Category: Interviews

First Crack #126. Hardware Startups with Matt Bauer

PedalBrain‘s Matt Bauer and I talk about the challenges, capital requirements, and multi-year timelines inherent in bringing a retail hardware product to market. He talks about the recent epiphany he had with PedalBrain and how that enlightenment has helped him through these challenges. Listen to Hardware Startups with Matt Bauer. [31 min]

First Crack #125. Open Font Licensing with David Crossland

David Crossland (Cantarell font family, Open Font Library) and I dive into font licensing – specifically open font licensing – and the cultural benefits of open licensing. Links and topics we mention: Open Clip Art Library Creative Commons and the CC0 License GNU Public License with Font Exception SIL International SIL Open Font License MIT […]

First Crack #123. Building CitizenWausau.com with Dino and Andy

CitizenWausau is one of the coolest, homegrown citizen journalism projects I’ve seen since I’ve been looking for them. I called up Dino Corvino and Andy Laub, the editor and technologist respectively, to discuss the project, how it’s grown, and it’s relationship with more established media in a smaller city market.

First Crack 122. John Hoffoss on Usability and Network Security

John Hoffoss, a network security engineer at one of Minnesota’s larger institutions, and I dive into computer security, security versus usability, the insecurity of URL shorteners, and some of the reasons Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer are more often targets of security exploits than other platforms. Stay til the end for a discussion of the […]

First Crack 120. Wonderlick’s Tim Quirk on Truth Through Music

I’ve been a fan of Tim Quirk’s music for 20 years – easy. The playful melancholy in throughout his songwriting continually resonates with me. When he announced the new Wonderlick album was in the works and available for ‘name-your-price’ pre-order – I jumped on the opportunity. When I started hearing about how successful the campaign […]

First Crack 119. Justin Grammens on Mobile VOIP

I have a hypothesis that mobile VOIP over WiFi will replace mobile carriers for the majority of phone conversations within 5 years. For a reality check, I called up Justin Grammens of Localtone Interactive and Mobile Twin Cities. From the picture he paints, I think we’ll see this well within 5 years. Maybe 2. Projects […]