TinyTube is a very small startup founded by Allen Day, who tells me how TinyTube is bringing massive amounts of video to your tiny mobile screen. His service transcodes and proxies video content from several of your favortite video-hosting sights. Allen gives me a demo of how easy it ...

Satisfaction is people powered customer service. For smart companies, their passionate customers support each other in ways that companies alone can’t provide. Satisfaction is a San Francisco-based startup that facilitates this relationship, putting passionate users of products and services in the driver’s seat of customer service. I stopped by ...

Competetive robots are a big thing these days and nowhere is that more evident than at Robogames in San Francisco. Robogames is an annual event that attracts robot makers and enthusiasts from all over the world who compete for bragging rights. Simone Davalos, co-founder and organizer of Robogames, gives ...

Skitch is a fun and interesting application that easily allows you to capture an image or screenshot and quickly annotate as well as share it. This is a well thought out application that is equally useful for Web designers and for the busy executive on a conference call. I ...

The Sanyo Xacti digital video camera has become a favorite among videobloggers and home movie enthusiasts. Sanyo has just released a waterproof version of this camera called the Xacti E1. Sanyo had a launch party for their new submersible camera in San Francisco, where I spoke with John ...

Sexerati is a look at the future of smart sex. I sit down with Melissa Gira, the founder and editor Sexerati, who gives me a peek into what this future might look like. Sexerati is a blog, a video podcast and resource for future dating tips, reviews of ...

When it comes to clothing and fashion, one doesn’t usually think of open source ideology and community collaboration. Not true with the founders of BurdaStyle, Nora Abousteit and Benedikta von Karaisl. Nora and Benedikta have created a destination for sharing clothing patterns, step-by-step fashion making instructions, a passionate community ...

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a black box to many people. Eric Wolfram is an SEO consultant in New York City, successfully helping many businesses receive increased and relevant traffic from Google. Eric and I discuss why SEO is important, and he shares some tips and tricks to ...

Transparency in government is a noble and ever evolving notion, one that the League of Technical Voters is bringing to the federal budget. Silona Bonewald, founder of the League, outlines her project to make the federal budget process more transparent and accountable. Through open source tools and crowdsourced ...

Most travel sites give you the world, but don’t specialize on the local. 71Miles is a travel site that does just that. Over lunch, I chat with Adam Rugel, founder, and John Vlahides, executive editor and co-founder of 71Miles. Adam and John tell me how 71Miles concentrates ...

I return to the Maker Faire in San Mateo, Calif., the showcase for inventors, makers and geeks. I pay a visit to Jeremy Boyle, a maker of pneumatic MIDI-controlled musical instruments, and Nemo Gould, creator of stylish kinetic “Fauxbot” sculptures.

This week we’re doing a couple special LunchMeet shows from the Maker Faire in San Mateo, Calif. The Maker Faire is an annual gathering of inventors, makers, crafters and geeks who come together to showcase their projects. For today’s show, I talk with Cris Benton, maker of aerial ...

Forget ever having to remember a password again. Sxipper is a Firefox plugin that let’s you control and securely manage your online identity information. While at the recent Internet Identity Workshop held in Mountain View, Calif., I sat down with Weston Triemstra, developer and product manager for

User-centric identity is about working relationships and services between individuals and retailers, employers, membership bodies and organizations of any kind. To learn more about user-centric identity, I stopped by the Internet Identity Workshop being held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. I sat town with ...

I caught up with Sean Penn (no, not the actor), vice president of Roxio Labs, at a recent promotional event at the House of Shields in San Francisco. Roxio Labs is Roxio’s sandbox for new beta software, previews and freeware. Sean shows me two products from the lab, ...

Tangler is an interesting service centered around discussion groups. The heart of the service is similar to threaded discussion forums but with lots of AJAX goodness, real time notification and easy rich media integration. I had lunch with Tangler’s Mick Liubinskas, chief customer officer, and Erik Miller, chief financial ...

Roxio, the company known for it’s CD and DVD burning software, has introduced a home video transcoding product called Crunch. I recently caught up with Vito Salvaggio, VP of product management for Roxio’s Mac products division, at the House of Shields in San Francisco. Vito shows how me ...

SNiPiTRON is an interesting service geared toward academics and researchers who want to collect Web pages, photos, videos, PDF documents and other files into online projects. Ryan Rouland, one of SNiPiTRON’s founders, stopped by the Hat Factory to have awesome sandwiches from Hazel’s Kitchen and to take ...

I dropped by the San Francisco offices of Attendio, an events discovery and recommendation service. I sat down with Attendio’s CEO, Gerardo Capiel, and CTO, Eric Hansen, to get the scoop on how they differ from other online event calendar services. Attendio goes beyond seeing just what events your ...

To the average Web surfer, SplashCast is an embedded multimedia slideshow viewer. To a publisher, SplashCast is a distribution platform for pushing out audio, video, photos, PowerPoint, PDF documents and RSS feeds to blogs and other websites. At the recent Podcast Hotel, I caught up with Alex Williams, ...

I sat down with Aaron Wadler and Ryan Bailey, founders of Viddyou, to find out how Viddyou differs from other online video services. They tell me it’s about you and your conversations. Viddyou is a social network that is rooted in video at every turn. Profiles, posts, comments and ...

There’s a plethora of online video hosting and sharing services out in the wild these days. Viddler stands out among the crowd due to its robust timeline commenting, ease of use, inline recording and community features. I catch up with Colin Devroe, community evangelist for Viddler at the Web ...

I visited the shiny new offices of Jaman, an interesting destination site for cinema-quality independent and international films. Chris Baum, senior product manager, and Ji Kim, senior interaction designer, tell us how Jaman is different from short-form video services like YouTube. They give me a tour of their site ...

There are tens of thousands of independent music labels out there and IODA helps to effectively distribute and market their music to the online masses. I sat down with Corey Denis, Digital Marketing Manager for IODA, at IODA’s San Francisco office to find out how they do it. Corey ...

I stopped by the San Francisco offices of Underdog Pictures to have lunch with Nic Hill, director of Truth In Numbers, a new documentary in production on the Wikipedia phenomenon. Nic shares his inspiration for creating this documentary and recounts some of the experiences he and his ...