News from IT Conversations
The Executive Producer of IT Conversations is Phil Windley, and you can read his blog for
IT Conversations news and more. Here are some recent stories:
If you haven't subscribed to IT Conversations yet, click here to get IT Conversations downloaded to your desktop everyday. Don't miss another informative and interesting program!
While some believe that the Web 2.0 wave is winding down, in this panel discussion from the 2008 Emerging Communications Conference, there are clear signs that Web 2.0 is spreading and reaching new markets and users. As it spreads, it is moving into new industries and encompassing more applications. In this session, Jon Arnold, a leading VoIP blogger, moderates a diverse panel of experts on the evolution of Web 2.0 into voice and mobile voice mashups.
On this edition of Interview with Innovators, host Jon Udell speaks with the Chief Scientist of IBM Entity Analytics, Jeff Jonas, who discusses a set of themes woven through his work, explored on his blog, and captured in a series of evocative phrases: perpetual analytics, non-obvious relationship awareness, sequence neutrality, "data finds data", and anonymous resolution.
Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Professor Jesse Schell, from the Entertainment Technology Center, about the serious task of designing video games.
Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Maria Giudice, CEO and founder of Hot Studio, about the democratization of the internet, and the principles of human centered design.
Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with various leaders of industry of the biotech industry in the San Diego BioTech Cluster and asks them how to attract biotech venture capital in a place where the venture capitalists don't live.
Joel and Jeff discuss the mysteries of server hardware, anomalous voting patterns, change fatigue, and whether or not Joel is the Martha Stewart of the software industry.
Steve Jelley, Eric Lindstrom, Matt Locke, and Jeremy Silver discuss digital media in the context of teen social networking, books, activism, and predictions of what the digital future will look like. Because we are a social race and need to communicate, content will remain even when platforms mutate and we create and talk about content in new ways. Each panelist gives his predictions of the dramatic changes which will define the digital world just ten years from now.
Design or evolution? In building complex, artificial intelligence systems, is it best to use top down design, a gradual evolutionary process, or a combination of the two in order to maintain some level of control? Steve Jurvetson, Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, is placing his money on iterative evolutionary algorithms as the best path to the future of artificial intelligence.
Mark Jacobstein discusses a solution that brings together VoIP and mobile like peanut butter and chocolate. Mobile voice does not mean running VoIP over the cellular data channel. Instead Jacobstein reveals how the iSkoot solution uses the voice-optimized, circuit-switched network for delivery of voice communication to a mobile device, bringing IP telephony to mobile. He describes the huge success of the "3 Skypephone", powered by iSkoot, in a handful of countries so far.
Bionic people, facial scanners, and artificial organisms: What do these things all have in common? They're all on "the edge" - new territory just waiting to be explored, and they might be closer than you think. That's exactly what O'Reilly Radar is all about.
What do you get when you apply Moore's law to robotics and GPS? Chris Anderson, of Wired magazine, explains what you get in this Where 2.0 presentation. Cheap and ubiquitous location technologies combined with robotic toys have given birth to a thriving amateur Unmanned Aerial Vehicles community. Though these sophisticated spy toys, which are powered by open source software, are usually flying just for the fun of it, the federal regulators are trying to figure out what is even legal, in this brave new little world.
Craig Burton discusses innovation by reviewing three of his essays on the topic. He talks about how to distinguish innovation myths from realities, reviews how technology companies make mistakes with customer demographics, and how Novell created software infrastructure as a new software category.
Elizabeth Churchill, researcher at Yahoo, discusses a project to connect online community activity with offline community activity in the physical world toward a goal of building relationships and trust between two groups of colleagues in different time zones. She shares observations about people's behaviors around the project, challenges faced, and ponderings about what the future business success of such installations might be.
Although host Jon Udell isn't an avid gamer, and neither is his wife Luann, he was intrigued when she came home from a physical therapy session raving about the Nintendo Wii. In this episode Luann talks about how the Wii, the Balance Board, and the Wii Fit application are helping her retrain the proprioceptors in her legs. Then we'll hear from Anna Domyancic who, with Darren Gerber, runs Keene Physical Therapy and Sports Medicine. Like other physical therapists, they're finding that the Wii can be a valuable therapeutic tool.
Herbert Needleman has received numerous awards for his work in documenting the effects of lead poisoning in children. Dr. Moira Gunn asks Needleman why we have unleaded paints and gasoline, and how neuro-developmental changes are caused by lead poisoning.
Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Wayne Pisano, the CEO of the world's largest flu vaccine producer Sanofi Pasteur, and asks him whether Americans receive the same vaccination as Europeans do, and how you can prepare for a global flu epidemic.
Joel and Jeff discuss whether programmers should spend time working with customers, the value of easter eggs, and how to define elegant code.
Eric Norlin is an expert on how social networking data from one source is broken down and being reaggregated in other ways. He talks about how tools and websites, such as Twitter and Zemanta, are being used to create new concepts and how this new information is being used.
Brough Turner describes residential internet speeds of 100 MB per sec for only 16 dollars a month in Sweden as illustration of how we are falling behind in the United States. Turner, a telecommunications expert, believes there is only one thing we should fight for - owning the dark fiber ourselves or controlling who lights the dark fiber that comes into our homes. He gives three examples of this model from Quebec and Sweden as what we can fight for and why.
Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu, discusses the growth of commerce around Ubuntu and the key drivers and themes for the coming year. Shuttleworth makes announcements and delivers commitments from Ubuntu in the commercial ecosystem, the consumer market, and the developer community. Their goal is to build a new model for the entire industry.