News from IT Conversations
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Dr. Moria Gunn tracks down Intelligence and Homeland Security correspondent, Shane Harris, to review information technology and surveillance in America today.
Dr. Moira Gunn discusses food safety with Mike Doyle, Director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia. They dive into the challenge, prefaced by the statistic that 15% of our food is imported from other countries.
"The opportunity to innovate starts with doing something that hasn't been done yet", Chris Brogan presses in this lively, sardonic speech about ten minutes in length, in which the blogger and President of New Marketing Labs, a social media agency, advises businesses and individuals alike on how to utilize to the best capacity the web's power to connect them to their communities.
Jonathan Ellis discusses Cassandra, an open source distributed database system, used by Facebook and other sites. An Apache Software Foundation top-level project, it is designed to handle very large data sets spread out across commodity servers while providing a highly available service with no single point of failure. Jonathan reviews the project, explaining details about the system as well as the importance of scalability in database design and the differences between distributed and relational databases.
Digital broadcasting networks are being developed worldwide to deliver high-bandwidth, real-time content to and from mobile platforms. Francois Lefebvre describes the tension between telco- and broadcast-driven services; telcos tend to promote subscription based services while broadcasters try to extend their free-to-air model. The good news is that breakthrough, open applications are emerging that can deliver reliable and innovative mobile broadcast networks.
Digg.com, one of the most successful social media websites, has over 40 million users, amounting to about 20,000 submissions a day, but young CEO Jay Adelson wants more. In this candid conversation with Brady Forrest "serial entrepreneurs" Adelson and his Partner Kevin Rose share with us where Digg fits into the "huge volume of stuff", as Adelson puts it, on the World Wide Web, and their plans for its future.
Join best-selling author Steven Berlin Johnson as he discusses the changing face of online journalism, one in which citizen journalists and bloggers are news gatherers and information curators. Both journalists and techies alike are providing new ways to share and consume content, and creating rich relations between consumers and providers of information. Members of this new media are also required to wear many hats, from local news reporter to database administrator.
Joel and Jeff discuss the pursuit of venture capital, why Joel is ending his blog, and the hidden power of Google's web spider.
Dr. Moira Gunn sits down with author, Peter Hessler, to discuss the new car culture that has emerged in China, as 90 million new drivers take to the streets each day.
Author David Siegel discusses his book Pull: The Power of the Semantic Web to Transform Your Business, in which he reviews the concepts for a future version of the web. He defines the idea of the semantic web and how Pull is a model for it. Siegel reviews how businesses in the future can take advantage of the improvements in the use of data and why the improvements will assist in commercial success.
The Government is no longer a secluded center of power that rules the citizenry. Government agencies now try to actively connect with the public and interact with them. Allan Holmes, Executive Editor at Government Executive, talks about how some of the well-made government websites are not only successful at what they set out to do, but top the internet charts for traffic and user engagement.
Dr. Moria Gunn learns about the uses for chemical genomics from Dr. Greg Roth, Director of Medicinal Chemistry from the Burnham Institute for Medical Research. She then sits down with GeoVax Labs Senior VP, Dr. Harriet Robinson, where they study HIV and AIDS vaccines.
Dr. Moria Gunn tracks down author and unlikely environmentalist, Brenda Peterson, who takes her through her book of memoirs, I Want To Be Left Behind.
Mapping space and the heavens is harder than anything found on Earth. Chris Spurgeon introduces us to the measurement tools for tracking the moving objects as they march across the sky. From major celestial objects as close as our Moon to the far out reaches of Jupiter and beyond. The science of space mapping is challenging but endlessly interesting for those curious enough to investigate.
Networks of people, information, things, and energy are coming together in ways that redefine the practice of architecture. Duncan Wilson, an engineer with the global consulting firm Arup, joins host Jon Udell to discuss a variety of projects that illustrate the new synthesis.
Dr. Moira Gunn analyzes the changing face of corporate culture with Grant McCraken, author of Chief Culture Officer, where he combines a mastery of marketing, culture, anthropology, and modern business practice.
Thomas Petersen discusses his experience in designing for startups and established companies. In addition to discussing the problem with the ever increasing amount of data available on the Internet, he also reviews designing principles, listing steps of good practice.
How is open-source closed? Andreas Constantinou talks about the relative openness of the "eight centers of gravity" in the mobile industry, and says it's not the licensing, which concerns source control, but the governance, which concerns the product, that developers must watch out for. He explains the mobile phone industry shift and loosely outlines the governance structures of the LiMo, Symbian, and Android foundations.
Flat World Knowledge is pioneering a new way to create and distribute textbooks. The model combines open licensing, online access, and print-on-demand. In this week's episode, host Jon Udell discusses the model with co-founder Eric Frank and CTO Jon Williams.
Joel sits down with the Stack Exchange team, who are working on the hosted version of Stack Overflow.
Dr. Moira Gunn sits down with author and CEO, Dan Roam, to learn how he is teaching people to solve complex problems using simple pictures, from the pages of his new book, Unfolding the Napkin, the Hands-On Method for Solving Complex Problems with Simple Pictures.