Topic: The Internet and the World Wide Web
Joel and Jeff discuss what a program manager does, the value (or lack thereof) of a functional spec and vision statement, building developer community, and planning your development time.
Scott Lemon discusses TopFollowFriday, a website that can be used to filter and choose to trust or not trust something, based on the reputation of the person who created the content. Based on #followfriday, a growing Twitter ad-hoc event that occurs each Friday, Scott's new site tracks #followfriday, and then records the endorsements, allowing users to chart the changes. Scott also reviews the Twitter AP and how he is using it for his site.
Dion Almaer and Ben Galbraith discuss the status of Bespin, a project of Mozilla Labs. The company states that Bespin aims to increase developer productivity and promte the use of open standards. Dion and Ben talk about the development of the project and its early prototype. The group also discusses Amazon frontends and how they are being used on the web.
Joel and Jeff discuss the enduring influence of C, the questionable value of the title "Software Architect", and the evolution of Java.
Global technology team leader at Morgan Stanley Mary Meeker gives her update on all things tech and internet in her presentation at the 2008 Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. In this short, data-rich presentation she also gives her thoughts on the economy and the current recession.
Joel and Jeff discuss dealing with incompetent programmers, whether salaries should be public, dealing with technical debt, and programming for small businesses.
Doug Kaye joins Phil and Scott to discuss the recently launched SpokenWord.org, a free service that helps you find, manage and share audio and video spoken-word recordings. In addition to giving a basic description of the site, Doug also discusses the technical aspects of the project, including how it was developed and what kind of challenges he is facing now that it is operational.
In this Q&A session the Rails core team discuss trends in the Rails community, the challenge of SproutCore, framework competition, and how to pick a Ruby implementation. Along with insights into the team's personal technology interests and the folly of micro-optimisation, the dangers of over abstraction and other areas are explored.
Mark Baker has always worked with distributed systems, starting with DCE and CORBA. When he learned about the Web's REST architectural style, he embraced it as a better way. When the Web Services movement veered away from key RESTful principles -- a uniform interface, hyperlinked representations -- he campaigned vigorously for them. Now, he tells host Jon Udell, REST has won the web, although not yet the enterprise.
Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Ken Brill about a paradox of modern life. He discusses how we traded in our big gas-guzzling automobiles, while dealing with the surprise energy downside of surfing the Internet.
