From the first day at Gnomedex
Aside from all the oo-ing and ah-ing over seeing the "celebrities of the blogosphere" in the halls of the Gnomedex conference, the major news from the first day seems to have been Microsoft's announcement that it is building RSS support into IE7 and Windows Longhorn, the next version of Windows due out at some as-yet-unspecified time in the future. In this entry at the IE Blog Dean Hachamovitch, who made the presentation that revealed the news, gives a one page summary of the significance, as he sees it, of what this development might mean to developers and users. And the 58 minute video, which was shot by Robert Scoble of the Channel 9 team, at this link shows some of the people involved in the project (including Dean) and provides a more in-depth explanation of it along with a few views of how it might look in IE7.

And James Prudente, our intrepid representative at the conference, doing his best impression of Kermit the Frog as the ace on-site reporter with microphone in hand (I don't know whether he's wearing a trench coat and frumpled hat with a press pass in the hat band, but I like the image) contributed five, count 'em, FIVE different podcasts from yesterday's session. In this one, just after the Microsoft announcement, James gives his impression and assessment of the news for about 9 minutes. Here's the link to the show notes he mentions in this podcast.

In this one-minute podcast, he captures the moment when Dave Winer and Adam Curry shake hands on stage, which elicited a round of applause from the audience because it seemed to signify a truce in their not-too-hidden "feud." (I'd explain what the feud is about, but it's not worth the effort, in my opinion.)

In a three-minute podcast about conversational podcasting, he gives a glimpse of where he sees podcasting going. In many ways this is one of the more important of the podcasts he has done from the conference so far, because it reveals a vision of what is possible but not yet being done in many podcasts.

This podcast recounts a hallway encounter with Adam Curry who, not realizing that James was the developer of MixCast Live, recommends his competitor's product.

Here, James interviews Spencer Nick, a recent convert to the Mac OS who runs a web site called TachyonXero, about podcasting and their experience at Gnomedex.

Listening to all these podcasts and watching the video at Channel 9 will occupy a considerable amount of your time, but doing so will also give you a sense of what it is like to attend one of these events. So if you have the time, watch and listen. I think you'll find it interesting. I know I did.
- posted by Perry @ 7:52 AM