Christine

The Commercialization of Open Source

Is the commercialization of open source malignant, benign, or beneficial? My day at OSBC West (the Open Source Business Conference) included this important exploration of how customers are incorporating open source products into their typically closed-source systems:

Women at DEMO 2006

Environment: DEMO 2006, the classic and best product launch conference. I was consciously looking to see if the numbers had changed from DEMOfall 2005.

The Future of Security

The good news: software and online service vendors are getting organized around security, and have taken security into consideration as a habit. The bad news: hackers are organized too. John Patrick from Attitude LLC led a panel discussion at DEMO 2006 to explore not only the Future of Security, but also taking on the challenges at the foundation of bringing security to an inherently open system:

Trends in Network Security and Protection

More serious security was discussed in this session on network protection. These solutions launched at DEMO 2006 are focused on improved network protections and tuning:

Blocking Identity Theft and Spy Hacks

Several technologies were introduced at DEMO 2006 around identity protection and fraud prevention. These represented not only new technologies, but new models:

Digital Media Madness

This session was a bottom-up media, user-generated content (pick your semantic) wonderland. Here are some of the technologies shown at DEMO 2006 for the creation, management, publishing, and consumption of digital media:

Looking for More Relevant Data

For this year's conference, DEMO 2006 producer Chris Shipley discovered several vendors that help individuals find relevance in massive amounts of information and media:

Innovations in Digital Media Search

Search technology is indeed big business, but is there room outside of Google and the other megaportals? At DEMO 2006, a number of players were introduced with new search algorithms, for new forms and volumes of content:

Disruptions at DEMO that Drive Community

There were three DEMO 2006 launches identified as disruptive innovations by producer Chris Shipley. These startups all provided new and fascinating approaches to engaging consumers and encouraging them to participate actively in emerging online communities:

iGuitar: New Hope for the DEMO Jam Sessions

Tonight's jam session at DEMO 2006 will renew a wacky and wonderful tradition, the amateur jam. Producer Chris Shipley is clearly seeding future jams with the presentation of iGuitar's innovative guitar products:

Guardian Angels for IT and Support Staff

After a very interesting panel on computational biology (a great seventh-inning brain stretch), the DEMO 2006 stage turned to network health. Some of the products demonstrated sounded like heaven-sent solutions for IT managers and support staff:

Applying Cooperation Technologies to Software Development

The open source community has long enjoyed the benefits of its cooperative community in pushing innovation and rapid development. At DEMO 2006, several companies brought the lessons learned from open source into more structured tools that support development:

Collaborating Around Search

The DEMO 2006 producers note that 'as the library of freely available information grows, purely computational methods will fall short of finding the most reliable sources that are exactly what you want.' Several technologies have been developed in order to harness the hive mind of the community in organizing content:

Next-Gen Meeting Platforms

Chris Shipley is always interested in products that "advance the art of meetings". These vendors demonstrated their virtual meeting platforms at DEMO 2006 in Scottsdale:

DEMO 2006 Kicks Off

The ever-popular Chris Shipley kicked off DEMO 2006 with a "sweet 16" of product launches for the day. (This the 16th year for DEMO.) Here's some sound bites from this morning's six-minute demonstrations:

Grantmaking 101

What makes a good grantmaker? The answers to this and other questions were recently discussed in a brown bag lunch on Grantmaking 101:

Stanford Entrepreneurship Conference XX

Environment: The 2006 Entrepreneurship Conference, hosted by the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Securing VoIP Conversations

Phil Zimmermann (the creator of PGP) gave a great talk on VoIP security at last week's O'Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference. I unfortunately missed part of the talk, so didn't blog it. Happily, I've just listened to the entirety of Phil's talk courtesy of Dan York, the producer and co-host of Blue Box, the VoIP Security Podcast. But you don't need me to tell you about it...you too can download Zimmermann's talk here. It's very worth the 15 minutes.

Jabber - Is It Really this Good?

Peter Saint-Andre from Jabber gave a very speedy (and I thought I talked fast) talk on Jabber and Jingle. Here's the basics, in case you aren't at O'Reilly eTel and haven't been riding the Jabber bandwagon:

Death to the Carriers from a Thousand Widgets

Was last year the year for mobile content? Will it be this year? Or what about next year? At eTel, Benjamin Keighran from BluePulse offered up an explanation for why mobile content hasn't taken off:

Using Open Source Telephony to Drive Advocacy

Today's speakers at O'Reilly eTel had a solid do-gooder streak. Tad Hirsch from MIT's Media Lab is wholly invested into the intersection of art, activism, and technology. He's currently using open source telephony to promote community development:

Watching CALEA Wiretaps Squash VoIP Innovation

I just love hearing from those passionate EFF guys. Brad Templeton (or was it his evil twin?) came to O'Reilly eTel to talk about why the ILECs should love CALEA. (See my earlier post about how CALEA kills online advocacy.) Here's some implications for emerging telephony:

Owning Your Identity in the New World

The issues around identity extend far beyond the borders of emerging telephony, but it was a recurring theme at the O'Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference. Both the hackers and the microsofties had things to say:

Driving VoIP Towards Open Standards

I can barely keep up with all of the great stuff here at O'Reilly eTel. (Carpal tunnel, here I come.) Michael Robertson of Linspire started SIPphone with the vision of an open dialtone that anyone in the world could connect to. What do you need for this?

Yahoo! Mobility Breaks Open the Space-Time Continuum

Yahoo! Research Berkeley is a new research partnership between Yahoo! Inc. and UC Berkeley, looking into the intersection of social media and mobile media technology. Marc Davis came to the eTel conference to talk about some of their projects: