Podcast Update

• Opening Move with Scott Mace
  • Julie Hanna Farris talks about Scalix which offers a messaging application that presents an Outlook like interface via a browser. Interesting comments about the penetration of open source into commercial enterprises. She clearly believes that the two will continue to play well together. For her company, they open sourced a limited, but rich set of features in Scalix Community Edition. In fact, it sounds like they open sourced all but those that are most clearly directed towards more enterprise use (e.g., group scheduling). She also made it clear that their target is to provide a messaging system for Linux. They are not targeting Windows. Interesting presentation.
    
  • Brian Capouch talks about the open source project, Asterisk. This open source project provides PBX functionality for VoIP. Brian made it clear that the main version of Asterisk is best understood by those with a background in IT and Telephony. However, he also indicated that the home distribution is easy to install and essentially gets you setup via answers to easy to understand questions. I know little about telephony. So, I imagine I would find the full edition of Asterisk intimidating. Brian mentioned several uses of Asterisk that were quite interesting. For example, he mentioned once case where an application used Asterisk and bluetooth to ring the room in which a person was physically located. Good presentation.
• Larry's World
• Larry talked with Craig Newmark of Craig's List. Given the use of Craig's List during hurricane Katrina, I was very curious to hear this presentation. I must the most impressive part for me was the insight I gained into the character of Craig. Maintaining a simple site where control remains with the users, bypassing offers for huge sums of cash to maintain a work he finds important, both speak well for Craig. Very interesting.
• Larry talked with Jakob Nielsen a usability expert. This lively and entertaining presentation features Jakob sharing some of the no-no's we see and should avoid as we build web applications (or applications in general for that matter). It is how the user is going to use the site, not what it looks like that matters. Good listening.
  
• Rajesh Jain, Professor of Information & Computer Sciences, UC, Irvine, talks about Experiential Computing. Every time I listen to Rajesh I gain more appreciation for his insightful and informed viewpoint on where computer science is taking us. This excellent presentation find Rajesh reminding us that we are on the edge of escaping some of our historical baggage (like viewing everything on the web as a document) into a world where our experiences are captured in multiple ways and linked via the web and other technologies to allows to revisit and share that experience. Cool presentation.
  
• Vermor Vinge talks about Singularity.
• The Gilmor Gang talks about the current range of browsers standards for the web (blessed and de facto). This very interesting presentation brings together a group of knowledgeable folks to talk about the browsers and the tagged languages to which the appeal. They talked about the W3C blessed standards and the standards that appear in the real world. XForms, SVG, and DOM level 0 and level 1 make the list of topics discussed. With the apparent ongoing onslaught of Firefox use growth, this presentation is still timely and interesting. I highly recommend this presentation.
  
• Tara Lemmey talks about National Security in the Information Age. This brief, but very informative presentation, highlights how the automation of information between and within agencies needs to meet certain usability requirements that many of us probably don't think about much. For example, some FBI agents have a strong preference for NOT having to type in information. Then, one has to determine how to manage annotations and viewability within a security context. Who can see what on the original document and amongst the collections of annotations. Good presentation.
• Richard Monson-Haefel, Senior Analyst for the Burton Group, talks about Java Superplatforms including those from IBM, Oracle, and BEA. Richard makes a compelling case that essentially divides the world of Java based platforms between these big players and open source where open source represents the lower end of the market space (read as less large scale enterprise deployments). I am not sure I completely accept Richard's viewpoint as the most accurate descriptive or prescriptive of the current and future marketplace. But, it is certainly feasible that things could end up exactly as he describes. My hesitation is driven by my knowledge that some corporations do, in fact, thrive on multiple and varied solutions. Many corporations' IT shops are thrown a mix of applications by their business units and expected to help them find coexistence without forcing a one-size fits all solution. Do NOT read this comment as a rejection of Richard's position. I do believe Richard speaks for some, perhaps many, organizations.