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Robert Kaye

Biography

Robert Kaye is the Mayhem & Chaos Coordinator and creator of MusicBrainz, the music metadata commons. Find out more about him at Mayhem & Chaos Central.

Robert is a diehard mp3/ogg/vorbis fan dedicated to improving the digital audio experience. After studying Computer Engineering at Cal Poly he joined Xing Technology where he worked on the AudioCatalyst project. At EMusic, Robert worked on FreeAmp (now Zinf) and Obsequeiuem, one of the first web based mp3 jukeboxes.

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ETech: Mobile Phones Reveal the Behaviors of Places and People

March 13 2009

[Quinn managed to scoop me blogging about Tony Jebara's presentation! But after I chatted with her, we both agreed that I should continue with my blog post and see if I can augment her post a little.] Tony Jebara's presentation "Mobile Phones Reveal the Behaviors of Places and People" really… read more

ETech: Wrapup

March 13 2009

I've been attending ETech and the P2P conference that preceded ETech and this conference, and this year I've noticed the best gender balance ever. Granted this conference's focus has changed from the very geeky P2P and Web Services focus it started with and meandered through a host of topics to… read more

Uncommon Knowledge and Open Innovation: Building a Science Commons

March 12 2009

The first session I attended today was John Wilbanks' "Uncommon Knowledge and Open Innovation: Building a Science Commons" presentation. John talked about the process of establishing the Science Commons and how creating a science oriented commons presented unique challenges. John first pointed out that Metcalfe's Law works for both networked… read more

ETech: I Just Don't Trust You: How the Tech Community Can Reinvent Risk Ratings

March 11 2009

The "I Just Don't Trust You: How the Tech Community Can Reinvent Risk Ratings" presentation posited that the system for rating credit instruments is horribly broken. Right before Lehman Brothers crashed, Moody's credit rating agency gave Lehman Brothers a AAA credit rating. Moodys immediately down-rated Lehman Brothers after they crashed… read more

ETech: Priorities for a Greener World: If You Could Design Anything, What Should You Do?

March 11 2009

The second session today I'd like to share with you was presented by a personal friend of mine, Jeremy Faludi. Jer started his session entitled "Priorities for a Greener World: If You Could Design Anything, What Should You Do?" by pointing out that if we want to change the world,… read more

OSCON day 2: Do You Believe in the Users?

July 26 2008

After enjoying Ben Collins-Sussman and Brian Fitzpatrick's comments on the anti-patterns panel yesterday, I decided to peek into their "Do You Believe in the Users?" presentation. Ben and Fitz started the presentation with "Successful software requires more than just technical effort." as their premise and then went on to build… read more

OSCON day 3: Reflections on OSCON 2008

July 26 2008

Today was the last day of OSCON and I'm in the mood to think about the conference and share some of my random observations that didn't make it into any of my other blog posts. First up is a comment that Brian Aker of MySQL fame made during the "Tim… read more

OSCON day 2: Prophet, your path out of the cloud

July 25 2008

Some of you may know Jesse Vincent as the guy who hands out snarky t-shirts like last year's "My free software runs your business" shirt. But today I got to see Jesse's more serious side when I attended his "Prophet, your path out of the cloud" presentation. He started his… read more

OSCON day 1: Beyond REST? Building Data Services with XMPP PubSub

July 24 2008

Its good to be back in Portland for my favorite geek convention: O'Reilly's Open Source Conference. The overcast sky in Portland is making it a little easier this year to focus on the plethora of excellent speakers and sessions. The first session to really grip and and speak to me… read more

OSCON day 1: An Open Source Project Called "Failure:" Community Antipatterns to Know and Avoid

July 24 2008

The second session of the day that really appealed to me was "An Open Source Project Called "Failure:" Community Antipatterns to Know and Avoid". When I saw that Ben and Fitz of subversion fame were joined by other open source heavy weights, I was sold on this panel. In this… read more

OSCON day 1: Beyond REST? Building Data Services with XMPP PubSub

July 23 2008

Its good to be back in Portland for my favorite geek convention: O'Reilly's Open Source Conference. The overcast sky in Portland is making it a little easier this year to focus on the plethora of excellent speakers and sessions. The first session to really grip and and speak to me… read more

Really, Really, Really Intimate Interfaces

March 06 2008

This afternoon I had the pleasure to listen to Kyle Machulis' talk about teledildonics in his "Really, Really, Really Intimate Interfaces" talk. I've been joking about teledildonics to my friends for many moons, only to be met with incredulous looks of "Really?". Little did I know that teledildonics is real… read more

Cute Cat Theory of Web Activism

March 05 2008

This afternoon I had the pleasure to listen to Ethan Zuckermann's presentation on the "Cute Cat Theory of Web Activism", which opened my eyes to a side of Web 2.0 technologies I'd never seen before. Ethan started his presentation with this thesis: Sufficiently usable read/write platforms will attract porn and… read more

Futuretainment: The Asian Media Revolution

March 05 2008

My second day of ETech started off with Mike Walsh's "Futuretainment: The Asian Media Revolution" presentation. Mike presented a view of how young people in Asia consume media and how their experiences differ vastly from what kids in America and western Europe experience. read more

How billions of examples lead to better models of images and text

March 04 2008

Its time for my favorite conference of the year! ETech kicked off this morning to some awesome keynotes and moved straight into some killer sessions. The first session I attended was Peter Norvig's "How billions of examples lead to better models of images and text" presentation. Before I tell you… read more

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Robert Kaye