Om and Niall PodSessions

Last night Om and I sat down with Matt Mullenweg, lead developer of open-source blogging software WordPress and a recent founder of Automattic. Automattic is a software services company centered around the WordPress blogging platform. This podcast is a little geeky and aimed at entrepreneurs just getting started and in need of technical advice.

What does it take to launch a successful startup? In this week's PodSession we discuss identifying your customers, how to build to scale, how to decide on a programming language (Rails vs. PHP vs. ?), how to design for your users, and what concepts (such as spam) you cannot afford to overlook. Matt jumps in with some stories from the front line of software development with close to 200,000 active users on hosted blog site WordPress.com and about 40 million blog spam messages blocked on Akismet.

During the podcast we mention Cal Henderson's new book, Building Scalable Web Sites, about designing hardware and software systems for web applications with Cal's work on Flickr as a solid example.

Om recently wrote an article for Business 2.0 titled How to build a bulletproof startup. Also mentioned in the podcast are PHP, the Ruby on Rails web framework, script.aculo.us JavaScript library, and Eclipse and TextMate code editors.

This week's PodSession, Startup Do's and Don'ts, is 22 minutes in length, a 10 MB download.

Posted by Niall Kennedy at 9:07 AM | Permalink

In this week's podcast Om and I talk about the penetration of modern web ideas across borders and board rooms. How do so-called "Web 2.0" technologies apply to a world outside buzz-heavy Silicon Valley and consumer-focused startups? What are the business opportunities available for companies who understand both worlds and mesh together the best of both sides?

Om spoke at last week's Mesh conference in Toronto, Canada. The conference drew a lot of fresh faces and new ideas from Canada and nearby areas. Enterprise Ireland hosted a similar event a few weeks ago named Web2Ireland. Countries and companies are realizing the ideas of the modern web have applications on their own home turf and within their speciality sectors to help change productivity, work flow, and community interaction.

This week's PodSession, International Next Net, is 23 minutes long, an 11 MB download.

Posted by Niall Kennedy at 10:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (1)

The next generation of video game consoles and games will be interconnected and ever-changing. Consumers will purchase a gaming console, bring it home, and connect it to their home network to access updates, new content, new opponents, and new shopping experiences. In this week's PodSession Om and I talk about the current state of the video game industry as well as the new demand created for servers, networking gear, software, and home connectivity as new devices make their way into the home.

Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony are showing off their new gaming consoles this week at E3 in Los Angeles. Xbox 360, Sony PS3, and Nintendo Wii feature online hubs for users and their games, increasing revenue opportunities for the console makers as well as smaller content producers. The new consoles are increasing demand for high definition televisions and always-on broadband connections. Linksys just introduced a network optimizer for gaming. Millions of game players online at any given time has also increased the demand for large server farms with fast response times around the world.

Portable and mobile phone gaming are also picking up speed, with public WiFi hotspot and 3G cellular technologies enabling gameplay in new locations. Nintendo's GameBoy DS includes WiFi and free access to the Internet and online gaming from McDonalds, Barnes and Noble, and other locations. Microsoft just announced Live Anywhere, a new online gaming initiative including Windows Mobile, Java, and BREW mobile handsets.

We talk about these topics and more in this week's PodSession, Video games gunning for bandwidth. The podcast is 21 minutes in length, a 10 MB download

Posted by Niall Kennedy at 9:27 PM | Permalink

Om and I attended Startup School last Saturday, a one-day event at Stanford organized by seed funders Y Combinator. Entrepreneurs shared lessons learned in between sessions from supportive services such as lawyers, venture capitalists, and a journalist.

Did we learn anything? Lawyers are excited about the many new patent opportunities for startups, a supposedly necessary tool to bargain against the patents of others. Moonlighting as an entrepreneur is in, creating new prototypes with a low burn-rate. Y Combinator provides seed money to young entrepreneurs, enough for about 3 months of development.

Om and I discuss our favorite and least favorite speeches from Startup School and some of the entrepreneurs we met along the way. What does it take to be a successful startup in 2006? Are you building your company around a product or a feature? What does it take to get the attention of a journalist?

This week's PodSession, Startup School, is 24 minutes in length, a 11 MB download.

Posted by Niall Kennedy at 8:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)