Money for nothing? Open source VC funding - CBRonline.com

Money for nothing? Open source VC funding - CBRonline.com: "'The VC community is trying to predict where the market is going, the whole job is trying to predict where the [hockey] puck is going to be,' says Robin Vasan, managing director at venture capital firm Mayfield."

Amazon.com: The Economics of Open Source Software Development: Books: Jürgen Bitzer,Philipp J.H. Schröder

Amazon.com: The Economics of Open Source Software Development: Books: Jürgen Bitzer,Philipp J.H. Schröder: "The topic of open source software development is truly interesting, and very timely. There is clearly a need for a book like this on the economics of the phenomenon. This book, due to its analytical and theoretical focus, will be a great complement to the many books that have been published on the phenomenon....The editorial team is highly accomplished and well regarded in the research community. They are very well known for the contributions to the economic theory on open source software,"

Gigantene styrt av bloggen

Jøss, trudde ikkje dette nyhende skulle koma til Noreg før tidlegast i 2010.

"Store selskaper lar blogg-lesere styre viktige avgjørelser – for å vise at de følger med i tiden."
Les meir om dette i Dagensit.no

Users Who Know Too Much And The CIOs Who Fear Them - Editorial - CIO

Users Who Know Too Much And The CIOs Who Fear Them - Editorial - CIO: "A new IT department is being born. You don't control it. You may not even be aware of it. But your users are, and figuring out how to work with it will be the key to your future and your company's success."

Thomson Learning :: Thomson Learning Adopts Sakai Open Source Collaboration and Learning Environment

Thomson Learning :: Thomson Learning Adopts Sakai Open Source Collaboration and Learning Environment: "Thomson Learning Adopts Sakai Open Source Collaboration and Learning Environment"

Firefox3: Web Apps Game changer

Rod Drury > Firefox3: Web Apps Game changer: "A session with huuuuge implications first up today from Robert O’Callahan from Mozilla. He’s based in NZ but drives the rendering engine of Mozilla/FireFox. (Aside1: I think that it is completely cool that such a web significant thing is being built from a guys sun room in New Zealand - rocking!)"

Haakon Wium Lie want something else than OOXLM and ODF

I'd pick the 700-page specification (ODF) over the 6,000-page specification (OOXML). But I think there is a better way.

It is possible to build a new format on top of the universally understood HTML and CSS.

Read more at CNET.COM

Stats Show Google Dominates the International Search Landscape

Searchenginewatch.com has some interesting statistics about the overwhelming dominance of Google in the search landscape.

Worldwide readership of the Open Access News Blog

This Clustermap shows that Peter Suber's blog has got a worldwide readership.

Web 2.0 "no going back"

Today I opened up my Google Reader, found last news from the Peter Suber Blog, Then I clicked on the Open Repositories 2007 conference link and found a del.icio.us page and a Flickr photoset from the conference. After that I read the article “Latest News”: EPrints Meets Web 2.0 and then clicked on the Eprint statistics page and find out from wich country people had downloaded this article, how many abstract and full text views that had happened. I clicked on some other articles, and found the integration of Google Scholar to the citations in them by clicking on "SEEK" in the reference list. (it was not working this time). Anyway, this is a good example on how mashups and mixing is functioning. I have been using around 10 different web 2.0 services about a topic I was interested in. Bill Thompson wrote earlier today in the BBC News this:

But Yahoo! has given us a glimpse of the networked future, where the world's information is not only at our fingertips, but available to be mixed, mashed and filtered on demand, giving us what we want, when we want it - and from wherever we can get it. There will be no going back.

I agree, this services is simply so useful that "There will no going back.

Google is under legal attack by the E.U. - MarketWatch

I bet that the appeal from Google will win ultimately, because this is just to ridiculous to pass through a court. It has nothing to do with protecting the francophone languages and culture because Google has an interface in French and index French and Belgian newspapers/libraries as much as they want in French. It has nothing to do with copyright infringement as long as they don't cache (they don't). This is just about coming late to the search business and see that they have lost. This is just to fantastic, there is no lock-ins in the search engine market, still they want to use the court to harass the companies. I see nothing support from nongovernmental groups in support of the publishers, nobody except corrupted politicians and search hungry publishers.

John Dvorak second opinion is always one of the best comments to the market:

Google is under legal attack by the E.U. - MarketWatch: "This legal action is so fishy that the U.S. government should take this up with the World Trade Organization regarding unfair trade practices, and feed the E.U. some of its own medicine."

Cultural anthropology in cyberspace

Michael Wesch has a lot of interesting stuff on his webpage about digital anthropology.

Zotero and Simile

Some interesting thoughts about two of the most promising project in the academic world:

Why I Like These Two Projects

I am an omnivore for finding new, exciting projects. I have specific aims in mind, and they are (generally) different than what is motivating the specific project developers. Of the many hundreds of projects I have investigated, I think these two are among the best, but for different reasons and with different strengths.

The Zotero project, though early in the process, has all of the traits to be an exemplar in terms of documentation, professionalism, openness and active outreach to its communities. I take the criticisms from some in the community (motivated, I believe, by good will) to be a result of possible frustrations regarding pent-up needs and expectations, rather than the project’s poor execution or arrogance. I think posing the discussion as the dialectic of the cathedral v. the bazaar is silly and does the project and its sponsors a disservice. What looks to be going on is simply the real-world of the open-source sausage factory in the face of constraints.

As for Simile, we are seeing true innovation being conducted in real time in the open. And while some of these innovations have practical applications today, many are still cutting edge and not fully vetted. With the program’s stated aims of addressing emerging computer science challenges, this tension will remain and is healthy. Criticisms of the Simile efforts as “research programming”, I think, miss the boat. If you want to know what is going to be in your browser or influencing your Internet experience a few years hence, look to Simile (among others).

http://www.mkbergman.com/?p=330

Google Reader in Google Apps for Your Domain

This is unofficially news from the blogosphere: "I nearly fell out of my chair but look top right and saw I was logged in with my Google Apps for Your Domain account and not the @gmail.com login."

paulmwatson.com

Linux Foundation and Linux Mobile Foundation established

It is so nice to see the biggest companies in the world do something with the Microsoft constantly trying to lock-in consumers, businesses, and governments with their proprietary "industrial standards". I am especially happy with this list from the Linux Foundation:
http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/Members (impressive industrial support behind GNU/Linux)

And a few days later, these well-known companies formed the Linux Mobile Foundation:
Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics, and Vodafone

LiMo Foundation

Adobe to Contribute Entire PDF Specification to AIIM - ISO

Good news from Adobe today, it is always good with freedom, and it feels a little bit easier to breeth now. Here is a comment from the standards blog:

With the full specification in that state, the PDF formats will once and for all abandon the rather confusing, schizophrenic existence that they have maintained to date.

Andbudsrunder på universiteter

Anbudsrunder i det offentlege er trege saker, og ofte vert kravspesifikasjonar skrive av folk som ikkje har fylgd så godt med dei siste åra, dvs. folk som oppdagar mashup-omgrepet for fyrste gong slik rundt 2010:-) ikkje noko negativt med folka, mange av mine nærmaste vener er ikkje akkurat teknofrikar. Her er ein artikkel om "It's Learning" frå NTNU, og her ser ein at anbudsrunda var for fem år sidan, og ein kan rekne med at dei hadde brukt eit par år på å vurdere tilboda, samt at det var litt etterslep på kunnskapen om alternativa. Det er kanskje 7-8 år gamle vurderingar som vart lagt til grunn for at studentane i 2007 skal bruke denne læringsplattforma. Er dette noko å halde på med? Kunne ein ikkje berre gå over til Google Apps for education med ein gong, og få alt saman implementert gratis på eit par veker, og ende opp med 2007-teknologi som fungerar utruleg bra?

– Det vi kan si er at vi har en kontrakt vi er fornøyde med, og som er nøye vurdert ved inngåelse. Den var vurdert etter en anbudsrunde i 2002, hvor It's Learning kom best ut, sier hun.

Akademia ikkje lenger i tet

JonblOGG har eit veldig bra innlegg om e-læring og korleis utdanningssektoren ikkje greier å henge med her. Eg meinar at Universitetene må opne seg opp mot omverda i langt større grad. Det burde til dømes verte eit viktig moment for karaktergrunnlaget å skrive oppgåver som har aktualitet, og gje karakter på korleis studentane greier å tileigne seg lærdom frå kva som foregår på forskningsfronten. Ein kan godt seie at slik har det alltid vore, men når ein går nærmare etter i saumane så er det lite premiering for å vite om forskning som ikkje er publisert i vanlege trykte bøker og tidsskrifter. Ein kunne også arrangere videokonferansar for studentar, og bruke dette som grunnlag for eksamensoppgåver. For samfunnsøkonomi kunne ein til dømes laga ei konferanse med Standford om bruken av konkurranseloven mot XAML er samfunnsøkonomisk optimal? Dette ville vore ypperleg trening i å bruke den samfunnsøkonomiske verktykassa, og studentane ville måtte bruke bloggar og forum for å gripe an problemet, akkurat som samfunnsøkonomane i den verkelege verda må gjere. Dessutan er det vanskelegare å jukse sidan det ofte er lite ferdig stoff på slike nye tema. Her er nokre gode refleksjonar frå Jon Hoem:

"Samarbeidslæring står for tiden sterkt innen sosiokulturell og konstruktivistisk pedagogisk teori, en retning som er populær ved mange tradisjonelle undervisningsinstitusjoner.

Problemet med tradisjonell samarbeidslæring er at den ikke skalerer særlig godt."

"En rekke kommersielle aktører har skjønt dette, at brukeraktivitet, sosiale funksjoner, og brukergenerert innhold har egenskaper som folk finner stadig mer interessante. I første omgang når dette underholdningsmediene, noe som understrekes av at både avissalget og fjernsynsbruken går dramatisk ned. Dette handler om tidsbruk og informasjonstilgang, en utvikling som også vil påvirke utdanningssektoren, selv om denne lever en ganske beskyttet tilværelse."

The IT-crisis

Service oriented architecture is a very interesting topic these days. The institutional repository of the University of Oslo does only contain 25 doctoral thesis, and nothing is searchable via search engines. Compared with the institutional repositories at Stockholm University in Sweden, the University of Oslo missed perhaps 150 000 downloads of doctoral thesis in 2006. Instead they have to wait till they eventually are published in journals or books, and that takes on average a couple of years. I wonder how many citations these thesis missed?

Instead of building up a working institutional repository the it-appartment are more concerned about other day to day work. Is that a good investment? Dave Girouard in Google has some interesting remarks about this phenomenon:

"Google’s general manager of enterprise business, Dave Girouard, says a “crisis” in IT is preventing organisations from pursuing the type of innovations that allow businesses to grow."

"“Information security, as critical as it is, needs to be taken care of by organisations who live and die by it, who invest the money, time, resources and staff. Why should every company in the world have to build up their own expertise and have to maintain servers and provide security?”"

PR's 'pit bull' takes on open access

"Although Dezenhall declines to comment on Skilling and his other clients, his firm, Dezenhall Resources, was also reported by Business Week to have used money from oil giant ExxonMobil to criticize the environmental group Greenpeace."
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v445/n7126/full/445347a.html