First Crack Podcast with Garrick Van Buren

First Crack #125. Open Font Licensing with David Crossland

Garrick Van Buren — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 23:23:17 +0000

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:

Listen to Open Font Licensing with David Crossland. [37 min]

Cold Start #4 – How to Start Your Startup with Dan Grigsby

Garrick Van Buren — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 06:25:37 +0000

Dan Grigsby from MobileOrchard, discusses how he’s building a comfortable life for himself with a combination of projects, what’s lacking in the Minnesota tech startup community, and why that isn’t a problem.

Listen to Cold Start #4 -How to Start Your Startup with Dan Grigsby [55 minutes]

Cold Start #3 – Changing Your Startup with Ben Moore

Garrick Van Buren — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 14:27:07 +0000

Ben Moore from WorkSimple, discusses how, after almost 3 years into his funded startup, his company changed direction, branding, and almost everything else.

Listen to Cold Start #3 – Changing Your Startup with Ben Moore [41 minutes]

First Crack #124. Open Web Fonts with Ben Weiner

Garrick Van Buren — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 22:32:50 +0000

Ben Weiner’s been doing great work on giving greater visibility for open fonts – and has written a book proposal for web fonts. I called him up to discuss this work and my notion that web fonts are a brant new species of fonts.

Links and topics we mention:

Open Font Library
EEULAA.org
SIL Open Font License
Jos Buivenga’s Exlijbris Font Foundry
University of Reading UK – MA Typeface Design Program
Dave Crossland: Understanding Unlimited, Cantarell font family
FontSquirrel
Open Baskerville
Type & Media, Den Haag
My Kernest web font delivery project

Listen to Open Fonts with Ben Weiner. [45 min]

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

Garrick Van Buren — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 04:09:20 +0000

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.

Listen to Building CitizenWausau.com with Dino and Andy.

First Crack 122. John Hoffoss on Usability and Network Security

Garrick Van Buren — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 01:41:09 +0000

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 security threats of places like Facebook and Twitter.

Listen to John Hoffoss on Computer and Network Security.

Cold Start #1 – Prototyping MVPs and Insulation

Garrick Van Buren — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:22:42 +0000

Listen to Cold Start #1 – Prototyping MVPs and Insulation [43 minutes]

Cold Start #0 – About the Cold Start Podcast

Garrick Van Buren — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:21:40 +0000

Listen to Cold Start #0 – About the Cold Start Podcast [8 minutes]

First Crack 121. Drink Beer from a Cat’s Butt: Tasting of Mikkeller’s Beer Geek Brunch

Garrick Van Buren — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:38:49 +0000

Now that Surly’s Coffee Bender has become the pinnacle of Coffee Stouts I’m on a quest for interesting and unique coffee beers. I picked up bottle of Mikkeller’s Beer Geek Brunch – an oatmeal stout with civet coffee.

After the civet coffee review with Sam Buchanan how could I not take this beer home.

10.9% alcohol in a 1 Pint 0.9 oz. bottle.

My tasting notes:

Short version: “It doesn’t want to be drunk.”

Long version: Listen to Drink Beer from a Cat’s Butt: A Tasting of Mikkeller’s Beer Geek Brunch [11 min].

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

Garrick Van Buren — Mon, 04 May 2009 22:17:27 +0000

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 was – I asked Tim if he’d talk about the album and the campaign for the podcast.

As he mentions in our conversation, the common theme through the 16 tracks is the exploration of an experience he first wrote about in 2002:

“I wondered what she said the next day when friends asked her how the concert was. I wondered whether the crowd had been applauding her breasts or her daring. I wondered if maybe she was a plant and had actually gotten paid for her performance. That last one was just a specific way of asking a more general question, I guess—mostly I was wondering exactly what she got out of it.” – Tim Quirk

In the 16 Topless at the Arco Arena tracks, Tim, with Jay Blumenfield, ask everyone involved what they got out of the experience.

My top 5 Wonderlick – Topless at the Arco Arena tracks:

The Case Against Tattoos
A Different Kind of Love
We Run the World
This Song is a Commerical
Fear of Chicago

Wonderlick on Facebook

Listen to Wonderlick’s Tim Quirk on Truth Through Music [36 minutes]