Speakers in the News »

2/10/06
JOEL SPOLSKY

Joel Spolsky

Joel Splosky offers cautionary advice for the current round of Web 2.0 hype, focusing his critique on the plethora of web-based appointment applications: "Why so many Ajax calendars? My theory is that about a year ago, there was a lot of buzz (possibly true, possibly false) about Google shipping a calendar, and everybody thought, oh gosh, it's gonna be really good, like Gmail, and then Yahoo! is going to be embarrassed again, and run out and buy the best Ajax calendar company they can find, just like they did with Oddpost.,making those very funny kids millionaires overnight. So people aren't really building calendars to sell to people like me who need calendars: they're building calendar companies to sell to Yahoo!, which, for some reason, has given up on the old concept of hiring programmers to write code, and is going with this new age concept of buying entire companies on the hopes that they might contain a good programmer or two, which, by the way, is a sure sign of trouble for a technology company." Hear more of Spolsky's opinions at the "Sink or Swim: The Five Most Important Startup Decisions" panel at the SXSW Interactive Festival on Sunday, March 12. After this session concludes, this speaker will sign copies of his popular book "Joel on Software".

12:04am CST | +

2/09/06
HENRY COPELAND

Henry Copeland

Looking for yet another sign of the growing influence of the blogging community? Then consider that the Netherlands Board of Tourism & Conventions has arranged free flights and accommodations for 25 US bloggers as a way to generate more positive buzz about this European country. This February excursion was organized in part by Henry Copeland of Blogads, who explained to Expatica.com: "After some brainstorming and number-crunching Sebastian Paauw of the Tourism Board back and asked about bartering blogads for trips, saying they normally had a pile of plane tickets for journalists and that it would be fun to see what happened if these went to bloggers instead." Asked about the potential fallout of bloggers accepting travel perks (and thereby mirroring a habit of traditional journalists that they often criticize), Copeland remarks: "While we’ve heard of companies giving freebies to bloggers, there has been no standard yet for how to disclose the nature of the gifts and whether there are any quid pro quos. We hope this project helps to highlight the question of best practices on disclosure. I’m sure we’ll get some feedback on this and look forward the discussion." Hear more about the power of personal publishing at the 2006 SXSW Interactive Festival, where Copeland will moderate a panel titled "Revenge of the Blogs: Election 2008."

12:09am CST | +

2/08/06
SCOTT DIETZEN

Scott Dietzen

AJAX has the buzz, but there is still a bit of a learning curve to greater adoption in the developer community. A recent story on the UK online publication Techworld reveals that efforts are being made to reduce these barriers: "A group of top industry vendors is set to announce a new community initiative aimed at popularising AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and Extensible Markup Language), the nickname given to a collection of software development tools and standards that help web applications mimic the speed and smoothness of desktop programs." The Techworld story quotes Scott Dietzen of zimbra.com, one of the companies involved in this initiative. "Part of Zimbra's motivation for participating in Open AJAX is to ensure that there is a winning AJAX platform in open source," he comments. "This is a great start. We have cut the complexity of authoring an AJAX application through the collective work of the participants. It's ten times easier than it was when we started down this path two years ago. I would like to see us make it two or three times easier still than it is now." Dietzen will be part of the "What's Cool in Web Applications" panel at the 2006 SXSW Interactive Festival. And, if you are interested in learning more about this new programming language, also be sure to attend the "AJAX: What's Up With that Session" scheduled on Saturday morning, March 11.

12:03am CST | +

2/07/06
ANDREW MICHAEL BARON

Andrew Michael Baron

Add an interesting experiment in new media financing to the resume of trend-setting videoblog company Rocketboom. As noted on MediaPost Publications, "For the first time since its 2004 launch, the popular video Web log Rocketboom is selling ad inventory on its site. Unlike other Web publishers, the company isn't working with a media buyer or ad network. Instead, Rocketboom is auctioning off its video inventory on eBay. The auction is for five post-roll video ads, which will run each daily Rocketboom video log entry March 6 through March 10. Rocketboom will conceive, create, and produce the winners' ads, which will run from 15 to 30 seconds. Although Rocketboom will produce the ad, the marketer will be able to give input and will have final approval over the finished product. Rocketboom reserves the right to reject any bidder, and said in its eBay posting that it won't accept pornography or gambling ads." Andrew Michael Baron, founder of this company, will no doubt talk about this move when he lends his expertise to the "Videoblog Business Models" panel at the 2006 SXSW Interactive Festival.

12:32am CST | +

2/06/06
CRAIG NEWMARK

While we do not usually highlight negative press in this section, a recent editorial about 2006 SXSW Keynote Speaker Craig Newmark (pictured above) in the San Francisco Bay Guardian demands our attention. In this essay, Tim Redmond blasts the founder of craigslist: "When Craig comes to town (and he's coming to just about every town in the nation soon), the existing community institutions – say, the locally owned weekly newspaper – have a very hard time competing. In many ways, he's like a Wal-Mart – yeah, landlords get cheaper real estate ads, and consumers find some bargains, but the money all goes out of town. And he puts nothing back into the community: He doesn't, for example, hire reporters or serve as a community watchdog." The logic put forth by Redmonds bears notice, if only because it reveals the completely irrational thinking from traditional media when threatened by the power of new technology. As noted in a response to this story by former SXSW panelist Anil Dash posted on his blog: "The defensiveness I see in the SF Bay Guardian, and in many similar papers around the country, indicates a powerfully uncurious and defensive reaction. It's an embarassment to me as a liberal that people who claim to share my values would want to undermine someone who gives a community a place to connect, for free, about the most important things in their life . . Realize that the reason Craig is eating your lunch is not merely because his information is better, or because he cares about being online and you don't, but because he's given people a place to connect with each other, instead of just being preached to by people too arrogant to stay curious."