Interviews with Innovators: Jon Udell's Friday Podcasts http://jonudell.net Interviews with Innovators: Jon Udell's Friday Podcast en Interviews with Innovators: Jon Udell's Friday Podcast Jon Udell Jon Udell judell@mv.com No no http://jonudell.net/jon.jpg http://jonudell.net Jon Udell 144 144 Interviews with Innovators: Jon Udell's Friday Podcast A conversation with Barry Ribbeck about digital identity in higher education http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/03/09/a-conversation-with-barry-ribbeck-about-digital-identity-in-higher-education/ I met Barry Ribbeck, who's Director of Systems Architecture and Infrastructure at Rice University, a few years ago at a Dartmouth conference on the deployment of public key infrastructure (PKI) in higher education. I attended that conference several times as an observer, and wrote a couple of InfoWorld columns about it. For today's podcast I invited Barry to reflect on what's been happening with token-based authentication, PKI, and identity federation in the realm of higher education.

Near the beginning of our conversation I mentioned that people are spooked by the Real ID initiative, and Barry offered a great perspective. We already have a national -- indeed, international -- federation of machine readable identity documents. It's called the ATM network, and we all use it routinely.

For years, people like Barry Ribbeck have been working toward the same kind of ubiquitous deployment of smartcards and digital certificates. It's been slow going, and still is, but these folks have a long-term vision and the patience and determination to make it real.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 24:30 Fri, 09 Mar 2007 05:00:00 -0000 I met Barry Ribbeck, who's Director of Systems Architecture and Infrastructure at Rice University, a few years ago at a Dartmouth conference on the deployment of public key infrastructure (PKI) in higher education. I attended that conference several times as an observer, and wrote a couple of InfoWorld columns about it. For today's podcast I invited Barry to reflect on what's been happening with token-based authentication, PKI, and identity federation in the realm of higher education. Near the beginning of our conversation I mentioned that people are spooked by the Real ID initiative, and Barry offered a great perspective. We already have a national -- indeed, international -- federation of machine readable identity documents. It's called the ATM network, and we all use it routinely. For years, people like Barry Ribbeck have been working toward the same kind of ubiquitous deployment of smartcards and digital certificates. It's been slow going, and still is, but these folks have a long-term vision and the patience and determination to make it real. A conversation with Terry Swack about design, green construction, and the business of sustainability http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/02/23/a-conversation-with-steve-vinoski-about-services-the-enterprise-and-the-web/ This week's podcast is a conversation with Terry Swack. She's a graphic designer, Internet strategist, and serial entrepeneur. In recent years she has focused on helping businesses use the Internet to respond to the growing demand for environmentally sustainable products and services.

One of her projects is Green Building Blocks, a directory of "green" design and building professionals. She's about to launch Clean Culture, a "customer experience strategy firm" that will help companies explain how they're advancing the cause of sustainability.

How do you get from graphic design to green construction and clean energy? By following your intuitions, and always learning and doing new things. In the end, everything's connected.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 28:30 Fri, 02 Mar 2007 05:00:00 -0000 This week's podcast is a conversation with Terry Swack. She's a graphic designer, Internet strategist, and serial entrepeneur. In recent years she has focused on helping businesses use the Internet to respond to the growing demand for environmentally sustainable products and services. One of her projects is Green Building Blocks, a directory of "green" design and building professionals. She's about to launch Clean Culture, a "customer experience strategy firm" that will help companies explain how they're advancing the cause of sustainability. How do you get from graphic design to green construction and clean energy? By following your intuitions, and always learning and doing new things. In the end, everything's connected. A conversation with Steve Vinoski on services, the enterprise, and the web http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/02/23/a-conversation-with-steve-vinoski-about-services-the-enterprise-and-the-web/ From an undisclosed location somewhere on the east coast, middleware maven Steve Vinoski joins me for this week's Friday podcast. Earlier this month Steve announced that he was leaving IONA to join a stealth-mode startup. He can't discuss his new job yet, but I took this opportunity to ask him to review his long career working with distributed systems and to reflect on lessons learned.

It was a timely conversation because Steve was originally slated to represent IONA at next week's W3C Workshop on Web of Services for Enterprise Computing. I'd hoped to attend that conference as well, but all attendees have to present position papers, and I'd be the wrong guy to represent Microsoft's position. So instead I asked Steve what he would have said there, and I chimed in with some things that I would have said, and we both had a lot of fun.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 35:05 Fri, 23 Feb 2007 05:00:00 -0000 From an undisclosed location somewhere on the east coast, middleware maven Steve Vinoski joins me for this week's Friday podcast. Earlier this month Steve announced that he was leaving IONA to join a stealth-mode startup. He can't discuss his new job yet, but I took this opportunity to ask him to review his long career working with distributed systems and to reflect on lessons learned. It was a timely conversation because Steve was originally slated to represent IONA at next week's W3C Workshop on Web of Services for Enterprise Computing. I'd hoped to attend that conference as well, but all attendees have to present position papers, and I'd be the wrong guy to represent Microsoft's position. So instead I asked Steve what he would have said there, and I chimed in with some things that I would have said, and we both had a lot of fun. A conversation with Dan Chudnov about OpenURL, context-sensitive linking, and digital archiving http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/02/16/a-conversation-with-dan-chudnov-about-openurl-context-sensitive-linking-and-digital-archiving/ Today's podcast with Dan Chudnov is a sequel to my earlier podcast with Tony Hammond about the Nature Publishing Group's use of digital object identifiers. I invited Dan to discuss related topics including the OpenURL standard for context-sensitive linking.

I'm not the only one who's had a hard time understanding how these technologies relate to one another and to the web. See, for example, Dorothea Salo's rant I hate library standards, also Dan's own recent essay Rethinking OpenURL.

I have ventured into this confusing landscape because I think that the issues that libraries and academic publishers are wrestling with -- persistent long-term storage, permanent URLs, reliable citation indexing and analysis -- are ones that will matter to many businesses and individuals. As we project our corporate, professional, and personal identities onto the web, we'll start to see that the long-term stability of those projections is valuable and worth paying for.

Recently, for example, Dave Winer -- who's been exploring Amazon's S3 -- wrote:

I have an idea of making a proposal to Amazon to pay it a onetime fee for hosting the content for perpetuity, that way I can remove a concern for my heirs, and feel that my writing may survive me, something I'd like to assure.

Beyond long-term storage of bits, there's a whole cluster of related services that we're coming to depend on, but that flow from relationships that are transient. When I moved this blog from infoworld.com to wordpress.com, for example, InfoWorld very graciously redirected the RSS feed, but another organization might not have done so. I could have finessed that issue by using FeedBurner, but I wasn't -- and honestly, still am not -- ready to make a long-term bet on that service.

For most people today, digital archiving and web publishing services are provided to you by your school, by your employer, or -- increasingly -- by some entity on the web. When your life circumstances change, it's often necessary or desirable to change your provider, but it's rarely easy to do that, and almost never possible to do it without loss of continuity.

There are no absolute guarantees, of course, but a relatively strong assurance of continuity is something that more and more folks will be ready to pay for. Amazon is on the short list of organizations in a position to make such assurances. So, obviously, is Microsoft. Will Microsoft's existing and future online services move in that direction? I hope so. Among other things, it's a business model that doesn't depend on advertising, and that would be a refreshing change.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 52:52 Fri, 16 Feb 2007 05:00:00 -0000 Today's podcast with Dan Chudnov is a sequel to my earlier podcast with Tony Hammond about the Nature Publishing Group's use of digital object identifiers. I invited Dan to discuss related topics including the OpenURL standard for context-sensitive linking. I'm not the only one who's had a hard time understanding how these technologies relate to one another and to the web. See, for example, Dorothea Salo's rant I hate library standards, also Dan's own recent essay Rethinking OpenURL. I have ventured into this confusing landscape because I think that the issues that libraries and academic publishers are wrestling with -- persistent long-term storage, permanent URLs, reliable citation indexing and analysis -- are ones that will matter to many businesses and individuals. As we project our corporate, professional, and personal identities onto the web, we'll start to see that the long-term stability of those projections is valuable and worth paying for. Recently, for example, Dave Winer -- who's been exploring Amazon's S3 -- wrote: I have an idea of making a proposal to Amazon to pay it a onetime fee for hosting the content for perpetuity, that way I can remove a concern for my heirs, and feel that my writing may survive me, something I'd like to assure. Beyond long-term storage of bits, there's a whole cluster of related services that we're coming to depend on, but that flow from relationships that are transient. When I moved this blog from infoworld.com to wordpress.com, for example, InfoWorld very graciously redirected the RSS feed, but another organization might not have done so. I could have finessed that issue by using FeedBurner, but I wasn't -- and honestly, still am not -- ready to make a long-term bet on that service. For most people today, digital archiving and web publishing services are provided to you by your school, by your employer, or -- increasingly -- by some entity on the web. When your life circumstances change, it's often necessary or desirable to change your provider, but it's rarely easy to do that, and almost never possible to do it without loss of continuity. There are no absolute guarantees, of course, but a relatively strong assurance of continuity is something that more and more folks will be ready to pay for. Amazon is on the short list of organizations in a position to make such assurances. So, obviously, is Microsoft. Will Microsoft's existing and future online services move in that direction? I hope so. Among other things, it's a business model that doesn't depend on advertising, and that would be a refreshing change. A conversation with Antonio Rodriguez about Tabblo, photo albums, and social networks http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/02/09/a-conversation-with-antonio-rodriguez-about-tabblo-photo-albums-and-social-networks/ My guest for this week's podcast is Antonio Rodriguez, founder of Tabblo, a photo site that's used to create online photo albums that can be transformed into a variety of print formats.

Among the topics of discussion were:

  • How photo albums tell stories about key events in peoples' lives
  • Strategies for archival storage of images
  • Strategies for organizing collections of images
  • The relationship between photo applications that live on the desktop and applications that live in the cloud
  • Whether people share their photos online, and if so, with whom
  • What Tabblo's layout engine does, and how it might be extended
  • Automatic geotagging

We also revisited a topic we'd discussed earlier in the week, on a panel at the MIT Enterprise Forum. The question, also explored here, is: How might certain features of social networks, notably group formation, be factored out of invidual sites and made available in a more federated way?

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 28:43 Fri, 09 Feb 2007 05:00:00 -0000 My guest for this week's podcast is Antonio Rodriguez, founder of Tabblo, a photo site that's used to create online photo albums that can be transformed into a variety of print formats. Among the topics of discussion were: How photo albums tell stories about key events in peoples' lives Strategies for archival storage of images Strategies for organizing collections of images The relationship between photo applications that live on the desktop and applications that live in the cloud Whether people share their photos online, and if so, with whom What Tabblo's layout engine does, and how it might be extended Automatic geotagging We also revisited a topic we'd discussed earlier in the week, on a panel at the MIT Enterprise Forum. The question, also explored here, is: How might certain features of social networks, notably group formation, be factored out of invidual sites and made available in a more federated way? A conversation with Ed Vielmetti and John Blyberg about superpatrons and superlibrarians http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/02/02/a-conversation-with-ed-vielmetti-and-john-blyberg-about-superpatrons-and-superlibrarians/ Last fall, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I gave a talk entitled Superpatrons and Superlibrarians. Joining me for this week's podcast are the two guys who inspired that talk. The superpatron is Ed Vielmetti, an old Internet hand who likes to mash up the services proviced by the Ann Arbor District Library. That's possible because superlibrarian John Blyberg, who works at the AADL, has reconfigured his library's online catalog system, adding RSS feeds and a full-blown API he calls PatREST.

I've written from time to time about Eric von Hippel's notion of user innovation toolkits and the synergistic relationship between users and developers that can develop around such toolkits. What Ed Vielmetti and John Blyberg are doing with Ann Arbor District Library is a great example of how that relationship can work.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 26:30 Fri, 02 Feb 2007 05:00:00 -0000 Last fall, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I gave a talk entitled Superpatrons and Superlibrarians. Joining me for this week's podcast are the two guys who inspired that talk. The superpatron is Ed Vielmetti, an old Internet hand who likes to mash up the services proviced by the Ann Arbor District Library. That's possible because superlibrarian John Blyberg, who works at the AADL, has reconfigured his library's online catalog system, adding RSS feeds and a full-blown API he calls PatREST. I've written from time to time about Eric von Hippel's notion of user innovation toolkits and the synergistic relationship between users and developers that can develop around such toolkits. What Ed Vielmetti and John Blyberg are doing with Ann Arbor District Library is a great example of how that relationship can work. A conversation with Tony Hammond about digital object identifiers http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/01/26/a-conversation-with-tony-hammond-about-digital-object-identifiers/ Tony Hammond works with the new technology team at Nature Publishing Group. His company publishes a flock of scientific journals in print and online including, most prominently, Nature. It also operates Connotea, a social bookmarking service for scientists. In this week's podcast we talk about digital object identifiers which are, in effect, super-URLs designed to survive commercial churn and to work reliably for hundreds of years.

Many of us are becoming publishers nowadays, and we'd like to imagine that all our stuff could enjoy that level of consistency and durability. Few of us are prepared to make the necessary investment, but it's interesting to hear from someone who has.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 31:47 Fri, 26 Jan 2007 05:00:00 -0000 Tony Hammond works with the new technology team at Nature Publishing Group. His company publishes a flock of scientific journals in print and online including, most prominently, Nature. It also operates Connotea, a social bookmarking service for scientists. In this week's podcast we talk about digital object identifiers which are, in effect, super-URLs designed to survive commercial churn and to work reliably for hundreds of years. Many of us are becoming publishers nowadays, and we'd like to imagine that all our stuff could enjoy that level of consistency and durability. Few of us are prepared to make the necessary investment, but it's interesting to hear from someone who has. A conversation with Avi Bryant and Andrew Catton about Dabble DB http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/01/19/a-conversation-with-avi-bryant-and-andrew-catton-about-dabble-db/ Last week's Friday podcast ran afoul of travel craziness but the series continues this week with a further exploration of Dabble DB, the through-the-web database that was also featured in a screencast. In my conversation with Avi Bryant and Andrew Catton we explore some of the underpinnings of Dabble, including the remarkable fact that it's written in the Squeak implementation of Smalltalk.

I've underplayed that point until now, because I'm trying to broaden the appeal of what I do, but it turns out that Dabble DB is a great example of how dynamic languages can produce effects that people see, interact with, and care very much about. Programmers aren't the only ones to benefit from direct manipulation of objects, continuous refinement, and always-live data. We all need things to work that way, so it's cool to see how the dynamic qualities of Dabble's Smalltalk engine bubble up into the application.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 22:45 Fri, 19 Jan 2007 05:00:00 -0000 Last week's Friday podcast ran afoul of travel craziness but the series continues this week with a further exploration of Dabble DB, the through-the-web database that was also featured in a screencast. In my conversation with Avi Bryant and Andrew Catton we explore some of the underpinnings of Dabble, including the remarkable fact that it's written in the Squeak implementation of Smalltalk. I've underplayed that point until now, because I'm trying to broaden the appeal of what I do, but it turns out that Dabble DB is a great example of how dynamic languages can produce effects that people see, interact with, and care very much about. Programmers aren't the only ones to benefit from direct manipulation of objects, continuous refinement, and always-live data. We all need things to work that way, so it's cool to see how the dynamic qualities of Dabble's Smalltalk engine bubble up into the application. A conversation with Graham Glass about the future of education http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/01/05/a-conversation-with-graham-glass-about-the-future-of-education/ This week's podcast is a conversation with Graham Glass, a software veteran who's self-funding the development of edu 2.0, a web-based educational support system. It seems like a big change from Graham's previous projects: ObjectSpace Voyager, The Mind Electric's Glue and Gaia, webMethods Fabric. But not really, says Graham. It's always been about the reuse of components, whether they're software objects or learning objects.

Graham and I share a passion for project-based learning, and in the podcast he refers to an EdVisions video on that subject which you can find here. I also (again) referenced the extraordinary talk by John Willinsky which I discussed and linked to here.

I know that technologists always say that the latest inventions are going to revolutionize education, and I know that mostly hasn't been true. Still, I can't help but think that we're on verge of a dramatic overhaul of education, and that systems like the one Graham is building will play a key role in enabling that to happen.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 31:55 edu 2.0. ]]> Fri, 05 Jan 2007 05:00:00 -0000 This week's podcast is a conversation with Graham Glass, a software veteran who's self-funding the development of edu 2.0, a web-based educational support system. It seems like a big change from Graham's previous projects: ObjectSpace Voyager, The Mind Electric's Glue and Gaia, webMethods Fabric. But not really, says Graham. It's always been about the reuse of components, whether they're software objects or learning objects. Graham and I share a passion for project-based learning, and in the podcast he refers to an EdVisions video on that subject which you can find here. I also (again) referenced the extraordinary talk by John Willinsky which I discussed and linked to here. I know that technologists always say that the latest inventions are going to revolutionize education, and I know that mostly hasn't been true. Still, I can't help but think that we're on verge of a dramatic overhaul of education, and that systems like the one Graham is building will play a key role in enabling that to happen. A conversation with Paul English about customer service and human dignity http://blog.jonudell.net/2006/12/29/a-conversation-with-paul-english-about-customer-service-and-human-dignity/ This week's podcast features Paul English. He's a software veteran who's been VP of technology at Intuit and runs the Internet travel search engine at Kayak.com, but is best known for the IVR Cheat Sheet. Now available at gethuman.com, this popular database of voice-system shortcuts makes it easier for people to get the human assistance they crave when calling customer service centers.

The gethuman project isn't just a list of IVR hacks anymore. It's evolved into a consumer movement that publishes best practices for quality phone service and rates companies' adherence to those best practices.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 22:43 Fri, 29 Dec 2006 05:00:00 -0000 This week's podcast features Paul English. He's a software veteran who's been VP of technology at Intuit and runs the Internet travel search engine at Kayak.com, but is best known for the IVR Cheat Sheet. Now available at gethuman.com, this popular database of voice-system shortcuts makes it easier for people to get the human assistance they crave when calling customer service centers. The gethuman project isn't just a list of IVR hacks anymore. It's evolved into a consumer movement that publishes best practices for quality phone service and rates companies' adherence to those best practices. A conversation with John Halamka about health care information exchange http://blog.jonudell.net/2006/12/22/a-conversation-with-john-halamka-about-health-information-exchange/ Dr. John Halamka joins me for this week's podcast. He's a renaissance guy: a physician, a CIO, and a healthcare IT innovator whose work I mentioned in a pair of InfoWorld columns. Lots of people are talking about secure exchange of medical records and portable continuity of care documents. John Halamka is on the front lines actually making this visions real. Among other activities he chairs the New England Health Electronic Data Interchange Network (NEHEN), which began exchanging financial and insurance data almost a decade ago and is now handling clinical data as well in the form of e-prescriptions. The technical, legal, and operational issues are daunting, but you'll enjoy his pragmatic style and infectious enthusiasm.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 29:15 Fri, 22 Dec 2006 05:00:00 -0000 Dr. John Halamka joins me for this week's podcast. He's a renaissance guy: a physician, a CIO, and a healthcare IT innovator whose work I mentioned in a pair of InfoWorld columns. Lots of people are talking about secure exchange of medical records and portable continuity of care documents. John Halamka is on the front lines actually making this visions real. Among other activities he chairs the New England Health Electronic Data Interchange Network (NEHEN), which began exchanging financial and insurance data almost a decade ago and is now handling clinical data as well in the form of e-prescriptions. The technical, legal, and operational issues are daunting, but you'll enjoy his pragmatic style and infectious enthusiasm. A conversation with Jon Udell about his new job with Microsoft http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/12/08.html For today's podcast I decided to interview myself about upcoming new gig. It's a short episode, under six minutes, and here's the transcript:

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 05:27 Fri, 08 Dec 2006 05:00:00 -0000 For today's podcast I decided to interview myself about upcoming new gig. It's a short episode, under six minutes, and here's the transcript: A conversation with John Wilkin about the Michigan/Google digitization project http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/12/01.html My guest for this week's podcast is John Wilkin. He's the director of the University of Michigan Library's technology department, and coordinator of the library's joint digitization project with Google. It's been two years since Google began partnering with the University of Michigan and with other libraries, including Harvard and the New York Public Library. In this conversation we talk about the UM's earlier (and still-ongoing) efforts to digitize its 7-million-volume library, about how the partnership with Google has radically accelerated that process, and about what this is all going to mean for libraries, for publishers, for Google, and for all us.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 39:26 Fri, 01 Dec 2006 05:00:00 -0000 My guest for this week's podcast is John Wilkin. He's the director of the University of Michigan Library's technology department, and coordinator of the library's joint digitization project with Google. It's been two years since Google began partnering with the University of Michigan and with other libraries, including Harvard and the New York Public Library. In this conversation we talk about the UM's earlier (and still-ongoing) efforts to digitize its 7-million-volume library, about how the partnership with Google has radically accelerated that process, and about what this is all going to mean for libraries, for publishers, for Google, and for all us. A conversation with Rajiv Gupta about fine-grained access control http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/11/17.html Joining me for today's podcast is Rajiv Gupta, CEO of Securent. His new company, which has been operating in stealth mode for a couple of years and just announced itself today, is focused on the thorny problem of fine-grained access control. In this conversation we discuss the role of XACML, the Extensible Access Control Markup Language, we talk about how to wrap or intercept legacy security policies in order to hoist them out of application logic and place them in the network where they belong, and we explore the relationship between fine-grained security which focuses on individual resources, and coarse-grained security which deals with users and roles.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 37:00 Fri, 17 Nov 2006 05:00:00 -0000 Joining me for today's podcast is Rajiv Gupta, CEO of Securent. His new company, which has been operating in stealth mode for a couple of years and just announced itself today, is focused on the thorny problem of fine-grained access control. In this conversation we discuss the role of XACML, the Extensible Access Control Markup Language, we talk about how to wrap or intercept legacy security policies in order to hoist them out of application logic and place them in the network where they belong, and we explore the relationship between fine-grained security which focuses on individual resources, and coarse-grained security which deals with users and roles. A conversation with Jim Russell about the Pittsburgh diaspora http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/11/10.html Jim Russell is a geographer, social theorist, and would-be social entrepeneur who blogs at Burgh Diaspora. In today's podcast we discuss his analysis of ways to organize Pittsburgh's diaspora -- the informal network of ex-Pittsburghers scattered around the world. Why might that matter? Jim's thesis, which I find fascinating, is that the "distance trust" embodied in that kind of network can have important social and economic effects not only for Pittsburgh, but for local and regional populations everywhere in this era of pervasive mobility and telecommunications.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 45:13 Fri, 10 Nov 2006 05:00:00 -0000 Jim Russell is a geographer, social theorist, and would-be social entrepeneur who blogs at Burgh Diaspora. In today's podcast we discuss his analysis of ways to organize Pittsburgh's diaspora -- the informal network of ex-Pittsburghers scattered around the world. Why might that matter? Jim's thesis, which I find fascinating, is that the "distance trust" embodied in that kind of network can have important social and economic effects not only for Pittsburgh, but for local and regional populations everywhere in this era of pervasive mobility and telecommunications. A conversation with John Schneider about Efficient XML http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/10/27.html John Schneider, the CTO of AgileDelta and the driving force behind E4X, is now evangelizing Efficient XML, an alternate binary syntax for XML. In today's podcast we discuss the motivations for this proposed W3C standard, its theoretical foundations, and its uses.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 39:17 Fri, 27 Oct 2006 04:00:00 -0000 John Schneider, the CTO of AgileDelta and the driving force behind E4X, is now evangelizing Efficient XML, an alternate binary syntax for XML. In today's podcast we discuss the motivations for this proposed W3C standard, its theoretical foundations, and its uses. A conversation with Cricket Liu about the Domain Name System http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/10/20.html Cricket Liu joins me for today's podcast. He's known for his popular books on DNS infrastructure, and as VP of Architecture at Infoblox has recently led an effort to identify and correct DNS security vulnerabilities.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 25:36 Fri, 20 Oct 2006 04:00:00 -0000 Cricket Liu joins me for today's podcast. He's known for his popular books on DNS infrastructure, and as VP of Architecture at Infoblox has recently led an effort to identify and correct DNS security vulnerabilities. A conversation with Mark Ericson about communications-enabled business processes http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/10/13.html Mark Ericson, director of SOA product strategy for BlueNote Networks, joins me for this week's podcast on the subject of VoIP/SOA convergence. When Mark talks about communications-enabling business processes, he doesn't just mean processes talking to one another, but also processes communicating with people -- and coordinating the communication among people. We've dreamed about unified communications forever, and for the most part we're still dreaming, but we'll get there one of these days. When we do, we'll wonder how we ever got along without the service-oriented integration of voice and data that BlueNote envisions.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 31:24 Fri, 13 Oct 2006 04:00:00 -0000 Mark Ericson, director of SOA product strategy for BlueNote Networks, joins me for this week's podcast on the subject of VoIP/SOA convergence. When Mark talks about communications-enabling business processes, he doesn't just mean processes talking to one another, but also processes communicating with people -- and coordinating the communication among people. We've dreamed about unified communications forever, and for the most part we're still dreaming, but we'll get there one of these days. When we do, we'll wonder how we ever got along without the service-oriented integration of voice and data that BlueNote envisions. A conversation with Ellen Ullman about living close to the machine http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/10/06.html Joining me for today's podcast is the programmer-turned-writer Ellen Ullman. I recently reread her 1995 book, Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its Discontents, and found it as compelling today as it was then.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 37:53 Fri, 06 Oct 2006 04:00:00 -0000 Joining me for today's podcast is the programmer-turned-writer Ellen Ullman. I recently reread her 1995 book, Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its Discontents, and found it as compelling today as it was then. A conversation with Tim Fahlberg about mathcasts, clickers, and the future of education http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/09/29.html The guest innovator for today's podcast is Tim Fahlberg. During his 11-year stint as a math teacher, Tim pioneered the use of what he calls whiteboard movies or mathcasts, and what I call screencasts. Today he's a consultant and reseller of educational technologies who's passionately committed to reinventing education. His main website is CoolSchoolTools.com. On his Wiki, Mathcasts.org, you can find hundreds of mathcasts. Tim has done a bunch of these himself, and there are also a bunch made by other people including these Australian schoolkids.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 38:21 Fri, 29 Sep 2006 04:00:00 -0000 The guest innovator for today's podcast is Tim Fahlberg. During his 11-year stint as a math teacher, Tim pioneered the use of what he calls whiteboard movies or mathcasts, and what I call screencasts. Today he's a consultant and reseller of educational technologies who's passionately committed to reinventing education. His main website is CoolSchoolTools.com. On his Wiki, Mathcasts.org, you can find hundreds of mathcasts. Tim has done a bunch of these himself, and there are also a bunch made by other people including these Australian schoolkids. A conversation with Cyril Houri about annotating the planet using a GPS/WiFi/cellular hybrid http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/09/22.html Today's podcast with Cyril Houri, founder and CEO of Mexens Technologies, advances a story I began telling in early 2005 about annotating the planet. The problem was, and still is, that there aren't very many people with GPS devices. Cyril's system, Navizon, aims to bootstrap us out of that situation. The idea is to incent people carrying the fairly small number of GPS-equipped mobile devices (PocketPCs, cellphones) to map the locations of both WiFi access points and cell towers. Then people using vast numbers of devices on WiFi or cellular networks can use location-aware applications without having to own GPS gear.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 34:41 Fri, 22 Sep 2006 04:00:00 -0000 Today's podcast with Cyril Houri, founder and CEO of Mexens Technologies, advances a story I began telling in early 2005 about annotating the planet. The problem was, and still is, that there aren't very many people with GPS devices. Cyril's system, Navizon, aims to bootstrap us out of that situation. The idea is to incent people carrying the fairly small number of GPS-equipped mobile devices (PocketPCs, cellphones) to map the locations of both WiFi access points and cell towers. Then people using vast numbers of devices on WiFi or cellular networks can use location-aware applications without having to own GPS gear. A conversation with Phil Windley about identity in the real and virtual worlds http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/09/08.html The multi-talented Phil Windley joins me for today's podcast, which was prompted by my recent experience with an expired passport, lost birth certificate, and misplaced social security card. As an author, university professor, InfoWorld contributor, and of course former state CIO, Phil has an excellent understanding of identity regimes in the real world, in the virtual world, and at the intersection of the two.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 45:27 Fri, 08 Sep 2006 04:00:00 -0000 The multi-talented Phil Windley joins me for today's podcast, which was prompted by my recent experience with an expired passport, lost birth certificate, and misplaced social security card. As an author, university professor, InfoWorld contributor, and of course former state CIO, Phil has an excellent understanding of identity regimes in the real world, in the virtual world, and at the intersection of the two. A conversation with Roy Fielding about HTTP, REST, WebDAV, JSR 170, and Waka http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/08/25.html Roy Fielding, the primary architect of HTTP and a co-founder of the Apache Software Foundation, joins me for today's podcast. We talked about the past, present, and future of web architectural style, and about how REST principles carry over to the work Roy has done as chief scientist with Day Software on the Java content-management standards JSR 170 and JSR 283.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 38:48 Fri, 25 Aug 2006 04:00:00 -0000 Roy Fielding, the primary architect of HTTP and a co-founder of the Apache Software Foundation, joins me for today's podcast. We talked about the past, present, and future of web architectural style, and about how REST principles carry over to the work Roy has done as chief scientist with Day Software on the Java content-management standards JSR 170 and JSR 283. A conversation with Peter Suber about open access http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/08/18.html Peter Suber, the leading chronicler of the open access movement, joins me for this week's podcast. Since the dawn of the blog era, it's been obvious to me that the modes of knowledge exchange we bloggers take for granted are also a natural fit for scientific and academic publishing. That idea has matured more slowly than some of us had hoped. But as you know if you follow Peter's blog, Open Access News, it has now taken root and is growing at a healthy rate.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 41:34 Fri, 18 Aug 2006 04:00:00 -0000 Peter Suber, the leading chronicler of the open access movement, joins me for this week's podcast. Since the dawn of the blog era, it's been obvious to me that the modes of knowledge exchange we bloggers take for granted are also a natural fit for scientific and academic publishing. That idea has matured more slowly than some of us had hoped. But as you know if you follow Peter's blog, Open Access News, it has now taken root and is growing at a healthy rate. A conversation with Charlie Hoffman and Brian DeLacey about XBRL http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/08/11.html Charlie Hoffman, the director of industry solutions for UBmatrix, is acknowledged as "the father of XBRL" -- the eXtensible Business Reporting Language to which I had a bit of an xallergic reaction when I first encountered it a couple of years ago. But when Brian DeLacey, a researcher turned XBRL entrepeneur, suggested that I interview Charlie I jumped at the chance. In this week's podcast the three of us discuss the history of XBRL, its relationship to XML, its goals, its successes, and its challenges.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 69:19 Fri, 11 Aug 2006 04:00:00 -0000 Charlie Hoffman, the director of industry solutions for UBmatrix, is acknowledged as "the father of XBRL" -- the eXtensible Business Reporting Language to which I had a bit of an xallergic reaction when I first encountered it a couple of years ago. But when Brian DeLacey, a researcher turned XBRL entrepeneur, suggested that I interview Charlie I jumped at the chance. In this week's podcast the three of us discuss the history of XBRL, its relationship to XML, its goals, its successes, and its challenges. A conversation with Ross Mayfield about wikis in the enterprise http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/08/04.html Ross Mayfield, CEO and founder of the enterprise wiki company Socialtext, joins me for this week's podcast. It was a well-timed interview because today and this weekend the Wikimaniacs are gathered in Cambridge, MA, for Wikimania 2006.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 30:32 Fri, 04 Aug 2006 04:00:00 -0000 Ross Mayfield, CEO and founder of the enterprise wiki company Socialtext, joins me for this week's podcast. It was a well-timed interview because today and this weekend the Wikimaniacs are gathered in Cambridge, MA, for Wikimania 2006. A conversation with Paul Patrick about BEA's AquaLogic suite http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/07/28.html Paul Patrick is the architect of BEA's AquaLogic suite. In today's podcast we reflect on what's happened in the year since BEA declared its intention to become the Switzerland of SOA. Topics include objects versus services, why SOA != web services, how XQuery enables smart intermediaries, the nature of security in a world of distributed data, and BEA's intentions with respect to .NET, PHP, REST, and POX. Despite that mouthful of acronyms, the conversation should be accessible to IT-oriented businessfolk as well as to business-oriented technologists.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 45:13 Fri, 28 Jul 2006 04:00:00 -0000 Paul Patrick is the architect of BEA's AquaLogic suite. In today's podcast we reflect on what's happened in the year since BEA declared its intention to become the Switzerland of SOA. Topics include objects versus services, why SOA != web services, how XQuery enables smart intermediaries, the nature of security in a world of distributed data, and BEA's intentions with respect to .NET, PHP, REST, and POX. Despite that mouthful of acronyms, the conversation should be accessible to IT-oriented businessfolk as well as to business-oriented technologists. A conversation with Bob Glushko about document engineering and business patterns http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/07/21.html When I first heard Bob Glushko speak at a conference I knew we were kindred spirits. Our shared interests include information architecture, XML, web services, and the hybrid discipline of document engineering that he and Tim McGrath define in their eponymously-titled new book.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 44:15 Fri, 21 Jul 2006 04:00:00 -0000 When I first heard Bob Glushko speak at a conference I knew we were kindred spirits. Our shared interests include information architecture, XML, web services, and the hybrid discipline of document engineering that he and Tim McGrath define in their eponymously-titled new book. A conversation with Mike Hudack about blip.tv and the future of web video http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/07/14.html Mike Hudack, one of the founders of the video sharing service blip.tv, was my guest for this week's podcast. Mike had seen my essay on walled gardens. We discussed blip.tv's current efforts and future to ensure that videos, as well as metadata about videos, flow freely on vthe web. Blip.tv is working with Dabble, FireAnt, Technorati, and other in a collaboration called Video Vertigo (hint: the password is (intentionally) in the authentication dialog box) to federate video-specific metadata, such as viewership stats, as well as general metadata such as tags.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 44:44 Fri, 14 Jul 2006 04:00:00 -0000 Mike Hudack, one of the founders of the video sharing service blip.tv, was my guest for this week's podcast. Mike had seen my essay on walled gardens. We discussed blip.tv's current efforts and future to ensure that videos, as well as metadata about videos, flow freely on vthe web. Blip.tv is working with Dabble, FireAnt, Technorati, and other in a collaboration called Video Vertigo (hint: the password is (intentionally) in the authentication dialog box) to federate video-specific metadata, such as viewership stats, as well as general metadata such as tags. A conversation with Lou Rosenfeld about search analytics, information architecture, and designing for usability http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/06/30.html Lou Rosenfeld is my guest for this week's podcast. Fellow superpatron Edward Vielmetti put me in touch with Lou, with whom I share an affection not only for Ann Arbor, Michigan, but also for a cluster of topics including information architecture, search analytics, print and online publishing, designing for usability, tagging, and microformats. We had a great conversation!

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 46:09 Fri, 30 Jun 2006 04:00:00 -0000 Lou Rosenfeld is my guest for this week's podcast. Fellow superpatron Edward Vielmetti put me in touch with Lou, with whom I share an affection not only for Ann Arbor, Michigan, but also for a cluster of topics including information architecture, search analytics, print and online publishing, designing for usability, tagging, and microformats. We had a great conversation! A conversation with Dan Thomas and Suzanne Peck about open government http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/06/23.html Open government is the subject of this week's podcast with Dan Thomas, who directs Washington DC's DCStat program, and Suzanne Peck, chief technology officer for the city. I first met Dan at our SOA forum in November. Recently he contacted me about an exciting new initiative that soft-launched last week: live data feeds that will enable any interested citizen to track the performance of agencies that deliver city services.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 37:31 Fri, 23 Jun 2006 04:00:00 -0000 Open government is the subject of this week's podcast with Dan Thomas, who directs Washington DC's DCStat program, and Suzanne Peck, chief technology officer for the city. I first met Dan at our SOA forum in November. Recently he contacted me about an exciting new initiative that soft-launched last week: live data feeds that will enable any interested citizen to track the performance of agencies that deliver city services. A conversation with Mike Frost about intelligent energy management http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/06/16.html Mike Frost, CEO of Site Controls, joins me for this Friday's installment of my Interviews with Innovators series. A couple of years ago I wrote an essay called The energy web about a set of ideas that matter more with each passing month. I'll say more about this in my InfoWorld column next week, but as you'll hear in this interview, I'm really excited by the focused entrepeneurial approach that Mike's company is taking. "We can't wait for the government to build the railroads in this case," he says, and I violently agree.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 25:54 Fri, 16 Jun 2006 04:00:00 -0000 Mike Frost, CEO of Site Controls, joins me for this Friday's installment of my Interviews with Innovators series. A couple of years ago I wrote an essay called The energy web about a set of ideas that matter more with each passing month. I'll say more about this in my InfoWorld column next week, but as you'll hear in this interview, I'm really excited by the focused entrepeneurial approach that Mike's company is taking. "We can't wait for the government to build the railroads in this case," he says, and I violently agree. A conversation with CJ Rayhill about Safari U and technology in education http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/06/09.html For today's installment of my Friday podcast series I got together with CJ Rayhill. She's the CIO at O'Reilly and Associates and, with Allen Noren, has been leading the SafariU project. It's a service that provides college course materials online and also as customized books printed on demand.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 41:42 Fri, 09 Jun 2006 04:00:00 -0000 For today's installment of my Friday podcast series I got together with CJ Rayhill. She's the CIO at O'Reilly and Associates and, with Allen Noren, has been leading the SafariU project. It's a service that provides college course materials online and also as customized books printed on demand. A conversation with Peter Rodgers about the 1060 NetKernel http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/06/02.html Today's installment of my Friday podcast series, which I'm now calling Interviews with Innovators (RSS feed here), began life as a screencast in which Peter Rodgers, founder and CEO of 1060 Research, was demonstrating the 1060 NetKernel. It's an unusual creature -- a REST-oriented, microkernel-based app server that I first noticed back in 2004.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 32:13 Fri, 02 Jun 2006 04:00:00 -0000 Today's installment of my Friday podcast series, which I'm now calling Interviews with Innovators (RSS feed here), began life as a screencast in which Peter Rodgers, founder and CEO of 1060 Research, was demonstrating the 1060 NetKernel. It's an unusual creature -- a REST-oriented, microkernel-based app server that I first noticed back in 2004. A conversation with Frank Martinez about governance and tolerance http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/05/26.html For this week's Friday podcast I got together with Frank Martinez, founder of Blue Titan and now, as a result of a recent acquisition, executive VP of SOA Software.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 31:37 Fri, 26 May 2006 04:00:00 -0000 For this week's Friday podcast I got together with Frank Martinez, founder of Blue Titan and now, as a result of a recent acquisition, executive VP of SOA Software. A conversation with Andy Singleton about building global teams http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/05/19.html For today's Friday podcast I got together with Andy Singleton. I've known Andy for a long time. Back in 2003 I brought him in to help with a feature story on the globalization of software development -- in particular, for his thoughts on the dynamic assembly of global teams that can wield open source componentry.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 35:21 Fri, 19 May 2006 04:00:00 -0000 For today's Friday podcast I got together with Andy Singleton. I've known Andy for a long time. Back in 2003 I brought him in to help with a feature story on the globalization of software development -- in particular, for his thoughts on the dynamic assembly of global teams that can wield open source componentry. A conversation with Anders Hejlsberg about the May 06 preview of LINQ http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/05/12.html The new preview of LINQ went live yesterday. For this week's Friday podcast I got together with Anders Hejlsberg to talk about the project in general, and what's in the new preview.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 22:06 Fri, 12 May 2006 04:00:00 -0000 The new preview of LINQ went live yesterday. For this week's Friday podcast I got together with Anders Hejlsberg to talk about the project in general, and what's in the new preview. A conversation with Nathan McFarland and Benjamin Hill about harnessing collective intelligence http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/05/05.html Today's podcast, the fifth in my Friday podcast series, is a conversation with Nathan McFarland and Benjamin Hill. I met Nathan at ETech, where he demonstrated CastingWords, a podcast transcription service that uses Amazon's Mechanical Turk to distribute and coordinate work. Benjamin's project, Mycroft, packages up puzzle-like tasks in ways that people can interact with on web pages. You can find a write-up on Mycroft in this CommerceNet technical report.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 35:18 Fri, 05 May 2006 04:00:00 -0000 Today's podcast, the fifth in my Friday podcast series, is a conversation with Nathan McFarland and Benjamin Hill. I met Nathan at ETech, where he demonstrated CastingWords, a podcast transcription service that uses Amazon's Mechanical Turk to distribute and coordinate work. Benjamin's project, Mycroft, packages up puzzle-like tasks in ways that people can interact with on web pages. You can find a write-up on Mycroft in this CommerceNet technical report. A conversation with Kingsley Idehen about open source Virtuoso http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/04/27.html In my fourth Friday podcast we hear from Kingsley Idehen, CEO of OpenLink Software. I wrote about OpenLink's universal database and app server, Virtuoso, back in 2002 and 2003. Earlier this month Virtuoso became the first mature SQL/XML hybrid to make the transition to open source. The latest incarnation of the product also adds SPARQL (a semantic web query language) to its repertoire.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 53:50 Thu, 27 Apr 2006 04:00:00 -0000 In my fourth Friday podcast we hear from Kingsley Idehen, CEO of OpenLink Software. I wrote about OpenLink's universal database and app server, Virtuoso, back in 2002 and 2003. Earlier this month Virtuoso became the first mature SQL/XML hybrid to make the transition to open source. The latest incarnation of the product also adds SPARQL (a semantic web query language) to its repertoire. A conversation with Chris Gemignani about data analysis and visualization http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/04/21.html Today's podcast is an interview with Chris Gemignani. We've crossed paths a couple of times, and I've been greatly impressed by his combination of skills. He's an extreme Excel hacker, has a Tuftean sensibility about data visualization, and uses his screencasts to open a window onto ways of thinking about, and doing, analysis of business data.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 43:39 Fri, 21 Apr 2006 04:00:00 -0000 Today's podcast is an interview with Chris Gemignani. We've crossed paths a couple of times, and I've been greatly impressed by his combination of skills. He's an extreme Excel hacker, has a Tuftean sensibility about data visualization, and uses his screencasts to open a window onto ways of thinking about, and doing, analysis of business data. A conversation with Steve Burbeck about multicellular computing http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/04/14.html Today's podcast is a conversation with Steve Burbeck on the topic of multicellular computing. I first met Steve at Tim O'Reilly's 2001 summit conference on peer-to-peer technologies. Steve was at IBM then, and was working on UDDI among other things. (He's an author of the UDDI spec.) His background prior to IBM includes consulting and product management in the realm of object-oriented development tools -- especially Smalltalk. Before that he ran data processing and statistics at the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine, acquiring the understanding of biological systems that he now hopes to apply to networked computer systems.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 38:37 Fri, 14 Apr 2006 04:00:00 -0000 Today's podcast is a conversation with Steve Burbeck on the topic of multicellular computing. I first met Steve at Tim O'Reilly's 2001 summit conference on peer-to-peer technologies. Steve was at IBM then, and was working on UDDI among other things. (He's an author of the UDDI spec.) His background prior to IBM includes consulting and product management in the realm of object-oriented development tools -- especially Smalltalk. Before that he ran data processing and statistics at the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine, acquiring the understanding of biological systems that he now hopes to apply to networked computer systems. A conversation with Gary McGraw about security http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/04/07.html In today's podcast I interview Gary McGraw, CTO of Cigital and author of, most recently, Software Security: Building Security In. It had been a decade since we'd spoken, and our discussion touches on a number of things beyond the scope of the new book -- including the Letter Spirit project, which was Gary's contribution to Douglas Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies.

]]> Shows Jon Udell No No 48:07 Fri, 07 Apr 2006 04:00:00 -0000 In today's podcast I interview Gary McGraw, CTO of Cigital and author of, most recently, Software Security: Building Security In. It had been a decade since we'd spoken, and our discussion touches on a number of things beyond the scope of the new book -- including the Letter Spirit project, which was Gary's contribution to Douglas Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies.