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Marc Canter is a very divisive figure in the Conference circuit, but one thing is for sure. He’s incredibly drive, knows what he wants out of every interview, conference and meeting, and is not afraid to let everyone know he’s on a mission to reform Social Software on the internet – think The Blues Brothers with an Internet connection) and you get the force of nature that is Canter. So here he is, closing off our coverage of Le Web 3.

Marc’s Blog (blog.broadbandmechanics.com)
People Aggregator (www.peopleaggregator.net)

Tags: LeWeb3, Marc Canter, People Aggr.

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Charlie Schick (Nokia) has been at all the Le Xxx conferences, and he was more than happy to talk to me about why he personally enjoys them, why Nokia’s presence is a benefit to the Finnish company, and what does he think of the chances of an Apple phone appearing in the market?

Nokia Main Site (www.nokia.com)

Tags: LeWeb3, Nokia, iPhone.

DOWNLOAD the podcast by right clicking on this link, or press play and listen in your browser.

Where would any Tech Conference be without “The State of The Blogosphere” seminar from David Sify, CEO of Technorati? The honest answer is I’m not sure – probably with the word bar- or un- in the title. But can the seminar translate to how popular blogs are in Europe? Has it been a good year for Technorati? And what would David do with five million in VC capital if he couldn’t spend it on Technorati?

David Sifry’s Blog (www.sifry.com/alerts)
Technorati (www.technorati.com)

Tags: LeWeb3, Technorati, David Sifry.

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Tom “O’Reily Sued me for using Web 2.0” Raftery was at Le Web 3, in his role as an Internet Consultant. We talked briefly in the queue for lunch, talking about Tom’s conference experineces, his thoughts on the seminars, where the business of the internet and the blogs are goin and yes, that Web 2.0 cease and desist letter.

Tom Raftery’s Blog Blog (www.tomrafteryit.net)

Tags: LeWeb3, Tom Raftery

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Fellow Scot, and Mr Web 2.0 cartoonist himself, Hugh MacLeod (he who uses the business card format form his highly amusing doodles) was at Le Web 3, and I took some time to find out the history behind his unique approach to getting his message out, what he feels about the blogging compared to real products, why use business cards, and the obligatory plug for Stormhoek wine and The English Cut…

Hugh MacLeod’s Blog (www.gapingvoid.com)

Tags: LeWeb3, Gaping Void, Hugh MacLeod.

DOWNLOAD the podcast by right clicking on this link, or press play and listen in your browser.

Le Web 3 is here, and with a promise of bringing together entrepeneurs, coders, internet geeks, I wanted to find the man behind the UK/Europe echo chamber of Tech Crunch UK, Sam Sethi. Why start the company? What challenges are there for VC funders, how do start ups work in the 2.0 world, and what can they use as their cash out?

Tech Crunch UK (uk.techcrunch.com)
Sam Sethi’s Blog (www.vecosys.com)

Tags: LeWeb3, Sam Sethi, Tech Crunch UK.

It should be noted that this conversation was recorded and edited on Monday evening, before subsequent events placed Tech Crunch UK on hold, with Sam Sethi and Michael Arrington parting company. No subsequent edits have been made, although it is a rather bittersweet listen now…

Time for the final podcast from O’Reilly’s European Open Source Convention 2005. As well as talking to Program Chair Nat Torkingtonabout the conference as a whole, I speak to Michael Sparks bout his Kamelia system for linknig code into applciations (a very old school use of OSCon) and Tom Steinberg, who is Open Sourcing democracy (the new ideas of OSCon beyond programming).

Kamelia, Michael Sparks (http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/).
Tom Steinberg, My Society (http://www.mysociety.org/)
Nat Torkington, O’Reilly EuroOSCon Program Chair.

Tags: Euro OSCon, My Society, Kamelia, O’Reilly.

I’ll let Piers Cawley explain this one…

This year’s EuroOSCON had no lightning talks scheduled. Then, late on Wednesday night, I noticed that a talk had been cancelled. Aha! I thought. I asked around a few people I knew who normally go for the lightning thing, got a critical mass of interested parties, went and found Nat and we were good to go. And it was good. Even if we hadn’t organized the session at less than 12 hours notice it would have been good.

So who do we have?

BooK, The Sensational YAPC Magazine Covers.
Dennis Kaarsemaker, Ubuntu and Launchpad.
Suw Charman, Open Rights Group UK.
Damian Conway, 101 Reasons I Love Perl 6.
Gervase Markham, Phishing: Conning the Unwary for Fun and Profit.
Jesse Vincent, Refactoring Perl.

Missing here are three talks. One from Piers himself on how to make sure that pictures taken of you are good (it was highly visual and just didn’t work as a ‘cast); Russ Nelson talking about his chorded keybaord (Russ and I coverd 95% of the same ground in the interview from Make Fest); and some random bloke called Ewan Spence talking about podcasting…

Tags: Euro OSCon, Lightning Talk, Perl, ORG, Phising, O’Reilly.

Russ Nelson, The Chorded Bluetooth Glove.
Dale Dougherty, Editor of MAKE Magazine.
Bre Pettis, The Drawing Robot.
Hans Krohn, Homebrew Flight Simulator.

In some respects, the MAKE Fest, where O’Reilly gather together the tinkers of the world to show of their projects is nothing more than a glorified MacGyver convention – and in a sense it is. A collection of people who aren’t bound by the rules of products and consumer sociey, and are determined to break the moulds and rules to do something different.

So the MAKE Fest is a celebration of this, the ingenuity of people. Time to grab the microphone and see what it is all about

Tags: Euro OSCon, MAKE, MAKE Fest, O’Reilly.

Jim Purbrick
Open Source and Second Life
Deeeep Witte
SL Business Magazine

THere’s lots going on here, it’s like a different world – and that’s what today’s show is all about. Imagine a space with over $600,000 turnover each month, three times the size of manhattan, where 25% of the population build stuff and play with the tools of life. That’s Second Life.

I spoke to two people concentrating on different areas of Second LIfe, the first was Jim Purbrick, one of the coders who taks about the progress in using Open Source tools for Second Life (and making Second Life open source itself); and then Deeeep Witte (his SL name) about the SL Business Magazine.

Tags: Euro OSCon, Second Life, SL Business, O’Reilly.

Kobdy Amedume, The Zimki Website
Javascipt, It’s Happening All Over Again!

Well, finally at the conference, and people are starting to arrive. I managed to grab a hold of Koby, who works for Fotango – and they are launching a new JavaScript service, Zimki, at EuroOSCon. I asked him what the service was all about.

Tags: Euro OSCon, Fotango, Zimki, O’Reilly.

As well as a number of pre-confernece interviews that we are running just now, while the conference is running I’ll be reporting from the floor with short daily interviews and features, talking to a number of people at the Conference, and catching up with some of the news that I am sure is going to come out during the 4 days in Brussels!

Peter Saint-Andre
Jabber Boot Camp
Jabber, The State of the Bulb

Alex has just pointed out that the uploaded file has last the last four minutes – I’[m away from the original files jsut now, but will endeavour to get the compelted show up as soon as possible.

It’s fair to say that without instant messaging, the internet (and podcasting) would be a lot more lesiurly paced. As with everything, there is an open standard, and the Jabber XMPP protocols are well known. Presenting on two areas at EuroOSCon is one of the executive directors of the Jabber Foundation, Peter Saint-Andre, and I spoke to him to find out more about the protocols, why we need them to be open, and the high bandwidth environment of conferences.

Tags: Euro OSCon, Jabber, O’Reilly.

Jeff Waugh
Ubuntu: Community Building for Human Beings

Like the Canadaian Mounties, I’ll always get my man. Jeff and I have fought a ten hour time difference, chock full diaries and just plain bad luck to finally get the Skype call lined up. I wanted to talk to the man behind the Ubuntu community – for a Linux distro that was almsot unknown a year or so ago, it’s made a huge impact.

Tags: Euro OSCon, Ubuntu, O’Reilly.

Louis Suarez-Potts
Making It Work: How to Build a Successful Open Source Project

Time to start our coverage of O’Reilly’s European Open Source Convention. I’ll be doing some pre-show interviews, and then coverage from the Conference floor. Anyone you want to hear from? Let me know at ewan@thepodcastnetwork.com. To start off, I caught with Louis Suarez-Potts, one of the leading lights behind Open Office dot Org, a leading Open Source project.

Tags: Euro OSCon, OpenOffice, O’Reilly.

Hot from a second successful year covering the Ednburgh Festival Fringe, Ewan Spence will bring pre-conference interviews with some of the leading lights in the Open Source movement, along with daily coverage every evening from the conference itself.

If you’re not yet subscribed to the podcast then here’s the RSS Feed or you can add The Tech Conf Show in iTunes.

Tags: Euro OSCon, O’Reilly.

Eric Rice is one of those people that’s just everywhere – SXSW say Rice host another of the ever popular Frey Cafes, as well as chairing a panel on the evolving future of podcasting, and making your blog into your business. There’s some new features in Audioblog to talk about, and Eric’s just accquired his own record label (Multiverse Records)… in Second Life, the virtual world. An experiment, prototyping a new business model for music sales. See, he’s everywhere… and it’s his birthday.

Tags: SXSW06, SXSWi, Eric Rice, Second Life.

Music IP is a lovely piece of technology that analyses your music collection accoustically, and can then recommend new music that sounds the same as your favourites, which launched at SXSW. Another part of the equation is the MusicBrainz enginge that labels the tracks from their open source database. I caught up with both MusicIP and MusicBrainz to talk about this hidden treasure in WinAmp.

Tags: SXSW06, SXSWi, Music IP, MusicBrainz.

One of the great things about the web is when you’re at a large event like SXSW, or ETech, is that everyone is using tags on their blog posts and pictures to help you find them. BUt where can tagging go now? An interesting round table style discussion arose at SXSW, and it brings up some good points.

Tags: SXSW06, SXSWi.

Whyville is an amazing social network site. Behind it is Dr Jim Bower, and he explains to me why an educational site for children can keep it’s viewers there longer than amazon, encourage the children to understand the world and relationships, and much more. It’s everything that Second Life hopes to be, and it’s been around for over seven years. Even in this short space of time, Bower neatly describes the idea of an ‘attention economoy’ far better than any other confernece this year.

Tags: SXSW06, SXSWi, Whyville.

One of the most exciting panels for me at SXSW Interactive was that on Serious Games for Learning. Brody Brazell was the moderator for the panel, and he has some amazing views on where technology is going, especially focused on nano/bio technology. Brazell believes that we are saying next technologies will be configured this way and focused on human development, living labs, commercialization and innovation.

Tags: SXSW06, SXSWi.

Fans of UK TV’s Spaced will realise just how weird the idea of running some Robot Wars / Battlebots in an undisclosed car park at BarCampAustin, which ran alongside SXSW Interactive. Steel Reign is one of the leading US robots that came out for the demonstration – and I spoke to the father and son team behind the robot. What drives people to build, fight and potentially destroy a robot worth tens of thousands of dollars?

Tags: SXSW06, SXSWi, battlebots.

Las Vegas sees the first Mix06 conference, and while there’s a lot of talk about it on the web, what’s it really about? I caught up on Skype with Tim O’Brien to find out more about this new conference. What can I expect, what are Microsoft bringing to the table, and who is the conference for?

Tags: Mix06.

A lot of companies are working on ways to leverage the mobile phone to be the ltimate personal computer, for both communication, and media consumption. Rob Greenlee is behind Melodeo’s podcast client and server for mobile phones. Taking a full blown podcast, converting it to a mobile friendly format, and then streaming it down to the phone is, for many, the bleeding edge of podcast mobility. How does it all work, what bandwidth does it need, and does it all hold up in the real world?

Tags: SXSW06, SXSWi.

The first panel I walked into at SXSW was the first Battledecks – where five hand picked contestants had to make a compelling and keynote worthy technology presentation, without having seen their PowerPoint. Think improvisational buzzword comedy taken to the power of 2.0. After the competition, I spoke to both the organiser and the winner. Is this the new sport of conferences?

Tags: SXSW06, SXSWi.

Doc Searls is not only co-author of the Cluetrain manifesto, he also has a big interest in technology -
and a background in advertising. Listen to his reflections at the end of Etech about Attention economy versus Intention economy, how much vendors where going for Web 1.0 kind of advertising, why Google needs to rethink their business model and what Barcamp has to do with Renaissance.

Additional link: The Intention Economy

With ETech over, I caught up with co-hosts Richard Giles and Nicole Simon to talk about the conference, the highs, the lows, and if ETech was a worthwhile experience for them and myself.

Tags: etech, etech 06.

Along with all the programming, API’s and new techniques, oanother item on show at Etech was a fleet of Hydrogen powered cars. I grabbed Richard Giles from TPN’s Gadget Show, to take one of them for a test drive.

Tags: etech, etech 06.

ETech isn’t the only O’Reilly Conference. Coming up in June is Where 2.0, and Nat Torkington is the Program Chair. As well as finding out more about Where 2.0 I look back at ETech with Torkington and the difference it can make.

Tags: etech, etech 06.

The evoloution of video games is nothing to do with processors or memory, but everything to do with the game controller. From the Atari 2600 stick to the Nintendo Revolution controller, Tom Armitage looks at the effects that input has on games, computers, and the world around us.

Tags: etech, etech 06.

Danny O’Brien’s ETech talks are usually barnstormers, and this year was no exception. Programmed at the end of the last day (after all, would you want to follo him?), he took on the topic of Americas Top Ten Tech Lawsuits of the Future. Now working with the EFF, this is a subject close to his heart and his working life, but there’s more to Danny than just the EFF.

Tags: etech, etech 06, EFF.

To find out more about Ning, I spoke to David Sklar, one of the software architects. Ning is a site that allows non-programmers to experiment with Social Software, and also provides a rapid development for that software genre. What’s Ning like to use, and how has the product improved since its launch last year?

Tags: etech, etech 06, Ning.

Update: MP3 link fixed. Thanks Yoz!

Yoz Grahame is the Developer Advocate at Ning.com, and while we touch on that briefly, what I really wanted to talk to Yoz about was his consultant role in the Channel 4 series, ‘The IT Crowd.’ What are some of the secrets of the set?

Tags: etech, etech 06, The IT Crowd

Lee Bryant, the Director of Headshift, has taken a huge number of social tools and techniques and applied them in businesses. How does this shared knowledge between workers, managers and corporate systems change business practices, make workers more involved, and threaten middle managers?

Tags: etech, etech 06.

Joe Gregorio is not only very active in the ATOM space and also member of the Atom workgroup, he also cares a lot about to be secured data in feeds. His proof of concept presentation at Etech “Secure Syndication” brings up interesting questions we try to touch on in this interview.

Tags: etech, etech 06.

Jeff Han is a Consultant at the Department of Computer Science at the New York University and presented this morning the most drooled about gadget of Etech: A multi touch interaction panel which combines ideas of Star Trek with Minority Report.

But in this interview Jeff explains, why this goes far beyond some movie and why he hopes that his kind of research would spring new user interface developments.

Tags: etech, etech 06.

Sxip promises a single online identity, much like the failed MS Passort system, but expcept this one will work. Keith Grenin gives the lowdown on why the system is good for webmasters and users.

Tags: etech, etech 06.

Last.FM is social software, but for your music. It takes the tracks you listen to (eg in iTunes) and collates theseto discover your music tastes, create a personal radio station, and then match you up with people that like what you like.

Tags: etech, etech 06.

George Dyson, a Historian of Technology, provided one of the most illuminating talks at ETech. Entitled “Turing’s Cathedral” it looked at the historical work of Leibniz and Von Neumann in bridging the world of logic and machines, taking the lessons from this, and where technology could lead us into the future. When you’re surrounded by the new applications and ideas at ETech, to have this in a historical content and to see what these prophets foretold of our future.

Tags: etech, etech 06.