Etech07 Videos

Tim O'Reilly, Founder and CEO, O'Reilly Media, Inc., shares his take on how emerging technology will shape the future.

Jeff Jonas is Distinguished Engineer and Chief Scientist, IBM Entity Analytics.

O'Reilly Media CEO Tim O'Reilly in converation with William H. Janeway, Vice Chairman, Warburg Pincus and Peter Bloom, Managing Director, General Atlantic LLC.

"Why Can t a Computer Be More Like a Brain? How a New Theory of Neocortex Will Lead to Truly Intelligent Machines" - Jeff Hawkins. Coaxing computers to perform basic acts of perception and robotics, let alone high-level thought, has been difficult. No existing computer can recognize pictures, understand language, or swiftly navigate through a cluttered room. Following nature s example, Hawkins has developed an understanding of how the neocortex performs these and other tasks. The theory, called Hierarchical Temporal Memory or HTM, explains how the hierarchical structure of the neocortex builds a model of its world and uses this model for inference and prediction. To turn this theory into a useful technology, Hawkins and his colleagues have created a company called Numenta. In this talk, Hawkins will describe the theory, its biological basis, and introduce a new software platform created by Numenta that allows anyone to apply this theory to a variety of problems. A separate breakout session will go into detail on how to use Numenta s HTM platform.

"Making Offline Web Applications a Reality"- Satish Dharmaraj, Founder and CEO, Zimbra. Web-based applications have been applauded for their richness, simplicity and elegant user experience, but how useful are they if you are not connected to the Internet? While the Internet is pervasive it's still not truly everywhere and in an offline world desktop applications rule...until now. Imagine the possibilities when AJAX-based applications can be accessed anytime, anywhere regardless of Internet connectivity. In this session Satish Dharmaraj, CEO and Co-Founder of Zimbra, will explore how offline AJAX-clients will deliver end users increased productivity, flexibility and choice.

"Creating Alternate Realities" - Jane McGonigal, Lead Game Designer, Institute for the Future. This talk explores what the new game designers know about improving everyday quality of life, and how non-gaming companies can become a part of the solution. Alternate reality game designers are solving problems that other technology companies have yet to discover. Cutting-edge collaborative, reality-based games are addressing a whole new set of social needs and personal desires, individual challenges, and collective wants. But games are not the only way to meet these needs and desires. In this talk, McGonigal explores how other technology products, services, and brands can capitalize on key signals coming out of the most innovative game genres.

"The Core of Fun" - Raph Koster, President, Areae, Inc. Recently, game designers have been engaged in figuring out just what the heck games are: how they work, what makes them fun, what core elements go into making something what we call a game as opposed to a toy or a hobby. Surprisingly, what has started to emerge from this fledgling study is an understanding of the atomic parts that make up game systems and they turn out to be surprisingly applicable to all sorts of interaction design. Each of these elements can be boiled down into a simple checklist for making your customer experience more entertaining. Learn what the core bits of a game are, and how you can apply them to whatever web site or product you happen to be building!

"Big Company Hacks at Yahoo!" - Chad Dickerson, Sr. Director, Yahoo! Developer Network, Yahoo!. Hacking software and hardware can be challenging at times, but the rewards for breakthrough moments are huge. The same goes for hacking companies, which have their own cultural "software" and facilities "hardware" to dig into. For just over a year, Yahoo! has been hacking itself with its internal Hack Yahoo! program, turning "mashup or shutup" into an engineering rallying cry across the globe at the company. The Hack Yahoo! program encourages the pursuit of self-directed personal projects by Yahoo! engineers, projects that are not subject to prior review by anyone -- all by design. The success of the Hack Yahoo! program has been driven largely by the regular Hack Day events in offices around the world. At the internal Yahoo! Hack Days, engineers own the spotlight as they showcase their personal projects to their peers and top Yahoo! executives in a rapid-fire format that is always full of delightful surprises. In September, Yahoo! opened up its campus to rock star hackers -- and one actual rock star -- for a mega-successful open Yahoo! Hack Day that introduced major new capabilities from the Yahoo! Developer Network for outside developers to hack on with the same free-wheeling spirit as the internal Hack Days. In this talk, you'll learn what it takes to successfully hack your own company to make an event like Hack Day happen, including building the best wireless network in the world for visiting hackers; turning a nondescript space in front of the company gym into a major rock venue; making sure the automatic sprinklers are turned off for the campers on the lawn; and generally what it takes to embrace, encourage, and celebrate the unexpected in a corporate environment.

Anthony Ravitz is Project Coordinator, Real Estate & Workplace Services, at Google, Inc.

"Apollo: Bringing Rich Internet Applications to the Desktop" - Ed Rowe, Adobe Systems. Apollo is the code name for a cross-operating system runtime being developed by Adobe that allows developers to use existing web technologies (Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript, Ajax) to build and deploy rich Internet applications to the desktop. In this talk Ed Rowe, Director of Engineering for Apollo, will demonstrate how to start building Apollo-based applications using Ajax and Flex. He will also discuss some of the capabilities unique to Apollo, explain the value they bring to developers and to users, and take a look at some Apollo applications that developers have already started building.

"Amazon Web Services: Building a 'Web-Scale Computing' Architecture to Meet the Variable Demands of Today's Business" - Werner Vogels, Vice President s essential in today s business landscape. This applies to an enterprise trying to cut-costs, a young business unexpectantly saturated with customer demand, or a start-up looking to launch. Werner Vogels, vice-president and chief technology officer of Amazon.com, will discuss the challenges of building a reliable, flexible architecture that can manage unpredictable behaviors of today's internet business. Vogels will also provide the blueprint for "Web-Scale Computing" -- enabling businesses to outsource the undifferentiated "heavy lifting" and implement an elastic business model that can quickly respond to demand. This allows businesses to compete on ideas, instead of resources. Vogels will also introduce customers that are already implementing Web-Scale Computing business models, with multiple Amazon Web Services -- such as Amazon Simple Storage Service and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud -- to launch innovative applications. Amazon.com spent twelve years and over $2 billion developing a world-class technology and content platform that powers Amazon web sites for millions of customers every day. Today, Amazon Web Services exposes this technology, through 10 open APIs, allowing developers to build applications leveraging the same robust, scalable, and reliable technology that powers Amazon s business.

"Patterns: From Fabrics to Fabrication" - Dale Dougherty, Editor & Publisher, Make, O'Reilly Media, Inc. Craft helped to establish a cottage industry of handmade goods. Then the automation of craft led not only to the industrial revolution but the information revolution through machines like the Jacquard loom. Today, the re-emergence of craft is part of the DIY movement that is discovering new tools for personal fabrication.

"The Coming Age of Magic" - Mike Kuniavsky, Co-founder and Principal, ThingM. The desktop metaphor is dead. Increasingly, as computers become embedded in everyday objects, those objects exhibit behaviors that we do not, and cannot, fully control, based on layers of difficult technologies. Interaction design is significantly trailing the capabilities of the technology because of how difficult it is to explain what all this new stuff does. One side treats everything like a laptop, even if it's a phone. Another is obsessed with making simulations of people. Increasingly, however, the devices in our lives fall in between. How can we explain new technologies in a useful way when how they actually work is highly complex and interrelated? The desktop metaphor was useful for twenty years as a way to structure and explain information-processing technology. I propose "magic" as a metaphor for structuring interactions with embedded information processing technology. It is behavioral, embedded, widespread, and it's easy to explain it as a metaphor (i.e., that it's not true, but a useful model). The manuals for magical items have been written for hundreds of years, now it's possible to make the objects themselves.

"Incantations for Muggles: The Role of Ubiquitous Web 2.0 Technologies in Everyday Life" - danah boyd, Doctoral Candidate, School of Information, University of California-Berkeley. Over the last few years, the tech sector has been abuzz with talk of social media and Web 2.0 and journalists have been hyping the peculiar things that the MySpace generation is doing. While the "radical" practices of young people and the organizational fetishes of technologists are certainly a curiosity to be examined, the real shift is happening in the lives of everyday people without an ounce of reflexivity. Google has become the go-to person for questions about health symptoms. Yahoo! Local has replaced the Yellow Pages for providing insight about local restaurants. People have connected around all sorts of common ground to share everything from recipes to confessions of secrets that have been long held. Elderly citizens are jumping online to do their genealogy research and diaspora communities are conversing across geographical boundaries. With the vast majority of Americans online, the content of Web 1.0 has been ubiquitously integrated with the social technologies of Web 2.0 to provide a seamless experience for all sorts of people. Our society has become fundamentally networked. People are sharing content and creating culture along the way. So what does this mean? Are practices evolving or is it simply the underlying architecture that is shifting? Why have common adult practices been invisible as they go digital while teen practices continue to provoke moral panics as new technologies are incorporated into them? In this talk, Boyd will seek to step out of our techno-centric worldview and dive into the everyday practices that are affected by the rise of Web 2.0 technologies. By unpacking the magic, Boyd will try to shed new light on the implications of the systems that we develop and analyze the ways in which architectural shifts are affecting the way we live.

"From Pixels to Plastic" - Matt Webb, Director, Schulze & Webb. Things of solid material and electronics are getting easier and cheaper to sculpt and manufacture. The maker culture shares its expertise in ever-broadening communities. Rapid prototyping machines and software are allowing small, agile companies to apply their iterative methodologies to physical objects. Stuff itself is getting smart and social, with emerging standard components for networking, and new paradigms for interaction. Even the business model is there: folks have been paying for plastic longer than pixels. As the internet sensibility hits the stuff in our homes, our product world is undergoing a massive transformation. But once there, what will we build? Matt Webb is a technology consultant and designer at Schulze & Webb. Through the lens of the magic inside all things, he takes the lessons of the Web, social software, and interaction design, and spins up new products -- new social stuff -- for our connected and creative lives.