Copycat: I Say "Tomato", and You Say "Tomato"

Ha!

MA Ma-Madness

Talking of lightning, I can't believe that the curse of Massachusetts has struck twice in the same place, but apparently it has:

In (another) sad day in Massachusetts, State CIO Louis Gutierrez submitted his resignation today to the Romney administration. Like his predecessor, Peter Quinn, Louis is a man of principle. And, like Peter, he is taking the high road by using his resignation to inform the citizens of Massachusetts of a regrettable lapse on the part of their elected representatives.

I suppose the only consolation is that if ODF succeeds here, with everything ranged against it, it will succeed anywhere.

Microfinancing Goes Open

Microfinancing - making small loans to many people, especially those traditionally unable to obtain loans - is about decomposing money: breaking it up into smaller bits for more efficient use. The same could be said about the distributed development technique employed by open source. So it's good to see the two coming together:

A Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization has sparked the creation of an open source project to help build technology infrastructures for non-profit microfinance institutions. In developing countries around the world, these institutions loan small amounts of money to women who want to start businesses and create a better life for themselves and their families. The Mifos Software Initiative debuts this week at the Global Micro-Credit Summit in Halifax.

The Mifos Software Initiative has been created by the Grameen Foundation:

to address the microfinance industry’s information management challenge. The Mifos Initiative delivers an open source information management system for the global microfinance industry via a collaborative development and support community.

The Mifos Initiative is a new approach to technology that puts the control of technology in the hands of the MFI [microfinance institution]. The open source framework allows microfinance institutions to select locally based development and support services to assist with customization of their software, maintenance and implementation support services. Previously, this level of control could be met only by building and maintaining their own system, which is extremely expensive and therefore not accessible for most MFIs.

Feast of the Behemoths

There's no doubt that the three giants of the online world are Microsoft, Google and Yahoo. What they get up to matters, so tracking what they're doing in terms of acquisitions, say - and who they're doing - is a fruitful activity. The problem, is keeping track. Enter this rather nice draggable timeline, which shows who did what, when and to whom. (Via John Battelle's Searchblog.)

Top500 Supercomputers: Guess Who's Top?

The Top500 Supercomputer list is always fun, not least because it shows us where we will all be in a few years' time. There are all sorts of cuts of the main data, but the one you'll really be interested in is here; it shows that GNU/Linux ran a cool 75% of the Top500, and that a certain other operating system's share is so nugatory it's not even mentioned by name.

How Green Was My PC?

Not very, it seems.

This report contrasts the amount of electricity consumed, and carbon dioxide generated, by two approaches to school computing: one based on conventional PCs, the other on thin clients running open source. The difference is startling:

The Green Model therefore represents a 89% saving in the cost of electricity and a 78% reduction carbon dioxide emissions when compared to the Conventional Model.

And it's going to get worse:

The stated aim of many authorities is to have one computer per child. In addition the exponential growth of the interactive whiteboard in all education sectors is set to achieve one in every classroom.

Bearing in mind that an interactive board runs from a conventional PC with a 600w projector and that there are over 50,000 primary schools in the UK we can predict a ten fold increase in power consumption with concomitant carbon increases over the next five years.

Serious stuff that merits thought and action, quickly.

Will Lightning Strike OpenOffice.org?

I've written elsewhere about what I call the FOOGL concept - Firefox, OpenOffice.org and GNU/Linux. Basically, the idea is that once everyone is using Firefox and OpenOffice.org on Windows, it's much easier to slip them across to GNU/Linux, because nobody really cares about platforms if the apps are the same.

The only fly in the ointment in this argument is that you need a good email client. Thunderbird, I here you say: to which I reply, OK, but what about the calendaring? If you're going to replace Outlook, you need to match its basic functionality, and for businesses that means calendaring.

Enter Lightning, an add-in to Thunderbird that brings it up (down?) to Outlook's level. Here's an interesting interview with the Engineering Director at Sun Microsystems, Michael Bemmer, on this very subject. What's particularly significant is that it hints at a day when Lightning will be more closely integrated with OpenOffice.org too.

Now that would be seriously fooglicious.

Legal Commons vs. Social Commons

Interesting distinction, fascinating examples.

Science Commons - the Conference

To late to go to this, of course, but it's interesting to see the science commons meme spreading. And there's always some yummy papers to console.

Google+Open Access = Health

Doctors in doubt about a patient's ailment could use Google to help them reach a diagnosis, researchers said today.

Two Australian doctors have found that entering the symptoms of a tricky case into the internet search engine often results in accurately diagnosing the illness.

This story has an interesting implication. One easy way to improve the quality of the results - and hence the quality of the diagnosis and subsequent therapy - would be to release more medical literature as open access. Then, by definition, it would be picked up by Google, which would feed through the results to the medics.

Open access: you know it makes sense.

The Opens.mp3

If you really have absolutely nothing better to do, you could always listen to me wittering on about the opens at the British Computer Society a couple of weeks back. You can even read the book of the mp3 at the same, for double delight.

Tagging Second Life

Tags have proved one of the most powerful Web 2.0 ideas. They let everyone add their pebble to the cairn of taxonomy, creating a rich tapestry of knowledge that would be impossible to match using automated means (well, with the current state of AI, at least).

Tags are a kind of signpost in semantic space, so an obvious extension would be to tag other kinds of space - for example, the virtual one of Second Life. Enter the LandRing, which lets you do exactly that. It's another product of the fertile mind of Timeless Prototype, and it's being made available through the Multi Gadget - here are the details.

Towards a Trillion Trees

I'm a big fan of trees, especially for helping to address the world's environmental problems. So this sounds like a jolly good wheeze:

The Nobel peace laureate Wangari Maathai launched a campaign today to plant a billion trees next year - 32 every second - to highlight the need to tackle global warming.

Mind you, in the light of the fact that

Over the past decade 130m hectares of trees have been destroyed, according to the UN. Reforesting such an area would require 140bn trees to be planted.

I think we should be more ambitious: how about a trillion trees? Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?

Zeroing in on Abundance

A characteristically deep post from Techdirt about the intertwinings of copyright, economics and abundance.

Thinking about Thinkature

I like Thinkature for four reasons.

First, it's about real-time, online, visual collaboration.

Second, it doesn't use Flash (unlike one of its rivals).

Third, it's free.

Fourth, it's got a great name.

(Via TechCrunch.)

Wikipolitics, Or, The Power of the Many

Nothing new here, but it bears underlining, since it's why collaborative openness will prevail:

when news of Donald Rumsfeld's resignation from his position as Secretary of Defense came across the wires I was not necessarily surprised to see that a Google search for his nominated replacement Robert Gates returned Gates' Wikipedia page as the first search result. Wikipedia content places very high in many Google search results, not only its articles but its user profiles as well. But the key factor was that his bio had been updated to include dozens of useful new edits from several sources within hours of his announced nomination - including information and links about the nomination itself.

Tapping into the Digital Tipping Point

For some reason, the idea of open source film is one that exerts a strong fascination on people. I've written about it before, and here's another one:

The Digital Tipping Point film project is an open source film project about the big changes that open source software will bring to our world. Like the printing press before it, open source software will empower average people to create an immense wave of new literature, art, and science.

...


The first DTP film will follow my individual personal growth from being an attorney who feared computer technology to being a community activist who picks up technology tips while shooting this movie, and brings that technology back to a local public school.

So far, so dull, you might think. But more interestingly:

We will make as many films as the open source film community would like to make. The DTP project will actually be many, many films made about free open source software. We are giving away our footage under a Creative Commons license on the Internet Archive's Digital Tipping Point Video Collection.

There's another aspect to this. The 300 or so hours of interviews that have been conducted for this film will form an invaluable record of some of the key people in the open source world, a resource that future historians will be able to tap.

Which reminds me: I really must put online the hundreds of hours of interviews that I did for Rebel Code six years ago: it would make an interesting foil to the present material.

From Ransom Love, With Love

One thing I could never understand about the whole SCO affair is how the people at Caldera, which took over SCO, could be in any way part of the mess. And now comes this from the ever-diligent Groklaw:

Here's Ransom Love's Declaration [PDF] as text, which he has provided to IBM, another of the 597 exhibits IBM has offered in support of its summary judgment motions. I want to thank Laomedon for doing the work.

Love was the CEO of Caldera prior to Darl McBride. And he tells the court about Caldera when it was a Linux company, about the Santa Cruz assets acquisition, a bit about Novell, where he worked before starting Caldera and worked on the Corsair project, and about his view of SCO's claims regarding header files. He didn't have to do this declaration. It's voluntary, unlike a deposition, and that speaks volumes right there.

He thrusts a dagger right into the heart of SCO's claims. I see no way to recover from his declaration, because there is no one who can convincingly contradict. He was the CEO, the co-founder of the company to boot. Who can possibly know more than he does about the history of the company, what it did with Linux, its striving for POSIX compliance, and particularly whether the company knew about the header files being in its own distribution of Linux that SCO claims are infringed? Even if SCO were able to trot out Bryan Sparks, the other co-founder, Sparks was not CEO at the time of the Santa Cruz acquisition. There is no one but Love to testify at this level. Love has done the honorable thing and told the truth. I take my hat off to him.

Me too. When I interviewed him for Rebel Code, he seemed a very decent chap. This latest twist in the sorry SCO saga confirms that view.

Fork Your Data

Eric says:

The more we can, for example, let users move their data around, never trap the data of an end user, let them move it if they don't like us, the better.

Nothing like the threat of a fork to keep 'em honest. (Via Slashdot.)

Skulduggery at WIPO

An interesting leaked document shows how the intellectual monopoly bullies (the EU, US and Japan with a few hangers-on) are trying to undermine any good work that WIPO might be minded to do under the influence of developing countries. Clearly still a long way to go on the WIPO front. (Via Boing Boing.)

An Open Letter to Our Tone

Yup.

UOFology

Andy Updegrove has a fascinating post about the Chinese document format UOF:

It's called the Uniform Office Format (UOF), and it's been in development since January of 2002; the first draft was completed in December of last year. It includes word processing, spreadsheet and presentation modules, and comprises GUI, format and API specifications. Like both ODF and OpenOffice XML, it is another "XML in a Zip file" format.

And he points out:

Implementation of UOF will continue the trend away from proprietary, "lock in" products, and towards an environment with more competition, more variety, and more freedom for end-users. Presumably, the proliferation of compatible open format alternatives will place added pressure on OOXML to become increasingly open and competitive in order to be relevant. Whether that will be sufficient to offset the appeal of alternative (and often cheaper) office suites implementing ODF and/or UOF remains to be seen.

Open Source DIY

I hate DIY.

No, really: I really, really hate DIY. So the idea of a site devoted to the damn subject is pretty appalling. Except that Instructables has a clever twist (otherwise I wouldn't be writing about it): this is a kind of collaborative, open source DIY, where people share their DIY ideas, tips and secrets, and others make suggestions for improvement or just generally comment on things.

It's a nice idea. But a better one would be where somebody else came around to your house and did it for you. Now that's what I call real collaborative DIY. (Via TechCrunch.)

When the Picture Changes

I've written about Riya a few times. It's visual search technology is interesting; alas, it hasn't turned out to be very profitable, because the people behind it are changing direction somewhat. They've just launched Like.com, which seems to be a specialised accessories search engine for people with more money than taste.

What I do admire, though, is the way the company's founder, Munjal Shah, has put the ecstasy and agony of the transmogrification of Riya into Like in his blog for all to see and learn from. It's both brave and generous, and I salute that.

Pity about the new company, though.

It's the Info Commissioners Squad

I don't know how much practical effect this will have, but it's a nice idea:

A group of international data and privacy protection commissioners has decided to act together to challenge the surveillance society which they claim is developing. Commissioners from the UK, France, Germany and New Zealand will adopt common policies.

At the annual Conference of Data Protection and Information Commissioners, held last week in London, a joint set of objectives was adopted by the international commissioners aimed at tackling what they see as a growing international issue of constant citizen surveillance.