O'Reilly Week in Review for Jan 5th, 2009

By James Turner
January 6, 2009

This week's podcast has a commentary from editor Kurt Cagle on the potential opportunities that this year could bring, a conversation with Tim O'Reilly about ways the SEC could leverage search technology, the answer to last week's quiz and a...

O'Reilly Week in Review for December 22, 2008

By James Turner
December 23, 2008

This week's podcast looks back at an interview we ran with physics rapper Katherine McAlpline in the fall, as well as announcing our first podcast quiz winner, and the new quiz question, that can win you your choice of any in print O'Reilly book.

O'Reilly Week in Review for Dec 15th, 2008

By James Turner
December 17, 2008

This week's (delayed) podcast includes excepts of interviews with Dr. Joshua Wurman about storm chasing and Professor Rich Gordon about the adoption of the web by traditional print media. There's also a new quiz question (your chance to win free O'Reilly books!)

Engineering Tornado Intercepts - Dr. Joshua Wurman Discusses Mobile Doppler Radars

By James Turner
December 15, 2008

If you've watched the Discovery Channel series "Storm Chasers", you will be familiar with Dr. Joshua Wurman and his Doppler on Wheels radar, which he uses to study tornadoes up close and personal every spring. We spent some time last week speaking to Dr. Wurman about what it takes, technologically, to operate a weather radar in 100 mile per hour winds in the middle of a lightening storm. We also talked about the value of this kind of research to both tornado and hurricane research, and how having a film crew around during missions affects the science.

Craig Newmark Interview: A Brief History of Craigslist

By Timothy M. O'Brien
December 13, 2008

A brief conversation with Craig Newmark from this year's Personal Democracy Forum 2008. In this interview Craig talks about the founding of Craiglist, how he came to found one of the most popular sites on the web. Craig also discusses his work with the Obama team and some of the important customer service issues facing Craigslist.

The Best of O'Reilly - Now Available in Podcast Form

By James Turner
December 8, 2008

This week's episode includes excerpts of interviews with our JRuby authors and climatologist Andrew Weaver, as well as news of the SCO lawsuit and this week's quiz question. Now, for your listening pleasure, we present "O'Reilly Week in Review", a roundup of the best content from the site, as well as good-natured pokes at the industry and a trivia quiz that can score you your choice of books from the vast O'Reilly catalog.

A Conversation with the Authors of JRuby Cookbook

By Timothy M. O'Brien
November 25, 2008

Henry Liu and Justin Edelson authors of the just released JRuby Cookbook talk about JRuby, the current state of the Java platform, and some of the compelling benefits of integrating a language like Ruby with the Java platform.

Spring Getting into a Groove with Groovy: SpringSource Acquires G2One

By Timothy M. O'Brien
November 12, 2008

Rod Johnson and Graeme Rocher discuss SpringSource's acquisition of G2One. In this 20 minute interview, both Johnson and Rocher discuss the differences between Groovy and other scripting lanuages available on the JVM and why they believe that Groovy on Grails provides the path of least resistance for enterprise web application development.

A 2008 e-Voting Wrapup with Dr. Barbara Simons

By James Turner
November 7, 2008

Dr. Barbara Simons knows something about electronic voting, enough so that she was appointed to the advisory board for the Federal Election Assistance Commission, the group responsible for overseeing the technological overhaul of the nation's voting systems. So we though she'd be the logical choice to go to for a postmortem of this year's election e-Voting experiences.

How Linux Supports More Devices Than Any Other OS, Ever

By chromatic
October 29, 2008

Greg-Kroah Hartman discusses why he believes the Linux kernel supports more devices than any other operating system ever has, why binary-only drivers are impractical, immoral, and illegal, and how the kernel development process contributes to the inevitable world domination of free software.

How Techies Can Improve Democracy and Governance

By chromatic
October 29, 2008

Silona Bonewald is an established technologist as well as an experienced political consultant who believes that well-designed and well-applied technology can improve communication, transparency, and governance in political systems -- and state legislators are listening. Here's how you can help her improve democracy.

Sunlight Foundation Interview: Toward an Accountable, Transparent, and Open Government

By Timothy M. O'Brien
October 28, 2008

In this interview Sunlight discusses the importance of transparency in government, and how technologists can help filter and process the vast amount of data that the US federal government produces.

Why your clock radio is all abuzz about your iPhone

By James Turner
October 27, 2008

Have you ever put your iPhone (or other phone) near a clock radio or answering machine, and heard a loud staccato buzzing? If so, you're not alone. Reports of iPhones making consumer electronics buzz and click are common, but why does it happen? We talked to a couple of RF experts to learn what's going wrong, and what you can do about it.

Three Degrees of Conflagration: Dr. Andrew Weaver on Modeling Global Warming

By James Turner
October 22, 2008

Dr. Andrew Weaver may be one of the most famous people you've never heard of. Weaver, a professor at the University of Victoria's School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, is one of the world's leading experts on climate modeling. He was served as lead author for last year's ground-breaking report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; and when the Discovery Channel needed someone to analyze the potential impact of their "Project Earth" geo-engineering schemes, they turned to Dr. Weaver for help. On the heels of the recent World Wildlife Federation report on vanishing sea ice, we thought it might be a good idea to chat with Dr. Weaver about the current state of the art in climate modeling, the political realities of effecting carbon reduction, and why certain proposed geoengineering ideas terrify him.

What's the Appeal of the iPhone to Developers?

By chromatic
October 13, 2008

Raven Zachary and Bill Dudney are co-chairs of the one-day iPhone Live conference in San Jose. O'Reilly News recently talked to them to answer the questions "What's interesting about the iPhone to developers?" and "What hints does the iPhone give to Apple's future plans?"

How PowerTOP, LatencyTOP, and Five-Second Boot Improve Desktop Linux

By chromatic
September 24, 2008

Arjan van de Ven is a Linux kernel hacker and the author of PowerTOP and LatencyTOP. His goal is to fix problems in the Linux desktop to save power, respond more smoothly, and to run faster. This interview explains how.

Theodore Tso: How the LSB Helps You Behind the Scenes

By James Turner
September 22, 2008

The Linux Standard Base (LSB) is the Rosetta Stone for Linux distributions, it establishes a common set of libraries and tools that any Linux application can use safely, and be assured of running correctly. The Linux Foundation is the keeper of the LSB, and recently we spoke with Theodore Tso, who helps tend the LSB, about what goes into keeping it healthy, and how it benefits ISVs, distribution maintainers, and end users alike.

The Present and Future of Ruby and Rails

By chromatic
September 19, 2008

Chad Fowler and Rich Kilmer discuss where Ruby and Rails have gone in the past year, whether RESTful composition obviates the need for ORM, what's interesting in the upcoming world of Ruby and Rails, and how Maglev, Rubinius, and other new Ruby implementations contribute to the world of dynamic languages.

Podcast: Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle discuss the upcoming Web 2.0 Summit

By Joshua-Michéle Ross
September 15, 2008

Beginning on November 5th, 2008 a wide array of thought leaders and practitioners of Web 2.0 are converging on San Francisco to attend the 5th annual Web 2.0 Summit. This year's theme, "Web Meets World" reflects how much Web 2.0 has evolved over the past five years. I recorded an informal conversation with co-chairs Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle to...

Experience Syndication: Powered by Zappos

By Joshua-Michéle Ross
September 12, 2008

I have been thinking a lot about the new Powered by Zappos service. According to Zappos: Powered by Zappos (PBZ) is a feature Zappos.com offers to its partners where we design, host, fulfill and own a partners web site. Our goal is to provide Zappos customers as well as our partner's customers with the best possible service experience. By building...

Audio: Mozilla's Frank Hecker on Politics 2.0, Open Source, and Participatory Democracy

By Timothy M. O'Brien
September 12, 2008

O'Reilly News interviews Mozilla's Frank Hecker at Personal Democracy Forum 2008 in New York City. In this 25 minute interview you'll hear Frank Hecker talking about Mozilla's mission and structure, as well as his own views on how open source could provide a model for involving citizens in participatory democracy.

The Mac at 25: Andy Hertzfeld Looks Back

By James Turner
August 27, 2008

Andy Hertzfeld, one of the original designers of the Macintosh, is also the author of the book Revolution in the Valley, which tells the tale of the birth of the Mac. As the Mac approaches its 25th anniversary in January, Andy spent some time talking about how the Mac has changed over time, how a group of highly talented individuals was able to come together as a team to create it, why Xerox let it get away, and how life might have been different if Steve Jobs hadn't left the company for more than 10 years.

David Flanagan on JavaScript 2

By chromatic
August 22, 2008

Is JavaScript and HTML the new BASIC? What does the average programmer need from JavaScript 2? Is the web the new client-server model of computing? JavaScript guru David Flanagan addresses these questions and more in this interview.

Rapping the Higgs Boson: Katherine McAlpine (aka AlpineKat) talks particle physics, the Large Hadron Collector, and Rapping at CERN

By James Turner
August 20, 2008

Katherine McAlpine spends her days putting together the online newsletter for the ATLAS project at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. But at night, she dawns her white labcoat and geek bling, and becomes AlpineKat, rapping about the world of high energy particle physics. O'Reilly News spent some time talking to this multi-talented woman about what's going on at CERN, what we can expect from the LHC, why the Higgs Boson is important, and guerrilla filmmaking in the bowels of CERN.

Audio: Lawrence Lessig on Congressional Reform and Internet for Everyone

By Timothy M. O'Brien
August 18, 2008

Lawrence Lessig discusses Change-Congress.org, a online tool for users to tag congressional candidates as supporting or opposing reforms such as public financing, earmark reform, and congressional transparency. Lessig also responds to a few questions about InternetForEveryone.org, a coalition of public interest and industry groups working for open, universal, and affordable access to broadband.

Luke Kanies Wants to Modernize System Administration

By chromatic
August 14, 2008

Luke Kanies, author of the Puppet configuration management tool, discusses how to fix what's wrong with system administration and why shell scripts and ssh are the wrong tools to keep your systems up to date.

Brian Aker's Vision for a Livable Design, Looking at MySQL as OSCON Approaches

By James Turner
August 14, 2008

With me today is Brian Aker, Director of Technology for MySQL. Brian is the author of Running Weblogs w/ Slash. He's also leading a tutorial at O'Reilly's Open Source Convention, July 21-25, in Portland, Oregon...

Benjamin Mako-Hill on Open Source vs. Free, GPL and Prepping for OSCON

By James Turner
August 14, 2008

We're talking today with Benjamin Mako-Hill; he has his fingers in so many pies I'm just going to read his bio off the OSCON Website.

Radiohead Remix: Tim Sinnott, GIS, ArcMAP, and Google Earth

By Timothy M. O'Brien
July 30, 2008

Radiohead shot an entire video using LIDAR and released the dataset for people to remix and render as they see fit. In this first article of a four-part series, we profile Tim Sinnott. Tim used ArcMAP and Google Earth to create a fly-by of Thom Yorke's face over Kansas. Read the article to listen to a short audio interview and watch Tim's rendering of the data.

Open Source in the Enterprise is Inevitable

By chromatic
July 24, 2008

The question about open source in the enterprise is no longer "if", but "how". Bernard Golden is the author of a new O'Reilly research report about adoption statistics and usage of open source in professional development and business -- who are hiring more open source people than ever.

What to See at OSCON 2008

By chromatic
July 17, 2008

O'Reilly News interviews Allison Randal, co-chair of OSCON, for a quick survey of what's new and interesting in the world of open source.

Audio: Rep. Culberson on Twittering, Energy, and Science

By Timothy M. O'Brien
July 12, 2008

In this 24 minute interview, John Culberson backs down from the partisan call to arms he issued this week on Twitter. He discusses transparency and technology in Congress, and the efforts to clarify the rules governing which web sites a member of Congress can participate in.

The Software Behind the Mars Phoenix Lander

By chromatic
July 9, 2008

What kind of software does it take to send a 700+ pound device millions of miles away to land safely on another planet? Peter Gluck is the project software engineer for the Mars Phoenix lander mission. In this interview with O'Reilly News, he describes how rocket scientists write and manage code, and why you're not likely to see NASA's source code any time soon.

Audio: Luiz Barroso on Energy Proportional Computing

By Timothy M. O'Brien
July 1, 2008

Luiz Barroso talks about the concept of Energy Proportional computing and how he thinks DRAM and disk manufacturers could do a better job creating devices consume energy in proportion to the computing to perform. Barroso and Holzle analyzed 5000 servers at Google over six months and found the average CPU utilization was between 15-45% - the region in which a computer operates the least efficiently. At issue is the fact that most manufacturers maximize efficiency to SPECpower which assumes that the computer is running at 100% utilization.

Audio: Brian Cox Discusses the Large Hadron Collider at CERN

By Timothy M. O'Brien
June 26, 2008

This interview audio and transcript is being published with another article "Large Hadron Collider as Massive Grid Computer". The following interview took place on June 19, 2008. Tim O'Brien: Earlier today I had the chance to speak to Brian Cox....

Building the Green Data Center

By James Turner
June 20, 2008

Bill Coleman, founder and CEO of the Cassatt Corporation, and one of the founders of BEA, has made it his mission to make data centers more energy-efficient. We caught up with him right before the O'Reilly Velocity conference where he is scheduled to speak to get some pointers on making data centers planet-friendly.

Gordon Mohr Takes Us Inside the Internet Archives

By James Turner
June 18, 2008

Gordon Mohr is the Chief Technologist for Web Projects at the Internet Archive. In this interview, he gives us a peek behind the scenes at what's involved in recording the continually updating web, as well as the legal implications and how Web 2.0 is making their job both easier and harder.

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