Technometria with Phil Windley
Do you use Twitter? Follow Phil Windley to get information on shows and more in your tweetstream.
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.
Carl Malamud discusses his campaign to be appointed as the Public Printer of the United States. As the head of the Governmnent Printing Office, he would continue the work he has done at Public.Resource.Org, where he has made easily available millions of pages of government documents, as well as video and photographic material. He also assesses the work necessary to include more material on government websites.
Scott Lemon discusses TopFollowFriday, a website that can be used to filter and choose to trust or not trust something, based on the reputation of the person who created the content. Based on #followfriday, a growing Twitter ad-hoc event that occurs each Friday, Scott's new site tracks #followfriday, and then records the endorsements, allowing users to chart the changes. Scott also reviews the Twitter AP and how he is using it for his site.
Dion Almaer and Ben Galbraith discuss the status of Bespin, a project of Mozilla Labs. The company states that Bespin aims to increase developer productivity and promte the use of open standards. Dion and Ben talk about the development of the project and its early prototype. The group also discusses Amazon frontends and how they are being used on the web.
Doug Kaye joins Phil and Scott to discuss the recently launched SpokenWord.org, a free service that helps you find, manage and share audio and video spoken-word recordings. In addition to giving a basic description of the site, Doug also discusses the technical aspects of the project, including how it was developed and what kind of challenges he is facing now that it is operational.
Jesse Stay joins Phil and Scott to discuss SocialToo, described as "your companion to the social Web". Jesse talks about how the site can help you become a social power user by using SocialToo's tools to help members of such sites as Twitter and Facebook better take advantage of the continuing growth of social relationship sites. Jesse also discusses some technical aspects of Twitter and how he is using it.
Anne Thomas Manes joins Phil and Scott to discuss whether Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is dead. In addition to talking about why people are bad at architecture, she reviews examples of concrete architectural practices and makes it clear that spectacular gains come from spectacular efforts.
Aaron Iba joins Phil and Scott to discuss EtherPad, a real-time collaborative text editing tool currently in beta. In addition to giving details about EtherPad, Aaron talks about how it uses AppJet as a platform. He gives a great deal of technical background information and reviews the future of the product.
At the beginning of the new year, Phil, Dion, Ben and Scott discuss new products and projects, including business startups, new computers and computing devices, and other upcoming activities. Beginning with the problems with funding new companies, they move on to talk about some of the new CES and Macworld devices. Finally they review the upcoming digital TV changeover.
Greg Ness talks about how the internet network infrastructure may have serious issues in supporting the new services and products now being offered to users. He reviews how the current system may be handling the load, he gives examples on why upgrades and changes are needed. He also discusses how to look forward and make the necessary changes for the future.
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.
