Today, Novell announced that Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier is taking the reins as openSUSE's Community Manager. Those familiar with the open source world might recognize Joe from his work with various Linux and free software publications.

A long time open source advocate, Joe began using Linux in 1996, after purchasing a set of Slackware CDs at a local store. He says, "...I was blown away by the concept of 'free as in beer' software. The idea that you could share software, and even modify it and distribute it, was (and is) extremely exciting to me.

"I also find the community aspect of Linux and free and open source software particularly compelling. I love the fact that people around the world can come together and build useful tools, and then make those tools available for anyone to use. I knew pretty early on that I wanted to be part of that community."

We recently got the chance to talk with Joe about Linux, Novell, and the direction openSUSE (and open source) is headed.

We are long-time fans of the free DNS-lookup service OpenDNS, which serves as a replacement for your ISP's DNS. We recently got a chance to ask the founder and CEO of OpenDNS, David Ulevitch, for a quick history of OpenDNS and for an update on the service.

DLS: What got you involved in DNS?

David: When I was a freshman at Wash U. in St. Louis, I started becoming more active online. I went to buy a domain name and in the process, learned of the need for a solid, reliable DNS service. I was already running my own server, so I took the obvious next step and wrote my own DNS management software. The need became even more obvious when word about my software got around and several people wanted to use it. The software eventually became a service, EveryDNS.net, that's still operating today.

Say whatever you want about Microsoft and/or Bill Gates, it cannot be argued that the company and its co-founder have had a truly monumental impact on the world as we know it. Bill Gates is retiring from his full-time position from Microsoft (he will remain Chairman) on July 1, 2008 to focus on philanthropy. On Sunday, he gave his twelfth, and final, CES keynote address. Over at our sister site, Engadget, Ryan Block had the opportunity to sit down with the man, the myth, the legend, and interview him about his future role at Microsoft, Vista, his foundation and Microsoft's overall role in the industry.

It's a great interview with very candid and enlightening responses from the big man. We cannot imagine a world without Microsoft, and frankly, we wouldn't want to. For all the pot-shots we can take at Vista and corporate hegemony, Microsoft is still the industry leader and technology and software Bill Gates has helped create have changed the way we live and interact. OK, sappy time is over. Read the interview and get on with your daily tech snark.

Getting ready for interviews can sometimes be tricky. You just never know what to really expect, but want to stay on your toes and be prepared for anything. That's where InterviewUp steps into place.

The InterviewUp online community allows people to share, ask, find and search interview questions and answers. If InterviewUp manages to attract a strong user community, this could be a great tool for anyone out on the job hunt. The website will be dedicated to interview questions and answers and guide users along the path to doing well in an interview to get the job that are qualified for.

Too bad its currently only in a private beta, and accessible by invitation only.

When Robert Savage, creator of the recently released email client 3D Mailbox, commented on our post about his new product, we invited him to participate in an email interview with us. Here's what he had to say:

DS: What gave you the idea to create 3D Mailbox?

Ideas just come. Hard to dissect. William Faulkner wrote The Sound and The Fury after seeing a girl's white dress.

DS: Does your company plan to develop any new types of software using the technology you've created for Visitorville and 3D Mailbox?

Yes!

DS: What's the target audience for this product?

If you're interviewing for that dream job at Google -- like Amazon evangelist Jeff Barr -- don't forget your GPA. Jeff writes about his interview in Mountain View, "They were almost ready to make the "can't refuse" offer but the process became bogged down when I couldn't recall my college GPA. Given that I earned my degree in 1985 and have been earning a living by writing code since I was 15 or 16, this didn't seem all that essential."

Jeff goes on to make a strong point of irony, "Funny thing is, I now have several more emails in my inbox from other Google recruiters. After reading these emails it appears that they don't know that I interviewed there last year! Perhaps they don't have this data in searchable form. Could that be?"

Given the chance, we'd hire him.

The reaction to AOL's new web portal wasn't entirely warm, as it looks just a little too much like one of its major competitors. Instead of scratching his head on the matter, our own Ryan Block of Weblogs Inc. / Engadget decided to ask David Liu, SVP of AOL Portals, five questions on the new design and its motivations. As you would imagine from a VP, Liu's answers were riddled with PR-speak that doesn't actually reveal much other than 'yea, we were inspired,' but his final answer does offer some interesting snippets about an upcoming revamp of myAOL.com, another of the company's portals (really guys - how many do you need?). Liu promises some intriguing innovation for the new portal, and even MIchael Arrington of TechCrunch was apparently impressed with some early demos he got his hands on.

While we wait to see those promises fulfilled, check out Ryan's interview with David Liu to gain at least a little insight into why AOL's new portal looks just a little too familiar.

Merlin Mann of 43 Folders has just launched The Merlin Show, a new podcast which looks to be a logical expansion into video for the man behind all things productivity. The first episode, published today and titled Hello, offers a brief introduction and insight into some of Merlin's guiding inspiration (such as Benjamin Franklin, kites, beer and other various pleasures in life), while Merlin really kicks things off in episode 002 (also published today) in an interview with Jonathan Coulton, the man behind the now-infamous Code Monkey song.

After listening to and watching Merlin in many of his adventures with TWiT, it's great to see Merlin headlining his own podcasting effort. I'm already subscribed, and Merlin offers a bunch of handy pre-built buttons at The Merlin Show site.

Ever wonder what it's like to work at Microsoft, Yahoo!, or Google? No, not the perks, salaries, or hours, but the good stuff, like who throws the most parties, or gives away the most junk like T-shirts?

A former Microsoft and Google intern who now works at Yahoo! has written up a summary of his experiences with each company. The low-down? Yahoo! has too much bureaucracy, Google has the best food. At Microsoft, every employee has their own office but, Bill Gates has a worn-out pair of shoes, just like anybody else.

The most solid revelation in the article, however, is this bit of sage advice for the job candidate: "Apparently the answer to 'Can you tell me what was the most difficult bug you faced while programming and what you did to resolve it?' isn't 'My programs don't have bugs.'"

If you're a Basecamp user living in the Chicago or NYC areas, and if you have an interesting story to tell about the way you and your organization use Basecamp, then 37signals wants to talk to you. They're looking to shoot a series of interviews which will be promoted on the 37signals site, discussing how exactly you use Backpack. Who exactly are they looking for? Well:

"We're looking for customers from all walks of life and all industries. From educators to designers to writers to marketers to performers to lawyers to anyone who considers Basecamp an integral part of their business."

If you're interested, their blog post has the original announcement and contact information. No deadline for these interviews has been set.

Proving that job interviews are as formulaic as you think, (Where do YOU see yourself in 5 years?), InterviewStream has launched a new job interview prep web site called InterviewTRUE.

The idea is that you sit in front of a Internet-connected computer with a webcam and microphone and answer questions as if you were in a real job interview. When you're done, you can playback your job interview and find out why you keep getting passed up for promotion.

There are over a thousand possible questions on the site. You can either preselect a group of questions, or be all gutsy (and realistic) and answer a random assortment. An interviewer will pop up on screen and when he/she is done asking questions, your webcam will automatically start recording. You'll have two minute to reply, but if you're not happy with your answer, you can hit a button and start over.

When you're done, the whole thing gets uploaded to InterviewStream's servers, and the company will email you a link to watch the completed video. This seems a bit weird at first, like they're planning on doing something nefarious with the video. And maybe they are, but the official reason the video is uploaded rather than saved on your computer is so you can share it with friends, family, colleagues, career counselors, etc for constructive feedback. Of course, if you have these people in your life, maybe you should just ask them to sit down and ask you questions.

InterviewStream's been providing a similar service for college students for some time, but InterviewTRUE is open to the public. There's a free trial that provides you with 24 hours of access to the site. You can also buy 6 month or 1 year subscriptions.

Oh yeah, and as of now, not only is InterviewTRUE Windows XP only, but you need .NET Framework 2.0, Windows Media Player 9, and if you try to visit the site using Firefox you get a friendly note telling you that some features will only work with Internet Explorer.

SnapStream Media releases version 4.5 of its personal video recorder, BeyondTV today. 4.5 is a dot release, and doesn't feature any spectacular changes. Version 4.0 for example, added support for HDTV and DivX. But there is one major new feature. For $30, SnapStream is selling a DVD burning plugin that integrates directly into the BeyondTV interface. Now, when you record a show, you can choose to play, delete, save, or burn to DVD.

Since BeyondTV records in MPEG-2, DivX, and WMV formats, you could always have burned your own video-DVDs. But the ability to do it with your remote control from 10 feet away is new. If you've recorded programs in DivX or WMV, BeyondTV will automatically convert them into DVD-compliant MPEG-2 files. Or if you've recorded a high definition program using an over-the-air ATSC TV capture card, BeyondTV will convert the file into a high quality DVD. There's no support for Blu-Ray or HD-DVD burning yet, but Snapstream CEO Rakesh Agrawal says those features are planned for future releases.

I interviewed Agrawal for this week's PVR Wire Podcast. You can hear him describe some of the other features in BeyondTV 4.5, as well as the impact he thinks Windows Vista will have on 3rd party personal video recorder programs like BeyondTV and SageTV. Several of the retail versions of Vista will ship with Media Center functionality.

Over at Slashdot they're running an interview with Mozilla VP of Products Chris Beard about Firefox 2. The good thing about Slashdot's interviews is that the questions are chosen by the readers. Coincidentally, that's also the bad thing about Slashdot's interviews, because it means time gets wasted on questions like, "How was the cake from MS?" Anyway, it's not a terrible interview. Beard answers questions on Firefox's rendering speed as compared to IE7's ("we test every nightly build to make sure that we're getting faster, not slower than our previous releases"), standards and compatibility with IE ("We do our best to match IE's behavior. But we also realize that trying to be bug-for-bug compatible with IE is a dead end"), feature bloat ("Our community is surprisingly conservative, and we ask ourselves a lot of tough questions about whether or not a feature is really needed and used by a majority of users before we add it into Firefox."), and more. With Firefox's future growth uncertain in the face of IE7 and Vista, the interview is an interesting read.

BusinessWeek is running a great interview with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. The interview covers a ton of ground, beginning with Google's YouTube acquisition and ending with Vista. In between, Ballmer talks about the Web 2.0 valuations and "Bubble 2.0," the business transition from Xbox to Xbox 360, Microsoft's recent high-profile hires, Bill Gates' impending departure, Microsoft's competition, and, of course, the Zune. Vista is a disappointingly small part of the discussion, but it's still worth a read if you're interested in what Microsoft is up to.

This is a recent in-world IM interview I had with Akela Talamasca who blogs for Weblogs, Inc's own Second Life Insider (SLI). Since Second Life is a free software download, an online world that is user-created, and is very much web-based social software and 3D tool, I thought an interview would be very interesting to those who haven't heard of SecondLife or experienced it. Please enjoy, and let me know what you think of the interview. While you're at it, check out SecondLife Insider as well.

Ryan Carter: Akela, you blog over at Weblogs, inc's Second Life Insider (SLI), what is that all about?

Akela Talamasca: It's a blog designed solely to cover Second Life, in the same way that WoW Insider solely covers World
of Warcraft. I have a team of bloggers: Caliandris Pendragon, Mast Penguin, and Aimee Weber, who gets a ton of coverage for her own work in SL.

RC: You've got a great team, I enjoy reading everyone at SLI.

AT: Hey, thanks! I read DL Squad everyday!

RC: So, for anyone who hasn't heard, what is Second Life (SL)?

AT: Second Life is an online virtual world, created entirely by its residents. It has a working economy, with thousands of real world dollars being traded for goods every month. Currently, registration for an account is free, but to own land requires a paid monthly account. There are numerous benefits to owning land, including being able to build more objects, own a home, and stream music from your computer. SL is rapidly approaching one million residents, which many predict will occur between October and November.

RC: Why do you think DLS readers might be interested in SL? Is there something for everyone? Programmers, geeks, business people, students, corporations even?