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Southern California is an interesting environment for both technology and media, and in particular for the fascinating intersections of the two industries. One of the most interesting projects in recent months that combines the two is "It's Your Show", an online, Internet project created by NBC's Carson Daly. It's Your Show rewards users who upload their own user-generated video content with prizes, and with eventual broadcast of the winners on a television show. For today's interview, socalTECH's Ben Kuo spoke with Danny Kastner, CEO of FanRocket (www.fanrocket.com), the firm that powered the technology behind the social networking and user generated content on It's Your Show, and got his perspective on how Hollywood is now starting to think about interactivity in conjunction with its programming.

In the recent rush to the Internet with many online video and photo sharing sites, there's been an assumption that bandwidth is free and it costs nothing to provide these services. However, we recently spoke to Tony Greenberg, whose firm, Ramprate, helps companies like CBS,. iFilm, Yahoo, Sony, Virgin, and many others with IT hosting and content delivery costs. He details some of the costs of delivering Internet content for us.

Today, we're featuring a podcast interview with Matthew Kazmierczak, Vice President of Research and Industry Analysis at the AeA. The AeA recently released its CyberStates report, a report on the growth of high technology regions in the United States, and its California Cybercities report, which analyzed California's high tech industry. The Cybercities report included an interesting tidbit, showing that Southern California actually employs nearly as many people in high technology as Northern California does. We spoke to Matthew about the report and it's findings.

Our podcast today is with Kevin Perkins, CEO of Greenlight Wireless, a company that is developing mobile wireless products. The company is known for Skweezer, a service that takes any web page and reformats it for a mobile device. Kevin talks about Advertizer, a new service that Greenlight is offering in the advertising arena, and the business.

For today's podcast, socalTECH spoke with Mike Jones, CEO and President of Userplane, a Los Angeles-based company that provides instant messaging and other applications for social networking web sites. Mike talks to socalTECH's Ben Kuo about his company's applications for social networking, customers like MySpace, and some of his company's plans in the IM federation space and possible venture funding,

Robert Petrossian: My name is Robert Petrossian, and I'm the CEO of Siderean Software. Siderean Software provides software for information access to the enterprise. According to Moore's Law, the computing power is increasing, the interesting side effect of that is... (Continued)

Frank Peters, a guest podcaster for socalTECH, speaks to Leo Spiegel, a venture capitalist at Mission Ventures. Leo tells the story of Sandpiper Networks, the largest return from any Tech Coast Angel investment to date. He speaks of the transition from CEO/entrepreneur to venture capitalist.

I spoke with Jim Armstrong, who is Managing Director of Clearstone Venture Partners (www.clearstone.com) the other day, to get a sense of where they are investing nowadays, and for Jim's views on where the venture market is here in Southern California. Jim also talked to me about the whole idea of a venture capital ecosystem, and the challenges of the industry here in the area around experienced management.

Marc Diana: I'm Marc Diana, CEO of LeadPoint, Leadpoint started coming up just over two years ago, and operates a lead exchange marketplace. We provide a pure environment where buyers/marketers of consumer prospects can meet and exchange data. What's a lead, to Leadpoint, a lead is...

Frank Peters interviews Jim Mazzo, CEO of Advanced Medical Optics. "Vision for Life" is the motto for Advanced Medical Optics, that's what we'll hear from CEO Jim Mazzo. AMO is a spin-off from Allergan with a billion dollars in revenue. The products include laser vision correction, contact lens care and cataract surgery technologies.