Below are the titles and descriptions of the top ten shows on IT Conversations for March 2008.
- Michael Lenczner - Interviews with Innovators: Community Wireless (No rating yet)
Michael Lenczner is one of the founders of Ile Sans Fil, Montreal's community wireless network which comprises over 150 hotspots and serves almost 60,000 registered users. By any standards the project is a huge success. On this episode of Interviews with Innovators, host Jon Udell asks Lenczner whether Ile Sans Fil has really enhanced community life in the ways the founders hoped it would.
- Raph Koster - The Core of Fun (Rating: 4.33)
Raph Koster, author of the book "A Theory of Fun for Game Design", describes the grammar of fun. He gives a checklist of ways to make social media more fun based on his work in online games. Most important is to give users context and feedback for every action they take, and that fun comes at the edge of failure.
- Adrian Holovaty - Jon Udell's Interviews with Innovators (Rating: 4.60)
Adrian Holovaty recently launched EveryBlock.com, a service that generalizes ChicagoCrime.org's style of hyperlocal news to other cities and to a broader range of data types. Six months into a two-year project funded by a Knight Foundation grant, he discusses EveryBlock's accomplishments and aspirations.
- Jeremy Faludi - Technometria: Green Computing (Rating: 4.50)
As more companies examine the issue of environmentally friendly products, it is not surprising that the concept of green computing would grow in importance. IT professionals are examining power consumption, the hazardous materials used in manufacturing computers, as well as how best to recycle older devices. Jeremy Faludi, a product designer currently working for Project Frog, discusses the subject with Phil and Scott. He talks about the issues in general, as well as how companies are working to keep up with the problems.
- Moshe Yudkowsky - Revolutionary Telephony (Rating: 3.67)
In the last few years, telephony prices have dropped to ridiculously low levels and today, one doesn't need a telephone instrument to receive or make calls. Personal services are disappearing from the landscape while technology rapidly replaces them, albeit with a divide between what a customer wants and what he gets. What change is behind this revolution? Moshe Yudkowsky, President of Disaggregate, offers his theory on why emerging telephony is revolutionary.
- Tim Sanders - The State of WIMAX Late 2007 (No rating yet)
WiMAX, a new wireless broadband standard, is coming, and the buzz is growing. How is it different from what is available today, and where will it take wireless broadband in the future? These and other questions are answered by Tim Sanders, a leading industry expert and champion for this new wireless technology.
- CTO Panel - Technometria (Rating: 3.91)
Phil Windley regularly holds CTO meetings where IT professionals discuss current events in technology. In this show he talks with four individuals who work in and write about computing. The group reviews the current status of Twitter, whether companies are using blogging in useful ways, and other similar topics.
- Jim Fowler - Tech Nation: Online Global Directories (Rating: 4.00)
Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Jigsaw's CEO, Jim Fowler, about keeping an online, global directory with millions of business contacts up to date.
- Dan York - The Black Bag Security Review (No rating yet)
"Practice safe VoIP," is Dan York's appeal to the new entrants in the digital telephony landscape. In a spicy, fictional anecdote, CISSP's Director of Emerging Communication Technology cleverly reveals the possible security vulnerabilities VoIP networks are amenable to. Like all happy tales, in the end, the bad guys lose; VoIP security tools are to the rescue. But in real life, Dan warns, the potential threats are only increasing.
- Ward Cunningham - Interviews with Innovators: Creating Wiki Cultures (Rating: 2.85)
On this edition of Interviews with Innovators, host Jon Udell speaks with wiki inventor Ward Cunningham, who discusses the two most recent phases of his career. At the Eclipse Foundation in 2006, he pioneered a transformative new approach to making software-supported business processes transparently understandable both to developers and to users. Now, as CTO of aboutus.org, he's helping to create a new wiki culture for companies and organizations to explain themselves to the world.
