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RizWords - Daily Politics and Tech
If you need a quick update of what's interesting in Politics and Tech News, tune in every weekday!

A Conversation with Plentitube's Jon Labes
by guesswho@rizzn.com (Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins)
7 Jul 2008 at 8:49pm
Sean and I had the rare opportunity of unmasking a company today on Mashable Conversations. Our guest on the show today was Jon Labes, the founder of a new video marketplace called Plentitube (pronounced like "plentitude, if you change the 'd' to a 'b'). Jon is probably best known as being the creative mind behind Wallstrip, the financial podcast that was later famously sold to CBS Interactive for a tidy sum. Through his experience in New Media production as well as the experience of taking a show like that from concept to completion to exit, he was made aware of the wide variety of issues that arise for successful independent video prod...
Extra: Twitter, Identi.ca and July 4
by guesswho@rizzn.com (Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins)
4 Jul 2008 at 5:03pm
First of all, if you're American, and you're reading this - I have to ask why? The web is like a ghost town today. There isn't much going on via Twitter. FriendFeed is unusually slow, and about six or so of our two trillion readers showed up to leave a comment today. It's July 4! Independence Day! Go out and have a brew and a hot dog! For all our non-American friends and readers, and the six US readers who have nothing else better to do, Sean P. Aune and I have recorded a special episode of Mashable Conversations today. We scoured the web and couldn't find a guest to come in today, so we reverted to a topic that had particularly irk...
A Conversation with Filtrbox's Ari Newman
by guesswho@rizzn.com (Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins)
2 Jul 2008 at 2:19am
With the proliferation of information sources and ways to read them, it seems counter-intuitive that one of the hotter topics in the blogosphere is still aggregation, discovery and syndication. Yet here we are, yet another day, yet another Twitter story, yet another FriendFeed story, and yet another Digg story. Don't get me wrong - I too have a obsessive fascination with the nuanced myriad of way we can move our 1's and 0's around. That's why when I got a ping from Ari Newman, founder and president of company making an AI-powered news filtration service, my ears perked up. I had a chance to bring him on the Mashable Conversations podcast s...
A Conversation with Cramsters Robert Angarita and Aaron Hawkey
by guesswho@rizzn.com (Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins)
25 Jun 2008 at 9:04pm
Is there anything more frustrating than working on your homework late at night, you get stuck on a problem and there is no one you can get a hold of for assistance? This is where Cramster, a site to help you with your homework, comes into play. If your homework is in the fields such as math, science, engineering and so on, this is the perfect site for when you get stuck in those late night cram sessions. You go on the site, pose your question, and instead of just getting an answer, users are encouraged to explain the steps they took to arrive at their answer so that you can actually learn from them. Some of the problems I took a peek a...
A Conversation with Dredg's Gavin Hayes
by guesswho@rizzn.com (Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins)
5 Jun 2008 at 12:38am
Lots of people have been letting others know on Twitter what they're listening to as they work through their day, but what if you could also include the actual MP3 for people to join in and listen along? This is the idea behind Blip, a new service from Fuzz. that allows you to microblog ala Twitter, but with the added feature of using an MP3 search to embed the song you are currently listening to into the post so that others can check it out. Unlike SeeqPod, which has run afoul of legal questions, Blip is "Obviously it is legal and it's covered by the DMCA," according to Fuzz CEO, Jeff Yasuda. One of the most amazing things about Blip is...
A Conversation with Matt Mullenweg
by guesswho@rizzn.com (Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins)
29 May 2008 at 7:00am
What do you do if you have a chunk of time slotted to hang out and talk with the creator of WordPress and CEO of Automattic? You do what everyone else does in the Web 2.0 world - you talk about Twitter! This Friday past, Matt took some time out to hang out on Mashable Conversations to chat with me and you guys, not because he had anything to pitch me, but because he's a genuinely nice guy who when he says offhandedly at a WordCamp that he wouldn't mind coming on your podcast at some point, gladly obliges. Given that we had no particular agenda of topics to talk about, we chatted briefly about what's in store for the next version of Wor...
Mashable Extra - Bye Bye Birdie
by guesswho@rizzn.com (Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins)
28 May 2008 at 10:55pm
Twitter is down. I say that and it sounds like I'm playing word association games (I say Twitter, you say... down, that's right). It's unfortunate, given the inordinate amount of time people like us spend on the service that it's become so downright unavailable recently. There has been much more communication from the Twitterpeople with regards to what parts are up and down, and we're definitely glad that they're doing something about fixing it. On the other hand, contrary to the best predictions of Robert Scoble this on our weekend podcast, people just aren't happy to know why the service is down - they want it back up. A Tale of Roma...
A Conversation with Chamillionaire
by guesswho@rizzn.com (Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins)
28 May 2008 at 8:45pm
In 2006, rap artist Chamillionaireâs track âRidinâ became iconic in American pop culture, being infamously parodied by Weird Al Yankovic ("White and Nerdy"), becoming the most downloaded ringtone of all-time, and ultimately winning a Grammy for Best Rap Song. However, none of that was coincidence or pure luck. At the Digital Hollywood conference in Los Angeles, Pete got an opportunity to talk with the artist about how he uses social media to better connect with his fans and ultimately sell more music. Chamillionaire also talks about how the music industry needs new metrics to determine whatâs popular, since album sales are meaningless in...
A Conversation with Google's Kevin Marks
by guesswho@rizzn.com (Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins)
27 May 2008 at 10:09pm
Google, tomorrow, opens up the Moscone Center for the Google I/O conference with about 100 technical sessions designed to educate the developers of the world interested in making their applications ready for the Web Platform. I got the opportunity last week to speak to Kevin Marks (Google Developer Advocate), who took the time to speak a bit about the Google I/O conference, what attendees can expect (particularly on the social track). The goal of OpenSocial and all this support for Google developers is to really develop the social web, which is part of the larger goal of growing the web as a whole. Any user of Twitter doesn't need me to ...
A Conversation with Comcast-Plaxo's John McCrea
by guesswho@rizzn.com (Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins)
15 May 2008 at 9:09pm
I had a chance to talk to John McCrea today regarding the acquisition of his company by Comcast, and while a lot of the raw information is probably found elsewhere or in other analysis, the way he laid it all out to me showed me exactly how much sense the joining of these two organizations really made. This is a return visit for him, and he and I always have fun when he's on the show. Given that Comcast isn't a huge shareholder in the Web 2.0 property market, a lot of questions were going around as to what this could possibly integrate with, how much integration Plaxo would make within the Comcast organization. As it turns out, this buyou...
A Conversation with Revision 3's Sarah Lane
by guesswho@rizzn.com (Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins)
13 May 2008 at 5:34am
I had a chance last week to chat with Sarah Lane, a host of the variety show on Revision 3's network called PopSiren.  It's essentially a collection of women that talk about things ranging from the "DIY world, to science with a dash of random cool stuff," as Sarah put it. The weekly show is 10 episodes in, and is all about attempting to bring a fresh perspective to Internet TV. One of the tricks Rev3 uses to keep budgets under control? Hat sharing.  It's less unhygenic than it sounds.  For instance, Sarah Lane is not only the host of PopSiren, but the director of production at Revision 3. The VP of Sales, for instance, will occasionally ...
A Conversation with Twing's Scott Germaise
by guesswho@rizzn.com (Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins)
9 May 2008 at 2:10am
Twing is a relatively new forum search tool that launched back in mid-March.  Kristen recently reviewed them, and came to a lot of the same conclusions I did this week, as I sat down with Scott Germaise on an episode of Mashable Conversations this week and gave it a good once over: I was happy to see a rather extensive filtering sidebar that's present for narrowing down all of your search results. Modify existing searches by category, forum name, exact phrase inclusion or exclusion, and more. This is helpful in the sense that it lets you sift through the forums without having to read through all of them. I hate sifting through forums in o...
A Conversation with Canaan's Izhar Shay
by guesswho@rizzn.com (Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins)
7 May 2008 at 3:22am
It's not often we do news concerning gadgets, but there's been a few interesting social media bits of technology stories over the last few days.  The terrestrial radio inspired by the web was one sort of Web 2.0 inspired bit of technology, but there are a number of social media related device companies that have come across my radar recently. One gadget maker in particular was brought to my attention by the name of Prime Sense.  Israeli venture capital firm Canaan Digital Ventures recently just sank $20.4 million into a company called Prime Sense along with Gemini Israel Funds and Genesis Partners. Prime Sense is an Israeli developer of i...
A Conversation with New Relic's Lew Cirne
by guesswho@rizzn.com (Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins)
1 May 2008 at 12:01am
New Relic, Inc. is an organization not only dedicated to disproving the myth that Ruby on Rails as a web development environment can't scale, but also an organization involved in developing tools to assist in scalability and bringing them to the developer landscape. This afternoon, New Relic comes out of stealth status with the grand announcement of $3.5 million in first-round venture financing from Benchmark Capital. I had a chance to speak to founder and CEO of New Relic, Lew Cirne, a bit about his organization and exactly where these rumors of unscalability come from. For most of us here at Mashable, the biggest, most well known...
A Conversation with Google's Tom Stockey
by guesswho@rizzn.com (Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins)
28 Apr 2008 at 11:30pm
The Google I/O event is coming up at the end of May here, and it's set to be a defining moment for a lot of Web 2.0, particularly the social web.  Just about every big name in the social networking world and at the OpenSocial side of things at Google is due to speak or be present during this event designed to educated and propagate further development on the OpenSocial platform. Google Product Manager Tom Stockey stopped by at Mashable Conversations to give us a bit of insight as to not only who and what will be at Google I/O, but a bit of insight as to the guiding philosophies of those involved in the group.  It's a quick conversation, b...