Today’s interview is with Sugarenia & Stelabouras of SSmap. Read more about them and SSmap below.

1. Firstly,thank you for agreeing to do this interview. How did you decide to start SSmap?


Stelabouras: We were exchanging interesting links on a daily basis, so there was a moment when we thought that it could be a good idea to share this ‘knowledge’ (or data overload) with other people. So after a little research, we ended up with this podcast which serves its purpose of a links digest consisting of news that we found interesting throughout the week.


Sugarenia: We were also disappointed that there weren’t any greek podcasts that were also published regularly and not just sporadically. We try hard to publish a new episode every week, usually by Tuesday morning.


2. Surely, you took lots of responses on the podcast about what each one wants to listen every week. Did these responses influenced you and if yes, what changes did you do on the podcast?


Stelabouras: Well, let’s say that we prefer to ‘run’ the podcast in our own way. We are open to ideas, links and news and we include them in our episodes when it feels right to us. On the other hand, for some requests that we do not quite agree (like music breaks), we simply do not include them.


Sugarenia: We’re always glad to hear suggestions from fans – and quite often, if they are relevant to our interests, we add them to the next episode, always adding a reference to our fan that made the suggestion. However, the core of SSmaP stayed more or less the same in almost 30 episodes – as simple as possible, to emphasize on content and reduce post-processing overhead. We feel it’s quite representative of ourselves and of our web presence.


3. Were there moments that you wanted to stop the podcast?


Stelabouras: No, we enjoy what we are doing so far, and we hope to keep it this way.


Sugarenia: We will do everything to keep it going – it’s a great way to communicate with people and the perfect excuse to stay current with the latest developments of our trade.


4. Can you give us some further information about Sugarenia & Stelabouras?

Stelabouras: Zaharenia is first and foremost a friend and also a very talented web designer with a really bright future. She lives in Heraklion and started her freelancing career some months ago. She writes web related news in PC Magazine, has always a very tight schedule because of her passion for work and enjoys watching anime series and playing mini-games on her iPhone. She is currently working on designs for a lot of new (and unannounced) web services and she loves applying any new stuff she learns on her designs.


Sugarenia: Stelios is a very unique person and a great friend – coming from Thessaloniki, I guess that’s normal. He’s 24 years old, holds a M.Sc. in Computer Science and is a very skilled developer, currently working in Heraklion, Crete. He’s highly determined and can weave any kind of programming magic you ask him. During his free time, he enjoys hacking ‘n’ slashing (or rather, mind blasting) elite mobs in WoW, watching Lost, Flash Forward and Big Bang Theory or giving away headshots in COD with his friends.