Moira speaks with Douglas Rushkoff about the role that corporations have started to play in every aspect of our lives.

Can a monolith like Microsoft maintain stability through products like its popular Office suite and still be relevant in a time when free contribution and collaboration is increasingly the way to get things done? Absolutely, says Stephen Elop in this frank discussion with Tim O'Reilly.

Cathy Marshall is fascinated by how people manage, and avoid managing, their digital stuff. In this conversation with host Jon Udell she discusses her research on the efficacy of Flickr tags for image retrieval, and explains why we're rediscovering the virtues of loss and forgetting.

Moira speaks with Stanford Law professor Larry Lessig about trying to make our old laws work with the new technology of the Internet.

Moira Gunn discusses nanotechnology with Dr. Mike Fisher of Bio Nano Consulting and Tony Cass, professor of chemical biology at the Imperial College, London. They review both its reality and its potential.

Moira speaks with author and scientist James Lovelock, the creator of the Gaia Theory. Once controversial, it has reached mainstream acceptance, and he has more predictions now.

Michael DeHaan discusses Cobbler, a Linux server that can be used to set up networks quickly. He gives the background of the project and reviews how it is installed and used. He talks about developing software in an open source environment. Michael also discusses where he wants to go with the project in future versions, as well as his work with Func (Fedora Unified Network Controller).

Academic research has increasingly become reliant on processing complex data within short periods of time. Commercial applications are not always cost feasible for the academic researcher with access to vast hardware resources of the university. Noting a lack in software applications that meet the unique network user environment of academia Rich Wolski and his team set about developing an open source solution that was flexible and secure enough to ensure that the project was not used maliciously.

Moira speaks with UC Berkeley professor Dara O'Rourke, founder of GoodGuide.com. He tells us what it takes to understand the impact of everything we use, which requires the tracking of the global supply chain.

Six months after Sun purchased MySQL, Tim O'Reilly interviews Monty Widenius and Brian Aker, the founder and Director of Technology, respectively, of MySQL. In this conversation from the 2008 O'Reilly Open Source Convention, they discuss the integration of MySQL's open source culture into Sun, new projects they are working on, the effects the major tech companies have on open source, and philanthropic support of open causes.

Moira interviews Daniel Goleman about his new book, Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything. His book discusses the hidden environmental consequences of what we make and buy, and how with that knowledge we can drive the essential changes we all must make to save our planet and ourselves.

Moira talks to author David Helvarg about his book, Rescue Warriors: The U.S. Coast Guard, America's Forgotten Heroes. He tells the story of the Coast Guard and how their missions range from saving fishermen in the icy waters off Alaska to rescuing thousands in the wake of Katrina.

oira speaks with Fresh Air commentator and linguist Geoff Nunberg who discusses his book The Years of Talking Dangerously and assesses the impact of words in a dynamic, changing world. In the book, he explains why grammar buffs are drawn to sarcasm, and deftly unpacks the telling phrases of our national conversation, from progressive to elite to change, as well as the national conversation itself.

Kevin Kelly, noted author and editor of the Wired magazine, believes that the Web, in the next 6,500 days, will be as far removed from and beyond the Web we see today, as the current state of the Web is from what they speculated back at its beginning.

Moira speaks with former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler about his book The End of Overeating, in which he discusses what has been invisibly added to the American supply, leaving some of us obese, and many of us, unexpectedly overweight. He tells us the science behind what happens to our brains when we eat food laden with salt, fat and sugar.

As more individuals have the need to share material online with others, developers continue to come up with new ways to post items. Posterous allows users to post things online using email. It allows a member to share text, audio, photos, and other files. The site's developers, Sachin Agarwal and Garry Tan join Phil and Scott to talk about how the service was developed.

Drawing on his experiences as an entrepreneur in the area of open public local access networks, Matson describes a thought-provoking alternative: a high-capacity, unmetered, unrestricted local network operated as a trust for the benefit of all participants of a community. Beyond sketching the many benefits of such an implementation, Matson outlines the critical requirements of "getting from here to there" and the formidable challenges to meeting them. While creating an open public local access network starts with technology, it also requires equal measures of political will, market incentives and respect for personal freedom.

Moore's Law originated with Intel, and Intel continues to push it into the future. In this talk from the O'Reilly Web 2.0 Conference, Paul Otellini, President and CEO of Intel, discusses two new technologies their future chips will enable. The first, enterprise collaboration, will bring the utility of social networking and Web 2.0 into large businesses. The second, personal internet, will proactively bring information to you rather than requiring you to seek it out.

Dan Bricklin is a true software pioneer. He has written about technology for many years and has compiled much of this information into his new book, Bricklin on Technology, in which he talks about the human aspect of technology: how it is created, how it is used, and how it evolves. He talks about how the book came about, how he decided what content to include, as well as what he learned about the publishing process. In particular, he reviews the particular issues involved in trying to adapt a book for the Amazon Kindle.

Only 9 percent of the electorate thinks the U.S. Congress is doing a good job. Lawrence Lessig talks about the damage that arises from politicians focusing on raising funds to get themselves reelected. This constant attention to making money feeds the Washington 'economy of influence'. The morally destitute behavior, foretold by Thomas Jefferson in The Founders' Constitution, undermines the trust of the electorate in the institution of the government.

Web 2.0 ushered in a wave of new communication services that require different infrastructure and architecture than the services that preceded them. In this presentation from the O'Reilly Velocity Conference, John Fowler of Sun Microsystems describes several new developments by Sun to help meet the needs of modern Web applications.

People are naturally interested in other people. We want to connect and share with each other quickly and easily. But social computing as it exists now has many weaknesses that make us frustrated and uneasy. Barriers include multiple passwords, confirming identity, spam, and how to trust sites to which we send our personal information.

Moira speaks with UCLA psychiatrist Dr. Judith Orloff about the psychology and biology of our emotions. Orloff discusses her book Emotional Freedom, a road map for those who are stressed out, discouraged, or overwhelmed as well as for those who are in a good emotional place but want to feel even better.

In this presentation at the Web 2.0 Conference, Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh talks about his first business selling pizza in college, starting Link Exchange after college, and how he eventually ended up leading Zappos as the CEO. Tony discusses how his experience at Link Exchange influenced him to focus on corporate culture as a top priority, and why he thinks culture is so important to a company’s future growth and success.

In this short tutorial, Barton explains how to use Firebug's JavaScript profiler to measure the performance of a web page. With performance information available, he then illustrates how to use Firebug to identify performance bottlenecks. To conclude the tutorial, Barton uses Firebug to demonstrate the performance improvements gained from the changes made using Firebug.

Moira speaks with Dr. Alan Boss about his book The Crowded Universe and how NASA’s Kepler Mission expects to discover possible life-supporting planets.

Jason Hall, Clint Savage, and Will Smith of the Utah Open Source Foundation discuss how smaller local computer user groups can build into organizations that reach people in larger areas. Each of them talks about how they got involved in small user groups. They also give some background about the foundation and talk about how the annual Utah Open Source Conference has become a useful way for interested participants to get more involved. The group reviews some useful methods to start a conference and how best to grow it from year to year, including how to get presenters and involve the attendees in creating better conferences.

While the Scrum methodology of software development has been in use for many years, it is still less well known than other systems. Cydni Tetro, Chief Marketing Officer of NextPage, joins Phil and Scott to discuss it. In addition to reviewing the basic concepts and terms, she talks about how NextPage uses Scrum for its projects. She describes the responsibilities of each member of the development team and gives a number of useful examples to help make the concept more understandable.

Dr. Moira Gunn interviews Alva Noe, author of the book Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness, in which he challenges the assumptions underlying neuroscientific studies of consciousness.

Moira speaks with psychologist and author Dr. Ken Dychtwald, about re-writing the script for aging, especially in these economic times.

Moira speaks with Astrophysicist Mario Livio, who asks and answers the question: “Is God a Mathematician?”

Joel and Jeff discuss Eclipse, plugin architectures, sketching mockups, and optimizations that don't optimize.

Most software developers dread having to work on a "legacy" software project, because it is in an old language, or is poorly designed, or inflexible and difficult to modify. In his talk from RailsConf Europe, David Heinemeier Hansson argues that legacy is a frame of mind that indicates learning and progress on the part of a developer. If you can see what's wrong with code, you're better than you were when you wrote it.

After realizing that no overriding methodology existed for the development of open source software, Robert Lefkowitz set about trying to develop one. After looking at various models for general software development, he found that they had similar stages of creation and implementation. And he found that these stages dovetailed nicely with Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory, a model for persuasive argument.

This week host Jon Udell interviews ITConversations executive producer Phil Windley. His new company, Kynetx, provides structured, contextualized browsing experiences. In this interview Phil explains how Information Cards, jQuery, a universal browser extension, and a cloud-based ruleset work together to connect otherwise isolated web episodes.

The Public Printer of the United States is the head of the Government Printing Office, the Federal agency charged with making government publications available for the public. Carl Malamud discusses his campaign to be appointed by the Obama administration to this position. He talks about some of the reforms he hopes to accomplish and talks about how he would continue the work he has done at Public.Resource.Org, where he has made available millions of pages of government documents, as well as video and photographic material. He also assesses the work necessary to include more useful material on government websites.

There is an interaction between changes that happen in technology, changes in economics, and changes in society. The software industry is at the heart of these fundamental economic and social changes. More than any other time in history, software matters. In his keynote speech at the 2008 O'Reilly Media Open Source Convention (OSCON), Ubuntu founder and Open Source guru Mark Shuttleworth discusses how free software is the best way to drive wealth-creating opportunities.

Dr. Moira Gunn interviews Eric Simons, author of the book Darwin Slept Here, a portrait of a young Charles Darwin. 2009 is the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth.

Joel's essay How to be a Program Manager attempts to explain the essential role this person plays on a software project. It's a shame the job has such a nebulous title.

Sara Nelson gives a presentation at TOCcon about the past, present and future of book publishing, book distribution and book reading. She talks about what roles the publisher and the distributor historically has played, and what roles they play in the industry today.

LinkedIn, the social network for professionals, is building an application platform aimed at maximizing user value and business success. In this presentation from O'Reilly's Graphing Social Patterns conference, Adam Nash describes LinkedIn's strengths as a professional communication tool and how their application and advertising platforms will reach and serve professionals and business owners.

Susan RoAne, author of the book Face to Face: How to Reclaim the Personal Touch in a Digital World, talks to Moira Gunn about how basic conversational and social skills have deteriorated. RoAne's book offers simple steps to more effective communication.

This is the 43rd episode of the StackOverflow podcast, where Joel and Jeff discuss dealing with incompetent programmers, whether salaries should be public, dealing with technical debt, and programming for small businesses.

Mark Baker has always worked with distributed systems, starting with DCE and CORBA. When he learned about the Web's REST architectural style, he embraced it as a better way. When the Web Services movement veered away from key RESTful principles -- a uniform interface, hyperlinked representations -- he campaigned vigorously for them. Now, he tells host Jon Udell, REST has won the web, although not yet the enterprise.

Nathan Torkington gives a very humorous talk about how we can spawn (pun intended) the next generation of open-source hackers and teach kids how to use computers. He talks about the process of introducing usable, modern computer hardware and software (with a focus on open-source) into a school environment which had previously been the bastion of randomly assorted technologies, none of which were functioning very well.

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Zachary Shore of the Naval Postgraduate School about blunders, looking back through history and gleaning insights on life in the present. The techno-snafu's start with no other than Thomas Alva Edison.

This is the 41st episode of the StackOverflow podcast, where Joel and Jeff sit down with Robert Martin aka "Uncle Bob", and discuss software quality, the value of software engineering principles, and test-driven development.

The publishing industry must prepare itself for this fundamental cultural change by making use of technological advancements in everyday operations such as XML, semantic metadata and wikis. In this excerpt from the O'Reilly "Tools of Change" conference, Mr. Brooks discusses how publishers must not only review the publishing processes, but also focus on process centric activities, all within the context of improved productivity. It is a daunting task but one that is quantified by their mission statement, “Enabling content to do anything you can imagine, while leading the industry in operational excellence.”

Andy Singleton is an entrepreneur who has long studied and practiced the art of distributed software development. Influenced by the open source and agile movements, he has arrived at some startling conclusions about how to manage commercial projects. Among them: don't interview people, don't estimate schedules, and don't spend time in teleconferences. In this conversation with host Jon Udell he explains why not to do these things, and what to do instead.

Joel and Jeff sit down with Michael Lopp, aka Rands, to discuss how a geek manages other geeks, the dangers of working remotely, the pitfalls of offshoring, and some techniques for continual learning.

EtherPad is a real-time text collaboration tool, produced by AppJet, Inc. and currently in beta. Aaron Iba, co-founder of the company, joins Phil and Scott to discuss it. In addition to giving its background, he discusses its technical aspects, including how it uses AppJet as a platform.

Spectrum Radio's Steven Cherry interviews Robert Laughlin about his new book "The Crime of Reason and the Closing of the Scientific Mind." Professor Laughlin explores the inherent conflict between the government's efforts to support and protect the commercialization of Intellectual Property and the scientific researcher's need for free access to information in order to expand our knowledge in critical areas. Will ignorance be the price we inadvertently pay for safety and commerce?

In this conference talk from the 2008 O'Reilly Open Source Convention Danese Cooper investigates the consequences of whinging versus doing in the Free and Open Source communities. She examines approaches that have been taken outside of the software development world to move to the next level of cooperative problem solving. Danese explains ways of reframing issues to take away the negativity.

Moira speaks with Van Jones about what it takes to build a green collar economy. Remember that 10 pounds each of us Americans put on over the last decade? Well, he's computed what it's costing us in terms of gas in our cars and fuel in our jets.

Even before their highly successful Google IPO, the founders outlined a unique philanthropic strategy. The strategy ensured that Google would not only dedicate itself to index all of the world's information, but also to address the biggest problems in the world. This strategy, which was sent by a letter to all shareholders, outlined a hybrid philanthropy approach. By allocating 1% of the shareholder equity, 1% of Google's profit, and 1% of its manpower they created Google.org.

Greg Ness joins Phil and Scott to discuss how serious issues likely exist in supporting the new services and products now being offered to users.

He talks about how the current system is handling the load and gives examples of some of the problems that illustrate why upgrades and changes are needed. He also looks forward on how to begin to make the necessary changes for the future.

In a world of dangerous threats, how can individuals be protected? Are the top down approachs to security by the Department of Defense and Homeland Security up to this challenge? Is it a correct assumption that security from terrorism and other attacks will require the loss of privacy by individuals and private organizations? These are some of the questions Christine Peterson, cofounder of the Foresight Nanotech Institute, raises in this speech from the 2007 Singularity Summit.

Joel and Jeff, with special guest Eric Sink of SourceGear, discuss source control present and future, why writing a compiler is an important rite of passage for programmers, and how budding software engineers should be educated.

The increasing pace of technology and business innovation has resulted in a proliferation of content in a variety of new forms such as Wikipedia, Wikitravel, Encyclopedia of Life, Newser, and many more. Participation and collaboration are the values of a new creative class, one Samuel Johnson, writing only when paid to write something, would never have understood. Bill Burger describes the clash of cultures between these new models and the traditional world of publishing and the resultant suing by fearful authors and publishers.

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Maria Giudice, CEO and founder of Hot Studio, about the democratization of the internet, and the principles of human centered design.

Craig Burton joins Phil and Scott to discuss some of his ideas about innovation. He reviews topics covered in three of his recent essays and talks about how innovation is often misunderstood. He reviews how technology companies make mistakes with customer demographics, as well as how to distinguish innovation myths from innovation realities. He also presents an example of true innovation as he describes how Novell created software infrastructure as a new software category.

Brough Turner says, “Don’t fight for anything above dark fiber.” Changes in telecom tend to happen on a decade's time scale so be careful what you ask for - it will be with you for a long time. His proposal for improving internet communications in the United States is based on the paradigm of owning the dark fiber ourselves or controlling who lights the dark fiber that comes into our homes.

The vision to build a global platform that is free software, feely available, has powered Ubuntu’s success since its founding in 2004. Founder, Mark Shuttleworth, expands on the vision for the next three years to build a platform that is commercially successful and the foundation for an entire industry.

What is one thing that you really wanted to be good at but didn’t? The brain processes of neurogenesis and neuroplasticity may mean it’s never too late for you do so. Experts may know more about a subject than others, but that does not fully explain the performance differences between the world class and the average. Kathy Sierra, who is passionate about the brain, how the brain works, and how to exploit it for better learning and memory, shares what that extra something is.

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Judy Estrin, author of "Closing the Innovation Gap" and Cisco's CTO, about the state of the innovation ecosystem in the United States following the dot-com bust.

35 years ago, Carl Hewitt proposed a model for computation based on autonomous message-passing Actors. Now the demands of multi-core computers and cloud-based software are thrusting that model to the forefront. In this conversation with host Jon Udell, Carl Hewitt explores hardware-enforced privacy, paraconsistent logic, and scalable semantic integration. The terminology is arcane. But the discussion boils down to a few basic principles that apply equally to both carbon- and silicon-based life forms. First, we can only change ourselves. To influence others we have to send the right messages and then hope for the best. Second, there will always be inconsistency. But we can tolerate it, and reason effectively about it.

# Richard worked as the user interface guy on calendar startup Kiko.com; UserVoice was originally inspired by Richard's work on Kiko, as a hybrid of Reddit and FogBugz.
# There are some thematic similarities between Dell's IdeaStorm and My Starbucks Idea and UserVoice -- to some degree, UserVoice is users voting on the direction your software should take. Does software democracy work?

Computer programs require a lot of extra code because they don't have a sense of the world. Human language on the other hand conveys most of its meaning through its context and semantics. The goal of the Elephant 2000 programming language is to use context and speech acts to convey meaning without a lot of code. 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.

Dr. Charles Harper asks some big questions to challenge the readiness of science to recognize the potential risks and implications of rapid human technological development. Where should our concerns lie given the potential of super intelligent machines that could far exceed human intellectual capabilities? Are we up to the task of proper stewardship of such powerful new advances? Or more significantly will that role even be ours?

In this presentation from the 2008 O'Reilly Where 2.0 Conference, Adrian Holovaty shares how his site. EveryBlock.com, aggregates data from a variety of sources to provide a feed for the news, events, and civic goings-on that have happened, or will happen, in your city. Thus, mEveryBlock makes it simple to keep track of news for a very specific area. EveryBlock builds their feed by including data about crimes, property transactions, zoning changes, construction permits, movie filming, business reviews, pictures and more.

Twine is a new service that "helps people track their interests using the Semantic Web and collective intelligence." Nova Spivack, CEO and founder of Radar Networks, discusses how Twine works and where it's headed.

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Nobel Laureate Robert Laughlin, about the value of the information we get for free from the internet, and that which for scientists is not out there for any price.

Ben Rushlo, the company's Director of Web Performance Consulting, discusses how organizations should work to make their sites better. He talks about the status of the web and reviews how perceived performance is often different from actual performance. He gives tips for better operation and gives a number of suggestions that companies can use to improve their sites.

When is a book not a book? When there are no chapters, it needs special editors and researchers, isn't read from cover to cover, and its usefulness varies with size. In this presentation of the O'Reilly Tools For Change conference, Erin McKean, Chief Consulting Editor for American Dictionaries at Oxford University Press, explains why despite their appearance, dictionaries don't act like books and don't meet most of our expectations for books.

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Dr. Frank Wilchen, Nobel laureate and professor at MIT, about his latest book, "Lightness of Being," and how the recently activated Large Hadron Collider might confirm or dispel some of his most recent theories.

Joel and Jeff sit down with the ineffable Steve Yegge, who you may know from his excellent and extremely popular blog Stevey's Blog Rants. Steve worked for Amazon and currently works for Google.

The Sunlight Foundation’s ultimate goal is to strengthen the relationship between citizens and their elected officials and to foster public trust in Congress. The organization uses technology and the power of the Internet at the core of all of its efforts. Micah Sifry, the foundation's Senior Technology Advisor joins Phil and Scott to talk about a number of his projects.

In addition to the Sunlight Foundation, he discusses his work with Personal Democracy Forum and the technical aspects of the work. He reviews the API used for the Sunlight Foundation and discusses how it works and how it can be used by others

What are the near term practical robotic applications that are really going to matter? Difficult to predict due to the limited opportunity for people to tinker with the programmatic development of autonomous robots. Steve Cousins wants to overcome this challenge by building an open source platform that will allow enthusiasts to get inside the code and experiment with robotic devices in the same way that early automobile enthusiasts were able to tinker with their cars.