(Hear the MP3 version with additional commentary in beautiful monophonic audio.)

New Programs Last Week

Listed in increasing order of listener rating.

• JC Herz – Flickr for Satellites (rated 2.4 by listeners) The military often uses overlays on top of satellite images for strategic purposes. However, the same images can also be used for civilian purposes, in cases such as monitoring reconstruction activity in regions hit by disaster. JC Herz discusses how these "Flickr for satellite" images are used in combination with geographic data-mining to extract enormously detailed area-specific information to save lives in war zones and rebuild towns in devastated areas.
• Eddy Cue — The Video iPod (2.4) It’s hard to know what’s more significant about Apple’s video iPod. Is it the hardware — thinner device, more storage, larger screen and video for the same price — or is it the deals that Apple struck with Disney/ABC for television content? Host Larry Magid grills Eddy Cue, the VP of iTunes at Apple, to try and find out what the secret sauce might be that has given Apple a 75% marktet share in portable audio players despite what should be competitive devices from other vendors.
• Richard Oste (2.8) On BioTech Nation, Dr, Moira Gunn interviews Dr. Richard Oste, Food Chemistry professor at Lund University. They talk about the widespread prevalence of lactose intolerance and the new science which offers an alternative for everything from milk to ice cream.
• Legal Tips: What You Can Get Away With (3.0) As blogging becomes more mainstream, bloggers need to be aware of the legal implications of their work. What are your rights as a blogger, what can you write about legally and what should you avoid? At BlogHer 2005, moderator Jennifer Collins speaks with Lauren Gelman and Wendy Seltzer about legal issues facing bloggers.
• John Smart – Accelerating Change 2005 (3.3) We are all ambassadors to the future — this is the guiding principle behind the Accelerating Change conferences. In this opening address, kicking off the IT Conversations of this terrific event, organizer John Smart introduces the speakers presenting and the ideas discussed at the conference. For early access to our audio files, see our new QuickCast service.
• Ray Kurzweil (3.4) Moira is on-stage with prolific inventor Ray Kurzweil. You know him best as the inventor of speech recognition systems and music synthesizers. In more recent years he’s moved his focus to artificial intelligence, human consciousness and biological intelligence. They talk about his latest book: "The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology."
• SDForum’s SearchSIG – Media Search (3.4) Audio is exploding on the internet, and now even video is becoming easier to create, download and view. However, finding the content you want to consume is still a challenge. Join IT Conversations’ own Doug Kaye as he talks with Evan Williams of ODEO, David Marks of Loomia, Eric Rice of Audioblog and Jeff Karnes of Yahoo! at SDForum about the current state of search for audio and video.

The O’Reilly Pick of the Week:

This week’s IT Conversations/O’Reilly Pick of the Week is a new program from OSCON 2005:

Paul Graham – An OSCON 2005 Keynote Paul Graham, popular essayist and Lisp programmer, discusses what business can learn from open source. According to him, it’s not about Linux or Firefox, but the forces that produced them. He delves into the reasons why open source is able to produce better software, why traditional workplaces are actually harmful to productivity and the reason why professionalism is overrated.