Tag: INTERVIEW

Just yesterday Mozilla released the first beta of Firefox 4 (Fennec) for Android and Maemo. We've reported on various versions of Firefox for Mobile, but this build is something else entirely -- this is actually Firefox 4, with the Fennec UI strapped on top. Externally, from an end-user point of view, this is business as usual: Mozilla has been trying to produce a working version of Fennec for ...

When I visited the Mozilla offices in Mountain View, California, I met with three very important Mozillans. Aza Raskin, Creative Lead of Firefox; Vladimir Vukićević, Principal Engineer of Firefox; and Nick Nguyen, Mozilla's Director of Add-ons. Together, they form the spearhead that drives both the creative vision and development of Firefox, a browser that's now used by over 400 million users. ...

Good afternoon! This week we're fortunate enough to have the Mozilla Director of Community, Asa Dotzler, here with us in the Download Squad bunker. His yappy little dog doesn't like it much down here -- but with soundproofed cells, who cares? After my last interview with his comrade Aza Raskin (what are the chances of having two people called Asa working in the same office?), I was keen to find ...

Today we have something different for you. You're not getting add-ons, beta releases or titbits from Mozilla Labs this week -- oh no, instead you're going to be treated to an interview with the Creative Lead of Firefox, Aza Raskin. It's not the frankest interview I've ever conducted -- there's definitely a little coyness; a couple of crinkled, twinkled corneas -- but it's still very ...

Okay, let me get this out of the way first: Pomplamoose are awesome!!! I'm a huge fan, so I was overjoyed when Jack and Nataly agreed to grant me an exclusive 15-minute interview, chock full of nerdy goodness and hard-core technical information on how they create their music. In case you don't know them, you should really go watch their YouTube channel. They're a musical duo, and they are getting ...

In theory, the Web is supposed to level the playing field for new musicians; its democratic nature lets them find their own audience, without having to beg for the approval of a record label. Of course, real life turns out to be much more complicated than the theory. It may not be a nice thing to say, but there is a lot of bad music being made. Of course that's very subjective, but by "bad" ...

SuperGlued is a music lover's dream. It's a one-stop shop for people who go to shows and gigs regularly, offering schedules, tickets, social networking and sharing tools. For instance, you could see who is playing locally, buy a ticket, meet people who are going to the show, later share your pics of the show and ultimately brag about (or remember) all the shows you went to and logged on ...

If you're a journalist, a social scientist or even just a blogger, you've probably been through the process of transcribing a recorded interview. I do a lot of transcription, but I had always done it the hard way: with a text editor open in one window, and my audio in the other. I should have just downloaded Transcriptions, which handles the whole transcription process in one app, with a lot of ...

Twine is a service that lets you track your interests and discover new content that you care about, based on the bookmarks of the other 100,000 users who use it. On top of that, there are a million people who just read Twine every month, which means it's on track to be bigger than Delicious soon. Learn more about the human-curated web straight from Twine's Nova Spivack at SXSW. ...

Chris Saad tells Grant how JS-Kit works as an advanced commenting system for your blog, including stuff like OpenID and Facebook Connect. But it's also more than that: it provides widgets for comments, ratings, polls and chat across a network of 600,000 blogs. Basically, JS-Kit is an all-purpose system to cross-pollinate your comments and other info across sites in the network. These aren't all ...

Grant Robertson catches up with the Data Portability project to see what they've accomplished in the past year. Turns out it's quite a lot. Internal governance mechanisms are in place, so the project can go forward and get more sites on board with its vision of interoperability and user control of data. If you don't know what Data Portability is and does, this video is a good primer. ...

Download Squad's fearless lead blogger, Grant Robertson, has got his hands full in another interview from SXSW. Grant gathered a group that represents everything you need to run your small business or freelance practice, from tracking your expenses, to invoicing clients, to managing your contacts. Check out this interview to learn more about what Shoeboxed, Freshbooks, Outright and Batchblue can ...

Grant talks to the team from Rudder, a new financial-tracking service that sounds a lot like Mint.com. The Rudder guys tell him how they distinguish themselves from Mint by focusing on planning for the future instead of tracking the past. Learn about the cool features that let Rudder turn finances into a game that you play with yourself. Can financial management seriously be fun? Find out in ...

Download Squad's Grant Robertson has been interviewing up a storm down at South by Southwest. He just hooked up with Micah Baldwin of Lijit to talk about how blogs and trusted friend networks can lead to more relevant, more personal search results. The biggest surprise to me was that Lijit isn't supported by Wordpress yet. Micah's encouraging everyone to email Automattic and get them to change ...

I'll give Brad a pass on being a tad premature with the WordPress 2.7's announcement, because I know that he -- like many of us who use WordPress to power our self-hosted blogs -- was just super-excited about the new release. Well, the wait is over and the official release for WordPress 2.7 is now available from WordPress.org. WordPress 2.7, named "Coltrane" in honor of the Jazz legend, is a ...