O'ReillyGMT - Tech News from 4 timezones either side of the Greenwich Meridian

The Gutsy Gibbon: New Release For Ubuntu

Nik Butler writes:

This month will see a new release from Ubuntu: Gutsy Gibbon is scheduled for release on the 18th October. Each Ubuntu release has improved upon the quality and usability or this popular distribution. Looking at the roadmap for Gutsy there is, as before, much improvement expected.

Open Source Gets More Press Time

Nik Butler writes:

You can pick your metaphors for the apparent increase in positive stories about Open Source - you can call it a Tipping Point, a Rising tide, a ground swell - all manner of descriptions suggest Open Source is coming out into the open.

Jon Brodkin writes for Network World about Gartners' (latest) report on how by 2011 it will be impossible to avoid Open Source in Business, postulating that at least 80% of commercial software will contain Open Source code. I'm with Jon in suggesting that it's not as late as 2011: it's happening now, though 'industry' experts and analysts seem uncomfortable with committing to anything that isn't so far into the future as to ensure their opinions could be biased by history.

Certainly Yahoo's purchase of Zimbra will increase the value of Yahoo's own Email and its dependency on code and code bases inherited from an open source world. This news followed a while after Citrix announced that it was buying into the Desktop Virtualisation market with its acquisition of XenSource.

With companies like Dell, HP, Creative, Intel and IBM all making use of Open Source software to provide an additional vertical market to their corporate strategies, I think it's time for Gartner to reappraise the conversation on delivery times. It seems the Future is Now and software suppliers who are not getting into the Open strategy will very quickly become sidelined.

TV or Not TV? That Is The Question

Nik Butler writes:

Face it, how much time are you spending in front of broadcast television consuming content compared to that available online?

In an article on Newsfactor Network, Mark Long discusses IBM's survey which points to people spending as much time in front of the computer as they do in front of the television. Given the ever-increasing costs of producing and creating and distributing content on traditional broadcast media the increase in advertising and subsequent breaks for adverts are certainly one reason to look elsewhere for entertainment and news.

My own experiences certainly reflect the fact that the Internet provides a wider source of entertainment and two-way interaction as well as the benefits of shifting time and media and presentation formats, (although the later is a little more geeky to achieve).

I am drawn to this article by way of truemors which reported on the upcoming release of '35' from Synchronis.tv. 35 will be a live-streamed scripted character-rich and plot driven Webisode which, if the promos are anything to go by, will be intriguing to say the least.

The show premieres on the 19th of September and will be live-streamed and recorded via uStream.tv. There's been plenty of pre-recorded and edited content, specifically documentary or talking head, available from Ustream and similar websites in the past. This new production may well presage a growing interest in writers and producers embracing the 'heavy lifting' of the internet to get their ideas into the mass market for far less effort and cost than has been possible before.

If Shakespeare was around today, do you think he would have written for the Internet or for Sony?

PodcampUK - Sept 1 & 2 2007 Birmingham NTI

Nik Butler writes:

This September 1st & 2nd, PodcampUK, at Birmingham NTI. This is a free event which will be taking the excitement and ideas of Podcamp to the UK. I could not be more enthusiastic about getting there and getting involved. The event is not exclusively podcasting and the podcasting industry, though many taking part will be part of the 'new media', and it's a great opportunity for bloggers (text and video), social networkers and the Facebook vs LinkedIn armies to drop in and take part. In fact anyone enthused and dedicated to Internet media and its distribution should be signing up, turning up and taking part.

Guy Kawasaki on Start-Ups

Nik Butler writes:

Guy Kawasaki, Managing Director of Garage Technology Ventures, has an approach to web business that is more than just refreshing, its obvious. There is so much I could write but it is easier to watch it being said. Take 40mins to listen to his 2006 Talk and then a further 5 to think about the message.

He gave a talk at Gnomedex 2007 and its hard to find a blogger who has not been inspired by his passion and enthusiasm. The core concepts are to get things going first and get into the market without focussing on being right or perfect.

Great advice for Entrepreneurs and business startups.

Gizmo - The Other VoIP Project

Nik Butler writes:

Bandwidth on the Internet probably felt quite a bit lighter last week. Skype, the Internet Telephony application recently purchased by eBay, has been having problems, which have impacted its business and its users. Dan York has an excellent collection of articles highlighting some of the issues with the current outage.

This is a great opportunity to take a look at alternative VoIP client applications, such as:

The Gizmo Project
Gizmo provides many of the features you will be familiar with such as contacts, chat and conference calls. It includes a built-in recorder for voice calls and it supports all the major platforms, Windows, Mac and Linux. It also provides additional client applications for a range of Nokia and PalmTreo mobile phones.

Gizmo uses SIP technology, already established in Asterisk and other VoIP service providers, to create calls between clients and VoIP providers. This enables Gizmo to incorporate a wider range of service providers and reduce its dependency on a shared p2p network. Credits can be purchased to enable calls to traditional landlines and between other networks

Support for multi-network chat with Gtalk, AIM and MSN reduce the on-desktop clutter of icons. In fact, Gizmos range of additional features are easier to view for yourself.

An API is available for developers as well as an active Developer Forum to discuss API issues.

Call quality may not be on a par with Skype, however for conference calls and person-to-person conversations, file sharing and note swapping, the Client has proved far more reliable.

So whilst your waiting for the phone to ring why not add another channel to your call centre and give Gizmo a go.

Comparison of Online Video Blogging Sites

Nik Butler writes:

An earlier post mentioned that I am using Operator11 to create the talking heads videocast Old Grey Video Test. I thought it might be interesting to look at the video blogging tools that are currently available.

There are some commonalities between the various sites in that they all utilise Adobe Flash to handle the integration of video and audio content. This is not restricted to simple USB Webcams and some productions use more expensive cameras and audio equipment. They all include the facility for the watching audience to comment and discuss the show or its recordings. By now the standard Web 2.0 accoutrements are in place RSS, Comments, User Accounts and the variety of user generated content.

Ustream.tv
This video cast site has been making a name for itself online and its utilisation in everything from Presidential debates to live casts from various shows and exhibitions. Its production tools for broadcast are simple and provide the basic environment for livecasting and recording your content. The shows allow for one camera conversations though without the option to integrate other users or cameras. For simple livecasting Ustream.tv is the most straightforward site to use. Ustream is focussed on the professional presentation and delivery of content, a very new media feel.

Popular bloggers who use Ustream.tv include Jeremiah Oywang.

BlogTV
BlogTV provides much the same environment as Ustream.tv with the difference that you can integrate a second user into the conversation. You can pick the moments you wish to record, though it does not record the co-host stream. There is no useful indicator to the co-hosts of the possibility to chat online or to share the camera, leaving long gaps as people work out how to join.

Popular bloggers on BlogTV include Jeff Pulver whose PulverTV channel covers the various topics of technologies, social media and the internet.

StickCam
Stickcam feels very much like a the coffee shop conversation where viewers can integrate their own camera content, though like BlogTV, it is not recorded. Stickcam takes the video production concept a little further by enabling you to switch over to audio and graphic content, though this is not recorded as part of the show. The production interface is not entirely intuitive, though.

Leo Laporte has made great use of Stickcam for his Net@Nite and Tech Show channels.

Kyte.tv
Kyte.tv is less focussed on live studio productions and instead enables fast scrapbook productivity for short shows. The interface focuses less on mixing and more on content layering and integration. As a result, Kyte.tv feels very much like a Video Twitter with the ability to produce content on your own or others channels. Chat and conversation and comments about the shows exist behind the video window and the channels feel like a on-going video diary and commentary from the social media community.

Blogger Robert Scoble makes use of this site to create quick drop in conversations with the community.
Kyte.tv may also host the very first Videoblogged Mornington Crescent game.

Mogulus
Mogulus provides a "newsroom" production suite with integrated video content direct from YouTube. Each show is storyboarded and content can be cued ready for production: it streams and records live and, like kyte, sits as the current production until a new show is created. Whilst Mogulus is still in beta and is invite only, it feels a very slick operation. For corporations needing a professional content and authoring environment, this one looks promising.

Operator11
Operator11 feels the most sociable of the sites. Like Stickcam, its production studio incorporates other viewers and media content while offering the added benefit of being able to record those streams as part of the show. The Operator11 interface is intuitive, with the ability to drag readily created adverts, promotional and video content into your show. The single show and its mixed content are streamed with a maximum length of 30 minutes.

The missing piece in these productions though is the lack of converting the audio stream into a podcast after the show. Further, the ability to transcode or deliver the content in formats other than Flash has yet to be provided.

Currently, I have been using Operator11 and Kyte.tv to create quick, drop-in conversations and video diary content. Since blogging and content management sites are making it easy to embed video content, the interest in creating complimentary shows, articles and visual aides is growing.

Virtualisation for Businesses

At the start of each year, every blogger gets the opportunity to discuss their predictions for the coming year. I could not resist such a lazy topic option and I made a few predictions of my own. One of those predictions was the acceptance of virtualisation as a tool for businesses.

Dell announced, by way of Erica Ogg at CNET news, that virtualisation especially through Linux was to provide an architecture to enable easier access to implementing virtual servers for the business environment.

From a business owner's perspective, the value of running a virtual server is not apparent. Given the low cost of hardware and sofware as a capital investment, why should businesses care about virtualisation?

1) Business Continuity through Hosted Architecture
Now that's four big buzz words whose meaning is far less grandiose. Running a virtual server means that the computer system, applications, configuration and data are represented as a few files inside a directory.  Since your system is now a file - nothing more than an over-inflated sales presentation document, if you will - it is possible to back-up and move the whole server system, as a file, to another virtual server. This could be hosted externally, at another site or business. Being able to move your server operating system and its users and data from one machine to another and re-enable it at the press of a key is an effective way to reduce business downtime and the overhead in reinstalling, re-licensing your corporate environment.

2) Scalability and Redundancy
Hardware can fail. Since Linux does not restrict the number of installations, unlike other competing operating systems, it is possible to purchase multiple servers and have a back-up server environment available at short notice in the event of a complete hardware failure on one of the other systems.

3) Growing and Changing Applications
Since a virtual server is essentially a file, you can take a back-up of the server at any point in order to be able to wind back to a previous configuration. This means that it is now possible to have a snapshot of the server and its configuration prior to any software installation on top of this. This is a large time-saving when you consider the possibility of viral or update patch breakage on machines.

Whilst for many readers of this blog the above is second nature, it's worth considering that many small businesses are as yet uneducated about the new tools in technology that can reduce the overhead when managing their own servers and in turn reduce their own running costs and liabilities.

The growth of virtualisation creates yet another string to the bow of competent system administrator who will now be tackling not only the virtual operating system but the hosting operating system which runs it. It also creates a new business model and opportunity for various service providers to begin to offer virtual servers as a service in managed environments as a choice for business continuity.

The options virtualisation offers to both the business end user and service provider will open a new market for the IT industry which will be at once interesting and useful.

Bill Thompson on Microsoft's Open Source Licenses

Nik Butler writes:

Bill Thompson, writing for the BBC, talks about the long hard road to Open Source.

Microsoft, having submitted two licenses for consideration of the Open Source Initiative, have certainly stirred the usual feelings of angst and concern in the Open Source community. Thompson suggests that many may view the move as some grand manouever designed to hide some other attack:

Those who see only the machinations of a corporation intent on damaging free and open source software will therefore imagine this latest move as part of a complex game of corporate chess, where the open license knight moves closer to the free software king only to disguise the real attack, coming from the patent-carrying bishops hiding behind the pawns.

In this case the pawns are provided by Novell, a Linux distributor that struck a deal over patent infringement with Microsoft in 2006.

Some credit must go to Bill Hilf, the Open Source world's Man on the inside, who works for and with Microsoft to help them understand and engage with the Open Source community.

Microsoft however seem to be suffering from the effects of their own success. Having dominated and secured the Desktop market, they have not been able to move as swiftly or as quickly into managing and securing the internet market. Control over the browsers is not enough to help Microsoft maintain control, as developers and manufacturers are finding ways to move directly between their own client applications and servers over the net.

Don Reisinger describes it as Microsoft's Albatross and also puts forward suggestions as to how Microsoft need to reconsider their current market share. With manufacturers now openly selling Ubuntu and other Open Source distributions on their desktop PCs, it's clear that the distributors are looking for ways to avoid a possible lock-in and starvation in a market which is now, if slowly, heading away from desktops as the primary or exclusive domain of connectivity and the internet.

Whilst we are nowhere near a tipping point, there are certainly trembles in the market that point to a shifting interest in investment and delivery, and history has shown that the monolithic corporations rarely survive the changes.

Blogging As A Marketing Tool

Nik Butler writes:

Yesterday I was speaking with a client about Blogging vs Email Newsletters as part of their marketing and promotional content. Having described how tools like RSS enable content to be readily available for mass subscription and review, my client hit me with a fairly good point:

Does it really matter if you put the potatoes into cold water or boiled water? They taste the same when mashed anyway. (Actually she took far longer to explain: I am paraphrasing).

This discussion arose when we were looking at their new website, another example of graphic design and clever presentation creating a very one-way website. This lead me to ask how will they attract and maintain new business through their website, especially if all they are doing is pitching a glorified banner advert?

Currently the client has a system which exports contact information from ACT contact management and  parses this into Mailman to create a number of separate mail lists.

For many businesses the process of winning sales and maintaining clients requires human interaction and,  with the exceptions of retail delivery set-ups such as Walmart or Amazon, it really is about people buying from people. Many businesses use their websites to attract potential new clients (people) but the communication they have with those potential new clients is either a newsletter or a phone call or a email - there's nothing new. They are using their own websites as advertising boards or promotional and product placement opportunities. These businesses don't make use of the 'conversation' they could be having with their clients and in turn using their own clients to promote and include them in their decisions.

So why is blogging treated as a second fiddle in the marketing functions of many small- and medium-sized businesses?

Let's consider the issues:

Email marketing really does require a strength of numbers approach. Outside of ensuring an opt-in by your readers for your content, you need to ensure so many more things. Spam blocking by ISPs and Mail clients requires that you create good quality and well formatted emails which are delivered via transparent and accountable routes. Image blocking within an email and the potential for forward emails to be re-formatted nullifies the ability to track back emails at the source. Proxy servers and distant networks which rewrite and re-present the content before it is read make it almost impossible to ensure integrity of display and content. Finally the on-going deluge of news, notifications, updates, mail lists and forwarded jokes is forcing many to reconsider the role of email in their own lives. 

On the plus side, email is an understood technology with very little need for re-education, and people are familiar with what is required: it's an obvious extension to existing methods of producing news for your clients.

Blogs, meanwhile, have no guarantee of readers, and need to drive awareness to ensure that clients know where you are talking and communicating. The variety of platforms and content management systems available (wordpress, drupal, joomla, typepad) is off-putting to a new department or content provider, especially where people are already familiar and comfortable with emails. The prospect of an additional communication channel is daunting.

Blogs, however, provide a excellent mechanism with which to track interest, publish content quickly and to ensure that the message is transmitted in a consistent fashion. RSS Readers which compliment blogs are becoming tools du jour for professional web users and the understanding that you can access and discuss the news with a provider creates new opportunities for conversation.

Chris Brogan wrote an article recently on Understanding Community Development Strategies, which details some of the groundwork required to make the best use of community managers and social networks via blogs and other social networking sites. This article, along with his follow-up post, provide a really good jumping off point to help educate the small and medium business user on the opportunities available through opening up conversations with your own community.

It's time for modern businesses to understand that a Web 2.0 site is not one that incorporates large buttons and rounded corners but one that involved the clients and community in the content and the creation of content of the site owners themselves.

This learning curve will continue for many more months to come but those businesses that embrace a more open conversation on the web will gain the market share of an awaiting audience and the reciprocal  value that results from this.

Social Network Optimisation for Marketing 2.0

It seems impossible to move around the Internet today without discovering the Web 2.0 and Social Network communities. User driven content from Twitter to Facebook and LinkedIn are growing at an exponential rate, meaning the nature and need of the internet and its community is changing.

Companies can no longer deliver a one-way web, 'interact with the consumer or fade away' is the message which every business needs to hear. This need to grow and change marketing strategies is nothing new, sites such as Entrepreneur.com and MediaGuerilla are already explaining how to incorporate the community into a company's marketing strategy. Seth Godin's blog also identifies the need for a new role for the future. Clearly the need for a "new industry" to help agencies and businesses to grow within this new media is occurring.

Search Engine Optimisers have generated large amounts of value in focusing search engine results towards their client's one web site. Now a new breed of "Optimiser" can take the message of the client to the many eyes and in turn create new "conversations" and "awareness" about their client and their business.

SNO Agencies will be another facet of existing disciplines in Public Relations and Marketing Agencies. They will use their own network of Friends and Contacts on-line formed through social networks with which to build new links and ideas between their clients and their audience.

Social networks in turn will be able to weed out the spammers since they are already demonstrating a resilience to direct advertising and spamming. Social Networks are self-correcting, ostracising those who directly inflict advertising and rewarding those who bring content and interest.

SNOs will be able to use their experience in understanding existing and current social networks as they relate to their own client's needs, ensuring that the appropriate comments are posted to the relevant blogs, forums or mail lists and in turn contributing content that is relevant and socially rewarding to those communities.

Social Network Optimiser Agencies will work with existing Public Relation and Marketing Agencies  utilising current conversations and ideas to help promote and direct awareness of the product without directly advertising or "spamming" those own communities. 

Mark Harrison, of Mythinge.com said, "I can see a strong role for an SNO agency to work with our PR and Ad agencies. I think we'd need all three to promote our brand."

Less Fat In Your Laptop

Nik Butler:

Dell appear to be keeping their promise to listen to the needs of their consumers. Their new "Vostro" range of laptops are aimed at the small business sector. Mildly priced and specified, 15.4" to 17" screens, the laptops are available in Vista flavour, though the author believes XP may be available on request.

What makes these laptops stand out is the lack of "Bloatware" pre-installed on the operating systems which is a popular request on Ideastorm. Presumably being a flatter base install and incorporating less noise and clutter on the desktop making set-up from purchase easier by removing the need to boot into safe mode in order to unload the usual anti-virus software.

Its unclear how these systems will perform on the long term support service which is experienced in purchasing Dell Inspiron hardware, only time will tell.

The New Thing Is The Same Old Thing

Nik Butler writes:

It might well be time to examine how the fundamental usage of our applications is about to change, especially when an A list weblogger says ...

"Facebook has almost replaced my Outlook contact list because of this."

Robert Scoble's entry on "Why Facebook, why now" is one of a number of comments wondering about the efficacy of email and its continued relevance to today's web users. Jeremiah Owyang's kid sister suggested "she only uses email to communicate with old people like him".

The web is getting better connected and people are becoming more aware of their on-line activities and relationships to others and as a result the legacy of applications that once supported our communications are giving way to a new form of conversation. This is not an unsupported trend: if you examine the history of computing, the technical advances have been heading towards the ubiquity of data and the need to be in contact and share information. If you will indulge some blue sky thinking, examine the graph below and consider how it suggests a tendency towards data becoming the next "big thing":

Consider the first point on this graph, Hardware, wherein IBM came on the scene and dominated the office with Big Iron and big computers and the belief that there would not be a need for many more computers.

Microsoft soon put paid to that immutable law. Desktop computers and the "one true" operating system of Windows by way of Dos took over the world and the desktop market, with Bill Gates desire to see a computer running Windows Desktop on every desk. The success of this architecture was soon overtaken by the advent of the Internet and, whilst Microsoft managed a few abortive attempts to lock down and retain the culture to suit their own business needs, it was a runaway success for all computer users. Soon the desktop was no longer as relevant as what it would connect to.

Google came next to the scene, with its all-embracing collation of information and its entry into our vocabulary, where we Googled for this and Googled that. We discovered browsers and websites and places to sit and share information.

Which takes us to the Social networks. RSS feeds and XML are already enabling the bridging of published content and accessibility, and through the release of Public APIs, (application programming interfaces) sites are increasing interest and traffic and content by way of user generated content, which in turn self-perpetuates the creation of new and interesting articles to read and use.

Myspace, later replaced by Facebook and the increasing predominance of Social networks, the sharing of information and the ability to utilise and access the connections that each of our contacts share, is grabbing headlines and attention at the moment and leads me to wonder where the next big thing will be.

Data and its ubiquity would seem to be one possible extension of how this growth in the management and control of sharing our own information will lead. Tag clouds are becoming as synonymous with collecting information as domain names have been. Using Facebook to manage your address book and to have everyone else manage the data they wish to share with you seems a logical step for the ever growing and changing address book needs that we all have. The iPhone with its apparent integration with Safari and Web Apps seems a possible stroke of genius as we move the content from central servers and private computers into a webspace which we can access from any device or browser natively. 

There remains the issue of connectivity across all these data sets and the need to offer reduncancy, backups and load management for every user. When I publish an Event in Upcoming.org and it appears in my friend's RSS feed, he needs to be able to click the "ADD" button to move the event into his Google calendar. My Friends details in Facebook should be linked to my own address book and my Plaxo account. My blogs should be able to preapprove posts from my friends in Plaxo, Facebook and twitter. The company that begins to hone in on this application will quite possibly have the next big thing - certainly they will have reduced the gap between the online services and the users and the ability of information to be ubiquitous to our own needs.

Apples News That's Fit To Print

Nik Butler writes:

Michael R Sweet, owner of Easy Software Products and creator and source code manager for the Common Unix Printer System (CUPS), has gone to work for Apple as announced in a recent news article at their site.

CUPS, provided under the GPL2/LGPL2 License has provided the backbone for printer management and configuration for many modern Linux and BSD distributions including Canonicals own Ubuntu. With Apple taking over the rights to the code, and still promising to maintain the freedom, will there be a new surge in the development and interest of other printer manufacturers to commit drivers to the project ?

Those interested in how this affects CUPS both now and in the future will find more answers at the sites own Frequently Asked Questions page. The most interesting of which is the Apple License exception page here .

Plain speaking shortcuts

Nik Butler writes:

There's a small change to a tiny idea that has a big impact on how to share web addresses without resorting to tongue tying linguistics.

Linkpot.net provides a service to rewrite potentially cumbersome web addresses into shorter more memorable names. Similar to the TinyURL but without the random strings and numbers at the end; for example where  TinyURL provides this: http://tinyurl.com/2f978h, Linkpot provides this: http://linkpot.net/camera/

For podcasters or tech support phone calls this naming convention is far easier to communicate audibly and makes for a more memorable link. Further the inclusion of a  NSFW ( not safe for work ) tick box restricts the link by informing the recipient that the site about to be visited may not be appropriate for public viewing, no more shocking shortcuts.

Ben Thorp, Linkpots author, created this using the Django web framework platform because of his own familiarity with Python and because it enabled the project to be delivered with a very short lead time. He has gained further assistance in the web design and presentation from Chris Hayes and contributions and support from many within the Lugradio community.

Linkpot is already making its way into my own daily use and compared to TinyURL its been far easier to use and understand, so go check it out.