Adoption of Linux on mobile devices is hampered by the lack of a common standard. At the 2006 Emerging Telephony Conference, PalmSource Lead Scientist John Ostrem explains how the LiPs Linux Phone Initiative is making it easier to develop Linux-based phones by establishing a standard Linux platform for telephony devices.

Alex Martelli, the Uber Technical Lead at Google, debunks some common management myths, and shares a wealth of immediately useful advice for anyone involved in technical software projects. Software developers operate with their own particular mindset, culture and reward system. To inspire a top programming team, the ideal manager is a technical peer who can jump into the code and solve thorny problems. Technical involvement smooths the way, and helps the manager build credibilty and trust.

O'Reilly Media is changing the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators. Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, gives his popular O'Reilly Radar presentation at the 2006 MySQL Users Conference. The web has matured to a platform where users are partcipating and driving innovation. Listen as O'Reilly covers what the alpha geeks are up to, and how MySQL is leading the way in blurring the virtual and the physical world.

Are your users passionate? You need to seduce their legacy brains, says Kathy Sierra, who has successfully seduced the brains of countless readers of O'Reilly's Head First book series. Find out what turns users' brains on, holds their attention and even brings them to the Koolaid Point. Listening to Kathy talk about how what our brains care about could change how you interact with your users - and they'll thank you for it.

Mobile phones have evolved into a mature media platform capable of much more than just making calls or processing textual data. Nokia is empowering developers with APIs for their mobile platforms. At the 2006 Emerging Telephone Conference, Srikanth Raju, who works at Forum Nokia's technical services, presents the company's plans for mobile, VoIP and open source technologies.

Microsoft's recent embrace of Novell's SUSE Linux distribution, and Oracle's recent embrace of Red Hat Linux, raise the question anew: Can Linux avoid the fragmentation that crippled adoption of Unix? The Free Standards Group is dedicated to "safeguarding the future of Linux through standards." Jim Zemlin describes FSG's initiatives: the Linux Standard Base and related testing and certification efforts.

Larry Wall, the creator of Perl and author of "Programming Perl," delivers the tenth 'State of the Onion' address at the 2006 Open Source Convention. In this wacky annual speech, Wall rambles (as he puts it) about things marginally related to all things Perl. Listen to an entertaining take on the state of Perl and the community around it.

MySQL is encroaching upon enterprise space from its early beginnings of being a humble lightweight web database for hackers, geeks and hobbyist programmers. With customers preferring the subscription model of software licenses, the new economy is changing. The ecosystem is the new computer and collaboration, the new operating system. MySQL CEO Mickos gives an update on how MySQL AB is doing, including a view behind the scenes of the business, the vision, the phenomenal growth, and some of the plans for the future.

Businesses are eager to use online conferencing, but have been unable to do so at acceptable price points. Dimdim, the world's free web meeting software, is aimed at filling the web conferencing gap that exists today. Listen to Prakash Khot and DD Ganguly as they discuss how Dimdim is driving adoption and leveraging open source technologies to make web conferencing simple.

Tom Copeland, system administrator of RubyForge.org joins Phil, Matt, and Scott in an assessment of the current state of the Ruby programming language, including a review of the establishment of RubyForge as an alternative to SourceForge. The group also has a lively discussion of the new Microsoft Novell partnership, along with other current issues.