Rael Dornfest

ETech: the latest build

The ETech conference program is not so much set at any one point as it is always emerging. Not unlike building an application, from our initial call for participation in October to just a few days before the conference actually kicks off, it's a continuous build cycle. We're adding sessions and running integration tests, shuffling rooms and resolving conflicts, adding…

Registration is open for the Emerging Technology Conference 2007

I'm thrilled to announce that registration is now open for the 2007 edition of the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. ETech is being held once again in beautiful San Diego, California on March 26-29, 2007. This year's theme is "Sufficiently advanced technology", in reference of course to Arthur C. Clarke's third law of prediction: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable…

Fantastic elastic

While in the midst of something that doesn't afford me time to look much more closely, I just had to throw out an attaboy! to Amazon for their new "Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)" service. Upload par-baked application… Amazon will bake (S3) and serve (EC2)….

That voodoo that you do…

Slashdot coincidently celebrates ;-) the opening of our call for participation for the 2007 edition of the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference and this year's theme, "Sufficiently advanced technology," with an Ask Slashdot open question on "computer voodoo": A corollary to 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic' is that sometimes users have to resort to what I call 'computer…

Entrepreneurially yours

After six of the most enjoyable, educational, and rewarding years at O'Reilly, I went half-time last November to pursue one of those ideas that just wouldn't leave me alone. That idea has since blossomed into an application (edging toward product-hood) and fledgling company. And so it's time now to give it all the attention it deserves. Leaving O'Reilly the company,…

People like you enjoyed "Memcached For Fun and Profit"

OSCAL is an inspired bit of afternoon hackery that turns your personal conference scheduling into a social experience by bringing a little of Amazon's "people who bought this or that…" Browse the Open Source Convention by day, tag, popularity, speaker (I love the speakers cloud), etc. Read the comments and meander related sessions. Build your own personal conference calendar and…

Google picks up Measure Map

This morning Google picked up Adaptive Path's Measure Map application. Along with it they scored one of the most amazing and well-respected developer-designers (read: designer-developers if you're a designer) I've ever met: Jeff Veen. Congrats to Jeff, the MM and AP teams, and Google….

The eBay Developer Challenge

To celebrate both the success of the eBay Developers Program and the removal of all fees associated with using their web services, eBay are holdling the eBay Developer Challenge. Enter your innovative application in the eBay Developer Challenge 2006 to show off your skills. You could win $5,000, or many other great prizes. Or gather a team together of up…

Getting Pragmatic about Ajax

Those Pragmatic Programmers are bringing their pragmatism to Ajax with the addition of Ajax Studio to their lineup. Mike Clark mentioned it to me in passing and I immediately scrambled to see just how I could make it out to the three-day seminar. (Aside: If you're using Ruby on Rails for anything approaching deployment, be sure to read the writings…

Smarkets: An Amazon price rank prediction market

After my post this morning about the Y!/O' Buzz Market Game, I was pointed at Smarkets, a prediction market for Amazon products. Each new product added becomes a "stock". Chart_pie If a product's Amazon's sales rank improves, its stock price goes up. And vice-versa. Chart_pie Traders buy, sell, short, and cover. Here's this month's Oprah's Book Club choice: "A Million…