Free Software Linux

WPBook

So for a while I’ve been working on and beta testing the next version of WPBook. Tonight I’ve just tagged it for release, so it will be available for download shortly. (I’ve already been running it here for a while and testing it on a few other test blogs).

The Web Business Tool Box sponsored by DCKTN
A Practical Workshop Series  for Web Companies and Entrepreneurs.

MiniBar presents ‘The Web Business Tool-Box’ workshop series. As usual, we’re employing a practical minded, no-nonsense approach to the design of the workshop series which will address common business issues in web and tech companies. Our presenters are successful entrepreneurs, CTOs, investors and lawyers, who are amongst the best in the UK’s web sector. Each session will cover a different topic including:

Today marks the start of the 2010 Winter Olympics hosted in Vancouver, Canada. No time to sit in front of the tube all day watching the events? Well luckily for you they will be covered almost exclusively by Facebook and Twitter.

There’s even a list of verified tweeting athletes. Fans can also check out Twitter-Athletes, a site that organizes lists of athletes in other sports who use the service and it links directly to Winter Olympic Tweets.

Looks like Twitter (news, site) and its 140 character limit was not enough. Another upcoming social site/micro-post vendor called Whispurr wants you to expand your character limit horizons, while keeping it simple.

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Our Purpose

The Open 100 competition allows you to nominate your top open companies/organizations/platforms in the world, celebrating the power of openness and mass collaboration. The competition was born out of the UK’s National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA) search for the world’s top 100 open innovation organizations. Now it is being opened up to you to find who the world’s best open innovators really are. You can nominate those companies you think are the best deserving to appear on the list of the best and most interesting open businesses at http://www.openbusiness.cc/category/directory/.

Six Apart announced the release of Movable Type 5 this week. Traditionally a blogging application, Movable Type 5 brings new features into the Web application that evolves it into a more rounded social publishing system. This release includes two versions:

• Movable Type 5.01 - commercial license
• Movable Type Open Source 5.01 - open source license

The goal of Movable Type 5 is to give businesses, organizations and individuals a single, unified software package with integrated website and blog capabilities.  It's been enhanced for the easy creation, administration and management of websites and blogs - all from a single user dashboard.

I was recently invited to try a service called Rollip, a web application which processes photos and applies effect to them. As a bonus, the first 15 people to visit the service using this link will each get 30 free credits: Rollip Online Photo Processing

The effects are similar to those you’d get by applying filters in Photoshop or Gimp, but all the processing happens on the server, requiring no software install – handy for working on a guest machine or for folks who don’t need the full power of a graphics program but want to stylize a photo.

The process is very simple:

Why is it so hard to sell Free, Open Source solutions into the Public Sector especially Local Authorities?

You would have thought that it would be easy - after all FOSS solutions for services such as e-mail, collaboration software, and learning platforms are demonstrably cheaper and more effective than their proprietary equivalents.

You would also be encouraged by the Government mandating that all public sector IT procurements show that due consideration has been given to Open Source solutions alongside proprietary ones.

The Swedish champion of civil liberties and scourge of outdated monopolist Copyright and Patent Laws has made it to the UK. The Pirate Party, famous for losing a recent P2P file-sharing trial, is bloodied unbowed and recruiting.

...good timing too. Riding roughshod over the Minister for Transformation Tom Watson, the First Secretary of State, Lord Peter Mandelson recently announced that whole families will have their broadband access cut if any one of them is caught illegally sharing files.

What?

With an election on the horizon both the Conservatives and Labour are increasingly triangulating on issues they believe will win them votes. This is business-as-usual, but what is remarkable this time round is that Information Technology is heading for centre stage in the game.

Never before has ICT been considered political, but after a long string of Government projects most observers would characterise as failed or failing, absurdly late, and obscenely expensive it has earnt it's place.

It's political - a measure of both a Government's competence and it's financial acumen - both key issues in an election.

In the Open Source world we are rarely privy to what goes on behind closed doors in the world of ICT in UK gov. However, we have been remarkably 'lucky' over the years to fish out just what is going on. By popular request here's how it's done: The Spencer System.

This is my own system used for detective work when dealing with official releases written or spoken in Mandarin-Speak. They invariably consist of: lies (verifiable and non verifiable); 'economical truths'; weasel words; spin and monkey shaking. A glossary is provided at the end for those unfamiliar with the terms.

Ok, so now we know,

John Suffolk's (the Cabinet Office CIO) generously replied to my questions posed in last week's blog. G-Cloud is 'go' and it will be a Private Cloud, based on Open Standards and will use a mix of proprietary and (free?) open source software. All I reckon is left it to see whether it's stitched together by Microsoft's technology or Red Hat's.

In a world of spin, smoke and mirrors working out what is 'going down' is not easy and requires the full use of the "Spencer-scale".

At one end of this sale is 'paranoia', just feelings nothing more, moving through 'guessing' to 'speculation' and then on to 'putting two and two together'. At the other end is 'analysis' (of the facts) and ultimately a simple if rare report of the 'knowns'.

Anyone remember Computer Assisted Learning or CAL? No? Well it's back.

Ever since the first computer to draw a graph or do that parsing thing to allow kids to fill in missing words, ICT has been the 'Great Beige Hope' that would revolutionise teaching and learning.

It's all tosh by the way. Ignore the fake stats and the deluded evangelists. CAL (or interactive computer lead learning) is simply a gimmick perpetuated by the faux trendsetters with good hair that stalk education.