Kevin Marks

Kevin Marks
Kevin Marks
Born	1966-09-13 Harrow, UK
Occupation	software engineer, blogger
Nationality	UK
Website
http://epeus.blogspot.com/

Kevin Marks is author of the weblog Epeus Epigone and a software engineer at Google. He became principal engineer for Technorati after doing work for both Apple and the BBC. He is one of the founders of Microformats.

At the first BloggerCon, Marks discussed the power curve as it applies to weblogs:

The net changes the power law of the media curve. If you look at relative popularity on the web, using something like Technorati, you get a power curve that goes all the way down gradually, to the bottom where you see pages that got just a single click. If you look at popularity in the "real" world — best-selling books, or top music — the power curve drops like a stone from a very high level. That's because in order to get a book published, or a piece of music recorded, you have to convince somebody that you're going to sell a million copies. You end up in a zero-sum game, where people pour enormous resources into being the number one, because number two is only half as good. The promise of the net is that the power of all those little links can outweigh the power of the top ten.

In 2003, Marks was an early experimenter with and contributor to the technologies that became popular under the names podcasting and iPodder in 2004.

At the October 4, 2003, BloggerCon, Marks demonstrated (real audio file) a program that downloaded RSS-enclosure audio files and transferred them to Apple's iTunes music player, which could then synchronize them onto an iPod. In his weblog post from the conference that day, Marks mentioned discussing the program with Adam Curry, who also blogged about their chat the next day, including the possibility of their working together, a collaboration that apparently never went far.

Kevin Marks is on the Advisory Council of the Open Rights Group, a UK-based Digital Rights campaigning organisation.

Awards

2006 Best Blog Guide - Technorati - Web 2.0 Awards
2006 Best of Show - Technorati - SXSW Awards
2006 Best Technical Achievement - Technorati - SXSW Awards
2002 Primetime Emmy Engineering Award -Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for Final Cut Pro
1998 Best Paper presented at MacHack 'Personality & Code'
1997 Japanese Wildlife Television Festival Multimedia Award - Wide World of Animals
1997 DTi Information Society Creative Award - Matter Factory
1996 Wildscreen Multimedia Award - Wide World of Animals
1995 MacUser Award - Best Reference title - 3D Atlas
1995 EMMA award for Best Information and Reference - 3D Atlas
1995 EMMA award for Best Overall CD-ROM title - 3D Atlas
1995 BIMA Gold award for Best Reference title - 3D Atlas
1994 Prix Möbius International finalist - 3D Atlas
1993 BIMA European Gold award - Erd Sicht

References

Adam Curry accepts Marks' involvement in the genesis of podcasting CNet
on Apple's iPod CBS MarketWatch
on Apple's iTV Slate
on the European Directive, TV Without Frontiers BBC Radio Five Live Pods & Blogs
on internet radio The Guardian
on video codecs CNet
on blog statistics CNet
on tagging CNet
Marks' move to Google [[TechCrunch}