Speakers in the News »

12/02/05
LIZ LAWLEY

If holiday gift getting has gotten you down, then maybe a few hours of quality reading time will help lift your spirits. An excellent list of relevant geek-related books and essays can be found via a recent post on Liz Lawley's blog mamamusings.net. Things that she is currently exploring include Information Dynamics in the Networked World, Social Bookmarking in the Enterprise, The Social Life of Information, and The Tipping Point. Currently on leave from her academic post at the Rochester Institute of Technology and temporarily working as a social computing researcher at Microsoft, Lawley is scheduled to speak on the "Beyond Folksonomies" panel at the 2006 SXSW Interactive Festival.

11:26am CST | +

12/01/05
PHILLIP TORRONE

Phil Torrone

Need some creative gift ideas for the uber-geek(s) on your holiday list? Then check out the "Mostly Under $100 Gift Guide 2005" that appears in Make Magazine. Items on this list range from precision screwdrivers to a high-tech / robotics-enabled Lego kit to an FM radio transmitter that connects to the USB port on your computer. The article is put together by Make associate editor Phillip Torrone, who will be lending his expertise on the "DIY Media: Consumer is the Producer" panel at the 2006 SXSW Interactive Festival.

09:49am CST | +

11/30/05
DAVID PESCOVITZ

Today's edition of Salon.com features a couple of intriguing previews of the future, as authored by David Pescovitz. In a story titled "The Big Idea," Pesco talks about micro-robots, hacking DNA, the GeoWeb, DIY technology and biology as art. Even more fascinating is a sidebar story about "Desktop Manufacturing". Writes Pescovitz, "Imagine that your coffee maker breaks just before you're about to host a brunch. You go online and click on the model you want to buy. But you don't have to wait for it to be shipped; instead, a machine on your desk kicks into operation. Inside a glass chamber, a nozzle spits out the electronics, chassis, motor and other components, layer by layer. An hour later, you snap together a few parts and the brewing begins. That machine would be the 'Star Trek' replicator realized. Well, a beta version anyway. Already, several engineering threads are converging that may pull the replicator out of the far future and put it in our homes, or at least at Kinko's, in the next few decades." A co-editor of Boing-Boing, he will speak on the "Convergence and Transformation: A Whole New Creative World" panel at the 2006 SXSW Interactive Festival. This session is part of the Digital Convergence track at this spring's event.

10:12am CST | +

11/29/05
SAM BROWN

Sam Brown, who designed the artwork for last year's SXSW Big Bag, is this week's guest artist on the 37signals.com Signal vs. Noise blog. As noted in the section introducing his temporary role on this site: "Sam’s happy / sad / strange / evocative drawings are interpretations of phrases people send him (such as his power exceeds my expectations or not what I was thinking or make good choices). Sam has agreed to draw some ideas here on SvN that begin with 'In the future… For example, 'in the future we will all wear comfortable shoes' or 'in the future it will be tomorrow.' So, post your ideas/phrases as comments beginning with 'in the future…' and you may see it drawn here on SvN by Sam.'" In addition to his artwork, Brown also led the "Five Years of Exploding Dog" session at the 2005 SXSW Interactive Festival.

12:50pm CST | +

11/28/05
TANTEK ÇELIK

Tantek Celik

A recent blog post by Tantek Çelik entitled "Pandora's Box (Model) of CSS Hacks and Other Good Intentions" has stirred lots of attention in the web standards community. His essay reiterates the need for web designers to invent makeshift solutions to circumvent the limitations of browsers that are not yet fully CSS compliant. Among his more interesting points: "Be ugly. It's actually a good thing that a hack be visually ugly from a coding aesthetic point of view in the hopes that the ugliness will be a reminder that the hack is a hack, and should incite a tendency for people to a) minimize it's usage, and b) remove it's usage over time. At it's core, browser switching is one of those things you really shouldn't, but must, do to get your job done. Hacks' ugliness are like the equivalent of persistent warning tags, a reminder to dispose of them when no longer necessary." Çelik served as a panelist at the 2004 and 2005 SXSW Interactive Festivals; he is scheduled to speak again at this spring's event.