A compilation of O'Reilly Media's information about the Open Source development methodology, from news, books, conferences, courses, community, and reports. Copyright O'Reilly Media, Inc. http://oreilly.com/opensource/ 2009-11-11T04:00:01-08:00 O'Reilly Media, Inc. no O'Reilly Media, Inc. webmaster@oreillynet.com http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/11/four-short-links-11-november-2.html

ParticipateDB -- database of online tools for public participation. Closed alpha now, with 32 tools and 15 projects in the database. (via Sara Winge) DataTO -- like data.gov, but it's where users request data sets. (In this case, from the Toronto municipal government) Go -- new language from Bell Labs and Unix central figures Rob Pike and Ken Thompson,...

Nat Torkington 2009-11-11T04:00:01-08:10 http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/11/unlikely-group-working-happily.html

While the first reaction to a government announcement "Synopsis for Public Data Dissemination Sole Source Contract to Google, Inc." might be one of horror, this is actually part of an effort by an unlikely coalition to solve a problem government hasn't figured out how to solve itself.

Carl Malamud 2009-11-08T11:00:21-08:11 http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/11/four-short-links-4-november-20.html

Democracy Live -- BBC launch searchable coverage of parliamentary discussion, using speech-to-text. One aspect we're particularly proud of is that we've managed to deliver good results for speech-to-text in Welsh, which, we're told, is unique. I think of this as the start of a They Work For You for video coverage. I'd love to be able to scale this to local government coverage, which is disappearing as local newspapers turn into delivery mechanisms for real estate advertisements. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

Nat Torkington 2009-11-04T21:27:18-08:12 http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/10/four-short-links-27-october-20.html

Contraptor -- a DIY open source construction set for experimental personal fabrication, desktop manufacturing, prototyping and bootstrapping. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

Nat Torkington 2009-10-27T22:57:28-08:13 http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/10/four-short-links-26-october-20.html

Toiling in the Data Mines -- Tom Armitage describes the process that Berg calls "material exploration". "Programmers very rarely talk about what their work feels like to do, and that's a shame. Material explorations are something I've really only done since I've joined BERG, and both times have felt very similar - in that they were very, very different to writing production code for an understood product. They demand code to be used as a sculpting tool, rather than as an engineering material..." This and more in today's Four Short Links.

Nat Torkington 2009-10-26T17:27:23-08:14 http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/10/four-short-links-23-october-20.html

Information is Beautiful -- gorgeous descriptions of the design of infographics. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

Nat Torkington 2009-10-23T15:02:10-08:15 http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/10/four-short-links-7-october-200.html

Followup to jwz's Palm App Store Fiasco -- redux: still nothing concrete from Palm, but they're saying they'll create a second-rate app store into which open source apps will go (along with apps that Palm hasn't reviewed). Schmidt on YouTube -- the interesting bit for me was Every minute, more than 10 hours of video is uploaded to the...

Nat Torkington 2009-10-07T03:57:01-08:16 http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/10/questions-and-answers-about-th.html

When the White House retweets Cory Doctorow, you know something unusual has happened.

Carl Malamud 2009-10-06T16:56:13-08:17 http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/10/four-short-links-5-october-200.html

Brown Cloud Marketing -- advertorial "interviewing" GM of a company offering "DNS in the cloud". This might be a worthwhile service, but the way he markets it (by saying open source is "freeware" and the market leader is "legacy") reveals a rich vein of bozo. Freeware legacy DNS is the internet's dirty little secret (actually, it's the reason we...

Nat Torkington 2009-10-05T04:02:00-08:18 http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2009/10/an-open-source-approach-to-arc.html

Jenny and I are going to be doing our Beautiful Teams talk in a week at the ITARC 2009 New York conference. That's why I've been posting about architecture lately on Building Better Software: How well does your program do......

Andrew Stellman 2009-10-03T18:12:26-08:19 http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2009/09/seeking-information-on-free-li.html

I'm interested in hearing about good open-source training materials for GNU/Linux use and administration.

Andy Oram 2009-09-29T08:57:05-08:20 http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/09/four-short-links-29-september.html

Bletchley Park May Have a Future -- the UK birthplace of modern computing, where Alan Turing worked during WW II breaking German codes, is dilapidated and in need of major repair. They appear to have a supporter in the UK National Lottery, who have given them a grant to begin work and prepare for further grants. It should be...

Nat Torkington 2009-09-29T03:58:10-08:21 http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/09/four-short-links-24-september.html

Milestones in the History of Thematic Cartography -- This resource provides a comprehensive view of the history of cartography, with examples of maps created throughout the ages and background information about the contexts within which those maps, visualizations and map making technologies were created. Explore each time period, click on the images and stories found throughout each time line,...

Nat Torkington 2009-09-24T15:57:02-08:22 http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/09/four-short-links-18-september.html

Echofon -- Keep your unread tweets synced between your iPhone and your desktop. Formerly known as TwitterFon and TwitterFox, echofon is a suite of apps that that allow you to synch unread tweets between your browser and phone, and soon, the desktop. In addition to supporting multiple users and unread synching, the Echofon app offers multiple Twitter and user views, authoring, tracking, publishing and pushing. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

Nat Torkington 2009-09-18T13:57:39-08:23 http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/09/computerization-in-nilekanis-i.html

Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation promises to occupy a central position in discussions about India as well as the world economy this year. Particularly relevant to this blog are the book's observations on computers' role in the economy and society.

Andy Oram 2009-09-01T20:57:02-08:24 http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2009/08/dasein-open-cloud-api.html

The Dasein Cloud API is the next step in the drive towards Open cloud programming standards. This Open Source API enables programmers to write cloud management applications in Java against a single API that supports multiple clouds.

George Reese 2009-08-15T11:57:27-08:25 http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/e/1394

In this webcast, Git evangelist Scott Chacon covers the basics of the Git source control system. He'll introduce the audience to Git basics: staging and committing snapshots, viewing the commit log, pushing to and pulling from servers, and creating, switching between, and merging branches. Finally, he'll quickly cover a few more advanced features - code annotation, advanced log options and possibly more, time permitting. Attendance is limited for this August 13th event, so register now! More Upcoming Webcasts - Meet Experts Online: Energy Literacy Entity Framework Tips & Tricks Nuclear Energy: Future Directions Check out our Webcast page for on-demand videos of past webcasts and more upcoming live events!

Mary Rotman 2009-08-14T16:31:17-08:26 http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/08/four-short-links-11-august-200.html

The Slowing Growth of Wikipedia and More Details of Changing Editor Resistance -- researchers at PARC analysed Wikipedia and found the number of new articles and number of new editors have flattened off, and more edits from first-time contributors are being reverted. This is a writeup in their blog, with the numbers and charts. It's interesting that coverage in...

Nat Torkington 2009-08-11T04:27:58-08:27 http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/08/four-short-links-7-august-2009.html

Defragging the Stimulus -- each [recovery] site has its own silo of data, and no site is complete. What we need is a unified point of access to all sources of information: firsthand reports from Recovery.gov and state portals, commentary from StimulusWatch and MetaCarta, and more. Suggests that Recovery.gov should be the hub for this presently-decentralised pile of recovery...

Nat Torkington 2009-08-07T03:25:47-08:28 http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/08/three-quick-open-source-in-def.html

Three quick defense open source links, and one other random one.

Jim Stogdill 2009-08-06T01:56:11-08:29 http://blip.tv/file/2402171

O'Reilly Media 2009-08-04T16:56:01-08:30 http://www.insideria.com/2009/08/eclipse-tools-for-microsoft-si.html

Something you might not be aware of is that the part of Comcast that I work for is all open source. We use open source technology, we open source projects, we're even all on Macs which is something new for...

Tom Barker 2009-08-01T10:26:30-08:31 http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2009/07/five-projects-for-open-source.html

A group of companies and projects announced Open Source for America at the O'Reilly Open Source convention on Wednesday. I already have five projects they could take on.

Andy Oram 2009-07-24T16:59:30-08:32 http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/07/four-short-links-24-july-2009.html

Are Tweets Copyright-Protected (WIPO) -- According to an Internet posting on blogherald.com by Jonathan Bailey, every time a new communication technology emerges, it shifts the copyright landscape, and new copyright issues that do not fit existing intellectual property (IP) standards arise. With Twitter, for example, while its terms of service clearly state that tweeters own anything they post on...

Nat Torkington 2009-07-24T16:59:29-08:33 http://books.slashdot.org/story/09/07/20/1325215/the-geek-atlas

Ben Rothke found plenty to like in his Slashdot review of The Geek Atlas: 128 Places Where Science and Technology Come Alive by John Graham-Cumming. Giving this travel guide for geeks a winning 10/10, Rothke writes: "The Geek Atlas is a fascinating and enjoyable read; in fact, I found it hard to put down. Lets hope the author is working on a sequel with the next 256 additional places where science and technology come alive." Read Rothke's review now.

Sara Peyton 2009-07-20T17:55:39-08:34 http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2009/07/community-leadership-summit-th.html

An unconference such as the Community Leadership Summit 2009 feels like one of those long, lingering meals you can enjoy with friends in a fine European restaurant. Unconferences are likely to grow in their appeal.

Andy Oram 2009-07-20T00:28:38-08:35 http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/14/open-source-software-technology-breakthroughs-software.html

Recession-Proof Open Source — "When stocks are low, conventional wisdom says "invest in bonds." There's no conventional wisdom for what to do when the computer software market is low (for the second time in a decade). But if there were, it would say invest in open source," writes Allison Randal in the latest O'Reilly Insights on Forbes.com. Randal, co-chair of O'Reilly's upcoming Open Source Convention in San Jose, explains there are many young open source ventures worth watching this year. Read more.

O'Reilly Media 2009-07-16T02:26:53-08:36 http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/07/making-government-transparent.html

With Open Source now considered an accepted part of the software industry, some people are starting to wonder if we can't bring the same degree of openness and innovation into government. Danese Cooper, who is actively involved in the open source community through her work with the Open Source Initiative and Apache, as well as working as an R wonk for Revolution Computing, would love to see the government become more open. Part of that openness is being able to access and interpret the mass of data that the government collects, something Cooper thinks R would be a great tool for. She'll be talking about R and Open Government at O'Reilly's Open Source Conference, OSCON.

James Turner 2009-07-14T17:29:12-08:37 http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/07/sequencing-a-genome-a-week.html

The Human Genome Project took X years to fully sequence a single human's genetic information. At Washington University's Genome Center, they can now do one in a week. But when you're generating that much data, just keeping track of it can become a major challenge in itself. David Dooling is in charge of managing the massive output of the Center's herd of gene sequencing machines, and making it available to researchers inside the Center and around the world. He'll be speaking at OSCON, O'Reilly's Open Source Conference, on how he uses open source tools to keep things under control, and he agreed to give us an overview of how the field of genomics is evolving.

James Turner 2009-07-14T17:29:12-08:38 http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/07/four-short-links-7-july-2009.html

Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them -- Tests done since 1933 show that people who talk about their intentions are less likely to make them happen. Announcing your plans to others satisfies your self-identity just enough that you’re less motivated to do the hard work needed. I have noticed this myself. It must be balanced...

Nat Torkington 2009-07-07T06:56:56-08:39