IT Conversations

Michael Crichton - 2003 Interview

Thu, 4 Dec 2008 00:00:00 CST

In this 2003 archive interview, Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with the late Michael Crichton about his then latest book, Prey.

Gregory Mitchell - Economics of Algae

Thu, 4 Dec 2008 00:00:00 CST

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Gregory Mitchell, a research biologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, about the economics of algae, and why it forms to basis of most bio-fuel research.

Episode 32 - StackOverflow

Wed, 3 Dec 2008 00:00:00 CST

Joel and Jeff discuss software piracy, dealing with public criticism, how to get people to answer your questions, and the ideal programmer office.

Elias Torres, Ben Adida - RDFa

Tue, 2 Dec 2008 00:00:00 CST

RDFa helps bloggers and website authors make their web pages smarter by adding computer-readable information to a site. RFDa provides a set of XHTML attributes to augment visual data with machine-readable hints. Elias Torres and Ben Adida discuss RFDa, including its history, what problems it is meant to solve, and the technical details of how it works.

Christopher Allen - iPhone News

Mon, 1 Dec 2008 00:00:00 CST

Christopher Allen, founder of the iPhoneWebDev community, provides an update on the success of the iPhone today, new features added this year to support the Enterprise market, and details about the release of the iPhone SDK. Allen outlines Apple's iPhone apps business model, the questions that remain about iPhone apps, and the future of iPhone.

Russel Shorto - Decarte's Bones

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 00:00:00 CST

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Russel Shorto, author of "Descarte's Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict between Faith and Reason," about the peculiar role played by Descarte's bones.

Scott Jenkins - Dell, in Biotech

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 00:00:00 CST

What many Dell customers don't know is that the company is making a major effort in biotech, as Dr. Moira Gunn finds out when she speaks with Scott Jenkins, the director of the Dell's Healthcare & Life Sciences program.

Episode 31 - StackOverflow

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 00:00:00 CST

Joel and Jeff discuss the importance of pure math to the average software developer, the importance of status reports, SQL parameterization and pulling yourself out of a programming slump. Now with one more Turkey than usual!

Andre' M. Di Mino - Shadowserver

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:00:00 CST

Andre' DiMino of the Shadowserver Foundation discusses the darker side of the Internet and how Shadowserver is working to gather, track, and report on malware, botnet activity, and electronic fraud. In addition to giving its background, he talks about methodology and presents examples of some of the major security issues and how the problems are being solved.

Bob Frankston - Achieving Connectivity from the Edge

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 00:00:00 CST

We've become so used to the idea of telecom as a service in the style of the railroads that we don't realize that we don't need depend on service providers to assure that we can communicate. It's just the opposite - the Internet has demonstrated that it's hard to prevent connectivity. In this talk from the Emerging Communications Conference, Bob Frankston discusses the potential of the open internet.

Cooking with IEEE Spectrum: Harold McGee - IEEE Spectrum Radio

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 00:00:00 CST

Harold McGee, a gastronomic guru and author of On Food and Cooking, discusses his background and inspiration for writing the book. He shares a cooking experiment which involved a copper bowl, his reason for not having a fancy kitchen, his favorite kitchen tool, and his connection to the molecular gastronomy field. He ends with a preview of his next two book projects.

Saul Griffith - Energy Literacy

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:00:00 CST

Saul Griffith relates two intertwined energy stories, the impersonal story about climate change, global energy consumption, and fossil fuels, and the personal story about how every decision you make impacts the planet. Griffith lays out a logical approach to conversations about energy and presents a game plan for what we can do to make the difference in energy sources and personal energy consumption.

Carl Hewitt - Interdependent Message-Passing ORGs

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:00:00 CST

Just over 35 years ago, Carl Hewitt and his graduate students published a model for computation based on concurrent message-passing Actors. Now the demands of many-core computers and cloud-based software are thrusting that model to the forefront. In this conversation with host Jon Udell, Hewitt explores hardware-enforced cloud privacy, paraconsistent logic, and scalable semantic integration.

Episode Thirty - StackOverflow

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:00 CST

Joel and Jeff sit down with Richard White of UserVoice.com to discuss software bug and feature tracking, Web 2.0 style.

Sean Gorman - From Data Chaos to Actionable Intelligence

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:00:00 CST

In this session from the 2008 Where 2.0 conference, Sean Gorman discusses Finder!, the browser-based application for finding and sharing GeoData. Gorman gives a bit of history about GeoCommons, a product which brings geo-content to the web. He proposes a federation of the data of all the companies doing the same, with the goal of an ecosystem where users can combine GeoData with other web data to create semantic relationships and solve meaningful problems such as where to buy a house.

John McCarthy - Elephant 2000: A Programming Language for the year 2015 Based on Speech Acts

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 00:00:00 CST

Much of the meaning behind what people say comes from the context, not just the words. Elephant 2000 is a computer programming language project designed to incorporate the meaning of language, not just its structure. In this talk at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, John McCarthy, creator of Elephant, describes the language and how it will move work from computer programmers to compilers.

Charles L. Harper, Jr. - Superintelligence, the "Dilemma of Power," and the Transformation of Desire

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:00:00 CST

Dr. Charles L. Harper, Jr. asks some "off the wall questions" to challenge readiness of the scientific community to recognize the potential risks and implications of rapid human technological development. Where should our concerns lie given the potential ofsuper intelligent machines that could far exceed human intellectual capabilities? Are we up to the task of proper stewardship of such powerful new advances in technology, or more significantly will that role even be ours?

Dr. Gary Small - iBrain

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:00:00 CST

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Dr. Gary Small, the director of the UCLA Memory & Aging Research Center, about gaining understanding of the technological alteration of the modern mind through FMRI.

Dr. Lyle Armstrong - Stem Cell Science

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:00:00 CST

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Dr. Lyle Armstrong, a stem cell researcher and senior lecturer at Newcastle University, who reminds us what stem cell scientists actually do.

Episode 29 - StackOverflow

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:00:00 CST

Joel and Jeff discuss the productivity loss of being both a gamer and programmer, relying on Google as your primary site search provider, non-English programming languages, and hiring great programmers.

Eric Lindstrom - Video and the future of new media

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:00:00 CST

Eric Lindstrom, cofounder of VideoJuicer, believes that story telling in the television industry is going to change because of the Internet. He talks about what a hub site and an aggregator site is, and which one you'd need at which stage in building your brand. He also talks about the impact of time-shifting in daytime programming, and how the television industry perceives the Internet as a solution to their problem known as the DVR (digital video recording).

Dean Bubley - Who Controls Wireless Access?

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 00:00:00 CST

Dean Bubley addresses the challenges facing innovators looking to create openness and choice in the mobile communications market. Bubley, an analyst specializing in the field of mobile and wireless, reminds mobile communication innovators who hold a Utopian view of openness that they must consider the constraints posed by regulations, laws of physics, commercial practicalities, and especially the psychology of the Normob, the normal mobile user, who doesn't care about openness and will need to be convinced.

Cooking with IEEE Spectrum: Homaro Cantu - IEEE Spectrum Radio

Sun, 9 Nov 2008 00:00:00 CST

Most people don't think of liquid nitrogen or ink jet printers as kitchen utensils, but most cooks aren't like Homaro Cantu. In this special edition of IEEE Spectrum Radio, follow Chef Cantu from his family's fast food kitchen to his restaurant Moto, one of the most innovative in the world.

Adrian Holovaty - A News Feed for Your Block

Sat, 8 Nov 2008 00:00:00 CST

Have you ever asked yourself, "What's happening in my neighborhood?" If you think your local newspaper has the answers, think again. Adrian Holovaty, who created one of the earliest Web mashups, believes there is a better way to find the answers. In this presentation from the 2008 O'Reilly Where 2.0 Conference, Holovaty describes his new project, EveryBlock.com, which aims to collect hyper-local news and deliver it through a "news feed" for your neighborhood.

Keith Devlin - The Unfinished Game

Thu, 6 Nov 2008 00:00:00 CST

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Keith Devlin, author of "The Unfinished Game," who talks about the letters exchanged between two mathematicians -- Pascal and Fermat -- changed our lives.

Dr. Joseph DeRisi - The Virus Chip

Thu, 6 Nov 2008 00:00:00 CST

Viruses are everywhere, so how do we identify the ones that are problematic? Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Dr. Joseph DeRisi, professor in biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, about the promise of an innovative new technology: the virus chip.

Nova Spivack - Twine

Thu, 6 Nov 2008 00:00:00 CST

Twine is a new service that "helps people track their interests using the Semantic Web and collective intelligence." In this edition of Interviews with Innovators, host Jon Udell interviews Nova Spivack, CEO and founder of Radar Networks. They discuss how Twine works and where it's headed.

Episode 28 - StackOverflow

Wed, 5 Nov 2008 00:00:00 CST

Joel and Jeff discuss Windows Azure, full text search in SQL Server 2008, Bayesian filtering, porn detection, and project management -- among other things.

Mike Moran, Bill Hunt - Search Engine Marketing

Tue, 4 Nov 2008 00:00:00 CST

Effective search engine optimization and search engine marketing is now crucial to the success of a modern business. Authors Mike Moran and Bill Hunt discuss their book Search Engine Marketing, Inc., giving the fundamentals of search engines as well as guidance on how organizations can better reach people through search engines.

Eric Rodenbeck - Information Visualization is a Medium

Mon, 3 Nov 2008 00:00:00 CST

While many recall Marshall McLuhan's prophetic pronouncement that the "medium is the message", few people and companies are actively involved in examining how this concept applies to today's Internet-centric world. In this session from the 2008 O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, Eric Rodenbeck, founder and creative director for Stamen Design, offers several examples of how computers, massively large databases, and visualization can be combined to create beautiful, yet scientifically valuable ways of exploring data.