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Join Michael Levin in this video interview with Jonathan Schwartz, former Sun Microsystems CEO. "Jonathan Ian Schwartz (born October 20, 1965) is an American...
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Here’s a blast from the past. Wikipedia CTO Brion Vibber walks us through the beginnings of Wikipedia. Enjoy! Click here to hear the podcast.
Swampcast features Tim Westergren, Pandora CEOJoin Michael Levin in this Swampcast interview with Tim Westergren, Pandora CEO. Click here to listen. Photo credit: Gala
In 2007, Tim started touring the USA giving presentations about a new music service on the web called Pandora. I met Tim in Orlando. There's quite a bit of background about Pandora that Tim describes in this interview. He deferred to his CTO, Tom Conrad when I asked him about technical details. Tom and I did a Swampcast interview shortly after this one.
From Wikipedia:
In 1999 Westergren started Pandora Media along with two co-founders: Will Glaser and Jon Kraft. The Oakland, Calif., company went public in 2011,[3] reporting $138 million in revenue that fiscal year.
As an early project, Westergren and Glaser created the Music Genome Project, a mathematical algorithm to organize music.[1] As the company's chief strategy officer, Westergren spends the majority of his time traveling the nation and gathering feedback from Pandora Radio users. In 2010 he was listed by Time magazine as one among the 100 most influential people in the world.[4]
In April 2016, Pandora Media announced that Tim Westergren would replace Brian McAndrews as CEO. He had previously served as CEO and president from May 2002 to July 2004.[5]
In June 2017, he announced that he is going to step down as CEO.[6]"
This is one of the most deeply technical Swampcasts - fascinating!
https://codetown.com/profiles/blogs/pandora-swampcast-features-pand...
#pandora #tomconrad #swampcast #mikelevin
Here's a Swampcast featuring Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist. Enjoy!
Codetown is a social network. It's got blogs, forums, groups, personal pages and more! You might think of Codetown as a funky camper van with lots of compartments for your stuff and a great multimedia system, too! Best of all, Codetown has room for all of your friends.
Created by Michael Levin Dec 18, 2008 at 6:56pm. Last updated by Michael Levin May 4, 2018.
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Tracy Bannon's QCon AI NY 2025 talk revealed how the rise of AI agents risks amplifying common architectural failures. She emphasized the distinctions between bots, assistants, and agents, highlighting the need for governance, clear identity controls, and disciplined decision-making to address “agentic debt.” Bannon called for architects to apply foundational principles amid rapid AI adoption.
By Andrew Hoblitzell
In software development, success means going beyond meeting requirements. We must create products that surprise and delight users and are innovative, create impactful solutions, Ken Hughes said in the keynote “Connection is Everything”. AI can help us connect with customers and create better user experiences.
By Ben Linders
In a surprising move, AWS and Google Cloud have recently partnered to simplify multicloud networking, introducing a common standard and leveraging "AWS Interconnect - Multicloud" and "Google Cloud's Cross-Cloud Interconnect". The new option makes it easier for organizations to manage and secure workloads across both clouds, with Azure expected to join in 2026.
By Renato Losio
Kagi has released Orion 1.0, a web browser that features privacy by default, zero telemetry, and no integrated ad-tracking technology. Orion supports both Chrome and Firefox extensions and intentionally excludes AI from its core to prioritize security, privacy, and performance. Orion targets macOS and iOS, with upcoming Linux and Windows versions. Orion is based on WebKit.
By Bruno Couriol
Cactus, a Y Combinator-backed startup, enables local AI inference to mobile phones, wearables, and other low-power devices through cross-platform, energy-efficient kernels and a native runtime. It delivers sub-50ms time-to-first-token for on-device inference, eliminates network latency, and defaults to complete privacy.
By Sergio De Simone
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