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April 29, 2005

Is Backpack for me?

I'm constantly sending emails, between work and home, reminding myself of what I should be doing or need to do. Email is still my central "information hub" and so I looked at - but discarded - Web applications like Ta-Da Lists. However, I will be taking a look at Backpack once it's released. It looks slightly more like my way of organising stuff.

Posted by Matthew at 09:25 AM | Comments (0)

April 28, 2005

Linksys NLU2

I have one of these at home waiting to be connected. By chance I've just noticed that maybe I can do more with it than I thought.

Posted by Matthew at 12:35 PM | Comments (0)

Jumping for humanity

The 20th of July is World Jump Day. Save the planet - jump! Wouldn't "jump off" be better?

Posted by Matthew at 11:24 AM | Comments (0)

Football World Cup ticket chaos

Excuse me while I rant about this for a moment. The organisation committee for the Football World Cup 2006 in Germany have got themselves into a real pickle. The first round of the ticket-lottery has just finished, a few fans are happy but many are upset that they didn't receive a ticket. Now, the tickets are - supposed to be - personalized. The idea being that to take part in the lottery you had to enter a load of personal information into "the system" that links the ticket to you. The tickets themselves will only be sent out 4-6 weeks before the match and all we have at the moment is a simple email. At leas that was the theory.

So lets look at what has happened since last weekend.

People have started putting tickets up for sale on eBay Germany. And they are selling for massive amounts (12.500 Euros for 2 tickets for example). Because only so few people have received tickets, the "demand" side is obviously high. The organisation committee has publicly stated that "you aren't allowed to sell your ticket without prior written consent from us". Actually that is in the regulations governing the lottery.

But - this rule is most probably in conflict with German consumer rights. And common sense.

eBay on the other hand has stated "it is not illegal to sell football tickets in Germany". Stalemate.

However eBay have put up a page explaining the current situation with regard to receiving prior written consent from the organisation committee.

Now to make things worse the company actually responsible for organizing the lottery (Eventim) are now in discussions with the organisation committee to set up a way for tickets to be publicly bought and sold (i.e. where you can "legally" sell your ticket). However - not as an auction but only for the amount you yourself paid for it. This setup is scheduled to go live at the end of the year (if all sides agree). Of course Eventim will receive some additional income by doing this as there will be a fee for buying or selling your ticket.

Something tells me this is going to get worse.

Posted by Matthew at 09:32 AM | Comments (0)

April 27, 2005

PSP launch date in Europe

Sony have finally announced the PSP launch date for Europe - September 1st. Price tag will be € 249.

When I was in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago I went down to the Playstation store (a couple of times actually) to take a look at what all the buzz is about. I was really impressed. Although I now leave the "gaming" to my kids - this is one device that Dad needs to check out first to make sure it's "suitable".

Posted by Matthew at 05:20 PM | Comments (0)

Whose Open Source certificate do you want?

It looks like Oracle are set to provide certification of Open Source software in away similar to what SpikeSource is offering. It seems obvious that Oracle's emphasis will be on Open Source software corporate customers are using around the database. Looking ahead and I think we are in for a flock of companies (especially incumbents) that will start offering this sort of thing. I'm sure SpikeSource will need to adapt their business model to make sure it isn't so easy for existing application companies to "copy" or "add on".

Posted by Matthew at 03:04 PM | Comments (0)

April 26, 2005

AdSense in RSS feeds

Google is testing a new AdSense product that will let you put ads into your RSS feeds. At the moment availability seems to be limited to a few alpha testers.

Posted by Matthew at 01:09 PM | Comments (0)

World Cup tickets on eBay

From the "wow are we so not surprised" department: Major news in Germany today is that some bad bad people have put their hard earned World Cup tickets up for auction on eBay-Germany. Of course everyone is outraged and consequences will be extreme for both buyers and sellers. ho hum.

Posted by Matthew at 01:05 PM | Comments (0)

April 22, 2005

Going to the World Cup 2006!

Today, most of the people who ordered tickets in the first round of the Football World Cup 2006 (actually it's a lottery more than anything) received notification whether or not they will be lucky enough to actually see a match live. I haven't received an email yet but I logged in to the customer-service part of the site and guess what - I'm going to see a match! It looks as though we will be getting 4 tickets to see A1 play A3 in Dortmund on the 14.6.2006. A1 is Germany - so that should be good.

Mind you - I'll believe it when I actually have some sort of official confirmation.

Later: Just got the official email!

Posted by Matthew at 05:39 PM | Comments (0)

April 21, 2005

Glasnost

A piece of news that barely made the nightly news programs here made me jump. Today, NATO and Russia signed an agreement that makes the transit of troops through each other's territory easier. The transit of their troops thorough our territory - now hold on a minute.

What a fast turning world we live in that sidelines something like this. Amazing. Sorry - brief 80's flash there.

Posted by Matthew at 08:47 PM | Comments (0)

Norfolk - Englands forgotten coast

It's not often that Norfolk makes it into the German news - but here is an article in Spiegel Online. My Mum lives in Norfolk - near the coast - and it really is a great place to visit for a relaxing vacation. As I'm sure Andrew will also tell you.

Posted by Matthew at 09:28 AM | Comments (0)

April 20, 2005

Open Source integrity

Interesting discussions going on between Matt and Steve, here and here. This is such a difficult discussion to have via weblogs - a panel on this at an upcoming conference (there seem to be plenty around) would be a better place. I'm just going to pick out something Matt said and comment (make sure you read the whole post).

I talk to startups all the time that want the benefits of open source without abiding by its precepts. They should fail.

This is such a difficult call to make. In fact before I left for OSBC I thought I had a clear-cut opinion of how what "abiding" should look like. Mostly colored by my own experiences over the past five years of steering part of a commercial entity (our Open Source group) into the - as yet - uncharted waters of Open Source. This was 2000, remember.

When we first tried to work with the Open Source communities, we were treated as being a commercial entity that wanted to do exactly what Matt writes about above. Just cherry-pick the "free" software to build commercial offerings on. And it took both sides a while to get used to each other and figure out how we could get along. "Giving back" became a meme that I think is still so true even today. If you get involved with an Open Source community then you need to give something back to maintain your integrity. That "something" can be code, time, test-results, documentation, hardware, writing articles about the project and loads more. So, plenty of opportunities to become an equal member of the community.

Now, maintaining that integrity towards the Open Source community on the one side and still being able to look your commercially minded colleagues and managers in the eye is not easy. In fact it's a rough ride and you should be prepared to battle it out on several fronts at once. Things may be slightly easier today - but not much.

So, there I was - five years of "integrity" and business model building - when suddenly (well, not so suddenly really) these new business entities appear that seem (at first glance) to be built more on the commercial aspects of using Open Source than on the community principles. "That can't be right" was my first thought and "how unfair to the communities". I was also sceptic as to whether their business models would work. I still am to a point. But not as much as I was before I went to OSBC.

It isn't about whether "this way is right" or "that way is correct". If those companies give back to the projects they profit from, then that should work. If not, then they'll receive no support from the community and eventually fail (as Matt says). After all, you can't sell services for an Open Source project you aren't welcome in (and that publicly). Customers aren't stupid anyway. Maybe those new companies will even work out new ways of working with the communities - ways that are profitable to both sides. Who knows. We didn't back in 2000 :-).

I still think that just linking to an Open Source project from your home-page to "show your appreciation" isn't enough though. That link should be to a page showing just what you have done to give back to the community. Far more effective.

So really, there is no absolute integrity. It's a moving target that we will constantly redefine as we move forward. These are interesting times indeed.

Posted by Matthew at 07:54 PM | Comments (0)

A new Pope? Sorry, we're closed

After my last post about a religious subject - I was determined not to go there again. But sometimes - the Matrix just has it in for you.

As you can perhaps imagine, here in Germany there is only one piece of news today. As the national tabloid Bild-newspaper puts it so eloquently: "We are Pope". Living in Paderborn, one of the catholic cities in Germany (second probably only to Cologne) and with a wife who works in a church-funded handicapped kindergarten, I'm practically in the eye of the "Habemus Papam" tornado. Our local newspaper titles "The Paderborn-Rome bridge stands already" (because the new Pope and Paderborn Bishop were - well - buddies I guess).

However, word on the street is that people aren't that happy at the choice. Many people here were expecting a more "modern" pope to be elected and I guess Benedikt doesn't fit that bill at all (but who am I to know).

On a interesting side-note - a small group of people celebrating the German popes election were not allowed into Cologne Cathedral last night - why not? Because yesterday was Tuesday and the cathedral is closed on Tuesday evenings. Whatever happens.

And on another side-note - Rogers Cadenhead bought the right domain back on April 1st. I'm sure he'll regret doing that soon.

Posted by Matthew at 03:37 PM | Comments (0)

Speaking at Javaforum Stuttgart

I'll be heading to Stuttgart at the beginning of July and speaking at Javaforum 2005. My session is in German and titled: "Open Source for managers - don't panic". I've done this session a couple of times elsewhere already and the aim to is provide some insight into Open Source (how it works, who's involved, commercial aspects etc.) to people who may be considering using Open Source or getting involved themselves.

Posted by Matthew at 12:13 PM | Comments (0)

April 19, 2005

CNN ticker for iMovie HD?

I'm in the process of making a movie with iMovie HD and was wondering if there is anything around that will allow me to add a CNN type news-ticker that scrolls across the top or bottom of the screen with my own text in it.

Posted by Matthew at 12:57 AM | Comments (1)

April 17, 2005

EuroOSCON - Call for Participation

It is not without a warm fuzzy feeling of satisfaction that I see O'Reilly has now put up an official EuroOSCON 2005 page with a call for participation. EuroOSCON 2005 will be in Amsterdam from 17th-20th of October. I've been involved in this "project" for the last 3 years - ever since I wrote this post back in 2002. Plenty of emails, talks at EuroFoo last year and meeting up with the Gina and Nat last week at OSBC have finally paid off. So excuse me while I dance a little jig around the table.

Posted by Matthew at 11:49 AM | Comments (0)

April 16, 2005

Shifting my life around

Yesterday I bought a Pioneer DVR-420H DVD Recorder (80 GB hard-drive). This model is the same as the 520 but without the firewire port (and around 100 Euros cheaper). I was also considering the Panasonic DMR-EH52EG which is in the same price category. Both recorders have similar test results and from the forums I read, they both seem pretty equal. The Panasonic has an EPG that it downloads automatically but I read that this doesn't always work and the Pioneer has several ways of setting up timer recordings. So in the end I went for the Pioneer that also happened to be slightly cheaper in my local store.

Connecting the recorder up between my pay-tv decoder and aged Loewe TV was pretty simple. The actual recorder setup is well designed and the menus are easy to understand and walk through. Just make sure the cables are connected properly before moaning that you'll have to take it back to the shop (note to self).

My main reason for getting a device like this is to make our TV viewing more flexible. Let the device record what you want and then watch at your leisure, start your viewing say 10 minutes after the program has started but still be able to watch from the beginning or pause the program when the phone rings without missing anything.

So, my first step was to enter all our "regular" programs into the timer-programming - and it's really easy. Again, the Pioneer menus are well thought-out. My only quibble being that some things are only possible once you've entered the schedule into the device. For example - when entering a daily (or weekly) recording using the ShowView (or EasyTimer) function, I don't seem to be able to configure that I want the recording to replace the one from the day before. Once the program has been entered, I can however go into the timer-overview and change this option (and it works).

I'll probably be mostly recording to the hard-drive, but it's nice to have the DVD writer in case I want to transfer something over to a DVD. I haven't really tried most of the options yet - but up to now it does exactly what I want.

Posted by Matthew at 10:06 PM | Comments (0)

Lost camera at OSBC

Steve lost his camera at OSBC. If you found it, then I'm sure he'd be glad to hear from you!

Posted by Matthew at 09:31 PM | Comments (0)

April 14, 2005

AJAX comes to Cocoon

Sylvain Wallez has added support for the AJAX meme to Apache Cocoon. The framework just keeps getting better.

Posted by Matthew at 03:59 PM | Comments (0)

Internet 2.0 conference in Paris

Loic Le Meur is hosting a one day event in Paris on the 25th of April (registration is closed). I had thought of attending and spending a few days there - but unfortunately, I seem to have used up all my available "family will let you go away to a nice place on your own" time at the moment. Which is a real pity because Ross will be there, as will Doc.

Posted by Matthew at 09:38 AM | Comments (0)

April 13, 2005

Google Globetrotting

People are doing some way cool stuff with the recently introduced addition of satellite pictures to Google maps. Take a look at some planes and writings visible from space. I wonder what other categories we'll see...

Posted by Matthew at 04:08 PM | Comments (0)

April 12, 2005

OSBC writeup (German)

My German article on OSBC for Computerwoche is up.

Posted by Matthew at 01:39 PM | Comments (0)

April 11, 2005

Can Europe compete?

I'm back home. While I was traveling, I read the new dead-tree issue of Red Herring. The issue focusses on the current state of Europe when it comes to startups, funding and economic perspectives. An interesting read and plenty of overlap to things I've been thinking about while over in the US. Much of the issue focusses on how innovations that were "born" in Europe have been successfully commercialized in other parts of the world (Linux being the Open Source example).

The different articles also touch on the difficulties of European entrepreneurship. Not all of which are problems that stem from legal or bureaucratic red-tape but also from the people themselves being reluctant to take risks. When I talked to various people at OSBC about the reasons for the rise in Open Source companies over there, they cited:

There are obviously plenty more reasons the European playing-field is different from the US - but are we doing enough to compete? I think the current answer has to be no.

Posted by Matthew at 05:53 PM | Comments (0)

April 10, 2005

Leaving San Francisco

I leave San Francisco in a few hours to fly back home. I've uploaded a couple of pictures here.

Posted by Matthew at 05:27 PM | Comments (0)

April 09, 2005

The Vendorization of Open Source

I've tried to come up with a summary of what I saw at OSBC and I guess the title is as close as it gets. Open Source in business is becoming more and more about the vendors. Obviously this has been true with Open Source projects like MySQL and JBoss for a while now, but things are changing. Vendors are becoming highly visible for other Open Source offerings such as lesser-known projects (Funambol) or bundles of Open Source components (SpikeSource) or services and solutions around Open Source (Optaros).

Times have certainly changed from when I first started in Open Source business and it was a (nice) fight convincing the Open Source community that - even though you were a commercial entity - you were still prepared to support the community and "get involved". I still think getting involved (rolling up your sleeves) is important to becoming accepted in the Open Source projects - but it's obvious that there is now another level to Open Source commercialism.

On the one hand this is probably a good thing as plenty of corporations will base their acceptance of Open Source on their being these types of commercial entities ("to choke"). But on the other hand I doubt whether the involvement in Open Source projects will rise in proportion to the number of companies coming onto the market.

And this, in the long run, could cause major friction between the Open Source communities on the one side and the vendors on the other.

Posted by Matthew at 05:31 PM | Comments (0)

April 08, 2005

Building a European conference - Education or Networking?

I've been doing a lot of talking recently to US "folks" who are thinking about bringing their conferences over to Europe. One of the points I've been trying to emphasize is that at the moment (in Germany at least) conferences are focussed on educating the people who go there. Or rather - people who go to a conference expect to be educated.

Or even more rather: To go to a conference you have to convince your boss that you will learn something that will advance your work.

Going to a conference because "you want to hook up with the cool people there to exchange ideas, listen to visionaries discuss how to build a better mousetrap and build your network" will probably not exactly earn you smiles and funding from across the table. The company will feel that you are putting your own priorities before those of the hand that feeds you (yeah right). However, that is exactly what I spent most of OSBC doing (and I'm sure it's true for most people there). So much so that I'm sure several people I now feel I can bug are regretting me ever coming :-).

And therefore one of the problems I find at the German conferences I go to is that the sessions are one-way only (speaker to audience) and it's more like sitting in a classroom being taught stuff you can probably find elsewhere cheaper and easier. Panel discussions (common at US conferences) are virtually non-existent and if they do take place probably void of audience and discussion.

Of course cultural differences are also important to remember. Here in the US - everybody talks to you (which can also be annoying - especially when walking in an out of shops - but I digress). Even if a lot of the talk is sometimes superficial "let's stay in contact - blah blah". But even so, it certainly is easier to actually meet people - even "famous" people you probably wouldn't dream of approaching at a conference in Europe.

So, finding the correct mix will be important for any conference that plans on attracting European corporate participants.

Posted by Matthew at 10:11 PM | Comments (2)

Open Source Stack licensing

One of the problems I see with Open Source "stacks" is the proliferation of different licenses that are then "within" the stack and perhaps not readily visible (or understandable) to anyone wishing to adapt the components for their own needs. I just took a look at the SpikeSource license for their stack (the "SpikeSource Core stack as a Collective Work" license) and find the terms - um - confusing to say the least. Some excerpts (my emphasis):

The Open Software License version 2.1 (OSL 2.1) applies to the SpikeSource Core stack as a whole, with a few important exceptions for components that are only licensed to us in binary form. ...

The OSL 2.1 license contains both reciprocity and patent defense provisions. If you distribute copies of the SpikeSource Core stack outside your company, you must disclose the source code of any changes that you made....

...Only if you modify the stack components themselves and distribute or externally deploy those modifications does SpikeSource require that you disclose those modifications to us and to the rest of the open source community.

Now I find the last paragraph especially confusing. Because the next paragraph then says:

Individual components within the Core stack are subject to their own licenses. Some of those licenses also contain provisions relating to reciprocity and patent defense, and those provisions are not overridden or superseded by the OSL 2.1 license on the stack as a whole.

And in fact continues:

In particular, you are responsible for determining whether you have created derivative works of those components that would subject you to reciprocity under the terms of those open source licenses.

Maybe it's still jet-lag - but couldn't that be written so that I can at least understand it?

Update: Hopefully, a clearer explanation is forthcoming.

Posted by Matthew at 03:18 AM | Comments (0)

O'Reilly launches codeZoo

O'Reilly officially launches codeZoo, a repository of information around freely available, reusable components. SpikeSource is the exclusive sponsor of the site.

Posted by Matthew at 02:54 AM | Comments (0)

The Lawyer from Denmark

Sometimes you meet someone and afterwards realize that you would have liked to learn more about that person. I met Martin von Haller Groenbaek yesterday at the late afternoon meeting concerning a possible OSBC Europe next year. After reading his weblog I now know this is someone I want to meet again. Looking at his traveling though - that may not be so easy.

Posted by Matthew at 01:51 AM | Comments (0)

Bridge watching

Today I spent an hour watching the Golden Gate Bridge. It didn't move.

Posted by Matthew at 12:28 AM | Comments (0)

April 07, 2005

OSBC - Geoffrey and Larry

I didn't take many pictures at OSBC - basically because pictures of filled conference rooms are just - well - boring. However I did take a couple of Geoffrey Moore and Larry Lessig - which of course you may find just as boring.

And here's more from Flickr.

Posted by Matthew at 02:45 AM | Comments (0)

OSBC - a day of talking

Although I'm dog tired (I've been awake since 2 am this morning) I've spent today meeting and talking to a load of very interesting people.

For breakfast I met up with Gina and Nat from O'Reilly to talk about EuroOSCON. Expect more on that conference soon. I then spent some time talking to the guys from Optaros and got invited to their lunch event (yeah I suck up to anyone who'll get me something to eat).

There, I chatted to Robert (roml) Lefkowitz who now works for Optaros as Vice president, Research and Education. An interesting title - and he told me that one of his main roles is educating CIOs on the "Open Source proposition". During lunch (and by chance) I sat next to Jay Hansen, the CEO of Avalanche. Avalanche is a corporate technology cooperative that provides the infrastructure for corporations to share technology and intellectual property.

A short pre-lunch break allowed me to (at last) actually meet Ross Mayfield from Socialtext who was busy pitching their corporate wiki/weblog solution to many interested parties. After lunch I met Leon Gommans from Rotterdam CS. Leon is putting on the Holland Open conference at the end of May. Together we then joined up with Matt Asay to talk about the plans to bring the OSBC conference over to Europe. I also managed to listen to very interesting keynotes from Marten Mickos (MySQL) and Larry Lessig

So, yes, it's been a busy day. But worth every minute.

Posted by Matthew at 02:20 AM | Comments (0)

April 06, 2005

OSBC - Open Source Town Hall

Jetlag has me awake at 2am here - so some thoughts on last night's Open Source Town Hall here at OSBC.

SpikeSource put on an "invitation only" event last night and invited about 100 people to participate in an "Open Source Town Hall". Basically they got a panel of people together (inlcuding Kim Polese, Tim O'Reilly, Ray Lane, Robert Lerkowitz) to discuss the various aspects or Open Source in business.

Before I detail some of the discussion points - here's my main peeve about the Town Hall: Where was the Open Source person on the panel? I would have liked to have seen someone up there who is actually working on an Open Source project and also pitching/selling that project to corporate customers. Finding the balance between both worlds is one of the most important questions or issue that you have to solve to be successful.

About 3/4 of the way through Danese Cooper (who was in the audience) put in some (in my opinion) extremely valid point to the sense that the Open Source community doesn't really care whether a corporation uses the Open Source software unless that company actually rolls up their sleeves and also gets involved in the community itself.

The discussions centered around the typical questions corporations ask when deciding to use Open Source inside their enterprise including these that actually stuck in my tired brain:

How do I get support and from where?

Depending on what you need you may get it from various places (community, knowledge base, company like SpikeSource)

A corporation now has choice in where it gets support and "you can't get support" is no longer a valid argument against Open Source.

What kind of Open Source know-how do you need inside the corporation itself?

The tenor here was that any corporation using Open Source - especially in mission critical areas - needs to have people on the inside that know their way around the Open Source software. The argument was however made that this is probably true for the large companies and that companies like SpikeSource have their (main?) market in the companies that don't necessarily have the large IT resources themselves.

How does Open Source know-how scale?

This was an interesting discussion topic. If you take an Open Source project then you'll probably find that the main core team consists of a handful of people. Those people can offer deep know-how and support to companies using the software. But what happens as the Open Source software becomes more and more popular? How does that same small team handle the increasing number of users? Again, here the argument was made that this is also true of commercial products and that support for those products tends to be not worth the money anyway. Unless you happen to be an important customer (read: large expensive support contract) and then you may get support from those people who really know their way around the product. Open Source gives you "support choice".

Risks of using Open Source because of IP/Licensing issues?

One of the panelists noted that the US finance industry body (that wasn't the exact name - but I didn't catch it) has put out a report stating that using Open Source is no riskier than using commercial software - with this regard. And someone else on the panel stated that in his experience there had been far more problems with commercial companies suing because licensing terms were not being used correctly as opposed to Open Source licensing problems. However the tenor was that this sort of thing needs to be "managed" when you start using Open Source. Someone from the audience (from a company that has an Open Source support group) stated that this was the reason they also had people in the group who knew their way around the different licensing terms of Open Source projects.

Open Source (ERP) applications - ahead?

Already in my limited time here I've caught a number of discussions around the question whether or not we will be seeing (more) Open Source in this area or not. Even though SAP and IBM are opening up their solutions to be more flexible in the way the integration can take place or how functionality can be deployed (SOA, On Demand, Netweaver etc.) we are still some way away from seeing successful Open Source in this area. It is also a lot easier for a corporation to start off a new project using say MySQL (instead or Oracle) than it would be for them to rip out the ERP system(s) and replace them with an Open Source version. That sort of Open Source just doesn't lend itself so well to the DIY mentality - "let's just try it out".

Posted by Matthew at 12:08 PM | Comments (0)

The chasm at OSBC

This evening's keynote at OSBC was by Geoffrey Moore, famous for his books (like this one) on the stages new technology goes through before becoming adopted. Thankfully, Ross has a write-up of the talk and his notes are far better than my tired attempt.

Posted by Matthew at 05:18 AM | Comments (0)

SpikeSource at OSBC

SpikeSource is launching their Open Source services offering here at the OSBC conference. The website contains all the information and they also have a company weblog now. More on all this later when I'm awake again.

Posted by Matthew at 02:26 AM | Comments (0)

April 05, 2005

A (long) day in the life

If all goes as planned then today will be one of the longest and "hardest" I've been through. Not only do I fly from the middle of Germany to San Francisco but I also have to be "awake" enough to actually chat coherently to people later this evening (Pacific). And before I whine too much - it's my fault and mine alone.

All times local.

5:50 am - Hannover, Germany

I got up at 3:30 am and left home at 4:00. Just over an hours drive and I make Hannover airport with time to spare. The only Wifi available costs 4.50 Euros for half an hour, so I'll wait until I'm somewhere where it's cheaper. My flight for Paris leaves at 06:50.

8:49 am - Paris, France

An uneventful flight gets me to Paris with enough time to get through security and to my gate with about half an hour to spare before boarding. I've never been to Paris before - but I don't think this quite counts. The flight to San Francisco leaves at 10:15. Someone else just opened up their 12 inch Powerbook and already we're brothers. Yo.

2:50 pm - San Francisco, USA

I'm in the hotel after taking the BART from SFO into downtown. The long flight over was smooth and service on Air France is pretty good. Now for a shower and then off for the rest of today.

Posted by Matthew at 11:53 PM | Comments (0)

April 04, 2005

$150 million in Open Source venture capital

An interesting figure calculated by Matt Asay starts off the day of packing for my trip to San Francisco. Now what would interest me is how much of that was for US Open Source startups and how much for European. While the Open Source startup scene in the US is certainly "cooking", I see little sign of similar happenings over here. At least they're not (yet?) visible.

Posted by Matthew at 08:25 AM | Comments (0)

April 03, 2005

A growing girl

Today, my daughter Victoria, celebrated her first holy communion. Here in our part of the world this is a really big day with two trips to the church (another one tomorrow), family and god-parents visiting, lots of food and tired parents - about now. I'm the non-religious member of the family but my wife and I came to an early agreement that we would do our best to always show our children both sides of the coin so that they can then choose their personal view on the subject when they are ready to do so. And so I am able to celebrate today just as much as my wife - because I know my daughter is gaining an experience that will grow her - regardless of how religious (or not) she decides to be later in life.

Posted by Matthew at 09:52 PM | Comments (0)