The content management company Day Software may not be the world's most famous outfit making money from open source – perhaps a function of the fact that it is located in Basel, hardly known as a hotbed of hackers – but it's certainly an important one, particularly in the Apache part of the open source ecosystem.
On Open Enterprise blog.
I've written about the growing interest in HTML 5 a couple of times, and there is a parallel discussion around the role, if any, of Flash and its proprietary codecs in an Open Web. And now, hidden away in this dull press release from Google, we have another ingredient added to the bubbling cauldron...
On Open Enterprise blog.
The Ogg sound and video formats finally seem to be gaining some traction; the only problem is that few of the major sites employ it - Flash is pretty much ubiquitous these days. That's where TinyOgg comes in: This service allows you to watch and listen to Flash-based videos without the need to Flash technology. This gives you speed, safety, control, freedom and openness.
And if you want more detail on the latter advantages:Choosing Ogg over Flash is both an ethical and technical question. We all want our computers to do better, so here is how our computers are better with Free Formats:
1. You will be able to enjoy the media "natively"; there is no need to install any plug-in or add-on to your standard-friendly browser.
2. You will not need to load heavy and possibly unsafe scripts, which helps with speed and stability.
3. You will support a free, open Web where no corporation monopolizes an important technology, such as video.
4. You will enjoy more control over your digital life with Free Formats and Open Standards because no corporation decides what you can and cannot do with the files you have.
If you're wondering how they can afford to host all the stuff, the answer is, they don't:All videos on TinyOgg are hosted for 48 hours. We believe that most users are going to watch the video only once, so there is no need to the "for-ever hosting" feature, which is going to be costly.
However, you can download the converted files and view them at your leisure. Recommended.
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One of the heartening trends in openness recently has been the increasing, if belated, release of non-personal government data around the world. Even the UK is waking up to the fact that transparency is not just good democracy, but is good economics too, since it can stimulate all kinds of innovation based on mashups of the underlying data.
That's the good news. The bad news is that the more such data we have, the harder it is to understand what it means. Fortunately, there is a well-developed branch of computing that tries to deal with this problem: visualisation. That is, turning the reams of ungraspable numbers into striking images that can be taken in at a glance.
Of course, the problem here is that someone has to spend time and effort taking the numbers and turning them into useful visualisations. Enter the Open Knowledge Foundation, which today launches the self-explanatory site “Where Does My Money Go? - analysing and Visualising UK Public Spending” (disclaimer: I have recently joined the OKFN's Advisory Board, but had nothing to do with this latest project.)
Here's what the press release has to say about the new site:Now more than ever, UK taxpayers will be wondering where public funds are being spent - not least because of the long shadow cast by the financial crisis and last week’s announcements of an estimated £850 billion price tag for bailing out UK banks. Yesterday’s pre-budget report also raises questions about spending cutbacks and how public money is being allocated across different key areas.
However, closing the loop between ordinary citizens and the paper-trail of government receipts is no mean feat. Relevant documents and datasets are scattered around numerous government websites - and, once located, spending figures often require background knowledge to interpret and can be hard put into context. In the UK there is no equivalent to the US Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, which requires official bodies to publish figures on spending in a single place. There were proposals for similar legislation in 2007, but these were never approved.
On Friday 11th December the Open Knowledge Foundation will launch a free interactive online tool for showing where UK public spending goes. The Where Does My Money Go? project allows the public to explore data on UK public spending over the past 6 years in an intuitive way using an array of maps, timelines and graphs. By means of the tool, anyone can make sense of information on public spending in ways which were not previously possible.
There's currently a prototype, and a list of the datasets currently analysed available as a Google Docs spreadsheet. There are some really cool interactive visualisations, but I can't point you to any of them because they are hidden within a Flash-based black box – one of the big problems with this benighted technology. Once HTML5 is finalised it will presumably be possible to move everything to this open format, which would be rather more appropriate for a site dedicated to open data.
That notwithstanding, it's great to see the flood of information being tamed in this way; I hope it's the forerunner of many more like it (other than its dependence on Flash, of course) as governments around the world continue to release more of their data hoards. Meanwhile, do take it for a spin and pass on any suggestions you have that might improve it.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.
I had an interesting chat this morning with Mike Shaver, VP, Engineering at Mozilla, about the imminent Firefox 3.5. Its launch takes place against a background where Firefox continues to make gains in the browser market, passing the 50% share in some European countries, and where it has created an unparalleled ecosystem of addons that places it at the forefront of the browser world in terms of capability and customisability....
On Open Enterprise blog.
Here's the good news:Hemlock is a new web development framework, focused on allowing easy development of real-time, many-to-many apps. Hemlock follows the inspiration of Ruby web frameworks like Rails and Merb. It can be used for applications such as games, workspace collaboration and education.
Open source, too. What's not to like? How about this?
By combining the scalability of XMPP with the flexibility of Flash, Hemlock allows you to create web applications that are more dynamic, interactive and exciting.
Flash??? Aaaargh - quick: pass the hemlock.
As well as being a great coder, RMS is a fine writer (he made a number of excellent suggestions when I sent him rough drafts of the relevant chapter of Rebel Code). So it's a pity that he doesn't write much these days.
And it's also a red-letter day when he does, as with his latest missive: "The Javascript Trap". This describes a problem he has spotted: non-free Javascript.It is possible to release a Javascript program as free software, by distributing the source code under a free software license. But even if the program's source is available, there is no easy way to run your modified version instead of the original. Current free browsers do not offer a facility to run your own modified version instead of the one delivered in the page. The effect is comparable to tivoization, although not quite so hard to overcome.
...
It is possible to release a Javascript program as free software, by distributing the source code under a free software license. But even if the program's source is available, there is no easy way to run your modified version instead of the original. Current free browsers do not offer a facility to run your own modified version instead of the one delivered in the page.
He comes up with some interesting solutions:we need to change free browsers to support freedom for users of pages with Javascript. First of all, browsers should be able to tell the user about nontrivial non-free Javascript programs, rather than running them. Perhaps NoScript could be adapted to do this.
Browser users also need a convenient facility to specify Javascript code to use instead of the Javascript in a certain page.
RMS: where would we be without him?
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One of the seminal publications of recent years was the Whole Earth Catalog, which has attained almost mythic status in hacker circles. Now you experience (most of) the reality:After the WHOLE EARTH CATALOG and its descendants ceased publication, New Whole Earth LLC, headed by entrepreneur and philanthropist Samuel B. Davis, acquired the intellectual property and physical assets of the family of publications from the Point Foundation.
We thought it was important to preserve the heritage of the WHOLE EARTH CATALOG and its succeeding publications. Although the CATALOG's heyday was during a specific and turbulent period of American history, the ideas found in it and in its related publications continue to engage the brightest minds of the 21st century—and Whole Earth LLC believes that those ideas should be preserved as they were originally disseminated.
This collection is not complete—and probably never will be—but it is a gift to readers who loved the CATALOG and those who are discovering it for the first time. The great stuff found on these pages is a celebration of the genius of Stewart Brand and all those associated with the WHOLE EARTH family of publications.
It uses Flash (alas), but quite effectively, to let you flick through the volumes. Fantastic fun for browsing.
Facebook's 120 million users are being targeted by a virus designed to get hold of sensitive information like credit card details.
'Koobface' spreads by sending a message to people's inboxes, pretending to be from a Facebook friend.
It says "you look funny in this new video" or "you look just awesome in this new video".
By clicking on the link provided they're then asked to watch a "secret video by Tom".
When users try and play the video they're asked to download the latest version of Adobe Flash Player.
If they do, that's when the virus takes hold and attacks the computer.
But only, of course, if they're stupid enough to use Windows (which the story - once again - somehow fails to mention.) Oh, and BTW, it's a worm, not a virus.
Sigh.
Update: At least Charles gets it right.
I'm not the world's biggest fan of Flash, but there's no denying an open version would at least be better than a closed one. Here's why that's not happening:Now whether we would publish the entire Flash Player as open source is something that first of all would be somewhat challenging in that there are some codices in Flash that we don't have the rights to all the source to. That's one challenge with that. The other is that I think in terms of what's best here for consistency of Flash on the web, having multiple implementations and having forking and splintering of that code would be a big loss for the web in terms of that consistency. So we're really working to be a good steward of Flash and making sure that it runs across operating systems on the web. And we really want to make sure that we don't end up in a situation where it's fragmented and loses the value that it has brought to the web so far. That's really what we're working to do is to maintain the consistency, but we're very inclusive of open source and involved in open source to enable that innovation of the open source community to be part of the success story with Flash.
Now replace the word "Flash" with "Java", and you have *precisely* the argument that Sun used to give for not open-sourcing Java. Which is now available under the GNU GPL.
Adobe, are you listening...? (Via Aral Balkan.)
Here's that “open” meme again:
Interactive agencies, ad technology firms and software firms joined with Akamai to build a best practices approach to online video player development. The goal of the project was to give the industry a resource that promotes existing best practices around rich media development. Over the last three years thousands of applications have been developed based on this standard powering millions of video plays....
On Open Enterprise blog.
...well, at least as far as I'm concerned:Apple, continuing its reliance on open-source technologies, is using an open-source project called SproutCore to provide rich Internet applications like its new MobileMe service.
The idea is to use to keep Apple from being "locked into the browser plug-ins for...one particular standard."
Never heard of it, but if it offers a completely open alternative to the dreaded Flash, put me down for two of them....
Talking of wisdom of crowds, here's one of my favourite sites, TheyWorkForYou, attempting to harness it in order to make politics more transparent:Video speech matching
TheyWorkForYou has video of the House of Commons from the BBC, and the text of Hansard from Parliament. Now we need your help to match up the two.
We've written a little Flash app where you can (hopefully) match up the written speech being displayed to what's playing on the video. We'll then store your results and use them to put the video, timestamped to the right location, on the relevant page of TheyWorkForYou.
Web 2.0 at its best.
...and I will infect the world:
Symantec has warned of a security hole in Adobe's Flash Player that is already being exploited by web sites to install trojans onto users' computers. Adobe is still analysing the bug and has not yet been able to release an update.
...
The malicious code only appears to be attacking Windows at present. ISC reports that it downloads the files ax.exe and setip.exe. However, the vulnerability probably affects Flash Player for other operating systems as well. It is therefore likely to be just a question of time before malware coders are distributing malicious code for Linux and Mac OS X.
Another reason to flee Flash.
A decade ago, I and others started wittering on about the Microsoft monoculture - the fact that practically everyone was using the same OS, the same browser, the same office suite. This made crafting attacks much easier, because certain assumptions about what was on a given machine were almost certainly true.
Nowadays, with the rise of Firefox and, to a lesser extent, OpenOffice.org, you might think we've moved on. Apparently not:We have different versions of the OS, and we have Mac users. But we’ve only got one Flash vendor, and everyone has Flash installed. Why do you care about Flash exploits? Because in the field, any one of them wins a commanding majority of browser installs for an attacker.
Moreover:Although this document deals specifically with the Win32/intel platform, similar attacks can most likely be carried out on the many other platforms flash is available for. In particular, some of the methodology discussed might be useful for constructing a robust exploit on Unix platforms as well as several embedded platforms.
In other words, ecosystems need to be heterogeneous everywhere: as soon as you have a monoculture in some area, that becomes a weakness for the entire system to be attacked.
OMNow is a foundation dedicated to the development, support and empowerment of an open media infrastructure. Upon this infrastructure stand companies and individuals who need free media solutions. Free media solutions save companies money and give them control over product technology. Such solutions support individuals by offering them legal ways to create, distribute and display their creative works. Our foundation opens the media market by actively developing operating system-agnostic and cross-platform solutions.
Pity they're starting with bloody Flash/Gnash....
More details on the Elonex £100 ultraportable:Elonex claims the whole caboodle is optimised for the Linux software it runs. The Linux is Debian flavoured and the little office suite that is bundled with it is all branded ONE. ONEInternet, ONEMail, ONEWord, etc.
As we surmised, storage comes in a 1Gb flash flavour. There's 128Mb of DDR-II memory, a seven-inch 800 by 480 LCD screen with stereo two-channel audio, built-in speakers, a microphone and audio Jack. Wibbling comes courtesy of a Lan/WLAN 10/100M Ethernet with WLAN 802.11g Antenna.
Update: And someone else has spotted that it seems to be this machine, rebadged.
Another reason to hate Flash:Now Adobe, which controls Flash and Flash Video, is trying to change that with the introduction of DRM restrictions in version 9 of its Flash Player and version 3 of its Flash Media Server software. Instead of an ordinary web download, these programs can use a proprietary, secret Adobe protocol to talk to each other, encrypting the communication and locking out non-Adobe software players and video tools. We imagine that Adobe has no illusions that this will stop copyright infringement -- any more than dozens of other DRM systems have done so -- but the introduction of encryption does give Adobe and its customers a powerful new legal weapon against competitors and ordinary users through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
(Via Techdirt.)
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