Mac Slocum is director of online content at O'Reilly. He's been writing, editing and producing web content in various forms since the mid '90s. He also dabbles in video interviews from time to time.
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The Physical Web: A bridge between the Web and physical devices
The app-for-everything approach doesn’t scale, but the Web does. Scott Jenson, project lead for Physical Web at Google, outlines a vision for the Physical Web — an open approach to design and implementation that brings Web interaction to the physical world. “Let’s take the URL bar and bring it in the future,” Jenson says.
Practitioners, entrepreneurs, academics, and analysts came together in San Francisco this week to discuss the Internet of Things and the new hardware movement at the O’Reilly 2015 Solid Conference. Below we’ve assembled notable keynotes and interviews from the event.
Lock in, lock out: DRM in the real world
Author and activist Cory Doctorow uses his Solid keynote to passionately explain how computers are already entwined in our lives and our bodies, which means laws that support lock-in are much more than inconveniences. Doctorow also discusses Apollo 1201, a project from the Electronic Frontier Foundation that aims to eradicate digital rights management (DRM).
People from across the data world came together this week for Strata + Hadoop World 2015 in London. Below we’ve assembled notable keynotes, interviews, and insights from the event.
Shazam already knows the next big hit
“With relative accuracy, we can predict 33 days out what song will go to No. 1 on the Billboard charts in the U.S.,” says Cait O’Riordan, VP of product for music and platforms at Shazam. O’Riordan walks through the data points and trendlines — including the “shape of a pop song” — that give Shazam hints about hits.
Experts from across the software architecture world came together in Boston for the O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference 2015. Below we’ve assembled notable keynotes, interviews, and insights from the event.
Software architects: post-“post-useful”
The old notion of a software architect being a non-coding, post-useful deep thinker is giving way to something far more interesting, says Neal Ford, software architect and meme wrangler at ThoughtWorks. “Architecture has become much more interesting now because it’s become more encompassing … it’s trying to solve real problems rather than play with abstractions.”
O’Reilly’s keynote address at the Solid Conference in 2014 explored the human-IoT link. The talk expanded the scope of the IoT, making it clear this isn’t just about individual devices and software — we’re creating “networks of intelligence” that will shape how people work and live.
“If we could start over with these capabilities we have now, how would we do it differently?” Tim O’Reilly continues to explore data and the Internet of Things through the lens of human empowerment and the ability to “use technology to give people superpowers.”
Experts from across the data world came together in New York City for Strata + Hadoop World New York 2014. Below we’ve assembled notable keynotes, interviews, and insights from the event.
Unusual data applications and the correct way to say “Hadoop”
Hadoop creator and Cloudera chief architect Doug Cutting discusses surprising data applications — from dating sites to premature babies — and he reveals the proper (but in no way required) pronunciation of “Hadoop.”
Practitioners and experts from the web operations and performance worlds came together in New York City this week for Velocity New York 2014. Below you’ll find a handful of keynotes and interviews from the event that we found particularly notable.
Mikey Dickerson: From Google to HealthCare.gov to the U.S. Digital Service
“These problems are fixable, these problems are important, but they require you to choose to work on them” — Mikey Dickerson looks back on what it took to fix HealthCare.gov and he reveals his reasons for joining the U.S. Digital Service.