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September 29, 2005

Locomotive - Rails for OS X

Locomotive is a project that provides everything you need for Ruby on Rails development on Mac OS X.

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

The West Wing 7

As faithful followers of this blog will know, I am an absolute West Wing fan and so it was great to see that the new season has launched. Thanks to the Net I was able to watch the first episode last night. Still great stuff!

Posted by Matthew at 09:07 AM | Comments (0)

September 28, 2005

SAP invests in Socialtext

That's some news. Congratulations to Ross and team! I'm sure this signals the start of something big.

Posted by Matthew at 08:18 AM | Comments (0)

Open Source executives on the move

Matt is tracking the movements of various Open Source executives. Seems like an idea for a Google Maps mash-up.

Posted by Matthew at 08:14 AM | Comments (0)

September 27, 2005

Oracle names Chief Open Source Evangelist

Omar Tazi is named as Oracle's new Chief Open Source Evangelist. Now that's a title I could relate to. Omar used to be the CEO of Orbeon. Orbeon are the vendors of a commercial product that has certain similarities to an Open Source offering you may be familiar with (if you read this blog that is).

Posted by Matthew at 11:13 AM | Comments (0)

Parsley years

Today, my wife and I celebrate our Parsley wedding anniversary - which, as you all know, is 12 1/2 years (at least here it is). It is a custom here that your friends surprise you and come round to celebrate. The difference being, that they are supposed to bring all the food and drink. Roll on evening.

Posted by Matthew at 06:39 AM | Comments (1)

September 24, 2005

Lessig on Google

I've been fortunate enough to see Lawrence Lessig speak a couple of times and been deeply impressed by his style. He manages to make very complicated subjects clear to non-legally minded people like me. And as a person he just - well - fills the room - for want of a better term. Reading pieces like this one on Google Print, and the vision of him standing up on stage speaking the words backed by simple but impressive slides is just so automatic.

Posted by Matthew at 07:15 AM | Comments (1)

September 23, 2005

Middle age

Ross Mayfield turns 35 today - congratulations Ross! He wants to celebrate middle-age with a nap. Makes me wonder when he'll be jumping out of a plane. Oh wait - 5 more years :-).

Posted by Matthew at 09:02 PM | Comments (0)

The times they are a'changing

I've often blogged about how the European Open Souce business scene is - well - slightly *cough* behind what is currently happening in the US.That may be about to change. Little elves tell me that the European VC scene is casting an increasingly interested eye on Open Source startups. You read it here first.

Posted by Matthew at 08:54 PM | Comments (0)

September 18, 2005

Open Source meets Business - Conference

The German publisher Heise Verlag is putting on a conference titled: "Open Source meets business". The conference is scheduled for late January 2006 and the CfP is now open.

Posted by Matthew at 01:42 PM | Comments (0)

September 15, 2005

EuroOSCON - Open Souce business in Europe BOF

I've put forward and will be moderating a BOF at EuroOSCON. The BOF is titled "The state of Open Source business in Europe" and its aim is basically to bring together those people interested in Open Source business in Europe to discuss various topics such as - but not limited to:

If you're interested then please go to the Wiki page and add your name if you plan on attending. See you there!

Posted by Matthew at 07:53 PM | Comments (0)

September 14, 2005

Generation VIC20

At the breakfast table this morning, the following conversation took place between Christopher (11) and myself. Enjoy.

Chris: So Dad, what's a computer science class for at school?
Me: Well, you learn to program there for example.
Chris: Program?
Me: Yes, to write computer programs using a special language.
Chris: You mean like games?
Me: Well, yes I suppose.
Chris: Like Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic?
Me: Umm, no.
Chris: Well what then?
Me: That sort of game takes a whole team and years to make. When we first wrote programs we learnt as we typed them in.
Chris: Typed them in? Why didn't you use a CD?
Me: Umm, well we didn't have CDs back then.
Chris: - laughs -
Me: We typed the programs in from a magazine. And those were games we then played.
Chris: How much did you have to type in? Maybe I could do that.
Me: I don't think you'll find magazines like that around any more. We typed in pages of code - say 4 or 5.
Chris: And then you had a game you could play?
Me: Yes.
Chris: Like Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic?
Me: Umm - well - no. Say, isn't it time you went to school?

Posted by Matthew at 10:34 AM | Comments (3)

September 13, 2005

Reaching SOA

Just writing some slides on SOA and I'm struck with the thought that SOA has nothing to do with IT, networks or computers after all. It is actually a divine state of consciousness that 'the Net' wants to reach by fully decomposing itself into little granular services it can then remix at will. And then 'it' will start decomposing us into little granular services too. Imagine remixing my brain with ... well, that may be a bit far fetched.

I should lay off the coffee - or maybe it was that jump....

Posted by Matthew at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)

September 12, 2005

Building a global Yellow Pages

It looks as though we'll see an eBay announcement on the purchase of Skype in a few hours. People all over the Net are wondering why eBay would want to pay a few billion dollars (at that level what does it matter whether 1,2 or 4) for a service that would seem to have nothing to do with - auctions.

But wait, I think this analysis (in the comments) is spot on. eBay is building a global Yellow Pages service. Enhanced with an architecture of participation that provides additional value and soon with a one-click "Skype-me" way of getting into voice contact with the person (or company) selling the products. For the merchants on eBay being able to accept voice-calls through the auction-platform would provide an additional access channel.

Here are a few areas of eBay that I can imagine would profit from the possibility of a voice-call:

And of course, there's the Skype service itself.

Later: It's official - and a snap at $2.6 billion.

Posted by Matthew at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)

September 10, 2005

The power of the iPod

Steve Job's message to the consumer last week was "yawn - here's a phone with iTunes support" and "gloat - here's yet another iPod that will dig a hole in your wallets and crush the competition even further". However his message to the media and other "media-player" companies was probably far more disturbing.

It makes me think that there were probably some shouts of celebration when Apple didn't introduce a video version of the iPod (it would be interesting to check heart-rates of the Sony managers watching the event).

But Apple could introduce a video player - if he wanted to (all the infrastructure is in place after all). And that's the power.

Posted by Matthew at 12:55 PM | Comments (0)

September 08, 2005

Attending EuroOSCON - grab a discount

I've written before that I'm on the program committee for the upcoming EuroOSCON conference in Amsterdam. If you're thinking about attending then how about a 25% discount? Just enter the "euos05comm" discount code into the registration form and I'll see you there!

Posted by Matthew at 10:58 PM | Comments (0)

September 07, 2005

The death of the iPod mini

Apple kills the iPod mini and replaces it with the nano. Interesting marketing move aimed probably at keeping the competition on their toes and the customers drooling for more. Speaking of which, where's that order button.

Posted by Matthew at 08:20 PM | Comments (0)

September 06, 2005

Cocoon - the true integration framework?

Carsten is on a roll lately. After adding WSRP integration to Cocoon last week, it's Struts integration time this week. And next week.....

Posted by Matthew at 09:12 PM | Comments (1)

September 05, 2005

Fighting the War on Error

Doc Searls with a post on the War on Error.

In the War on Error, people will need to take the lead. Governments will need to follow or get out of the way

When information can flow freely, be published immediately and appear without filtering or spinning, Governments need to realize that the times are changing. For perhaps the first time in history, the people can hold up the mirror to press-statements, government-briefings and other "official" announcements and demand their leaders speak the truth. Immediately.

Posted by Matthew at 10:10 AM | Comments (0)

September 03, 2005

Ray Nagin speaks out

The interview that the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, gave to a US radio station is up as an MP3 download.

Posted by Matthew at 11:07 AM | Comments (0)