April 13, 2007
This blog permanently moved to http://gnuband.org
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January 02, 2007
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Craigslist President and Chief Executive Jim Buckmaster isn’t nuts. He just sounds that way, particularly to anyone who thinks that the point of running a business is, you know, to make money.
And that was enough to make his appearance last week at the UBS Global Media & Communications Conference feel like a dizzying trip through Lewis Carroll’s looking glass.
Speaking in an unflappable, near-monotone, Buckmaster calmly discussed with UBS analyst Ben Schachter a business model which, by any rational standard, is completely insane.
(…)
OK, so Craigslist boasts a huge potential to make money, but isn’t really interested in generating big profits. Given that combination, why not raise funds through equity investments or advertising and then give the money away to charity, Schachter asked.
“I think it’s a valid argument and one that we don’t necessarily have a persuasive answer for,'’ Buckmaster said. “That is a proven model for doing good in the world. It just doesn’t happen to be our model. Ours is to try to be as philanthropic in our core business as we can be and leave all the money out there in the hands of users.'’
We now return you to your regularly scheduled reality, already in progress.
December 21, 2006
This post is cross-posted from gnuband.org where it was originally written.
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During my long no-blog period, I kinda lost the unconditioned reflex "This is interesting, let me blog it" in favour of the less advanced "This is interesting, let me think about who might be interested and send her an email containing just this link".
At least this is something that was happening with my previous blog post, I was starting to think who might be interested in knowing that "Italian public television (RAI) will be entirely under Creative Commons" in order to send them an email. Luckily a strike in the blue sky of my mind came to rescue me with a providential "why don't I blog it so that I don't clutter their mailbox and ... if they want to read, they simply come here, when they want? Moreover the possible readers might include people I don't know that find the post after months via a search engine."
I strongly rationally believe that Email is where knowledge goes to die, I just think I lost the unconditioned reflex.
By the way, the metaphor of blogging as writing an email cc:World is due to Doc Searls.
This post is cross-posted from gnuband.org where it was originally written.
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The Italian Government has prepared the new guidelines for the Italian public television (RAI).
It is delightful to read that one of them is:
- (in Italian) offrire all’utenza, nell’ambito della licenza nome come Creative Commons, la possibilita' di scaricare via Internet tutti i contenuti radio-televisivi prodotti dalla RAI mediante proventi dei canoni di abbonamento;
- (in English) offer, under a Creative Commons licence, the possibility to download through Internet all the radio and television content produced by RAI using the mandatory subscription fees;
I must admit that I'm profoundly surprised but, hey, this is probably one of the effect of having a passionate blogger as Minister of Communications. Continue reading "Italian public television (RAI) entirely under Creative Commons!"
December 15, 2006
| Free software |
free_software
|
This post is cross-posted from gnuband.org where it was originally written.
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One of the big advantages of using GNU/Linux is that most of the computer games don't run on it and, as a consequence, I don't have the risk of trying one, become addicted and hence even less productive (whatever productive means). However I somehow feel isolated from conversations and frontier experiences for not being able to try World of Warcraft or SecondLife. I once tried to find some Free Software alternatives and downloaded PlaneShift, a very cool Free Software MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role-playing game) that runs also under GNU/Linux, but what happened is that I played until 6 in the morning and the following day I was sooo sleepy!
Another game that might soon become Free is Ryzom.
"Ryzom is an innovative MMORPG, which has been developed since the year 2000 by the independent studio, Nevrax. For the past two years Ryzom has been marketed and sold to gamers, developing a fiercly loyal fanbase. Unfortunately, due to market conditions and other unforseen cirucumstances, a request to begin bankruptcy proceedings has been filed at the commerce tribunal."
The Free Ryzom Campaign is soliciting donations in order to "help us purchase the source code, artwork and other game data associated with Ryzom, so we can breathe new life into it as an open, democratically run player project".
It is great to read that the Free Software Foundation announced that it will officially support the Free Ryzom Campaign with a pledge of $60,000. Lack of games is often mentioned as one of the main reasons for people not to switching to GNU/Linux.
And Ryzom seems incredibly cool too (see the YouTube video), so who will need the non-free software World of Warcraft or SecondLife anymore?!?
You might want to support this initiative and donate to The Free Ryzom Campaign or donate to the Free Software Foundation.
[via gnuvox] (this post was also an excuse to try how embedding YouTube videos works)
December 06, 2006
This post is cross-posted from gnuband.org where it was originally written.
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Last Saturday I participated in the BarCampTurin. Bru and I spoke about CouchSurfing as an example of "Sharing as a modality of economic production". Well, I wanted to speak about this concept while Bru wanted to speak about hidden profits, we probably didn't coordinate very well. ![[winking face]](http://moloko.itc.it/paoloblog/images/smilies/wink.gif){kind=small}
Anyway the slides are on slideshare in case you are interested.
It was my first BarCamp and, reading on the wiki there were more than 200 registered people, I was very afraid to burn my first experience of BarCamp. Overall, I think it went well (thanks Vittorio!) given the fact more than 250 people shown up.
Anyway, I would be very curios to run a poll asking to participants of BarCampTurin:
Did you read the RulesOfBarCamp on the wiki? YES | NO
(Of course there is no critical mass of readers in this blog so I solicit some more popular blogger to post the poll, if she finds the question interesting).
My impression is that 70% of the participants would say "NO, I didn't read the RulesOfBarCamp".
The fact we didn't even bother to translate the rules on the BarCampTurin wiki page might be an indicator. Of course the critique is first for myself and so in a pure free-wiki-doacracy-philosophy today I took some time to translate TheRulesOfBarCamp (English) in LeRegoleDelBarCamp (Italian). The translations is attached below but you better read them on the BarCamp wiki itself. And of course the translation is not perfect at all, but hey, it is a wiki, isn't it? Go ahead and improve it.
BarCampTurin was the second BarCamp in Italy (the first was BzaarCamp in Milan) and there are already more BarCamps in preparation, I know of RomeCamp and MarCamp (in Marche region).
It is self-evident that in order to run successful BarCamps we should at least be aware of the rules (and discuss them).
The important rule I think we should try to stick with is
NO SPECTATORS, ONLY PARTICIPANTS
or according to my translation in Italian
NIENTE SPETTATORI, SOLO PARTECIPANTI
even if I probably liked more "NIENTE SPETTATORI, SOLO ATTORI".
December 05, 2006
This blog permanently moved to http://gnuband.org.
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Summaryzing:
Follow the new blog at http://gnuband.org
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November 23, 2005
| Trust and Reputation |
trust_and_reputation
|
Wow, I received an email with another trust-related project.
The Agent Reputation and Trust (ART) Testbed initiative has been launched with the goal of establishing a testbed for agent reputation- and trust-related technologies. The ART Testbed is designed to serve in two roles:
* as a competition forum in which researchers can compare their technologies against objective metrics, and
* as an experimental tool, with flexible parameters, allowing researchers to perform customizable, easily-repeatable experiments.
You can play with the code released on Sourceforge and you can also enjoy the explanation movie!
| Trust and Reputation |
trust_and_reputation
|
Today is a day of interesting conferences about trust.
Reinventing trust, collaboration and compliance in social systems
A workshop exploring novel insights and solutions for social systems design
April - 2006 in conjunction with CHI 2006
| Trust and Reputation |
trust_and_reputation
|
- 22nd Chaos Communication Congress - Private Investigations - Breaking Down the Web of Trust
Even with tutorials on the WoT and good trust policies the concept of "trust" can still be hard to grasp. Here we'll look at trust metrics, ways of using current trust systems better, and some non-crypto applications of trust.
- Microformats Proposal for Reputation and Trust Metrics By Charles Iliya Krempeaux, B.Sc. Very interesting!!!
[From http://del.icio.us/tag/trust, subscribe to the rss feed (http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/trust)]
| Trust and Reputation |
trust_and_reputation
|
"There are three types of lies - lies, damn lies, and facts found on the Web."
Dr. Tim Finin, paraphrasing the well known quotation by Benjamin Disraeli on Statistics
This quotation opens the "Workshop Motivation and Goal" of the Models of Trust for the Web (MTW'06), a workshop at the 15th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2006), May 23-26, 2006, Edinburgh, Scotland.
The workshop seems incredibly interesting.
(via del.icio.us/tag/trust)
November 18, 2005
I read from Ethan Zuckermann who is currently in Tunis for the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) some shocking news.
Im here to help run a workshop titled Expression Under Repression, hosted by Hivos and organzied by the Global Voices team. When we arrived at the exhibition hall this morning, we were warned that our workshop could be cancelled. (...) Specifically, it was suggested by Tunisian authorities that expression under repression has nothing to do with ICT for development.
and
Yesterday, we were warned that our session could be cancelled by the Tunisian authorities. We also discovered that the session wasnt listed in the official program guide. Today, we came to the room where the session was to be held and there was a sign on the door stating that the workshop was cancelled. Friends who passed by the UNDP booth on the WSIS floor earlier today heard gossip that the security forces would appear at our session and anyone who attended would be arrested. And I got a few SMSs from people whod asked about our session at the information booths and had been told there was no information on our session.
It is incredibly stupid for Tunisia to just show its repressive and censorship face when all the world is looking in their direction for the WSIS. And we all should really think about it more often, many countries control Internet and negate freedom of expression to their citizens.
Something you can do (but only a tiny contribution of what we should do) is to join the Electronic Frontier Foundation which, among millions of other worthy campaigns, published How to Blog Safely (see also GlobalVoices technical extension and the Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
Just one more shocking news, RSF head Robert Menard was not allowed by Tunisian security officials to leave the plane after his arrival from Paris in Tunis.
Too often, leaving in a country where Internet is not (too much) filtered and there is (enough) freedom of expression I forgot about these important matters. If you care about these matters, do join EFF and follow Ethan's blog.
November 16, 2005
| Free software |
free_software
|
| ICT4D |
ict4d
|
You probably have heard of the MIT initiative One Laptop Per Child, a plan to develop a $100 laptop computer for distribution to millions of schoolchildren in developing countries.
Today I read from WallStreetJournal:
Steve Jobs, Apple Computer Inc.'s chief executive, offered to provide free copies of the company's operating system, OS X, for the machine, according to Seymour Papert, a professor emeritus at MIT who is one of the initiative's founders. "We declined because it's not open source," says Dr. Papert, noting the designers want an operating system that can be tinkered with.
Wow! Apple offers for free its fabolous operating system and the MIT has the strenght to refuse such an offer. Just think if this would have happened 5 years ago. MIT would probably have been so happy and thanking. But now GNU/Linux on the desktop is almost as usable as other operating systems, and it will be better in few years.
Of course MIT's refusal makes a lot, a lot of sense and I totally support their decision, even if they should speak fo Free Software and not Open Source. Anyway, embracing a proprietary operating system would not give to schoolchildren in developing countries the freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0), the freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). [Access to the source code is a precondition for this.], the freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2), the freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). [Access to the source code is a precondition for this]. These are the freedom that Free Software gives you.
The $100 laptop is just a mean for achieving a goal, that is reducing poverty (that can be defined as inability to improve your current conditions). In this sense, only the ability to "play with" and study how your tool works, the ability to be an active player in the game and not just a passive swallower of information can produce empowerment. So being able to play with the tool (i.e. access to its source code) is mandatory. And the before mentioned freedoms as well.
November 14, 2005
From rediff:
In an effort to spread information technology literacy and make the Internet more accessible to the masses, Hong Kong based Asiatotal.net has launched iT, a stripped-down version of a personal computer which will be distributed free of cost to lower income individuals and small businesses. iT is a compact, portable desk top computer equipped with Windows CE (operating system for hand-held devices) complete with everything necessary to connect to the Internet, and has home entertainment devices, a printer, a USB card reader for reading memory cards of digital cameras and many other USB peripherals.
It seems there is a new attention on how to squeeze business opportunities out of the poor, since they are so many. In fact how will this firm (the one giving away computers for free) make money? This device has a conventional keyboard with 14 additional keys, 10 of which will be sponsored by firms that want to tap rural markets, like a firm selling seeds or crop insurance. By pressing the relevant "hot key", farmers can directly access firms' websites where product information will guide them to making the right purchase.
I'm a bit skeptical about this approach (especially about the choice of Windows CE that means no real endogenous development can spark) but I don't have too much experience about the topic, even if these days I'm reading a lot about ICT4D, Information and Communication Technologies for Development (more about this later).
Related to the "economic opportunities at the Bottom of the Pyramid", I would also like to share that a new economical thinking seems on the rise patronized mainly by C.K. Prahalad. I keep finding his ideas, in particular the ideas presented in his book "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits".
This is a purely capitalistic approach to reach one of the millenium goals: halving extreme poverty by 2015. I can see why International Economic Agencies (WTO, World Bank, ...) and the rich countries who govern them like this approach: the new mantra might sound something like "no more need to donate percentages of the GDP to poor countries, just let keep our corporations trying to maximize their profits and everything will settle down by magic".
I have no idea if C.K. Prahalad's approach can really work, surely it is very realistic and not abstact, it argues about a possible way to eradicate poverty. It is not serious to criticize without proposing an alternative and I don't really have experience on macroeconomics. I'm more for approaches like global redistributions of richness but at the present moment they are politically totally unviable and unproposable.
Going back to the rural computer for free, I would like to underline that from 16 to 18 November 2005 there will be in Tunis the World Summit on Information Society. Surely one of the topic will be if and how ICTs will help in reaching the millenium goals and reduce global poverty. I'll try to keep an eye on it.
| Recommender Systems |
recommender_systems
|
Users reviews of products (like "I bought an Ipod and it was not working" or "I went yesterday to XYZ Restaurant and it was fabolous" or "i saw 'paradise now' and it was great") are the basic building blocks of Recommender Systems. And of course they are able to determine the success or failure of a product. Many people nowadays before buying a product check "what Internet is saying about this product?", usually the level of information awareness is precisely this one.
So, it should not be surprising that:
- There are authors on Amazon who write reviews of their own books under pseudonyms
at least one U.S. author was mistakenly outed on Amazon.com's Canadian website as having written a review of his own work. The real names of thousands of people who had posted anonymous customer reviews under pseudonyms like "a reader from St. Louis" were revealed online for several days - a mistake that finally was corrected after reviewers, some of them authors themselves, complained.
- a restaurant is suing zSurvey.com, a company that collects restaurant reviews from common consumers and posts them online and in a book, for damaging its reputation. (...) seeking a public apology and 50,000 yuan (US$6,173) each in compensation.They are also demanding the Website delete all of the negative comments it has posted online and stop publishing a guide book with negative comments".
- and mainly that Amazon Gets Patents on Consumer Reviews
Review your local dry cleaner, pay $10 million?
User reviews are a hot new content area, being used by Google (Quote, Chart), Yahoo (Quote, Chart) and MSN to sweeten their local search results. But as of Thursday, such consumer reviews could put search providers, as well as thousands of e-commerce sites, video rental or review sites and online booksellers, in the sights of Amazon.com's (Quote, Chart) lawyers.
The patents are simply absurd (you can read them in the article) and I'm not going to comment them and I'm very happy that at least for now Europe voted against Software Patents).
About reviews, I think that creators should be free to publish their opinions (in term of reviews in this case), they should own their reviews (hreview seems a great format for this task), reviews should be released under very liberal licences and everyone should be allowed to aggregate the reviews and do whatever she prefers with this information: offer a Recommender System service, use them for her own decisions, .... Reviews are one of the cornerstones of the Information society and they should be usable by anyone who has an idea.
10 older entries:
-
Spyware Sony seems to breach copyright [11/14/2005]
From dewinter.com: The spyware that Sony installs on the computers of music fans does not even seem to be correct in terms of copyright law. It is simply great. While Sony claims that it installed software secretly on the computers of unaware customers in order to protect the copyright of its musicians (while everyone knows that Sony is just trying to perpetuate its dying business model), Sony itself does not care about not respecting the copyright of the author of the software LAME that is licensed under the so called Lesser Gnu Public License (LGPL). It turns out that the rootkit contains pieces of code that are identical to LAME, an open source mp3-encoder, and thereby breach the license. This software is licensed under the so called Lesser Gnu Public License (LGPL). According to this license Sony must comply with a couple of demands. Amongst others, they have to indicate in a copyright notice that they make use of the software. The company must also deliver the source code to the open-source libraries or otherwise make these available. And finally, they must deliver or otherwise make available the in between form between source code and executable code, the so called objectfiles, with which others can make comparable software.... (210 words) (6 Comments) -
A Semantic Mobs Manifesto for the (r)Evolutionary Web: rejected! [11/10/2005]
One night, many days ago, Bru and I had a night divertissement (as I liked to call it). During a funny Skype session, we created a paper for SWAP2005 (Semantic Web Applications and Perspectives, 2nd Italian Semantic Web Workshop, Trento, Faculty of Economics,14-15-16 December, 2005). The title of the paper is "A Semantic Mobs Manifesto for the (r)Evolutionary Web" (pdf). Since the conference is in Trento, I'll probably go anyway so the idea was to get one more publication (is there another reason for sending a paper to a conference?). As I already said, it was a night divertissement, it took us few hours creating it, well, most of the time was spent in chatting about the possible title. We skyped really improbable titles I think I remember. And it was a lot of fun. Anyway I received few days ago an email saying that the paper was rejected (in the following there are the reviews in case you are curious). I think reviewers did the right thing in rejecting it. It was not a serious contribution to science but more a provocation (and a funny-for-us night divertissement). So how we created the paper? We took verbatim a blog post by Ryan King titled "An Evolutionary Revolution - On the shoulders of giants" and we inserted it in the paper. Since the blog post was resealed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence, we could import it legally, in fact we of course gave credit to Ryan King in the paper, we re-released the paper under the same licence and the paper was not a commercial work. Then we added a short quibbling about how with the Semantic Web envisioned in the conference, a paper like this one would be easily creatable by some software tool, expecially when i a short future the number of creative commons released text works will be huge. The last lines of the abstract hinted a matrix-like scenario in which (human) researchers will be no more needed. The title was entirely Bru's fault. Don't tell him but I think we got rejected because of the title So, well, enjoy it, it is released under a creative commons licence, respect the licence and do whatever you want with it, yes you might even want to cite it in a "real"paper, that would be a larger point about "what are conferences for in an era of free, decentralized publishing?" but I guess you will have to wait another post for it. Anyway, don't worry, it is not a unexpected or clever post, nothing more that our rejected submission for SWAP In the following you find the reviews we got and at the really bottom the text version of the paper. I wonder if Danny Ayers was one of the reviewer since he writes "I nearly had a dilemma over whether to give something a positive rating simply because it was really cool, rather than bringing significant academic value to the field. Again fortunately for me the material in question did have value in the latter sense as well, so I could call it a Clear Accept without any ethical worries." But it can't be because our paper has no value in the latter sense ... (1855 words)
(6 Comments)
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Sony managers (i.e. Cyber Criminals) should go to jail. [11/08/2005]
1) Creator of Melissa Computer Virus Sentenced to 20 Months in Federal Prison NEWARK - The New Jersey man accused of unleashing the "Melissa" computer virus in 1999, causing millions of dollars in damage and infecting untold numbers of computers and computer networks, was sentenced today to 20 months in federal prison, U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie and state Attorney General David Samson announced. 2) Pathogen Virus Perpetrator sentenced to 18 months in prison On 15 November 1995, a judge sentenced Pile to 18 months in prison. The judge declared: "Those who seek to wreak mindless havoc on one of the vital tools of our age cannot expect lenient treatment." 3) Sony installed spyware on the computers of anyone who simply inserted some of Sony music CDs into her Windows-based computer. Users were not informed of this installation. [Paradox: you buy the CD, you get the virus. At least Pathogen and Melissa were free!!!] So simple question: if Melissa brought 20 yearsmonths in jail to his creator and Pathogen 18 yearsmonths, how many yearsmonths you think Sony managers should spend in jail? And I don't even want to believe that one of the world's largest software and information technology companies, Computer Associates International Inc. says the truth. They claim that the antipirating software also secretly communicates with Sony over the Internet when listeners play the discs on computers that have an Internet connection. The software uses this connection to transmit the name of the CD being played to an office of Sony's music division in Cary, N.C. The software also transmits the IP address of the listener's computer, Computer Associates said, but not the name of the listener. But Sony can still use the data to create a profile of a listener's music collection, according to Computer Associates. and confirming its new status, Computer Associates yesterday reclassified Sony's software as spyware and will begin searching for and removing XCP with its anti-spyware software. Sony says that's not true and I believe Sony, that would be astonishingly criminal behaviour, just think about it for one second! No, that's not even thinkable! I could not believe they would do this. In the meantime, PcWorld reports that an Italian digital rights organisation has taken the first step toward possible criminal charges over the XCP software which, it was recently discovered, cloaks itself on users' computers and communicates with Sony servers over the Internet. The group, calling itself the ALCEI-EFI (Association for Freedom in Electronic Interactive Communications - Electronic Frontiers Italy), filed a complaint (in Italian, babelfished) about Sony's software with the head of Italy's cyber-crime investigation unit, Colonel Umberto Rapetto of the Guardia di Finanza. The complaint alleges that XCP violates a number of Italy's computer security laws by causing damage to users' systems and by acting in the same way as malicious software, according to Andrea Monti, chair of the ALCEI-EFI. "What Sony did qualifies as a criminal offense under Italian law," he said. I hope Sony will be submerged by Legal investigations. Sony managers should start reading Cyber Criminals on Trial. So what you can do? Of course stop buying anything related to Sony. Precise information can be found on Boycott Sony blog in which I just read this pearl: Sony President of Global Digital Business Thomas Hesse dropped the most outrageous statement to date on their DRM nightmare during an NPR interview, in which he stated that Most people, I think, dont even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it? (...) Some day someone will write a marketing case study about what not to do and say when dealing with a customer revolt, and that statement will be its epigraph. UPDATE: I miswrote "years of jails" instead of "months of jails" and this of course was a big mistake.... (645 words) (0 Comments) -
Sony, DRM this! [11/07/2005]
This is really shocking! A collegue of mine just explained to me this root-kit sony thing and I can only say I think I got it wrong because it is so unbelievably evil that I cannot think I understood it correctly: so Sony was inserting since few years a root-kit in your Windows machine just if you happened to listen any cds (also legally bought!) on the pc! Wikipedia definition of Rootkit: A rootkit is a set of tools frequently used by an intruder after cracking a computer system. These tools are intended to conceal running processes and files or system data, which helps an intruder maintain access to a system for malicious purposes. Sony is THE definitive cracker, they install a software on your computer without telling it to you, a software that is designed to hide itself! Sony's executives who ordered the projects should go directly to jail, they installed on millions of computers for years a malicious software of which the computers' owners were not informed of. This is criminal behaviour! On mass scale! For years! I'm almost sure I got it wrong. It can't be a so madly deviated behaviour! From CNET article: So, let's make this a bit more explicit. You buy a CD. You put the CD into your PC in order to enjoy your music. Sony grabs this opportunity to sneak into your house like a virus and set up camp, and it leaves the backdoor open so that Sony or any other enterprising intruder can follow and have the run of the place. If you try to kick Sony out, it trashes the place.... (274 words) (2 Comments) -
It will be TransMedia [11/07/2005]
It will not be google, nor yahoo!, nor microsoft but Transmedia. Phew, interesting times these days, eh? TransMedia Plots Death Of The Desktop in InformationWeek. The Glide suite, due later this month, runs on the vendor's own servers and is accessed through a browser. It includes applications for creating, sharing, and selling photos, music, video, and documents, as well as doing content management, calendaring, E-mail, and conferencing. Can TransMedia beat Microsoft and Google? The software, disclosed in mid-October, is called Glide Effortless. It's a set of 12 applications for content creation, communication, E-commerce, and sharing. The apps are Glide Photos, Glide Music, Glide Video, Glide Docs, Glide AllMedia, Glide Contacts, Glide Calendar, Glide Timeline (Glides search engine), Glide Mail, Glide Cast (audio, text, and video conferencing), Glide Share, and Glide Shops. Because the apps were developed simultaneously, they work in concert with elegance not evident in other loosely linked software programs like Apple's consumer media applications or Microsoft Office.... (422 words) (0 Comments) -
Microsoft Office Live [11/02/2005]
So I was wrong. Microsoft, and not Google or Yahoo! as I forecasted, is going to deploy in short (well in short time for Microsoft means at least 5 months) an online version of Office, check www.officelive.com. This is a very clever move from Microsoft, one I really didn't expect. Gates today announced that "We're entering 'live era' of software". While Microsoft is late (as always), its new forced online strategy (live.com, start.com, ...) is surely interesting and the business models they will try to follow worth close monitoring, given Microsoft current monopoly on Desktop software. I'm more and more curious about what kind of operating system Vista will be. More from zdnet: Gates said Microsoft is working on two products, "Windows Live" and "Office Live," that create opportunities for the company to sell online subscriptions and advertising. Both are targeted at smaller businesses and consumers. The products won't replace the company's ubiquitous operating system or productivity suite, and people don't need to have that software loaded to tap into the Web versions. "They are not required to use Windows or Office," Gates said at a press event here. Gates said that Windows Live is a set of Internet-based personal services, such as e-mail, blogging and instant messaging. It will be primarily supported by advertising and be separate from the operating system itself. Office Live will come in both ad-based and subscription versions that augment the popular desktop productivity suite. "This advertising model has emerged as a very important thing," Gates said. But free products won't replace paid software. Many of the Live releases will have payment tiers, Gates said, with the lowest levels free and ad-supported, and higher-end versions paid for by the user. "We'll have licenses and subscriptions as well," Gates said. In many cases, companies will have a choice between running software on their own servers or as a Live service. Acknowledging potential antitrust concerns, Gates said that Windows Live is built off published APIs (application programming interfaces) that its rivals will also have access to. "It's a dramatic sea change," Gates said of the overall shift to online services.... (357 words) (0 Comments) -
Google+Sun OS announced: check Microsoft's shares and predict the next future [10/04/2005]
[Update: re-released under CC-by for Sys-con (my blog posts are usually released under CC-by-sa)] From Yahoo!News: Google, Sun Challenge Microsoft's Office Google Inc. took a big step toward challenging Microsoft Corp.'s dominance in computer word-processing and spreadsheets with the announcement Tuesday that it would distribute Java technology from Sun Microsystems Inc. Few days ago I got a phone call, it was Jason Stamper from London, wow, I never got an interview call from London. He wanted to know about my forecast: Ajax Office available in less than one year. The article ended up in Computer Business Review and then got slashdotted. Wow, I have never been slashdotted. But let me be clear about it: I opened a project called AjaxOffice on Sourceforge because I was thinking about writing some code (I played with Javascript and the DOM model and you can create magic and this is easy-enough). I was thinking that a community would possibly gather around the project. In the process I set up a wiki and start collecting many similar projects and useful packages (some of them are Free Software). But I received many emails saying that the project is just vaporware, that I just want to get credit for something that other people are doing (I suspect all of them generated from few persons but I cannot tell of course). So let me clear about it: yes, there is no code and, since I should write my PhD thesis and since there are already many interesting projects, I don't have plan to write any code about it in the next few months. I plan to shout down the project shortly and just leave pointers to other Free Software projects that are already ahead creating a Web Office suite (Zimbra manages emails and contacts by now but check the video and hold your jaw (it is Free Software). But there are other intersting projects as well, just look in the ajaxoffice wiki). Anyway, it seems that with the "one year" forecast I have been conservative. In fact, this post is about the today joint announcement of Google and Sun. This is really disruptive for the entire computer, software industry. Don't you think that Google and Sun have already spoken with Hardware producers in order to have their system pre-installed on normal computers sold to normal people? I think so. And I can already foresee the scene in a normal computer shop: the seller is going to ask: "Ok, we have chosen your computer. So, which system do you want on? The crappy Windows XP or the new shiny Sun system with bright OpenOffice and Google widgets already integrated? By the way, the Microsoft one costs 100 euros more." Well, if you want a first idea, check the stocks: quotes of Microsoft vs Google (last 5 days) and quotes of Microsoft vs Sun (last 5 days). And look at what Scoble keeps saying: the thick client is coming back. I understand that you have to say it but really, Scoble, do you believe your own words? Or are you secretly selling all your Microsoft stocks? Question for you, reader: "which you would rather give up - your browser, or all the rest of your desktop apps?". First, answer. Ok, Jonathan Schwartz, Sun President, asked this very same question to the audience at a keynote and I can imagine you can predict the answers he got. Last point of an already too long post: having an alternative in the software market will be simply great for everyone, having concurrency is always better, having a monopoly is always worst. In this way, normal people will start undestanding that there is an alternative (TIAA), i.e. Windows is not the computer. The fact that OpenOffice is in the new system is good since OpenOffice is Free Software, software that gives you freedom. I don't think that the Java Desktop code is Free Software (see licence) but I think sooner or later Sun will have to release it under GPL. [The fact that most of this new Google+Sun system will use online services, for which they don't have to release the code, is the topic of another long post]. By the way, I think this is a great opportunity for a Free Software GNU/Linux system to really become available pre-installed on normal computers sold to normal people, my forecast this time is that it will be Ubuntu. Yours?... (750 words) (5 Comments) -
If Google Print is illegal, so is Google [09/30/2005]
From Lessig Blog: Google has been sued by the Authors Guild, and a number of individual authors. (...)The authors and the publishers consider Googles latest fantastic idea, Google Print a project to Google-ize 20,000,000 books to be massive copyright infringement. They have asked a federal court to shut Google Print down. (...)Google wants to do nothing more to 20,000,000 books than it does to the Internet: it wants to index them, and it offers anyone in the index the right to opt out. If it is illegal to do that with 20,000,000 books, then why is it legal to do it with the Internet? The authors claims, if true, mean Google itself is illegal. Common sense, or better, commons sense, revolts at the idea. And so too should you. This is a point I always make: the fact that Google caches sites is illegal (at least accepting the restricting copyright rules that are currently valid). Google by caching is doing a copy of my site and it has no right to do the copy (no copyright). Then, is Google cache a valuable service? Absolutely, I used it very often. Is it fair use? I think so, other may think differently. Google does not get sued about copying sites because is so big now. Google Print is not yet so big and Author Guild is trying this preemptive attack. Well, Lessig says it better, so read Lessig post or even better read Lessig's book "Free culture" or even better listen Lessig's book "Free culture".... (257 words) (3 Comments) -
The path to Identity (... 2.0 as everything these days) [09/30/2005]
I just saw the presentation by Dick Hardt at OSCON2005 about Identity2.0. The style of the presentation is great, it is almost a cartoon, check it. And it is a great for getting to know in a quick way many of the current efforts in providing an identity system that can really work on the Internet (decentralized, open, ...). I'm currently lurking the OpenID mailinglist and I discovered Passel that seems interesting. The presentation is available in WMV, QuickTime and as Flash, so you should have no problems. The last slide says that the presentation style was borrowed by Lawrence Lessig. As the online world moves towards Web 2.0, the concept of digital identity is evolving, and existing identity systems are falling behind. New systems are emerging that place identity in the hands of users instead of directories. Simple, secure and open, these systems will provide the scalable, user-centric mechanism for authenticating and managing real-world identities online, enabling truly distinct and portable Internet identities.... (166 words) (1 Comments) -
Comments to "A cognitive analysis of tagging" by Rashmi Sinha [09/29/2005]
I wrote this comment to the great post A cognitive analysis of tagging (or how the lower cognitive cost of tagging makes it popular) but it does not appear in the comments so I post it here. Wow, I overenjoyed your short-enough essay. Extremely clear! Might I suggest you 3 additional topics you might want to consider and include in your struggle for understanding? I would do it myself but I'll never be able to write as clearly as you 1) Visit http://cloudalicio.us/tagcloud.php?url=http://boingboing.net/ The graph shows the evolution in time of the tags used to tag a specific URL (in this case http://boingboing.net). You may notice that in the beginning people were using more "blogs" and now people use more "blog". This suggests people are moving from a category-like way of using del.icio.us (I put boingboing in the "blogs" folder that contains all the blogs) to a tag-like way of using del.icio.us (I name boingboing as a prototype of the class "blog"). Someone was making this point (surely more clearly) on some blog but I could not find it again. Anyway this is true also for other blogs and this is real, thriving evidence. 2) At http://www.blumpy.org/tagwebs/ there is another "cognitive" approach to the tagweb (or tagspace or tagsphere). I wrote about it at http://moloko.itc.it/paoloblog/archives/2005/02/04/tag_the_tag_tag_and_metadadaism.html Jakob argues "a neuron in your brain is a lot like a tag in a tagweb". A tagweb is a network of tags whose edges are the "this tag is tagged with this tag" relationship, for example he tags the tag "Victoria" with the tag "female". Will it be possible/useful to let users tag the tags themselves? 3) Of course it would be better to have people tagging stuff in a way that makes sense to them but, as soon as tags are public (everyone can see them), there is concern about tag spam (I tag something with a certain tag so that other people will be exposed to it). This is not a problem when tags are private, for example for the tag you use in your gmail account: no big deal in spamming yourself, no? I wrote about it at http://moloko.itc.it/paoloblog/archives/2005/01/29/what_is_tag_spam_or_better_tag_spam_exists.html (from where you can find interesting links). Or check the image at http://www.micropersuasion.com/2005/07/yahoo_myweb_bec.html In order to make better tag systems (I think this is one of your goals), we must take into account this issue as well. Of course one simple solution would be to give you the possibility to see only resources tagged by friends (flickr and Y!MyWeb2.0 let you do this) or friends of friends, i.e. users deemed trustworthy by a simple and customizable trust metric. What do you think?... (441 words)
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