Wikinvest is a wiki destination for investors with a wealth of in-depth and practical information on companies, business trends and concepts. I sat down with Parker Conrad and Mike Sha, the co-founders of Wikinvest, who describe why and how Wikinvest is useful to investors followed by a tour of ...

Ponoko is a platform for creative minds, allowing them to design and create physical objects that can then be sold in Ponoko’s marketplace. David ten Have, co-founder and ceo of Ponoko, tells me how his project came together, how it works and shows me some of the things ...

Every food establishment in the United States is inspected by local government officials for their levels of hygiene. As a consumer, it is often hard to discover the results of these inspections although it is very much public information. CleanScores solves this problem by standardizing the scoring of food ...

If you want to create a startup business, you’ve got to create (and follow through on) plans. From creating a business plan, tracking financials to following through on goals, PlanHQ makes this process possible and painless. I spoke with Tim Norton, CEO and founder of PlanHQ, who describes ...

It’s no surprise that online videos are growing in quantity, quality and audience reach. Podaddies helps video producers make money from their video creations through an advertising network in conjunction with the major video hosting sites. I had lunch with Podaddies founders Nate Pagel, CEO, and Robert Boyle, CTO, ...

In the United States, Bebo may not be a household word, but in the UK, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia it is well known. In those countries, Bebo is the most popular social network, attracting some 34 million registered users globally. I sat down with husband-and-wife founders Michael ...

Kiptronic is a platform that gives podcasters, videobloggers and advertisers a way to dynamically insert ads into any downloadable media. Kiptronic works with most major media hosting platforms and a whole range of big brand advertisers. I sat down with Jonathan Cobb, Kiptronic’s founder and chief technology officer, at ...

This is a question and answer session with Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, that I conducted for a workshop on the Transparent Federal Budget project that took place in Austin, Texas last month. The Transparent Federal Budget project is a collaborative, open effort to bring greater ...

There are many different mobile phones out there and almost all of them support some sort of interesting media capabilites. Rather than spending a couple bucks downloading a ringtone or wallpaper image from your cellular provider, you can use ToneThis to do it for free and with your own ...

I stopped by the VoiceCon conference in San Francisco recently and caught up with Mark Spencer, the man behind the popular open source telephony platform, Asterisk. Spencer, CTO of digium, also created the popular Linux-based instant messenger client, Gaim. Spencer talks about the history of Asterisk ...

Joomla! is a robust and highly customizable open source content management system. While at the recent Linuxworld in San Francisco, I spoke with Joomla! lead developers Johan Janssens and Louis Landry, who shed a bit of light on what Joomla! is all about and who uses it, ...

OpenMoko is an interesting project that is an open linux-based mobile communications platform. Primarily an open source operating system and applicatiion environment, when combined with a hardware device by FIC, it quickly feels like an open threat to the Apple iPhone. While at Linuxworld, I spoke ...

Ubuntu is a GNU/Linux distribution that is quite useable and easy to install. Based on debian and GNOME, ubuntu offers extensive hardware recognition combined with a functional desktop environment complete with a suite of office applications. While at Linuxworld in San Francisco, I had a chat ...

While in Las Vegas recently for DEFCON, I had a chance to sit down with my pal Srini Kumar, the proprieter and meme crafter behind Unamerican.com and StickerNation. Srini, who recently published Sticker Nation: The Big Book of Subversive Stickers, Volume I, describes his intentions and ...

ClickUni is an interesting service that gives university clubs and social groups the tools to manage their membership lists, events, newsletters and organizational network details. It is the brainchild of two Oxford University students David Langer, managing director, and Andy Young, techincal director. They were recently in Silicon Valley ...

Online games are big business and people love chess. it’s no wonder that web 2.0 goodness has come to a game that has been loved for centuries. Chesspark is a platform for playing chess online with other players or against Robopawn, a virtual cyborg competitor. Strategic advisor and serial ...

Social networking is at the heart of many of the services and sites on the Internet these days. If your business has a community you will probably want a social network of your own. That is exactly what Leverage Software does, they create private-labelled social networks. I spoke with ...

Gleamd is a brand new service, still in invite-only beta, that is geared towards tracking and ranking people. Users create bios of famous and not-so-famous people and then others can vote on them, much like digging works on Digg. Gleamd’s creator Matt McInerney was in town last week, ...

SeeqPod is an interesting music discovery service that provides a way to find most any linked music files on the Internet. You can quickly build playlists from found music, discover similar music based on genetic similarities and share your playlists by embedding them in your blog. SeeqPod also has ...

Live webcasting has come a long way since the days of CU-SeeMe. Now, with the proliferation of broadband access, inexpensive data center hosting, and cheap or built-in webcams, live webcasting is making a comeback. Ustream.tv is a Palo Ato-based company that does this well by allowing anyone with ...

illumio is an interesting desktop application and Web service that helps you discover answers and find resources by intelligently asking other illumio users for the answer. David Gilmour, CEO and founder of Tacit Software, explains how illumio performs its magic and gives me a demo.

Movie and TV fan sites and entertainment blogs attract huge engaged audiences. Those are audiences that Hollywood and the entertainment industry are constantly trying to influence. The blogosphere wants access to their favorite entertainment creators and promotional materials. Blogger Reps is brand new company founded by Marjorie Kase, president ...

The blogosphere is a noisy place filled with many interconnected conversations on all sorts of disperate topics. Tailrank, which calls itself a memetracker, is a service that tracks the zeitgeist of conversations in the blogosphere. I sat down with Kevin Burton, Tailrank’s CEO and founder, and Jonathan Moore, brilliant ...

Email spam is a problem we have all grown to loathe. Boxbe is an interesting service that puts the user in conrol of their email inbox. Thede Loder, co-founder and president of Boxbe, tells me how his innovative service not only stops spam but allows you to charge email ...