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The Engadget Interview: Sir Richard Branson on Virgin Galactic and space tourism for the everyman
It's been a particularly good week for Sir Richard Branson. SpaceShipTwo, Virgin Galactic's sub-orbital peoplecarrier broke the sound barrier for the first time, and Virgin America began service into San Jose, California. Sir Richard was in town to welcome VA's first San Jose arrival, and we jumped at the chance to chat with him, even if only for a few minutes. Our conversation revolved around Virgin Galactic's latest milestone on its journey towards ferrying the masses to the stars. Naturally, we wanted to know his plan to make space travel affordable for us non-billionaires, as the current cost of a Virgin Galactic ticket is a cool $200K quarter million dollars. His solution? A combination of more spacecraft, more spaceports and the most prolific satellite delivery service in history.
The Engadget Interview: Parrot CEO Henri Seydoux
This man sure knows how to entertain photogs, but he's much more than just a charming French poser. Meet Henri Seydoux, the founder, chairman and CEO of today's multi-talented Parrot. While promoting the recently launched Zikmu Solo wireless speaker in Hong Kong, Seydoux sat down with us to share the amusing story behind himself and his company. Check out the video after the break to hear how Seydoux's encounter with Roland Moreno, the inventor of the smart card, made him drop journalism in favor of software engineering, as well as his detailed explanation on why many Bluetooth audio products suck, and how Bluetooth will continue to rule the world "like Beyoncé." Enjoy!
The Engadget Interview: Nokia CEO Stephen Elop
It's been nearly a year since we spoke with Stephen Elop in New York City for the launch of the Lumia 800, a year that hasn't exactly been full of success on the financials front. But, forget all that, because the new devices are here! We had the chance to chat with Stephen about the new Lumia 820 and 920 and ask him what he thinks the chances are of this version of Windows Phone will be the one that finally gains some traction in the market.
The Engadget Interview: ViaSat CEO Mark Dankberg on Exede and the future of in-flight WiFi
When you think about satellite internet, dismal speeds, ridiculous latency and astronomical fees are likely first to come to mind. But the only technology capable of blanketing our entire planet in connectivity is now able to provide a fast, consistent and affordable experience, thanks to one market-leading company, and the vision and leadership of Mark Dankberg. Launched from Dankberg's home in Southern California, ViaSat lit up on the map in 1986, and spent the first two decades focused on government and corporate contracts. Last year's launch of ViaSat-1, however, beamed the company straight toward the top of the North American satellite broadband market, bringing high-speed internet to the rural masses. Pair the company's Exede household product with airline contracts for in-flight WiFi, and you have one ever-growing infrastructure giant. We sat down with Dankberg -- ViaSat's CEO since inception -- at the company's Carlsbad, California headquarters, learning about the Exede service launch, a portable newsgathering rig and what the future of in-flight WiFi may look like on airlines like JetBlue and United. Join us past the break for the interview in full, and an inside look at how ViaSat plans to transform the entire satellite internet experience.
The Engadget Interview: Fusion Garage's Chandra Rathakrishnan... post-fallout
If we learned anything from our last encounter with Chandra Rathakrishnan, it's that the Fusion Garage CEO is nothing if not candid when discussing his company's past failings. Of course, such admissions came amidst great deal of hype from the executive, who was, at the time, heralding the second coming of his company in the form of the Grid 10, Grid 4 and the innovative Grid OS that fueled the devices. It was the latest chapter in what's proven to be a long and bizarre tale, one that began with the dream of a $200 internet tablet. After countless scheduling pushbacks, fights and price hikes, the proposed CrunchPad finally came to life as the JooJoo, a $499 device that was greeted with scathing reviews, poor timing (thanks mostly to Apple's long-awaited announcement of the iPad) and rather lackluster sales, to put it kindly. In spite of attempts to rally the line, the tablet died a lonely death, and most suspected that it had taken the rest of the company with it. Read on for the full interview.
The Engadget Interview: ARM co-founder John Biggs
You've heard of ARM, right? The little chip design company that started out as twelve engineers in a barn in Cambridge, UK, but is now responsible for 25 billion of the microprocessors on this planet? Good, so now you need to meet John Biggs, who's been there since the very beginning -- since before the barn, in fact, when ARM was just a pesky little project within Acorn Computers. Read on for John's straight-up perspective on the company's frangible beginnings, its deep rivalry with Intel, and what those three letters actually stand for.
The Engadget Interview: Dr. Charlie Miller
Dr. Charlie Miller -- a man who has been covered extensively here at Engadget -- snagged a doctorate in Mathematics from the University of Notre Dame. He spent five years working on cryptography for the National Security Agency. And, after heading into the wilds of security analysis, he was the first to find a bug in the battery of the first MacBook Air, various bugs within Mac OS X and the Safari web browser and assorted bugs within iOS itself, all while racking up thousands of dollars in hacking contest prize money. PWN 2 OWN over: MacBook Air gets seized in 2 minutes flat The Pwn2Own trifecta: Safari, IE 8, and Firefox exploited on day 1 Linux becomes only OS to escape PWN 2 OWN unscathed Last week, this came to a head, as Miller created a controversial proof of concept application that both proved the existence of an iOS security hole as well as got him expelled from the App Store's developer network. Given that he's driven Apple Inc. somewhat nuts over the past few years, we sat down with the good doctor to see how he felt about Apple, iOS, security, technology, sandboxing, the pros and cons of modern security and the ups and downs of one of the weirdest career paths for any aspiring technologist today. Join us after the break for the full interview in both textual and audio form.
The Engadget Interview: Kobo's Michael Serbinis
Kobo celebrated the launch of its eReader Touch Edition with a decidedly low-key event, inviting a handful of journalists to a dimly lit brunch place in midtown Manhattan. The company's CEO Michael Serbinis presided over the event, framing his company as a David in the fight against e-reading Goliaths. It was a stark and fitting contrast to the Nook event that Barnes & Noble would hold a few days later and 40 blocks away -- not to mention the increasingly grandiose productions orchestrated by Amazon's Jeff Bezos. In spite of all of this, the company has managed to maintain a high profile in the e-reader space, as it did this week, when between the announcement of the Nook Tablet and the release of the Kindle Fire, it let the world know that it had been acquired by Rakuten, something of an equivalent to Amazon in its native Japan. The announcement followed the bankruptcy and subsequent closure of once giant bookstore chain Borders earlier this year, a company to which Kobo had long been closely tied. In a conference call last night, Serbinis denied a connection between these events, insisting instead that the deal just made good business sense for the Canadian company. How will the deal affect Kobo? Does this move ultimately impair Serbinis's ability to frame his 200-odd person company's battles as an old testament fight against corporate giants? Or does this simply offer a bit of assistance in its sometimes uphill push for market share? We sat down with the executive to discuss the acquisition, the crowded tablet space and the future of e-reading.
