Archive for April, 2006

Niall Kennedy podcast

Published
by
tom
on April 26, 2006
in Podcasting
. 3 Comments


Episode 32 of the PodLeaders show

My guest on Podleaders today is Niall Kennedy. Niall is the former Community Manager of Technorati and has just started working for Microsoft on the Windows Live project.

Niall was very generous to agree to do this interview. I interviewed Niall a couple of months ago but through some stupidity on my part and a bit of a software glitch, I lost the interview. I was mortified. I immediately notified Niall and he was exceedingly gracious and straightaway offered to do another interview. Our schedules didn’t allow us to do this second interview until now, but I’m glad because we were able to discuss Niall’s starting with Microsoft and the Windows Live project that he will be working on.

Here are all the questions I asked Niall along with their times during the interview:

Can you tell us first off about your background? - 0:36

Are PriceGrabber.com and NextTag a bit like Froogle? - 0:57

How did the Om and Niall podsessions podcast come about? - 1:46

It is interesting how you don’t always see eye to eye - 2:58

You recently left Technorati and joined the guys in Microsoft. Does that feel a bit like going over to the Dark side? - 3:43

When are you starting with Microsoft? - 5:42

Will it mean you having to move from San Francisco to Seattle? - 5:57

How does Live.com differentiate itself from Google’s start page and MyYahoo? - 7:00

You are a Mac user. How will Windows Live work with a Mac, I mean OneCare won’t work with a Mac, will it? - 10:31

Is there a business model around Windows Live that you are aware of? - 12:08

There are rumours emerging about Windows Live offering truckloads of disk space. Do you know anything about that? - 13:47

Readers questions:

Damien Mulley
What will you be bringing to Microsoft and what would you like to change in their attitude towards RSS/Atom - 16:23

What do you think of RSS/Atom/ and other “standards”? Do you think there should be one standard to unite them all? - 18:14

How will that affect Microsoft’s extension of RSS - 21:09

Paul O’Mahony
If you had some advice for some aspiring bloggers who wanted to improve the technical sophistication of their blog, what would it be? - 21:43

Dennis Howlett
As I understand it, you are going in to do some major work on RSS. If that’s true then is this for IE7? Or is this part of a longer term strategy regarding RSS inside MSFT apps? - 23:30

Conn O’Muninneachain

I’m looking forward to this one. I’m a big fan of Niall’s podcasts with Om Malik.

Niall may have some insights relevant to your recent postings on blogging for employment. I recall he posted a “syndicated resumé� in Atom format, complete with podcast enclosures, shortly before he left Technorati.

Did he have an inkling of an offer from Microsoft before he quit Technorati? If not, I find it interesting that he had enough confidence in his own “brand�, as represented by his blog, to feel he could make that leap into the unknown. - 24:39

Bif
Bif wants to know how you think the US will do in the World Cup? - 31:30

Me again!
How do you keep up with information management. What tools do you use? - 33:51

Will you have to give up the Mac working for MS? Or will you use Bootcamp? - 35:40

Download the entire interview here
(17.9mb mp3).

Any questions for Niall Kennedy?

Published
by
tom
on April 20, 2006
in Podcasting
. 0 Comments

Niall Kennedy is a well known blogger, a vertical search veteran, a podcaster (with Om Malik) on the Om and Niall podsessions podcast, and a soccer coach! I will be interviewing Niall tomorrow (Fri 21st) in the late afternoon (sorry for the late notice - I only just got confirmation) for a podcast.

Niall has worked for Technorati, shopping comparison engines PriceGrabber and NexTag, institutional investment search company Callan Associates, and business services search for American Express.

Most recently, Niall has accepted a job working for Microsoft’s Windows Live Division.

And most importantly, Niall is the proud holder of an Irish passport!

As always, if you have any questions that you’d like me to ask him, feel free to leave them in the comments or emil them to me at tom@tomrafteryit.net.

Any questions for Bruce Horn?

Published
by
tom
on April 19, 2006
in Podcasting
. 3 Comments

I will be interviewing Bruce Horn of Ingenuity Software, tomorrow (Fri 21st) evening.

Bruce was part of the original team which developed the Mac. He invented the Finder and his signature is one of 5 which were on the inside of the original Mac 128’s.

As always, if you have any questions that you’d like me to ask him, feel free to leave them in the comments or emil them to me at tom@tomrafteryit.net.

UPDATE:
The interview with Bruce has been put back to tomorrow (Fri) so you can still get your questions for another 24 hours.

Scott Anderson podcast

Published
by
tom
on April 19, 2006
in Podcasting
. 0 Comments


Episode 31 of the PodLeaders show

My guest on Podleaders today is Scott Anderson. Scott is Hewlett Packard’s Director of Enterprise Brand Communications - responsible for all communications to the company’s business to business (B2B) customers via traditional media, such as advertising, as well as interactive media such as the web, eMail, online events, blogs, streaming video and more.

I heard Scott very ably explain how and why he rolled out HP’s corporate blogging platform in his presentation at the Syndicate conference last December.

I had a few questions I wanted to ask him about corporate blogging so I invited him on the show. Very graciously, he accepted.

Here are all the questions I asked Scott along with their times during the interview:

Scott, can you start off with a little bit about yourself? What is your background? - 1:05

You have started a blogging programme for HP. How did you first hear about blogging? - 1:57

Why do you think blogging is such a good medium to use for connecting with your customers? - 3:00

Do you think blogging gives you advantages in terms of search engine optimisation (seo)? - 4:51

Are you using other social software tools like, wikis or Flickr streams to promote your brand or is it just podcasts and blogs? - 5:38

Allowing your employees to blog is fraught with risks. How do you know they won’t say something silly, libellous, etc? - 5:54

So your blog posts are not vetted before they are published? - 6:35

How do you make sure all your bloggers stay on message with the message the Marketing department are trying to put out? - 8:50

Do you have a written set of blogging policies that you ask your bloggers to sign up to? - 10:46

You mentioned negative comments. A lot of companies are afraid to put up blogs because they are afraid of negative comments. How do you handle negative comments? - 12:39

Are the comments moderated before they are published? - 14:34

Do you have a written comment policy for people? - 17:55

As well as external blogs, you have a lot of internal blogs as well, don’t you? - 18:33

And finally, we have very few companies in Ireland who are blogging.
Can you say why companies should be blogging? - 20:22

Download the entire interview here
(10.45mb mp3)

UPDATE:
There was an error in the download link for this interview - apologies, that link has now been fixed.

Steve Olechowski podcast

Published
by
tom
on April 12, 2006
in Podcasting
. 1 Comment


Episode 30 of the PodLeaders show

My guest on the show today is Steve Olechowski - Steve is the COO and one of the co-founder’s of FeedBurner. FeedBurner is a company which helps you better manage your (RSS) feed - if you are publishing a podcast, FeedBurner helps you with the RSS so it gets properly parsed by iTunes. It also gives you stats on your feed such as how many people clicked on your links etc. and can even help you monetise your feed.

The Skype call broke down a couple of times during the interview so apologies if it sounds a little choppy.

Here are all the questions I asked Steve and the times in the interview I asked them:

Steve, can you start off with a little bit about yourself. What is your background? - 0:47

So the three of you guys have been working together on different startups for the last four years? - 3:36

What does FeedBurner do? - 4:22

Do you advise full or partial feeds for your publishers? - 9:46

Going back to monetisation - how do I go about setting that up on my feed? - 11:58

I listen to Todd Cochrane over at GeekNewsCentral quite a lot and one mantra he repeats is that you need to stay in control of your feed - why should I give control of my feed to FeedBurner - 13:16

On the stats front, which are the most popular desktop or online feed readers? 14:40

If the Mac has only four to five percent of the desktop market how do you account for the popularity of NetNewsWire as a reader? - 16:36

At the moment, how many feeds are you publishing? - 17:58

And what kind of growth rate are you seeing? - 18:22

I read Dave Sifry’s alerts and he maintains that the blogosphere is doubling in size every five and a half months. Are you seeing a similar rate of growth? - 18:56

How does that breakdown between blogs and podcasts? - 19:45

You also have paid services. What would I get from the paid services that I wouldn’t get from the free services? - 21:05

How do you think Microsoft’s announcements of support of RSS in IE7, Vista, and Office 12 will affect FeedBurner? - 22:18

I don’t know if you saw Steve Rubel’s idea to make Monday, May 1 RSS Appreciation Day? What do you make of that idea? - 24:00

What is FeedBurner’s business model? Is it just the paid services? - 25:56

Do you guys have an exit strategy? Are you hoping to be bought out by Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft or someone? - 27:38

And finally, what’s next for Feedburner? - 28:55

Download the entire interview here (14.3mb mp3)

Any questions for Steve Olechowski?

Published
by
tom
on April 6, 2006
in Podcasting
. 0 Comments

Apologies for the short notice on this one but I only got notice this morning that the interview I am doing with Steve is taking place this afternoon so you will need to be quick getting your questions in!

Steve Olechowski is the co-founder and COO of FeedBurner - FeedBurner provides an online feed management suite for anyone publishing rss feeds, as well as services for anyone who wants to advertise in their rss feed.

David Sifry podcast

Published
by
tom
on April 5, 2006
in Podcasting
. 8 Comments


Episode 29 of the PodLeaders show

My guest on the show today is David Sifry - David is the founder and CEO of Technorati - the Google of the blogosphere (or Live Web as it is now being called). Dave was a great interviewee - interesting, effusive and open.

And in what appears to be a direct response to one of my questions, Dave has switched his personal blog to full feeds and has started posting to his blog again - result!

Here are all the questions I asked Dave and the times in the interview I asked them:

David, can you start off with a little bit about yourself - what is your background and how did you come up with Technorati? - 0:37

Is it only blogs that Technorati indexes or is it anything with an rss feed? - 13:07

Do you have plans to index the comments that people leave on blogs as well? - 14:13

Readers’ Questions

Ken Carroll:
Do you have a China strategy? What do you foresee there in terms of blogging and blog search? - 18:08

Keith Bohanna:
My user experience of Technorati would be happier if the sponsored links nestled above and in the middle of the search results were more clearly differentiated. Their current presentation in an almost identical manner to the results makes it difficult to do a quick scan. Any chance of changing this? - 20:35

James Corbett:
Technorati is now offering search results on their Blogfinder service in OPML format, which is nice, but where we really need OPML is in their Favourites service so that we can use it to produce a proper Reading List. Is that feature forthcoming? And do the intend to fully embrace OPML going forward? 22:31

Marshall kirkpatrick:
In your recent state of the blogosphere report you’ve said that tagging has gone way up, but what percentage of that is categories in certain blog platforms being indexed as tags - and aren’t those pretty different concepts? - 23:17

Why don’t you offer a javascript applet to create the code for bloggers? - 24:24

Me again!
How does Technorati make its money - is it all Ad revenue? - 26:45

What’s next for Technorati? - 27:52

On your own blog Dave, how come you don’t publish full feeds? - 30:44

And finally, when are Yahoo!/Google/Microsoft buying you guys out? - 32:01

I asked people to submit questions for this interview and I got a flood of them - thanks - unfortunately 12 minutes into the interview, when we were still on the first question, I knew I wouldn’t be getting all the questions in - sorry if I didn’t get around to your question.

Download the entire interview here (15.2mb mp3)