on Friday morning. We’ll also have a small booth in the exhibit hall, and we’ll be announcing some major new plans (some of which you’ve heard me discuss) during the event. November 11-12, Ontario, California. See you there!

New Programs Last Week

Listed in increasing order of listener rating.

• Anne Thomas Manes - The Advent of Superplatforms (2.6) In this keynote speech at Burton Group’s 2005 Catalyst Conference, Anne Thomas Manes lays out the issues to consider when dealing with the rise of network- application platforms packed with features and functionality. More functions sounds good, right? Well, Anne looks at the benefits but also points out negative implications like vendor lock-in and high barriers to entry for new developers.
• Amit Sachdev (3.0) On Biotech Nation, Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Amit Sachdev, the Executive VP for Health BIO, They talk about proposals for increased measures to ensure safety *after* a drug has been approved.
• Jeremy Zawodny - Open Source at Yahoo! (3.0) Jeremy talks about open source software scales at Yahoo!, and specifically how Yahoo! leverages open source software to scale its system. Yahoo! recently acquired Konfabulator and Flickr, and Zawodny explains how Yahoo! is changing internally to become a Web 2.0 company.
• Ernie Allen - Reuniting Families After Katrina (3.3) Larry Magid interviews Ernie Allen, President and CEO of National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. The Center’s usual mandate is to help find abducted or exploited children, but has now become involved in reuniting families separated by Hurricane Katrina.
• Natalie Jeremijenko - Social Robotics, Smocial Robotics! (3.3) Open-source robot dogs, rescued from eBay and reworked, to investigate environmental contamination. A robotic goose lets people interact with wild geese on their turf. Natalie Jeremijenko investigates how robots can be used to change the ways humans participate with the environment and the natural world in this entertaining session. From ETech 2005.
• David Temkin - Laszlo Systems (3.3) Before AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) had a name, there was Laszlo Systems, a software tools developer using AJAX-like methods along with with Macromedia’s Flash Player to deliver richer Web experiences. In this conversation with Laszlo founder/CTO David Temkin, learn why he chose the Flash Player as a platform and why Laszlo went open source choosing IBM’s Common Public License. What is planned for Laszlo Mail and Laszlo Calendar and how he plans to leverage rich client environments other than Flash Player.
• Attention - Supernova 2005 (3.5) In a world where information overload is common, attention is a very scarce resource and there is an increasing need to manage it efficiently. In this panel discussion, Steve Gillmor, Glenn Reid, Dorée Duncan Seligmann, David Sifry and Linda Stone talk about the problem of coping with more information than one can handle and the possible solutions.
• Dave Passmore - Converged Devices, Nets, Apps and Orgs (3.8) Convergence is one of the great buzzwords of our time, ususally referring to the connection between voice and data. But there’s a whole lot more to convergence, accoring to Burton Group Research Director David Passmore. Learn about five areas of convergence that will affect most enterprises in the next several years and how to prepare for the future of networking.
• Brad Matsen (4.0) Moira Gunn also interviews Brad Matsen, National Geographic producer and author of "Descent — The Heroic Discovery of the Abyss."
• Graham Hawkes (4.5) And Moira speaks with Graham Hawkes, an engineer and explorer, the solo ocean dive record holder, and president of Hawkes Ocean Technologies. They talk about his quest to drive a submersible to the very bottom of the ocean, some seven miles down, as well as the very different experience of his underwater flight school.

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:

• Bob Metcalfe on Memory Lane (3.5) Halley Suitt sat down with Bob Metcalfe to learn more about his early days at MIT, wiring up the ARPAnet when it was only 14 nodes old, Harvard, Xerox PARC, inventing Ethernet, founding 3Com, up to the present day and his work at Polaris Venture Partners as a VC.