Topic: The Internet and the World Wide Web

Phil Windley regularly holds CTO meetings where IT professionals discuss current events in technology. In this show he talks with four individuals who work in and write about computing. The group reviews the current status of Twitter, whether companies are using blogging in useful ways, and other similar topics.

Matt Webb is a technology consultant, designer, and principal in the design firm Schulze & Webb. In an engaging and entertaining presentation, he explains how internet concepts can transcend the realm of pixels to inspire new products that will meet the expectations of a creative and networked generation that has grown up with the internet. Blurring the boundaries between hardware, software and the web can lead to astounding creativity.

OpenDNS is the world's largest and fastest-growing DNS service. The service is used by hundreds of thousands of schools, businesses and homes as they navigate the Internet, blocking phishing sites and also the power to block adult sites, proxies and individual domains. David Ulevitch, the company's founder and CEO, joins Phil and Scott to discuss the technical issues of DNS and how OpenDNS operates.

How does Google come up with meaningful search results for a query like "B&B AB"? It's harder than you might think. Udi Manber, who heads the core search group at Google, discusses the challenges of interpreting queries and how Google handles them. This entertaining talk has plenty of real world examples.

Adobe's Apollo is a cross-platform runtime that allows a user to run a Web application on his desktop. Isn't that what a Web browser already does? But Apollo can work offline. You disconnect from the Internet and you are still able to use the Web application. It detects the presence of a network and synchronises your data. If you're a Web developer, and you want to develop for Apollo, there's almost nothing new that you need to learn. Ed Rowe of Adobe Systems puts to practice, the wisdom, "Show, don't tell!" in this demo of Apollo.

More and more Web sites are being rewritten as Ajax applications and traditional desktop software is rapidly moving to the Web via Ajax. But, often, this transition is being made with reckless disregard for security. Ajax developers desperately need guidance on securing their applications. Billy Hoffman, co-author of Ajax Security, joins Phil and Scott to discuss the book.

Stefano Mazzocchi, the creator of Apache Cocoon, is now an MIT research scientist working on SIMILE, a series of projects that take a pragmatic, grassroots approach to bootstrapping the semantic web. The SIMILE team has learned that you can't mandate coherence. But when people can create and mix data to suit their own tastes and purposes, it may emerge.

Richard Wallis is a technology evangelist for Talis, a UK-based provider of library systems which has chosen to base its next-generation platform on semantic web technologies. The company doesn't talk about its mission in those terms, though. In a white paper, it describes the mission of the new platform as: "Harnessing mass collaboration on a global scale."

While the Internet is quickly becoming an indispensable part of our lives and business, it still remains a challenging environment to achieve a secure and private experience. In this moderated panel from the Trust Online Conference, Lise Buyer leads an insightful discussion of trust with the help of an extremely qualified panel. Scott Charney, Mozelle Thompson, and Dr. James Ransome share their experience while addressing some of the fundamental challenges of managing risk on the Internet.

Greg Whisenant, founder of CrimeReports.com, wants every city to make its crime data usefully available to citizens in the same kinds of ways that ChicagoCrime.org famously does. In this conversation with Jon Udell, Greg Whisenant describes a software product that can enable police departments to easily deliver online crime mapping and analysis. The future of law enforcement, he believes, will be a citizen/government collaboration enabled by this kind of social application.