Nerd Stalker

(3mins) Nerd Stalker interviews Jon Harris, Senior Product Manger of Microsoft Expression Blend & Design at MIX09. Jon's background is in design; he worked at Macromedia before joining Microsoft. Jon sheds some light on to the new Blend feature Sketchflow, which we are all so excited to try, as well as the future of the products. You can also watch at YouTube , MySpace , Metacafe , Blip.tv and Veoh

(7mins) Sand Hill Road is known for being home to some of the greatest venture capital companies that have seeded some of the most successful start ups and crushed the dreams of countless others. So it was interesting that it is home to Ricoh Innovation Labs Inc. (RII) in the heart of Palo Alto on Sand Hill Road. RII has been chartered with guiding the future of Ricoh and one of the current endeavors is a very innovative project called iCandy . We were lucky enough to speak with Margarita Quihuis, Director and Jamey Graham, Distinguished Engineer about iCandy. iCandy (beta) is a free application that makes it easy to access and share your digital world offline. Through the power of QR codes , iCandy connects iTunes or websites to printed iCandy links that you can share in person. Use a webcam to scan your iCandy link and your computer launches the song or website instantly. iCandy helps you: Put digital music and the web in your hands for in-person sharing (parties, family ge

4mins At a Mashable party in San Francisco, Nerd Stalker interviews Drew Olanoff, Community Manager of Strands. Strands develops recommendation and personalization technologies to help people discover new things. Strands' Social Recommender is capable of automatically learning people's tastes and how their preferences evolve over time. It can be used to generate real-time recommendations in a vast number of domains.

Wanna be inspired? Listen to Bill Buxton talk about user experience and design for just 10 minutes, and then you won’t be able to sign-up fast enough for MIX09 in anticipation of his keynote at the conference. He’s the author of Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design , is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and has a 30 year involvement in research, design and commentary around human aspects of technology, and digital tools for creative endeavors, including music, film and industrial design. Prior to joining Microsoft, he was a researcher at Xerox PARC, a professor at the University of Toronto, and Chief Scientist of Alias Research and SGI Inc, where he was a co-recipient of an Academy Award for Scientific and Technical Achievement! More information on Buxton and his work can be found at: www.billbuxton.com , or you could just come to MIX09 and meet him in person.