Technometria with Phil Windley
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In the 17th century, William Ames wrote a book called
Technometria. Technometry meant literally "the measure of a skill or
art." As Ames used it, he meant the study of the theory of the
interrelation of the arts and sciences. (See Why
Technometria for more detail.)
This is the Technometria podcast. I'm Phil Windley and I'm usually joined
by Scott Lemon and Ben Galbraith, good friends and
great technologists in their own right. Matt Asay has been a co-host in the past. We may talk him into coming back someday.
Technometria is our attempt to make sense of the technology that
surrounds us through exploration, analysis, and, hopefully,
reason. In these podcasts you'll find discussions of Web 2.0,
programming and software development, open source, identity, new
media, enterprise computing, and many other topics.
If you enjoy these podcasts, let us know by giving them a rating or sending us a note. You might also
enjoy Phil Windley's
Technometria blog.
Alistair Cockburn, one of the creators of the Agile Development Manifesto for software design, believes that software development is dependent on people speaking out and that one of the most important tasks of a software developer is to "bring your boss bad news". He joins Phil and Scott in a discussion of software engineering, as both a term and a process. He also relates his experiences with teaching software development methods with other cultures, as well as number of his articles related to the topic.
One of the major issues in technology is how to make services available to the less knowledgeable, making them so-called "grandparent compliant". In addition, consumers continue to look for ways to get what they need from businesses, rather than accepting a model based on a broken customer management system. Britt Blaser of Open Resource Group and Doc Searls, senior editor for Linux Journal, join Phil, Matt, and Scott in a discussion of the new paths of technology and how they relate to the average consumer.
What were the technology matters related to the recent general elections? What kind of controllers are being developed for the latest generation of computer game consoles? Phil, Matt, and Scott discuss these and other topics in this week's episode. The group also reviews Sun's decision to open-source Java, Web 3.0, as well as some security issues. As a bonus, discover one host's pizza habits when visiting Chicago.
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.
Online social collaboration continues to grow in popularity as companies develop tools to greater facilitate its use. Socialtext was the first company to build around the wiki and its CEO Ross Mayfield joins Phil Windley, Matt Asay, and Scott C. Lemon in a review of technology news. Starting with a followup of last week's Oracle/Red Hat discussion, the group moves to such topics as the announcement of SocialPoint, Socialtext's integration with Microsoft's Sharepoint. Other topics include issues such as email reduction and Google's acquisition of JotSpot.
Do bloggers have an impact on customer support? How is Oracle impacting the current state of Novell and is Oracle going to buy RedHat? What is Microsoft's involvement in the SCO lawsuit? These are some of the questions discussed by Phil Windley, Matt Asay, Scott C Lemon, and their guest Dave Rosenberg, CEO of MuleSource. They also review such topics as alternative operating systems, the release of Firefox 2.0 and other current technology stories.
The purpose of a natural language, such as English or Japanese, is to describe facts, thoughts, and feelings. Mankind thinks in the language and the particular language determines the way we think. Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto, creator of the Ruby programming language, asks whether programming languages influence human thought as well. He shows how program language usability is important and how Ruby fits into the mold.
SPARQL is the query language of the Web, it doesn't discriminate between data sources, and it's ready for use! So says Elias Torres, Senior Software Engineer at IBM and member of the RDF and the SPARQL working groups at W3C. In an interview with Phil Windley, Torres explains his view of the Semantic Web and how it will be enhanced by RDF and SPARQL, once the two standards gain widespread adoption.
As one of the oldest programming languages still in use today, Lisp has a rich history in computer science. This legacy sometimes obscures the fact that Lisp is also a mature, modern language with a lot of practical benefits. Programmers and anyone interested in the progress of computation will want to tune in as Phil Windley speaks with Peter Seibel, author of the best selling Practical Common Lisp, to answer the question, why Lisp?
The AJAX approach to dynamic web programming has caught on all over the internet, heightening our expectations for a new generation of rich, interactive web applications. In this conversation, Phil Windley sits down with Ben Galbraith, Bruce Grant and Scott Lemon, three experienced AJAX developers and evangelists, to talk about progress and challenges in the AJAX world.
