Boris Mann
The culture of open data
I'm kicking myself because I've been taking far too narrow an interpretation of "an open source approach". I've been focused on getting people to release data. That's the data analogue of tossing code over the wall, and we know it takes more than a tarball on an FTP server to get the benefits of open source. The same is true of data.
Open source discourages laziness (because everyone can see the corners you've cut), it can get bugs fixed or at least identified much faster (many eyes), it promotes collaboration, and it's a great training ground for skills development. I see no reason why open data shouldn't bring the same opportunities to data projects.
And a lot of data projects need these things.
via radar.oreilly.comI've been saying for a while that open data is a sort of new frontier. Open source is relatively wide spread and there is a general low hum of understanding about it in many places. For me, I sum it up by saying to people that they need to understand that their "code is worthless".
The next step is coming to understand about open data, and why we should care. Why we should convince people that their "data is worthless".
On demand book printing - bits come to the real world
I'm fascinated by tools and experiences that let us "DIY". Whether it's using blogging tools to easily put content online, or cooking things from scratch, I like the fact that many things that seem hard or specialized are in fact things that anyone can do. With the Espresso Book Printing Machine, publishing a printed copy of a book has just joined that list.
Oscar's Art Books in Vancouver is one of only a handful of places in Canada that has an "EBM". The Espresso is made by a company called On Demand Books. They're looking to sell the machines to bookstores, universities, and other places where "like minded" people gather.
We failed at making the Vancouver 2010 Olympics an Internet showcase #van2010
Photo by Robert Scales
There, I said it. I really needed to get that off my chest. It's 2010. We don't have hoverboards, but we sure as heck should know how to run large scale interactive websites.
I think I have some unique perspective on this. I'm a technologist that has been experimenting with cutting edge code and devices for over a decade. I was at the 2006 Olympics in Torino, where we put on a symposium around "The Olympics and Web 2.0".
The ticket sales site crashed in Torino back in 2006. I didn't expect that it would crash horribly in 2010.
In Torino, we were using Nokia phones, ShoZu, and cheap Italian 3G connectivity to take pictures and upload them to Flickr in realtime. I remember Darren Barefoot watching from back home. These were isolated incidents.
Today, just hit reload on the #van2010 tag on Twitter, and you'll get a constant stream of on the ground and watching from afar commentary. With links, photos, and hashtags a plenty. This may very well go down as the first "Internet" Olympics with this kind of activity.
But I think we blew it. The "we" being CTV, CBC, and most definitely VANOC initiatives. OK, perhaps I shouldn't expect much from top down IOC controlled bodies who believe in the "magic of television".
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Myth of a core #Drupal team /via @greg_harvey
This was a comment in a thread on Greg Harvey's blog about duplicate issues. I see similar sentiments a lot. Here's the comment I left:
There is no core team. That's the myth. There are people who do more work, and there are version maintainers ... but other than that, it's whoever pitches in.
So, try not to think about "them" or "the core team" -- because it's simply a group of people that have decided to put more time in. The exact people grow and shrink depending on time and interest level, and usually per core version.
How do you get involved with Drupal core? Pick an area that interests you, and submit a patch (or review a patch, or test a patch, or design a mock up, or write some documentation). The barrier to entry for that first post is surprisingly low. And yes, from there on you have to put bit more time in - because there are many many "single post" contributors, who for whatever reason, don't follow through.
But it's worth it, and I encourage you to start by starting. Who knows, you might become part of the core Drupal team :P
Press: CBC "Paid to Blog" segment regarding FTC blogger disclosure rules
The New Year is kicking off with a bang. Bootup Labs moved into our new offices on Sunday (Cambie at Hastings, the Flack Block - come visit!) On Monday morning Danny was in the Financial Post (actually, @trevoro from @layerboom has much longer quotes on page 2). Then on Tuesday (technically yesterday as I'm posting this), I got a call from @lalondetcbc and ended up with a short CBC TV segment talking about whether bloggers should be legally required to disclose payments and other bonuses they receive. I was "opposite" Rebecca / Miss 604. That is, it was supposed to be opposing view points. Rebecca is an excellent blogger. She is a professional blogger (i.e. makes her living from her blogging activities). It's great that she's decided to use CMP.ly to indicate her disclosures: it shows the kind of honesty and transparency that makes her a great blogger. Do we need a law for it? Well, the FTC in the US thinks it does, but the guidelines seem over broad - a $5 discount at a restaurant and a positive review could net you an $11K fine? Of course, they say it will be on a case by case basis. Hmmm ... a law that is hard to enforce and is applied inconsistently? Sounds like trouble to me! I like John Chow's disclosure policy -- everything he posts he's making money from. This is a pure case of media literacy - people need to learn about the sources they are consuming and make their own decisions. Of course, journalists aren't covered under these laws at all. Why not? Good question, and quotes like this one in a Reason Magazine article don't inspire confidence: "Yet I don't remember any reviewer in any print publication ever disclosing that the record, the movie, the meal or the vacation was free." Lastly, it seems like Rebecca and I were set up to have opposing viewpoints, since we seem to be on the same page. Oh well, at least they spelled my name right :P I have a few quotes bookmarked under the tag FTC Endorsement Guidelines for further reading.
Global mobile content $ > music + movies + gaming all put together /via @rtanglao
But even this is not the real comparison. I just said, that Portio measured 'non messaging' premium content revenues for mobile. What of the total mobile data industry? It is now worth over 284 BILLION dollars globally, including messaging income (says Morgan Stanley). Thats 825 times bigger in value than all apps stores. Its not mouse to an elephant in our zoo, it is focusing on the ant and ignoring the elephant.
via communities-dominate.blogs.comI kept trying to figure out different parts of Tomi's article to quote, and realized I was selecting the whole thing. You really do need to read the whole thing to understand where the mobile industry is *today* (and it is gigantic).
*However*, I think Tomi (who is fantastically smart and knowledgeable about the _global_ mobile telecoms industry) is missing where this is all heading. I saw the same thing happen at Nortel when the bitheads (me and other people in the IP everywhere camp - death of scarcity) bumped into the bellheads (telecoms thinking, more similarities to railroads, supply & demand).
Mac Tablet: A Tablet for the rest of us?
But will it actually be "nothing short of Apple’s reconception of personal computing," as Gruber opined? What I think he's getting at is the sentiment embodied by already announced products like the Litl and Google's Chrome OS. This is the middle ground between the desktop and mobile software platforms, which makes perfect sense for a hardware device that fills a similar position. The "reconception" part comes in when you consider how many people really need the power—and the complexity that comes with it—of a desktop platform, and in what situations. As a computer geek watching the Chrome OS introduction video, it's hard not to think about how much easier some people's lives would be (hi Mom and Dad) if they could trade technical complexities they don't care about for vastly increased simplicity and ease of use.