The Thought Leaders show hosted by Tom Raftery
I will be interviewing Thomas Vander Wal on Friday - According to Wikipedia:
Thomas Vander Wal is an information architect known for coining the term “folksonomy”. His work has been with the Web and with information design and structure.
If you have any questions you’d like me to put to Thomas, feel free to leave them in the comments of this post.
Duration: 50′48
Created: Tue, 31 Jan 2006
Location: Cork, Ireland
Category: Speech
License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA
Producer: Tom Raftery
My guest on today’s show was information architect and interaction designer Mary Hodder. Mary completed her Masters at the School of Information Management and Systems at UC Berkeley in May, 2004
We had a very wide ranging discussion on everything from video blogging to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to the the future of social media! The interview ran long and despite cutting at least 10 minutes from the interview it still runs to just over 50 minutes but it is all great stuff!
Here are the questions I asked Mary and the times in the interview at which I asked them:
Who is Mary Hodder, what is your background and what are you doing now? - 0:57
You mentioned that part of your masters was intellectual property, you also mentioned that you worked on usability and interaction design and Dabble is a video remix community - is there a common thread which ties these together? - 5:29
Who would be the intended audience of a video remix site? - 9:43
I assume there is a business model with Dabble… - 13:50
When is Dabble due to launch? - 16:06
Are there competitors in your space, right now? - 18:08
Do video bloggers spread their content all over to keep costs down or for redundancy or… - 19:52
2005 was the year when podcasting exploded - do you see 2006 as the year video will explode? - 24:48
What is average file size for a video these days? - 29:38
We are hearing a lot about the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and the Patriot Act over here - what exactly are they? - 31:24
You referred to last week - I presume you were referring to Google’s refusing to hand over information to the Department of justice where MSN, Yahoo and AOL did… - 38:46
The Department of Justice explained the subpoenas as being for child protection - do you buy that excuse? - 45:02
Where do you see social media going in the next 12 months? - 47:25
Download the interview here (11.63mb mp3).
Tags: podleaders, Tom_Raftery, Mary_Hodder, dabble, video_blogging, video_remix, DMCA, Patriot_act, social media
Artist: PodLeaders.com
Duration: 28′08
Created: Thu, 26 Jan 2006
Location: Cork, Ireland
Category: Speech
License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA
Today’s guest on the show is Frode (rhymes with road) Hegland, CEO of Liquid Information - a company whose aim is to make information flow like liquid.
Liquid Information has an advisory board which reads like a who’s who of IT (Doug Engelbart, Vint Cerf, Ted Nelson, Bruce Horn, Dave Farber, Joi Ito, etc.) - you just know that with a board like that they must be on to something interesting.
I contacted Frode and asked him if he’d like to come on the show to talk about his board, his company, their philosophy and their latest product - Hyperwords (an incredible plug-in for Firefox and Flock which I reviewed on my own blog) - which came out of beta on the day we talked.
Here are the questions I asked Frode and the times in the interview at which I asked them:
Frode, can you tell the listeners who is Frode Hegland, what is your background and what is it that you do now? - 0:51
It is an unusual career path going from advertising to human-computer interactions, how did that come about? - 1:16
And how did you go about making computer systems less “crap”? - 2:04
The idea came from Doug Englebart’s system? - 7:47
Where do you see Hyperwords - mobile browsers? beyond browsers? - 8:27
Hyperwords is not Web 2.0ish… 14:39
That must make selling your product in Silicon Valley quite difficult… 15:16
What is the business model? - 16:31
You mentioned WordPress, is there an option to blog with WordPress? - 18:22
What are the main differences between the version in private beta and the version in public beta? - 18:56
Apart from yourself, who else is behind Hyperwords? - 20:54
Your advisory board reads like a who’s who in IT (Vint Cerf, Doug Englebart, Joi Ito, Dave Farber) - how did you manage to land all those names? - 23:56
How many people were involved in the private beta? - 25:25
Is there anything else you’d like to say about hyperwords? - 26:26
Download the interview here (6.4mb mp3).
Tags: Hyperwords, podleaders, Firefox, frode_hegland, tom_raftery, tomraftery, Doug_Engelbart, Vint_Cerf, Ted_Nelson, Bruce_Horn, Dave_Farber, Joi_Ito, liquidinformation, liquid_information
I will be interviewing Mary Hodder at the start of next week - if anyone has any questions for her, feel free to drop them in the comments of this post and I’ll put them to her during the interview.
Artist: PodLeaders.com
Duration: 50′05
Created: Mon, 23 Jan 2006
Location: Cork, Ireland
Category: Speech
License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA
My guest on today’s show was Chris Messina - Chris is Director of Experience and Open Source Ambassador for Flock - Flock is a free, open source web browser - with elements of Web 2.0 built into the browser (i.e. it has a blog editor, a Flickr uploader and a Del.icio.us tagger built-in).
Chris is a committed open source advocate and has strong opinions on open source, DRM, and how the web should be used which he is not afraid to express.
Here are the questions I asked Chris in the interview and the times at which I asked them:
Chris, who is Chris Messina and what is it that you do? - 0:53
“Director of Experience and Open Source Ambassador”? - 2:02
What sets Flock apart from every other browser? - 5:03
Is Flock a Web 2.0 app? - 7:11
What is Web 2.0? - 8:56
How many are using Flock? - 14:27
Salim Ismail:
1) Does Flock have businesses as a target or are they focused on the general consumer? - 16:50
2) Will they private label their browser? - 20:18
3) Will some of the features get integrated back into the Mozilla codebase or will it stay as an extension? - 22:15
4) What’s the business model??! - 24:19
5) Finally, does he prefer Guinness or Murphy’s? - 26:36
JP Dubois:
1) What is the timeline for a 1.0 release? - 27:17
2) His views on “Web as Platform” and the ability to integrate API’s like your Blog, Flickr and del.icio.us. - 28:53
3) What’s up with this postcard thing? because I want a flock t-shirt : ) - 32:21
Anthony:
Do we really need another web browser?
Who is Flock targetting for its user base? - 33:34
Keith:
I would love to switch to Flock - but cannot find solid reasons for doing so. I use del.icio.us, I blog on two platforms and I collaborate a lot online - and the majority
of what I want from a browser I get from Firefox and the extensions that I need.
So there does not appear to be enough in it for me to relearn elements of
my browser use (and vocab) in the way that I perceive I would have to for Flock.
Also I would say that it appears to be static at present against a dynamic Firefox build timetable that is augmented by regular extensions updates and releases. - 35:41
Tara:
I’d ask him how his French fluency is coming along…
Sense of direction … - 39:07
There was a bit of a kerfuffle at the end of last December about one of your posts - I met Matt Mullenweg of WordPress in Paris last year and… - 39:44
Is there any Web 2.0 application you can’t live without? - 42:15
Are you Mac based or PC based? - 44:05
Do you have a favourite gadget? - 44:10
Finally, Do you unplug from technology often , to recharge yourself do you have any non-tech hobbies? - 46:20
Download the interview here (11.5mb mp3).
Tags: chris_messina, tom_raftery, podleaders, flock, open_source, flickr, drm, delicious, web_20, mozilla, firefox
Artist: PodLeaders.com
Duration: 36′28
Created: Thu, 19 Jan 2006
Location: Cork, Ireland
Category: Speech
License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA
My guest on today’s show is Bradley Horowitz.
As one of the senior players in yahoo!, Bradley helped manage Yahoo!’s Flickr acquisition and the integration of Flickr into Yahoo!. Bradley also looked after the Yahoo! Toolbar and Desktop Search.
More recently Bradley has shifted roles and he now heads up Technology Development within Yahoo!s Search and Marketplace Group.
Before working for Yahoo!, Bradley was the founder of Virage.
Here are the questions I asked Bradley in the interview and the times at which I asked them:
Who you are and what do you do in Yahoo!? 0:44
What is your take on web 2.0? 2:47
Yahoo’s acquisitions in the last year (Flickr, Del.icio.us, SearchFox, etc.) seem to be all web 2.0 companies - Yahoo! are obviously out to try to dominate this arena… - 5:15
How do you hope to make a profit from this? - 7:02
Yahoo’s biggest competitor or threat? - 8:39
What was Yahoo!s greatest achievement in 2005? 10:38
What do you have planned for 2006? 13:32
Yahoo! Maps and Publisher are incredibly US-Centric any plans to address this? - 14:30
Any plans to index podcasts using something like speech to text? - 17:14
Have you seen what Riya is doing at the moment? - 21:17
Robin left the following questions:
At present you index & search text very well and now the beginnings of good video search are emerging with on-screen ocr, close captions, speech recognition and iconography/iconology, shot/frame/scene boundaries, colour averaging etc…
At the same time, the human interaction with video has been a problem where the result set is hard to browse to see ‘quickly’ to judge if a result is relevant without actually watching the clip. Has Yahoo! anything up its sleeve to address this? - 22:04
At the same time Yahoo! seem to have a lot going on in the Mobile world, with much more expensive cell data rates in Europe than abroad (€26 average for 4MB in Ireland! Source: Sunday Independent), is this going to put a stub on the introduction of Yahoo! Mobile products on this side of the pond? - 24:11
Back to my questions again:
Yahoo! was at the receiving end of some negative publicity last year - In August, Ben Edelman outed Yahoo for funding Spyware developers, and in Sept, Yahoo! was accused by News.com of employing spyware tactics in its new version of its Instant Messenger app, does Yahoo! have a corporate Ethics Officer or a corporate Ethics statement that you follow? - 25:35
More bad PR in Sept when Chinese journalist Shi Tao was jailed for 10 years for posting “sensitive information” after Yahoo! turned over his Yahoo! hosted email account to the Chinese government - is this a case of Yahoo! putting profit before human rights? - 27:44
If this had happened in the US would Yahoo! have fought the government request in the courts? 30:37
Do you have a favourite gadget? - 31:25
Is there any Web 2.0 application you can’t live without? - 32:30
Are you Mac based or PC based? - 33:28
Finally, Do you unplug from technology often , to recharge yourself do you have any non-tech hobbies? - 34:09
Download the interview here (8.4mb mp3).
Tags: Bradley_Horowitz, Yahoo, Flickr, Del.icio.us, SearchFox, web_2.0, riya, Ben_Edelman, Spyware, yim, ethics, Shi_Tao, human_rights, podleaders, tom_raftery
I am interviewing Bradley Horowitz, director of technology development for Yahoo’s search group, tomorrow for a podcast - any questions you may have feel free to leave them here in the comments and I will be sure to ask them.
Chris Messina is Director of Experience and Open Source Ambassador at Flock.
I will be interviewing Chris later this week - the obvious first question I have for him is who dreamt up his job title?!
If you have any questions for Chris, feel free to leave them here in the comments and I’ll be sure to ask him.
Artist: PodLeaders.com - Tom Raftery
Duration: 28′24
Created: Mon, 16 Jan 2006
Location: Cork, Ireland
Category: Speech
License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA
Shel Holtz is a corporate communications consultant, a blogger, podcaster and author.
Before going out on his own, Shel was senior communications consultant and the communications practice leader for Alexander & Alexander Consulting Group, before that he was the director of corporate communications for Allergan, Inc. He held the same title at Mattel, Inc., where he was responsible for employee communications, the organization’s annual report, and regional media relations. He also has worked for William M. Mercer, Inc., ARCO, and Transamerica Financial Corporation.
In 2005, Shel was named an IABC Fellow, the highest honor the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) confers on its members.
His other memberships include the Association of Internet Professionals, and the a href=”http://www.eff.org/”>Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
Here are the questions I asked Shel in the interview and the times at which I asked them:
Who is Shel Holtz and what is it that you do? - 0:32
What made you decide to go out on your own? - 1:40
Any regrets? - 2:59
You wouldn’t go back to ‘working for the man’, as they say? - 3:03
You have been a communications consultant for quite a while, what are the greatest changes you have seen to the business and is the rate of change increasing? (or am I just getting old!) - 3:17
Is this shift in the control of the message why you started blogging? - 5:06
How do we get people more aware of and using RSS and similar tools? - 7:55
In Ireland there are still very few companies blogging - would you advise Irish co.s to blog, and if so, why? - 9:47
Marc Canter suggested using blogs internally within companies as a Knowledge Management tool… - 12:25
You are currently writing a book called Blogging for Business with Ted Demopoulos - how will this differ from Shel Israel and Robert Scoble’s book Naked Conversations on the same topic? - 14:01
How did you get together with Neville Hobson and set up your For Immediate Release podcast? - 15:01
Do you have any figures on numbers of listeners for your podcast? - 17:38
The 2 big events this last week were CES and MacWorld - both in California - did you get to go to either of them? - 18:44
What do you see different about the world today, January 2006, from January 2005? - 19:47
You thinking of starting a video blog? - 21:37
Favourite gadget? - 23:32
Mac or PC? - 25:17
Finally, Do you unplug from technology often , to recharge yourself do you have any non-tech hobbies? - 25:45
Download the interview here (6.5mb mp3).
Tags: Shel_holtz, Tom_Raftery, podleaders, corporate_communications, business_blogging, knowledge_management, naked_conversations, Robert_scoble, Shel_Israel,
Artist: PodLeaders.com (Tom Raftery)
Duration: 33′35
Created: Wed, 11 Jan 2006
Location: Cork, Ireland
Category: Speech
License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA
Tara Hunt is an Online Marketing professional, the Chief Blogger for Riya, and one of the most visible Marketers on the ‘net right now. I met Tara at the Les Blogs 2.0 conference in Paris last December and she impressed me with her razor-sharp mind, her tech-skills and her straight-talking so I decided I had to have her on the show!
The sound quality on this Skype connection left a lot to be desired and, in fact, we lost the connection several times during the interview.
Here are the questions I asked Tara in the interview and the times at which I asked them:
Tara, for anyone who hasn’t heard of you, can you give a brief bit on your background? - 0:38
You have a marketing consultancy called Rogue Strategies - are Riya a client of Rogue Strategies or are you now a fulltime employee of Riya? - 1:25
Riya are a startup company with a product in beta - can you tell us something about that? - 2:04
Will it work like an extended Flickr where you upload your photos and it recognises them or how will it work? - 3:21
What is your role in the organisation? - 4:19
What was it about your blog which landed you this blog at Riya? - 5:14
What is Guerilla marketing as opposed to traditional marketing? - 6:00
You mentioned that you took companies to task for their traditional approaches to marketing, what was it about their approach that you took them to task for? - 7:06
How does a company making widgets or making software to help widget manufacturers make better widgets, generate a blog buzz? - 10:24
What about the likes of Hugh MacLeod and the Stormhoek wine campaign - 13:07
Riya is described a Web 2.0 application - what would your definition of Web 2.0 be? - 14:39
Is there any Web 2.0 application you couldn’t live without? - 17:25
You seem to live your life quite openly on your blog, how do you know where to draw the line between your private life and what you post on your blog? - 18:27
You mentioned Del.icio.us - how do you use that? - 19:02
How do you manage to read as much as you do, to post as much as you do and keep the day job? - 20:22
Do you take any time to unplug, do you have any non-tech hobbies? - 23:21
We’ve just started into 2006 - have you any predictions for the rest of the year, anything you think is likely to happen? - 24:41
Riya have a blog going for some time now, you are not thinking of going into podcasting, are you? - 27:39
Download the interview here (7.7mb mp3).
Tags: tom_raftery, tara_hunt, podleaders, riya, podcast