interview

The Engadget Interview: Niklas Zennstrom of Skype

November 8, 2004 by JD Lasica

For this week’s Engadget Interview, veteran journalist J.D. Lasica interviews Skype co-founder and CEO Niklas Zennström about the future of voice communication, using Skype through wi-fi handhelds, and the coming death of the telecom dinosaurs.

Please give me a quick backgrounder on Skype.

We were founded on Aug. 29, 2003, and now have 70 employees, about half in London and half in Tallinn, Estonia, and some in Luxembourg. With our work at Kazaa, we began seeing growing broadband connections and more powerful computers and more streaming multimedia, and we saw that the traditional way of communicating by phone no longer made a lot of sense. If you could utilize the resources of the end users’ computers, you could do things much more efficiently. [Read more…] about The Engadget Interview: Niklas Zennstrom of Skype

Jaron Lanier discusses virtual reality & music

October 4, 2002 by JD Lasica

The man who coined the term ‘virtual reality’ discusses art, science and life in the post-Sept. 11 world

jaron_lanier Jaron Lanier — artist, scientist, visionary, and coiner of the term “virtual reality” — spoke by cell phone with J.D. Lasica from a café in Tribeca, New York, on Oct. 4, 2002, in advance of the PopTech conference in Camden, Maine.

The PopTech program teases us with your presentation by saying only, A Musical Experience With Virtual Reality. What should we expect?

Oh, my, that’s news to me. There is a thing I do sometimes which involves using some of the equipment from virtual reality research and stage performance, and I try to make virtual worlds that are themselves musical instruments in some way or have instruments in them. It’s fun, and it works on stage, but I’m struggling with this question of how to make creative tools for invention inside virtual worlds, and these instruments are, for me, the most familiar and appropriate metaphor to start with. However, I was not planning to do it in Maine, the reason being that it’s kind of a big production, and it’s expensive and involves a lot of equipment, and I had been thinking of this as a much simpler affair. [Read more…] about Jaron Lanier discusses virtual reality & music

Interview with Howard Rheingold

September 12, 2002 by JD Lasica

The Internet pioneer looks at the effect of disruptive technologies on society, culture and the entertainment industry

Howard Rheingold — online pioneer, author of the best-sellers Virtual Reality and The Virtual Community — has a new book, Smart Mobs. He spoke with J.D. Lasica by phone on Sept. 12, 2002, in advance of the PopTech conference in Camden, Maine.

Howard Rheingold

You’ve called Smart Mobs your most important book. Why do you say so?

For a couple of reasons. The proximate reason is that I’ve written this at a time when a lot of people have some experience and knowledge of what happened to them and their industry and to the world as a result of the PC and the Internet. Maybe, because this is very early in what I think is the third big wave of technology-enabled change, we can apply some of what we’ve learned to shape rather than be the victims of circumstance.

Histories are important, and books that help people think about the wider issues are important. But books that are written at a time when people might still be able to do something about an issue have more importance. [Read more…] about Interview with Howard Rheingold

Quick links

Featured books

Subscribe