Goodbye from IT Conversations
Since it’s inception, IT Conversations has published over 3300 audio programs. After ten years of operation and six years with me at the helm, all that is coming to an end. Those of us involved in the day-to-day operation and management of the site have decided that IT Conversations has run its course. We will continue to publish shows until around December 1, 2012. We’re going to get the very best of what’s left in the queue out the door before we turn out the lights. You can read Doug Kaye's announcement and more of my thoughts.
Our goal has always been to publish good, quality shows that will stand the test of time and we've always envisioned them being around for a long time. I'm happy to report that the shows we've published will continue to be available through an agreement with the Internet Archive. We appreciate your support over the years. Thanks for listening!
Phil Windley
Executive Producer, IT Conversations
When Doug Kaye created IT Conversations in 2003, most people didn't know what a podcast was and why they should care. Yet the idea spread and today, all kinds of people and organizations regularly release content to people throughout the world. Doug joins Phil Windley to bid farewell to the Conversations Network. They discuss the background of why Doug chose to be a podcast pioneer and how the network helped revolutionize a new way to distribute interesting content.
Web developers will need an ample supply of RUM to ensure their applications are performing to users' satisfaction. Patrick Lightbody, Director, Product Development, Neustar Web Performance, advises developers that beyond nav timings the core things users care about are performance, availability, and functionality. In this talk Patrick describes the tools developers can use to evaluate critical web metrics, and how to produce a meaningful score card from the data they produce.
Dr Peter Hartwell discusses Hewlett-Packard's project to form a new information ecosystem called the Central Nervous System for the Earth, or CeNSE. The system will include a planetary system of a trillion nano-scale sensors and actuators embedded in the environment and connected via an array of wireless networks with computing systems, software and services to exchange real-time information among analysis engines, storage systems and end users. Applications include food safety, energy use and factory operations.
The very standards and conditions that made the Web a permissive, open environment have come under an attack from an onslaught of legal regulations and the monopolistic aspirations of bandwidth and software providers. Albert Wenger, Managing Partner at Union Square Ventures, takes us on a journey of why the Web has proved successful for us, what made it interesting and open, how the very conditions that helped the Web flourish are under a threat, and what we can do about them.
What are the hidden motivations in all the decisions we make about technology? Pamela Rutledge, Co-Founder/Director, A Think Lab/Media Psychology Research Center, spells out why our intrinsic ability to get things done is really what gets us up in the morning. Hear in this talk what what drives creativity and innovation, what technology does with motivation, how this has implications at multiple levels, and how giving people more control over their lives increases commercial success.
All systems suffer from failures, but less frequently than expected. Why is it we have so few accidents in a world that behaves so badly? Dr Richard Cook speaks to this issue and what we learn from it based on twenty-five years of research beginning with the medical field in emergency rooms, surgical theaters and application of anesthesia. His scope then expands to other complex systems in such critical and dangerous human endeavors as aviation, power generation and distribution, and military operations.
Consultant Larry Downes discusses why the old utility regulatory model has not kept up with the new communications system, with its greater speeds and capacities. In this talk from the 2011 Emerging Communications Conference, he argues that the communications industry cannot succeed if it is forced to deal with slower legal processes.
"Since the 10th of November 2010, Amazon has not used a single physical web server. Everything is hosted on EC2 hosts," announces a proud Jon Jenkins, the Director of Platform Analysis at Amazon. Until now, the Velocity conference has laid the focus of their spotlight on Web velocity, i.e. Web performance. Jenkins moves the spotlight in the direction of "Web operations." He argues that optimizations in operations too can lead to greater business profits.
Nokia Research teams up with Sesame Street to improve communications for dispersed families. "Would you like to be able to read Sesame Street books with your child when you are far away from home? Or have your child's grandparents or other loved ones read with your child from afar? The furry friends from Sesame Street have teamed up with Nokia Research Center to help children connect with their long distance loved ones." Jofish Kaye from Nokia describes the development and value of this project.
The ideal social network of the future, for Alan Duric, co-founder of Telio, will be one that leverages real-time communication, provides data privacy and is based on a peer-to-peer governance system. Today's social networks, while evolving at a rapid rate, are still a far cry from this ideal, says Alan. After founding and selling two successful starts up to Skype and Google, Alan's new vehicle Telio is about bridging this gap between social media and real-time communication systems.
Solid-state drives or SSD's are much better than electromechanical drives such as the Hard Disk Drive or HDD. Low boot-up time, no audible clicks or spinning noise, low access time, less power consumption, no vibration -- these are only some of the advantages that SSD's offer. Hacker and technologist Artur Bergman tells us about them. Artur is the VP of Engineering and Operations and Wikia. Warning: This talk contains strong language and may not be suitable to listen to at work.
What if you didn't use multiple phone numbers or multiple SIM cards during international travel? What if you didn't have a phone number at all but a plain-text alias that people could dial into? Just like domain names in the place of IP addresses, what if human beings had unique aliases that could replace phone numbers, and these aliases were not tied to a carrier or a telephony operator? What if collect calls were possible on the Web? What if you could have a disposable phone that you used only for one phone call and never again? Tomaz Stolfa, the founder of Vox.io is working on making this a reality.
In the last decade, social media has changed the way we live our lives. We have all become high producers and consumers of social data. The data we generate is not just data, though. It tells our story. It is biographical. However, access to social data so far has been governed by APIs, and any API with a terms-of-service is restrictive. What if we could provide you a one-stop shop, an unrestricted, seamless, single point of access for all your social data; and you owned it all? Jeremie Miller, jabber/XMPP creator, has "Singly" to provide this.
If the delivery of pizza, flowers and books can be free, why not the delivery of bytes over the Web? Even landline telephone providers have a "1-800" model that delivers signal for zero cost to the carrier and the consumer. Thomas Sachson, founding member of of Box Top Solutions, proposes a market-driven model that can provide free or subsidized bandwidth and still pay for itself.
Amazon has a virtual supercomputer you can rent by the hour, and it is cheap too. Alyssa Henry from Amazon discusses the company's Elastic MapReduce web service for businesses, researchers, data analysts, and developers to easily and cost-effectively process vast amounts of data. It uses a hosted Hadoop framework running on the web-scale infrastructure of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)that can be quickly switched on and off. Hear how over 560 billion objects are tracked worldwide.
Mike McCue, a serial web entrepreneur, compares his latest venture, Flipboard, to the 1957 Jaguar XKSS. Flipboard, a "social magazine" for the tablet, brings the best of print production values and sprinkles in social aspects in a web interface that is out to make a new premium web category. Mike describes his perspective, with online examples, of how art fits into his business model.
Are you aware of the array of obstacles facing America's broadband policy? Richard Whitt covers how the national broadband plan was affected by the economic meltdowns of 2008 and 2009, court decisions, and other moving parts impacting the future success or failure of America's broadband roll-out efforts.
Our digital world with its huge amounts of data is evolving rapidly and often times in an uncharted manner. Brad Rencher of Adobe Systems says we need to know how to measure the impact of digital activities. He suggests we look at the problem from three directions: socially, through the use of mobile devices, and with data analytics. He offers case studies of successful and failed approaches to help businesses develop a line of sight to follow for digital success.
You want to know what's actually happening on your website? Google Analytics is a powerful tool that enables the following of website traffic. Susan Wojcicki, a senior vice president at Google, presents different features of Google Analytics, including innovations like dynamic diagrams, possibility of sorting data by many different criteria, custom variables, premium version for businesses that want SLA or more custom functionality, and a new feature that enables real time monitoring of web site traffic.
One of the many concerns a web site operator has is how well a site performs. It's a relative but important issue and one over which the site operator only has partial control. Exceptional performance is possible but can also be lost. Site performance requires constant monitoring. Alois Reitbauer from dynaTrace discusses what should be monitored and how to do it.
Dr. Moira Gunn talks with linguist and author, Geoff Nurnberg about his new book, Ascent of the A-Word, where he dives into the history of a term with origins dating back to World War II.
Dr. Moira Gunn talks about new diagnostics and therapy for autism with Seaside Therapeutics CEO, Randall Carpenter.
Michael Dell discusses with John Battelle the development, goals, challenges and Dell's place within the IT industry. He founded Dell, Inc., and directed the company for over twenty-seven years to its present $60 billion value and 120 thousand employee size. He is an industry expert and offers insider views here about the state and direction of this major industrial segment as it impacts the way we live and interact.
Today's enterprises demand a comprehensive application performance management tool that keeps pace with the speed and complexity of the applications that it monitors. Brian Doll, Director, Technical Marketing at New Relic introduces the company's end-to-end application performance management tool.
