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ReferralKey has been described as LinkedIn mixed with AngiesList. That's not a bad way to put it because they do allow you to build a network of professional contacts as on LinkedIn and they build lists of reputable businesses as Angieslist does with reliable contractors. This service focuses on a simple premise: You scratch my back and I'll scratch your's. So, you just build your network of contacts and refer the best you know and hopefully they'll do likewise and everyone benefits from the exchange. ReferralKey does all of the dirty work and helps you track every transaction and analyzes everything for you too. You can advertise your business on ReferralKey and get listed by your location and industry. They will also register your listing with many search engines. This all enhances the odds of consumers finding your listing. Membership to ReferralKey isn't free, even though they do let you create an account for free and allow you to receive up to three referrals without incurring any charges. Once you've reached three referrals you'll have to decide on which membership plan you want. There's a Silver Key plan for $10 a month and a Gold Key plan for $20 a month. The differences are detailed on here.MP4 / Subscribe for Free.The concept of this service is solid and if referrals can generate significant amounts of revenue then it makes sense to sign up for one of ReferralKey's membership plans. The site is easy to use and they provide a great deal of useful information regarding your contacts and your industry. The old adage is true: It's not what you know, but who you know that counts. In this case, it could pay off big time as well.

Iterend is a new blog search engine (still in private beta) that hopes to steal Technorati's lunch money, but first they have to beat Google's Blog Search to the punch. In this showdown, we'll perform a search test on all three services and compare the results. Checkout the screencast as well. Technorati has been king of the hill for a long time when it comes to blog search but as happens with all monarchies, they've grown complacent and stopped innovating which has opened the door for other potential heirs to the throne.Enter iterend and Google Blog Search which recently hit the streets. The initial reviews of Google's foray into the blog search arena has been mostly positive. Before checking the results of the showdown, here's a little bit about iterend which presents a busy home page with a flood of recent phrases as tags along with the top stories in the past twenty four hours. At the top of the page is their search bar which you can adjust to search for a different time frame such as the last hour, last week, anytime, etc. Here are some other features of note. - All articles are linked to structured wikipedia information, which makes it possible to search by categories. - Search results are clustered and you can search on sentence level, post level or blog level. - Next to the search results, relevant phrases and categories are displayed, so you are able to restrict your search or get an overview over the information you are looking for. - You can search for related posts to a given topic, url or cluster The Test ResultsMP4 / Subscribe for Free! As you'll see in the screencast, the old dog Technorati still seemed to provide the best and fastest results when searching for the same exact keywords. We used a post from Mashable for this video just to show how different the search results were for all three search engines. In most cases, Technorati provided the most recent blog posts. While Google's Blog Search impressed with its sheer extensiveness, Technorati seemed to include far less unseemly characters in its search results. Both Google Blog Search and Iterend appeared to include far more spammers, sploggers and other things you usually find hiding under a rock. Over all, Technorati is still the top dog for blog search while Google's Blog Search and Iterend are worthy challengers that will surely improve with time.

Among the hundreds of companies and social platforms debuting at Web 2.0 Expo NY was Xignite, a new financial Web service. Xignite's platform lets financial sites show global delayed stock data in their applications and satisfies the growing demand for reliable stock quotes from emerging countries. MP4 / Subscribe for Free Xignite uses an on-demand model to serve clients like ING, Goodyear, and McDonald's and provide market quotes, news, corporate data, industry information, analytics, tools and more. Until recently, much of the data that Xignite collects and organizes was otherwise scattered, raw or only available in bulk form. With their services, Xignite is leading the way for service-oriented business applications. I had the opportunity to meet with Stephane Dubois, the CEO and Founder of Xignite, and discuss Xignite's goals, special features and Splice, their new platform for creating web services mashups. (And, I don't need to remind you how excited I get about mashups). Using the Splice visual designer, developers can create a mashup in just 60 seconds by dragging and dropping objects without ever having to write code. A special thanks to Sony for letting me use their amazing TG1 HD camcorder, without which none of the Web 2.0 Expo videos would have been possible. You can watch the video via the embed below or download the MP4 directly.

DiggTop is an Adobe Air desktop app that scrapes and displays the images and videos from the Digg stories that you choose to track. After installing DiggTop you customize which categories you want to follow for News, Videos and Images. You can then view a slideshow of the images related to the stories you're reading. As for videos, DiggTop does a similar thing. You can change which topics you want to follow for video and they will appear in the app's player which does a good job of handling video. At any time, you can launch a browser session and go to any particular story on Digg by double-clicking it. This comes in handy whenever you want access to the Digg service. However, the app can provide most of the day to day features of Digg such as reading and digging stories. MP4 / Subscribe for Free! I know there have been way too many useless Adobe Air apps unleashed to our desktops lately, but I think DiggTop is actually a rare useful one. If you want a quick glimpse at the hottest news items along with a visual slideshow of images and the ability to play videos instantly right next to the story then DiggTop is the app for you. It's small and fast and gives Digg a new look and feel.

CampusLive wants to be a 24/7 RA (Resident Assistant) for college students all across the country by providing real-time information that they can use. For example, students can use the Food Finder feature that lets them find out exactly which restaurants near campus are still open for delivery, take out of dining in. They can read reviews from fellow classmates and even contribute a review of their own and rate the establishment. The home page is customizable and includes a search bar that can search Google, YouTube, CNN and most importantly the local campus area, including a people finder for the school. There's a weather tracker that shows the local weather as well as other locations that the student selects such as back home. The TV listings feature shows what's on the local channels. The comparisons to another website that started as a service for college students, Facebook, are inevitable. However, CampusLive makes it clear that they don't want to compete with Facebook but rather work with them. They've even gone as far as to integrate with Facebook so that students can actually see their live Facebook messages from their CampusLive homepage. There are plans to do the same with other social networks that are popular with students such as MySpace and LinkedIn. The news feed is customizable so that members can display the news that they want to see first. They can include local, national and international news feeds. There's also a QuickLinks feature that shows the most popular links on campus in an at-a-glance display. CampusLive started in uMass and currently covers campuses in nine states and 26 universities and growing. There's no question that this service does provide useful information for student in a timely manner. They need to continue to focus on adding more schools and more customizable features that allows students to build their own virtual dorm room on their site. The trick will be to convince everyone that they aren't trying to another Facebook or social network which would surely get them a failing grade. If they can accomplish all that then they will pass with honors.

MobaTalk is an experiment from Michael Baily that he calls "Video Twitter". Here's the alpha testing page where you can see all of the video tweets being recorded right now. The cool thing is that you don't even have to sign up or join his service and there's nothing to download or install. All you need is a webcam, a twitter account and a dream. Ok, maybe not the dream part so much. :) The video quality is outstanding, especially compared to other video recording services such as 12Secs and Seesmic. By the way, here's a comparison test MobaTalk conducted for video recorded on MobaTalk vs Seesmic. The other interesting thing about MobaTalk is the way that you can subscribe to any video message with your iTunes or GoogleReader. As a matter of fact, you can subscribe to either the hashtag itself and receive all of the videos from anyone or you'll be able to subscribe to the feed containing the videos from a specific individual, regardless of which hashtag they're in. For example, here's the MobaTalk hashtag for #ChrisBrogan who covered MobaTalk recently. The interface is ultra slick too. It has a very Mac-esque look and feel. Here's what the Video player looks like along with the Twitter user information MobaTalk is still raw and in its infancy but like a rookie with a natural swing it shows great promise for the future. We'll need to give it some time to mature and develop some discipline at the plate, ok enough already with the baseball metaphors! The bottom line is that the video quality is high quality and the concepts for delivering these video tweets to Twitter and subscribing to them are excellent too. MobaTalk might need to do more work with individual memberships and groups. While it's nice not having to create yet another online account it might be worth it in this case since we're talking about high quality videos and our personal feeds to twitter and other networks, as well as to iTune and GoogleReader. We should keep our eyes on MobaTalk and see what develops. Check out our screencast below, or download the MP4 directly. Never Miss an Episode! Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (video feed).

As I mentioned late last night, a lot of us who do this technology punditry for a living are searching for answers on what exactly this mess on Wall Street and inside the beltway means for us in the tech sector. All Americans are in the same boat, having been told to fear for the very existence of the standard of living we all hold so dear, but then given absolutely no tools to help us delve into the issue and find the answers that tell us what we should be angry at, afraid of, or smug over. I had similar conversations with Adam Ostrow and Sean Aune on Monday - both of them noticed the same thing I did, and that was that almost all news (particularly tech news) that had nothing to do with finance and politics had trickled to a standstill. Coupled with a deluge of financial questions and a drought of understand, I decided to ring up Jim Harper of the CATO Institute. Jim is a tech savvy lawyer for the free market-centric think tank CATO, as well as blogger for a number of blogs that tackle both politics and technology. The idea in sitting down with Jim was to get a handle on what all this insane financial lingo actually meant in English, and to help connect the dots to how it would affect us in the tech sector by looking at the effects on venture capital, advertising markets and available consumer dollars. I could have chosen from a number of think tanks, but I decided on Jim for two reasons. For one, I knew Jim from a panel we were on together at the Tech Politics Summit in DC back in March. The other, and perhaps more germane, is that CATO is one of the few organizations that flatly oppose the bailout proposed by the President. Even though I call myself a Libertarian (and thus a believer in free markets), I didn't have enough of a handle on the situation to understand how this was a tenable position. You can sit in on our discussion by playing the embed below or by grabbing the MP4. Never miss an episode. Subscribe in your podcast player. A Very Broad Summary There was a lot of ground covered by the discussion, but most poignant was his general position on the urgency of the matter. Based on the research at the CATO Institute, the effects of the collapse of large investment banks deigned the direct recipients of the bailout money are largely localized to investment banks. More to the point, this means that while there are ripple effects on consumer and business banks, these effects are driven by emotion and consumer behavior and not by what's happening on Wall Street. Jim went into some specific cases in which there were "Main Street" bank failures, and how these banks are managing themselves through these failures, but by and large he was of the opinion that our government in general and Congress in particular should take their time in assessing the damage and deciding what to do. He shied away from giving exact timetables, but he indicated that weeks, not days, should be devoted to watching and investigating the effects to both gain an actual understanding of the matter and see what actual economic damage would and would not be mitigated by the system. Some Suggested Resources for Further Information Jim ended the show with a number of resources and places to get coverage of the bailout mess - there certainly is no shortage of that anywhere - but if you found interesting the analysis proffered by Jim Harper, you might enjoy the links he gave me after the show. CATO's Daily Podcast: Where they've been very closely following and providing analysis on the events as the occur as well as the proposed policies in response. WashingtonWatch/blog: A website and blog that Jim Harper contributes to, designed to track and decipher the bills in front of Congress. CATO-at-Liberty: The blog of the CATO Institute. Technology Liberation Front: a team blog (with a cast of writers that almost rivals the number here at Mashable) devoted to following news and policy that intersects the worlds of politics and technology. Jim Harper is also a contributor there.

Mzinga has been around for over eight years so they're by no means a startup. They've been building white label social networks for companies such as ABC, ESPN, Amex and other big time players without much fanfare or media coverage. They've enabled businesses to add the social media tools that we use every day inside their protective firewall.If you go to mzinga's site you'll see the numbers behind their success which are staggering. They have over 14,000 communities, more than 1 billion page requests every month from 27 million users in 160 countries worldwide. All impressive stats but the real measure of success is the quality of their clientele. They have a list of who's who that continue to use their services internally as well as externally. However, because they rebrand most of these solutions to customize projects for their customers, the general public never knows who really did the fancy work. Fortunately, though, word of mouth spreads quickly from insiders so they generate the bulk of their work that way. One of mzinga's most popular solutions for companies is adding social media tools such as message forums and chat rooms that allow employees to brainshare and exchange ideas that are wasted otherwise. Most of the time, businesses without these tools never harvest this goldmine of information and lose out on some excellent data that could have lead the way to greater success. Mzinga prides itself on providing social tools that enable companies to communicate better internally amongst themselves as well as externally with their customers and partners.We sat down and spoke with mzinga at the SummerMash event in Boston. You can check it out via the embed below, or grab the MP4.

We're wrapping up the interview series from the Austin leg of the SummerMash stop, and one of my very favorite interviews and very favorite startup ideas I came across during my night in Austin is the coworking space Conjunctured. In case your unfamiliar with the term "coworking," it's a variant on the idea of an office incubator, where small startups can pool their resources to get office space and all the accoutrements of an office without paying the high price tag it can take to acquire all they myriad of electronics, furniture and physical space. Back in the late nineties, there was another form of the idea, we called them geek-houses. A slightly more intense version of the concept, it was where anywhere from four to nine (or more) industry geeks would pool their resources and create what ended up looking like something from the movie Hackers and calling it home. There's an interesting dichotomy for a lot of us in the tech sector - we like being our own bosses and setting our own agendas, but we miss some of the trappings of what the corporate world can offer. A coworking space can give that added benefit of providing a sense of community for startups to belong to when their company may only consist of one or two employees. As someone who's coded for companies with no other programmers on staff, I know how difficult that can be. John Erik Metcalf, one of the founders of Conjunctured, sat down with Aaron Novak during the Austin SummerMash stop to chat about the history of the company. The interview could essentially serve as a step by step way to bootstrap your own coworking space in your area (something I'm actually considering in a few months, after I move back to the DFW area). It's an interesting peek into a company that took the time to design an execute a growth based business model (something that's rare these days) as well as an intriguing glimpse into the burgeoning Web 2.0 culture of Austin, Texas. You can watch the interview via the embed below, or download the MP4. Never Miss an Episode! Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (video feed).

Were you pleased with the online coverage of the debates? I'm not talking about the punditry, the live streams and the drunkblogs. I'm specifically talking about the much-vaunted live coverage on Twitter and FriendFeed. You know, the stuff that was overlayed on Current's channel, talked about on CSPAN and probably used in at least a dozen other bits of news coverage.The usage was certainly there, and Biz shows us some interesting usage graphs, showing not-insigificant spikes during some key phrases in the debate.  Definitely, when looked at in terms of aggregate use, there are some interesting patterns that emerge. For those that are looking for a civilized general debate though, well, it definitely left me feeling a bit empty at the end of the night. A couple of weeks ago, I penned a piece called "Wisdom of Crowds isn't the Answer for Everything," and it's in the context of those points that Sean and I talked today about the suitability of most social media platforms for political discourse.Check in on the discussion below (or download the MP4). Oddly, I think we both agree that there are ways out of this problem, but there doesn't seem to be any end in sight currently for the lack of elevated discussion. The question becomes, then, what useful purpose during this election can FriendFeed and Twitter serve?  It certainly isn't substantive discussion or a place for distilled truth (like the blogosphere was four years ago). Is it simply statistics on when people are intrigued or moved by widely heard statements?Never Miss an Episode!  Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (video feed).

Last week, Web 2.0 Expo NY brought out a lot of different companies and social networking platforms to debut their latest endeavors, and among the big players this year was the very popular site, Hi5. Very popular, that is, internationally. Ever since Hi5 debuted in 2003, it has garnered millions of users in countries like Japan and Mexico, making it the third most popular social networking website worldwide after Facebook and MySpace, but only 83rd in the U.S. I met up with Mike Trigg, head of marketing for Hi5, during the week of the conference to talk about what makes Hi5 so different from Facebook and MySpace and what the network's plans are to win over Americans. A special thanks to Sony for letting me use their amazing TG1 HD camcorder, without which none of the Web 2.0 Expo videos would have been possible. You can watch the video via the embed below or download the MP4 directly. Never Miss an Episode! Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (video feed).

PaperTank isn't a web startup or a social network, but a PR & Marketing firm that helps companies build online communities. They help their clients learn how to use all of social media and social networking tools available today. Needless to say, all of these tools can become over-whelming even for the most web-savvy of us, just imagine how the traditional brick and mortar type companies must feel when they look at twitter for the first time.That's where Jon Ray and his firm steps in with kid gloves and plenty of patience. We included Jon Ray's blog when we listed the 13 Important Austin Tech Blogs we compiled after SummerMash this year.He and his associated have established a cool 90-day plan where they will help any company learn to crawl, walk then run on the Internet. They'll assist them with making the best use of online marketing and viral marketing via services such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and many others. PaperTank also does all of the traditional marketing and promotional work as well such as in-house writing,  production, editing and distribution from concept through delivery. They also do a great deal of music videos, infomercials and commercials.However, their forte appears to be this social media hand-holding with clients that are hesitant to venture into the wild and whooley social networking world. PaperTank takes their time to demonstrate all of the best practices involved with online marketing. They teach their clients how to use all of the tools available to them and help them create and manage their blogs and online communities.For more about PaperTank and its philosophies on social marketing subscribe to their founder Jon Ray's Blog,Who is Jon Ray?You can download the MP4 below, or subscribe to our podcast feed.

Minggl is like Friendfeed in a toolbar or a social network aggregator in a sidebar. Wait a minute, that sounds suspiciously like the Flock social media browser, doesn't it? Well, it isn't really, I assure you. While Minggl does offer some of the same features of the aforementioned hyper-kinetic social media browser, it also offers many of its own unique options. Everything that Minggl offers comes via a browser plugin for Internet Explorer or FireFox. This allows you to access many of your social networks and friends through the browser toolbar and sidebar. It remembers all of your login credentials for each service which is a big time-saver. Currently they support most of the major networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg and Flickr with many more to come on board soon. One of the most useful features is the Status Blaster which lets you send a single status update to several social networks at one time. Yes, it's similar to other services such as Ping.fm or hello.txt, but those services require you to visit there site to blast your message to all of your networks. Minggl will do so thru it's sidebar interface. The other handy feature is the way Minggl consolidates all of your friends from different social networks into one place. For example, you can have friends from Twitter, Facebook, Digg and MySpace all listed together. You can also tag them and categorize them and send a message to everyone or to selected groups. You can communicate with them no matter where you are on the web. The MingglStream is a social network aggregator that tracks everything that your friends are doing across several sites. It's very similar to the FriendFeed and many other social aggregators but once again Minggl accomplishes all this in the sidebar. The concept behind Minggl is excellent but many people have grown leary of installing toolbars and plugins. However, there are legions of people that actually enjoy changing their browser experience by installing add-ons and extensions like Firefox users do all the time. If you're one of those GreaseMonkey script types then Minggl could be for you. If you're not, then maybe you're better off with Flock, the social media browser that has toolbars and sidebars enfused with all this social media juice. If Google Chrome ever starts supporting browser extensions officially, then who knows where that will lead. In the mean time, you can test drive Minggl and see if it's worth a second date. Grab the MP4 here. Never Miss an Episode! Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (video feed).

At the Web 2.0 Expo in New York City last week I met up with Eileen Gittins, the CEO and Founder of Blurb, the creative book publishing platform. Kristen originally covered them here at Mashable back in October last year, and it is a place where anyone can create and publish their own books, essentially becoming their own authors. At the conference she spoke on a panel about "Building a People-Powered Products Company" along with Richard Moross, founder of Moo, and Michael Galpert, founder of Aviary. Eileen was kind enough to sit down with me and talk about what exactly "people-powered products" are and how they are revolutionizing the business world. She even convinced me to turn my blog into a book someday! A special thanks to Sony for letting me use their amazing TG1 HD camcorder, without which none of the Web 2.0 Expo videos would have been possible. You can watch the video via the embed below or download the MP4 directly. Never Miss an Episode! Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (video feed).

The SummerMash Tour may be over as of tonight, but thanks to Aaron from Stickam and his unstoppable propensity to do about three hundred interviews a night, we'll be playing the interviews from this tour well into our senior years. This particular interview was done at the Los Angeles stop on the tour, and Pete came by the Stickam booth to reflect on his experience thus, comparing LA, SFO and Seattle, and the different feels of each meet. Aaron and Pete also took a minute to recap some of the more innovative companies they had run into on the tour so far. You can check out their thoughts by playing the embed below, or by downloading the MP4. Never Miss an Episode! Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (video feed). Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (audio feed).

In another interview from the Los Angeles stop on the SummerMash tour, Aaron Novak, the host of all the on the road interviews, brings us a short conversation with Apple Levy from TheGreenGirls.tv, a new ecoblog centered in LA, but covering the worldwide green movement. Her blog tries to put an entertainment spin on the green movement, covering the news and views from greentech, eco-friendly companies with the purpose to inspire folks to live a more ecology conscious lifestyle. Features on the site include not just the typical blogging fare on what's new in business and the non-profit world, but features like a weekly video wrap-up, the eco-hottie of the week and tips for organic and healthy living. Watch the interview by playing the embed below or downloading the MP4. Never Miss an Episode! Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (video feed). Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (audio feed).

UserVoice is an interesting startup that sat down with us at SummerMash San Fracisco a couple weeks ago to explain what it is they do. Are you familiar with MyStarbucksIdea? It's a social media tool based off the Salesforce backend that allows Starbucks to easily connect with their customer-base in a seamless manner in the interests of better promoting good ideas to improve the company. UserVoice takes this highly successful and engaging idea that Starbucks has been using, and white labels it. The question remains, though, why would you want this for your company when you've got so many other communications tools that are at the disposal of your customers to use. As it turns out, UserVoice's Marcus Nelson has some pretty compelling reasons, like significantly increasing the engagement level of your customers. Typically, when a company uses tools like forums, email or other more traditional communications means, ideas and engagement with the userbase hovers around the 3-7% level. UserVoice has found that these can increase significantly, as high as 70%, and that through some simple mechanisms in the system they've put into place have also cut down the irrelevant noise in those comments significantly. You can watch the interview below in the second segment of today's Mashable Conversations, following a wrap-up of SummerMash Austin that Sean and I did. To watch both, play the embed below or download the MP4. Never Miss an Episode! Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (video feed). Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (audio feed).

Kaltura is an interesting video collaboration and publishing service that we talked about a great deal last year, but despite their relative quiet this year hasn't been sitting on their hands. It's been a little while, so in case you've forgotten, Kaltura was the 2007 People's Choice award winner in the video sharing category of the Open Web Awards, they're described by some as a "wiki meets YouTube," allowing for online video collaboration in the creation of online video. They also work heavily as a company on the challenge of monetizing and creating advertising opportunities for authors and publishers. Today, though, James Lewin over at Podcasting News tips us off that they've just released an interactive video plugin for WordPress blogs versioned 2.5 or better. The plug-in not only makes it easier to embed Kaltura videos in blog posts (which is always a pain, whether it's Kaltura or YouTube), but it also imports a slew of functionality from the Kaltura toolset into the framework of WordPress for easy access. They boast a few minute, four step installation process and full integration into the WYSIWYG editor. Brad Hunstable guest hosted Mashable Conversations last year at the Open Web Awards, and had an opportunity to learn a bit more about Kaltura and what they're doing. It's a short video that succinctly sheds some light on their goals and the changing face of the tool they offer from entertainment device to actual business tool, and gave a great list of company-style applications for it. You can grab the interview by playing the embed below, downloading the MP4 or subscribing to the feed. Never Miss an Episode! Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (video feed). Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (audio feed).

Mark is on his way to Austin for the SummerMash event, meaning he was up early... as you can see by his hair in the video... but he still got a video out for all of you enjoy today. Vic Podcaster is well known from FriendFeed and Twitter, and now he is running StartupNews, a site where anyone can come in and report about their own startup as opposed to it being left in the hands of staff writers. Vic sat down with Stickam at SummerMash San Francisco to discuss his new venture and give you the full 411 on what the site is about. Never Miss an Episode! Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (video feed). Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (audio feed).

So after a much longer flight back from Austin than I ever imagined possible, I'm finally sitting down this morning to put out some of the experiences from the evening. I had a great time, and as a native of Texas, am extremely proud of the impressive turnout to the event. Austin, of course, plays home to the SXSW conference every year; that event is something of a requisite to attend for anyone in tech these days, and most of Silicon Valley ends up being there. Taking a look around at the hundreds of native Austin-ite folks that were there showed me that we have a similar burgeoning Web 2.0 community here in Texas that could potentially give California and New York a run for its money. That's really the theme of the evening from the event that I picked up. I've found a few videos already starting to show up across the web talking about that from Austin natives as well as a number of visitors. I'll show you those, but I wanted to lead off with today's Mashable Conversations video, which I shot just before running to the airport to catch my plane back home. I round up a few of the interesting folks I met and spoke with there, what it is they're doing, and talk a tiny bit about Yoono, a SummerMash sponsor as well as the subject of today's SummerMash interview. You can check that out through the embed below or by downloading today's MP4. Never Miss an Episode! Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (video feed). Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (audio feed). There were a number of great videos that were shot and have been thrown out there to the web, as well as a literal mountain of images taken of the evening. One that doesn't go to illustrate any particular point but of the sheer size of the event is one I found by "A Yankee in Texas." It's a short couple minute piece consisting mostly of crowd shots. More to the point of the momentum shifting for Austin away from being a city with some techno-geeks in it towards a city that actually likes to geek out over technology like they did at the event, I'm not the only one who seems to be noticing it, and my distance from Austin seems to be providing me a bit of the perspective to make that judgement call. I was speaking with Josh Dilworth early on in the evening, and he wondered aloud whether or not Austin was becoming another Silicon Valley, if it was something he imagined since he wanted it so much, or whether it was just something that happened once a year because of the massive SXSW conference. As someone who's much closer to the Dallas tech scene, I was able to shed some light - SXSW did provide a bump in the Web 2.0, social media and general tech awareness for the entire state, and it is something that continues to resonate and ripple around the various tech centers here. About a month after SXSW is when WordCamp Dallas occurred here, an event I attended. From all over the country folks came to speak, talk and listen about WordPress and blogging, but most of them came from Austin and the DFW area. Unsurprisingly, most of them were still buzzing heavily about that years SXSW event, and that energy and enthusiasm seemed to carry over into the Dallas social media and tech community still. Will Pate, of Net@Nite and CommandN fame, was on hand for the night and was interviewed by the folks over at Spring.net. Pete, who seemed to have a radar last night that drew him inexplicably towards all cameras, came in and hijacked the interview, and observed that Austinites, unlike some startups elsewhere in the country, really have no regrets about not being in the Valley. Will later noted that he met his Net@Nite co-host Amber MacArthur at SXSW, and during his repeat visits he's seen a significant growth in the tech community, with more web-savvy faces of companies showing up from Houston, Austin and Dallas, something that "gives [him] a lot of hope that these startups are really pulling together and are building these communities that are going to bring forth these great next companies." The bottom line is that there are a lot of great efforts an truly interesting things evolving here in my corner of the country, something that not only excites as a Texan, but as a geek.

Citizen journalism is always a topic that sparks discussion and interest, at least amongst the New Media set. This year has been a particularly good year for citizen journalism, with a number of initiatives and startups coming out in the space: Fox Sports, NowPublic, YouTube, iReport and many others. At our Seattle SummerMash stop, AllVoices (, another entrant to the space, stopped to talk with us about what it is they're doing to add to the space. This of course, spurred a rousing discussion for Sean and I on the podcast on what we saw as some of the systemic flaws in a lot of citizen journalism efforts, and some possible solutions to the problem. You can participate by playing the video via the embed below, or downloading the MP4. Never Miss an Episode! Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (video feed). Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (audio feed).

Back in April, we had Keith Richman on Mashable Conversations to talk about the formation of the ROI council. Keith is the CEO of Break.com, and a genuinely knowlegable person to talk to when it comes to the broad topic of the business of online video. That's why I was thrilled when he dropped us a line to let us know about an innovative advertising campaign being undertaken by Break Media in conjunction with Samsung for their new Instinct smartphones. The campaign isn't at all a pre-roll, post-roll , overlay, or any other type of typical video campaign - the campaign is the video. They're basically a series of entertaining demostrations of the device in play and usage (and you'll be surprised when you see the clarity with which it is able to record, as a side note). More importantly for our interests (since we're not a gadget blog), it's a neat and interesting new way to monetize your video content and video brand. While we had Keith on the line, we took the time to pick his brain over some points Steven Hodson brought up in his recent editoral: Video Blogging is Not the Frontier You Might Expect. In that piece, Steven explored the trials and tribulations of creating video content in today's New Media landscape, and we got some great examples from Keith of video producers he thinks are "doing it right.' Watch the show for the scoop by downloading the MP4, subscribing to the feed, or playing the embed below. Never Miss an Episode! Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (video feed). Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (audio feed).

There's no way, particularly with today's gas prices, you can turn down at least a look at an idea for getting free gas. One of the interesting startups we discovered at the SummerMash Seattle stop is a local startup that sells the advertising space ... on your car .. in return for free gas. They are aptly named GasForFree. Introducing the clip today is my son AJ. I was a bit busy in the studio rendering the mountain of videoed interviews from the SummerMash tour, so he graciously at in with Sean today to introduce today's Mashable Conversation. Download the MP4 here, subscribe to the feed, or watch the embed below. Never Miss an Episode! Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (video feed). Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (audio feed).

Can a phone kill an industry? What's Qik offering, now that they're in public beta? These are the questions we tackle on today's Mashable Conversations. Sean and I were both intrigued by the fervor and discussion generated around my recent editorial on whether I thought the iPhone would kill terrestrial radio. The response to the article was thunderous and inconclusive. Just as many folks thought that I was right as thought that terrestrial radio has done a decent enough job of killing itself. It's a popular topic, too. This weekend's Elite Tech News show focused on this topic as well for a good portion of the program, and most of the panel disagreed with me on my hypothesis, though for a number of reasons ranging from Louis Gray's opinion that no technology ever truly kills another to Steven Hodson's proposition that mobile smartphone technology will never be truly ubiquitous. Sean and I spend a good deal of time hashing out the various thesii put forth here and there before taking some time out to speak with Qik co-founder Bhaskar Roy about today's launch of Qik into open beta status. He told us about a number of new upgrades that come out with this version of the service, including what was most exciting to us, a number of new distribution partners. As we've talked about before, CoverItLive now supports Qik (amongst a number of other live streaming services), but Qik is now partnered also with Facebook, MySpace and Orkut. For the full scoop on all this, watch the podcast below, download the MP4 to your device, or subscribe to the feed. Never Miss an Episode! Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (video feed). Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (audio feed).

Last week, it was very clear to most of us not in line for the iPhone that the most exciting aspect of the iPhone 3G release were the GPS capabilities. We haven't seen more announcements for locationally aware social networks come across our newsbox here at Mashable (or anything that takes advantage of GPS technology) before or since. One such network is one called Whrrl. It's not particular to the iPhone, but it is one location aware socnet that's been getting a fair amount of buzz lately. Kristen initially reviewed it here at Mashable, describing it as "Yelp Plus Twitter." The topic that Sean and I grapple with today on Mashable Conversations is exactly why it is you'd want the whole world knowing exactly where you are at any given point. Aside from just wanting to have a little anonymity, it seemed to us that we'd occasionally want to slip down to the bar without the wife knowing. Or perhaps go with our friends to a batchelor party while still being eligible to run for public office a decade later. The internet has a long memory (at least a year long). We're already responsible for every errant word spoken ont he net. Would you like to also be responsible for everywhere you've ever been? We explore this a bit further in the show, and then are joined by the folks from Whrrl at Seattle SummerMash, as they tell us a bit more about the service. Never Miss an Episode! Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (video feed). Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (audio feed).

In what seems to be a continuation of a never ending growth pattern by Meebo, it was widely reported this morning that they're now going to be offering branded chat for social networks and online communities. They have a staggering list of volunteer launch partners as well, including DanceJam, Flixster, myYearbook, Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids and Family Group's AddictingGames, Piczo, SparkArt, Sugar Publishing and Tagged. Sean and I had a great discussion with two of the three founders of Meebo on today's Mashable Conversations, and we came away with two main things that really are noteworthy about this implementation, aside from the technology aspects of it. First of all, the sheer size of the expected network growth is particularly eye-popping. According to Seth, Meebo, after implementation is finished, will have a global reach of 54.7 million, including an unduplicated reach in the US of 23.3 million. This is accomplished by allowing inter-site communication. If you signup on Piczo, for instance, you'll be able to speak with users from Flixter. This is accomplished by use of the XMMP (Jabber) architecture for the IM service backend. The other thing particularly noteworthy is that each partner is entering into a revenue sharing agreement, so that advertising supported chat will not only be a tool to significantly increase stickiness, but it will be a profit center as well. Aside from that, we got a little bit of insight into exactly where the name Meebo comes from - you can too. The video is embedded below (or you can download the MP4 version here). Never Miss an Episode! Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (video feed). Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (audio feed).

This weekend and over the course of yesterday, Guy Kawasaki's Alltop made the news for creating a new set of RSS feeds added to the site from FriendFeed. They called this the "Frienderati," and it was a list of FriendFeed members as determined by a mystery algorithm worth following on FriendFeed. Stan covered this here at Mashable, but here was how Guy Kawasaki described its' debut: I recently signed up for Friendfeed, and I had a hard time figuring out who to follow. Christine Lu told me that this is a common problem, and we came up with idea of aggregating the top Friendfeeds to help people get started. Check it out: Frienderati.alltop.com. You can use this as a starting point to figure out who to follow on Frienderati or to quickly scan what the Frienderati are discussing. Here's the problem Sean and I (and many other bloggers found): most of these folks are largely inactive on the service. As such, we think that most of the folks on the list aren't particularly useful to check out for folks new to the service. This is the topic we explore on Mashable Conversations today, and it's followed by a conversation that our own Kristen Nicole had with Guy Kawasaki at the launch of AllTop at this year's SXSW. Watch below or download the MP4! Never Miss an Episode! Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (video feed). Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (audio feed).

Controversy is good. Last week was full of controversy - from political controversy to racial controversy, the blogosphere was a buzz, and several issues rarely brought to the attention of the Web 2.0 set was put in the forefront. There was so much of it going on, it caused me to pause and reflect elsewhere about the usefulness of controversy as a tool. That's the topic that Sean and I tackled today as we re-examine the whole controversy regarding the whole issue of censorship of Twitter, Qik and other social media services' use by US congressmen. The post that brought this issue back to the fore was a a statement US Rep John Culberson made to TechDirt regarding his politicization of the issue: "I agree and I never should have brought up Democrat or Republican.... My goal is to shine a light into the Congress and I'll keep partisan labels out of it. And I'm going to stay focused on the goal.... The two things the internet has helped me do is the community has helped me understand to keep the partisan labels out of it, that's good advice which I have taken to heart. And the other good advice I got was that I mean and actually through this debate and TechnoSailor in particular, I think his name's Aaron, had some really good posts on his blog that kind of when you walk through his and a couple of other good blogs out there, I realize that I was targeting the wrong thing, that the existing rules make it illegal for me to post on Twitter, to post on a Qik website, under existing rules I'm operating in the Twilight Zone." I wasn't particularly sure, in our conversation today, that it was the wrong move to politicize this, as political censorship was a very plausible motive to ascribe at the time. In retrospect, it was more likely motivated by Ludditism, but the partisanship was what brought this issue to the fore, and ignited a good discussion on the matter. Grab the MP4 here or play the embed below. Never Miss an Episode! Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (video feed). Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (audio feed).

Hey folks. A quick weekend episode for your enjoyment. I'll have the MP3 feed going soon, but for now you're still stuck with the video only feed. In this episode, I talk a bit about Nas, Nerdcore, MC Frontalot, Robbie the Robot and the new Care-O-Bot. Get your MP4 link here.

In what we're hoping will become a regular feature on Mashable Conversations, we did an episode this week entirely devoted to the best of the comments from the previous week or so of shows. Due to Sean's travel schedule, we had to shoot this one close to midnight our time, so we're a little punch drunk, as you can probably tell, but we got to the more interesting comments left on our video posts. Much of the week's comments centered around our discussion of the progression of live video, and how it's still an emerging technology, despite the ubiquity, with comments from Mashable readers Alexander Williams, Duncan Riley and Morgan. Also, with an interesting (and verbose comment we truncated for the show) was George Riddick, who seemed happier than anyone I've ever met that Viacom was suing the pants off Google. Watch via the embed below, or grab the MP4 directly. Never Miss an Episode! Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (video feed). Get the Mashable Conversations podcast here (audio feed).