PandoWeekly

Last month, PandoDaily editor Adam Penenberg published an in-depth story about how he challenged hackers to break into his digital personal life – and how they succeeded. The remarkable, and chilling, story was one of Pando's most widely read posts ever. Today, Penenberg talks to Hamish McKenzie about what he learned from the experience and how we can better protect our online lives. 

Early this year, photosharing apps were pretty hot. That's when Albumatic launched its take on the genre. It didn't take off as hoped, so the company pivoted, a few times, before landing on its latest iteration, Koa.la, a photosharing app that integrates with the messaging app Kik. We'll be speaking with Albumatic's founder Adam Ludwin about failing fast, the benefit's of Kik's platform, and the tricky nature of consumer-facing apps. 

Early this year, photosharing apps were pretty hot. That's when Albumatic launched its take on the genre. It didn't take off as hoped, so the company pivoted, a few times, before landing on its latest iteration, Koa.la, a photosharing app that integrates with the messaging app Kik. We'll be speaking with Albumatic's founder Adam Ludwin about failing fast, the benefit's of Kik's platform, and the tricky nature of consumer-facing apps. 

In this week's episode of PandoWeekly, Erin Griffith interviews Phillippe von Borries and Justin Stefano, the co-founders and co-CEOs of Refinery29. Refinery29 just raised $20 million in fresh capital to invest in its fashion and lifestyle media property, after a year of experimenting with commerce and deciding it just wasn't worth it. We're going to have an in-depth discussion of the whole "content and commerce" trend that has swept media startups for the past year. We'll break down why commerce wasn't right for Refinery29, and whether those reasons are universal, to the category or unique to it. 

This week Erin Griffith of PandoDaily interviews hardware vet Scott Miller, who runs a "Kickstarter for hardware" crowdfunding platform called Dragon Innovation. We'll discuss scaling hardware startups, the challenges of China, and why we're in a so-called hardware revolution. 

Alexis Ohanian, Reddit co-founder and Y Combinator's "Ambassador to the East," has a new book out called "Without Their Permission." On this installment of PandoWeekly, Erin Griffith talks to Ohanian about his book, the power of the Internet, and various other Web-related things (cats?).    

Education is moving online, but what about textbooks? Dominated by traditional publishers who put out new editions every three years, the textbook industry is over-priced, outdated, and just waiting for disruption. One of the leading startups trying to do just that is Boston's Boundless. Today, founder and CEO Ariel Diaz talks to Hamish McKenzie about why Boundless is being sued by the major publishers, how textbook publishing could change in favor of students, and what it's like to run a consumer startup in Boston. 

Naval Ravikant, founder of AngelList, has been outspoken about the new SEC's general solicitation rules. They go into effect next Monday. In this week's episode, he'll discuss that and more with PandoDaily's Erin Griffith.  

Frontback, a simple photosharing app that matches selfies with Instagram-like scene shots, has seen a surprise surge in the App Store charts and in recent weeks has caught fire among Internet media types. PandoDaily's Erin Griffith talks to Frontback co-founder Frédéric della Faille about why the app has found such sudden fame.

Eric Stromberg is the founder and CEO of Oyster, a "Netflix for books" built for mobile that launched in beta on Thursday. Hamish McKenzie will talk to Stromberg about all-you-eat content consumption models, the future of book publishing, and how Amazon might be challenged. 

Jay Rosen is a media critic and journalism professor at New York University where he heads up Studio 20, a master's program devoted to new media and digital innovation. He is the author of the book "What Are Journalists For?" and his writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Nation.  For PandoWeekly, Rosen talks to David Holmes about how journalists can do their job effectively while living in a surveillance state, and other tech-media issues of the day. 

Greg Bettinelli is a venture partner at Upfront Ventures and an operating executive at Freeman & Spogli. The Los Angeles-based veteran ecommerce executive was formerly chief marketing officer for HauteLoook, leading the company to a $270 acquisition by Nordstrom in March 2011. Previously Bettinelli was executive vice president for business development and strategy at Live Nation and senior director of business development at eBay Tickets and StubHub. This week’s edition of PandoWeekly is hosted by PandoDaily’s Los Angeles reporter Michael Carney. Carney and Bettinelli will discuss the state of the ecommerce category at large, the role that ecommerce companies play in the Los Angeles startup ecosystem, and the big news coming out of the region this week that women's subscription ecommerce category leader JustFab acquired ShoeDazzle, following the latter's two-year fall from grace.

Russian Internet entrepreneur Dmitry Grishin, one of the founders of Mail.ru, thinks that robotics will one day be as important as the Internet -- and that most big Internet companies will have to become robotics companies, too. Today on PandoWeekly, Hamish McKenzie speaks to Grishin about why he's betting big on consumer robotics, why Japan's robotics industry is more show than substance, and why Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are right when it comes to thinking bigger than the Internet. 

Tech writer Farhad Manjoo joins Hamish McKenzie to discuss the implications of the sale of the Washington Post to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos -- and what it means for the future of the media business. 

Shane Snow is the co-founder and chief creative officer of Contently, a New York-based startup that matches journalists with brands. Contently is one of the drivers and connectors behind a content marketing push that is increasingly taking the place of display advertising for online publications. Snow is also a journalist who has written for Wired, Mashable, and a host of others. On PandoWeekly, Hamish McKenzie will talk to him about the rise of content marketing, and what that means for the media industry. 

Remember Facebook Platform? What has come of it? Did it ever live up to the potential that Mark Zuckerberg laid out for it back in 2007? Facebook Platform was supposed to be the second coming of Windows, but with a social layer. Startups like iLike, Slide, Causes, and RockYou flocked to the platform, spying new opportunity. And then... things kind of fizzled. Today we talk about Facebook Platform's ups and downs and explore what exactly happened to what was once touted as the next big thing. Nat Brown, the CTO of iLike and a founder of the Xbox project, had a front row seat through all the action. He shares his experiences with Hamish McKenzie. (Nat Brown on Twitter.) This show was originally scheduled to air on Friday, July 26, but we rescheduled it due to technical difficulties. 

THIS SHOW HAS BEEN RE-SCHEDULED TO MONDAY, JULY 29. Remember Facebook Platform? What has come of it? Did it ever live up to the potential that Mark Zuckerberg laid out for it back in 2007? Facebook Platform was supposed to be the second coming of Windows, but with a social layer. Startups like iLike, Slide, Causes, and RockYou flocked to the platform, spying new opportunity. And then... things kind of fizzled. Today we talk about Facebook Platform's ups and downs and explore what exactly happened to what was once touted as the next big thing. Nat Brown, the CTO of iLike and a founder of the Xbox project, had a front row seat through all the action. He shares his experiences with Hamish McKenzie. (Nat Brown on Twitter.)

Catherine Bracy moved to San Francisco to head up the technology office for President Obama's 2012 re-election campaign. She quickly noticed the enormous gap between the rich and poor in the area. Now head of international programs at Code for America, she has made a point of highlighting inequality issues in the tech industry, particularly gender and race gaps. For this PandoWeekly, she'll discuss those issues with Hamish McKenzie, and what the tech industry can do to solve the problems. 

Luis von Ahn, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, first saw business success by selling reCAPTCHA to Google. Now he's the CEO and founder of Duolingo, a language-learning app that adapts to users' needs by using Big Data. Hamish McKenzie will talk to Luis about the future of education, Big Data's role in learning, and why Duolingo will always be free. 

Hamish McKenzie talks to DuckDuckGo founder Gabriel Weinberg about "frictionless privacy," protection of personal information, and the implications of an Internet that is always being monitored.