500kV Switch Opening in the Nevada desert.

And in green:

gadgetDNA

Scotsman Ian Gilmartin, 60, and his friend Bob Cattley, 58, both from Kendal, Cumbria have invented a mini-waterwheel capable of supplying enough electricity to power a house – for free.

Affordable Internet Services Online, Inc. – Solar Powered Web Hosting

Our 120 solar panel system will eliminate the production of
– 19,890 lbs of Carbon Dioxide (CO2/GHG) per year
– 5.9 lbs of Nitrous Oxide (NOX/smog) per year
– 0.45 lbs of Sulfur Dioxide (SO4/acid rain) per year
This is the equivalent of planting 3.5 acres of trees per year

Finally, ye old solar ray of death.

I attended the Web2.0Expo last week. MindTouch was exhibiting and Ken spoke about wikis in the enterprise. I had an interesting and pleasant conversation about badgeware with John Roberts. I made it to the AllThingsD launch party. And I spoke so much to so many people I ended up losing my voice for a couple days. I believe this was the largest trade show/conference I have ever been to. I was told there were over 10,000 people in attendance and the exhibit floor had more than sixty exhibitors.

I spent most of my time at the conference on the exhibit floor working the MindTouch booth with Patrick (our newest addition–a very competent and pleasant sales dude) and Corey. I have to mention I love demoing our software! I'm not trying to gloat, but when we show people our work we regularly receive unanimous praise from the crowd. Or should I say from the merry mob? We had a lot of traffic. Those who gave us positive feedback included customers of competitors and even a couple competitors who stopped by to see, our enterprise software, MindTouch Deki in action. Every once in a while I spoke with someone who wanted to know if MindTouch Deki could part the Red Sea, end world hunger, or make their ex-spouse love them again all for under $5,000. However in general, folks understood Deki for what it is: a very powerful, highly usable, incredibly affordable collaboration platform that MindTouch has managed to make ridiculously easy to install (15 minutes including download), remarkably easy to use, and it's delivered with a dramatically lower total cost of ownership because Deki automatically updates and patches itself.

I had the distinct pleasure of speaking with some current customers of MindTouch who stopped by our booth too. One had come all the way from Salisbury, North Carolina. The city of Salisbury uses MindTouch Deki for sharing information and team collaboration. I wish I could remember the fellow's name. It was nice chatting with him. I asked him how the software was working out for them and he said: "It's great, we love it!" Sweet! (I said 'sweet' not him). I really enjoy connecting with folks, talking tech, and showing off MindTouch products. MindTouch gets most of our inspiration from feedback we get through in person encounters or by way of our community at OpenGarden.org.  

Unfortunately I only managed to make it to a few sessions. I caught a couple sessions on identity and missed a couple others I would have liked to had made it to. If you read this blog regularly you know I'm keenly interested in an Open Web Initiative (OWI) by which we users could have an extended YADIS or just use XRDS to describe a person's identity; e.g.- OPML file for feeds, and podcasts, URIs to personal resources (Flickr, Jaiku/Twitter, personal and work blog), a URI to a personal Atom repository, a FOAF, etc. This isn't for any commercial interest, but is really spurred by my (and SteveB's) personal interest in having more sophisticated privacy controls and mobility of profile, content, contacts, ect…i.e.- identity. Anyway, it was great to meet the folks who are driving OpenID, The first OpenID talk I attended was Kaliya's (talk here). She's wonderful and fun. She's also a powerful Connector in the OpenID space and an information Maven, which is remarkable because she isn't an engineer. At one point I participated in her talk because the audience didn't seem to understand the significance of OpenID beyond a single sign-on. So, I gave a 60 second monologue (at her invitation) about how it can and almost certainly will enable things like OWI. Later I attended Brian Ellin and David Recordan's talk, which was a rudimentary technical talk about how to implement and consume OpenID. It was useful and well attended. They also passed out a fancy OpenID tools CD. 

I attended a session on Open Source Business Models for Web 2.0 with John Roberts, Co-Founder and CEO, SugarCRM  and Mårten Mickos, CEO, MySQL AB. I met Mårten previously at OSCON06 along with Monty Widenius (co-founder MySQL) who graciously attended our OpenGarden.org launch party. I asked John a few pointed questions about badgeware during the question/answer section of the session that got him a tad on the defensive. Turns out badgeware is a dirty word to folks with an attribution clause in their software license. One of the questions I asked was: "do you think that if all the components and libraries you use in your stack required similar attribution it would adversely effect your business." I didn't really get an answer from John on this. After the session I spoke briefly with Mårten and tried to pin him down on whether he thought the recent badgeware licenses were good, bad, or otherwise for open source. I also asked him if he thought the recent flood of cash from venture captialists to "open source" companies was going to positively, negatively, or at all effect open source and the software industry as a whole. The VC backed open source companies are primarily the folks spawning new licenses with attribution clauses. Mårten was very diplomatic and unwilling to voice any opinion other than suggesting companies with attribution clauses were trying to prevent closed source competitors from stealing all our portions of their source code. I suggested using a GPL style license would prevent this from happening.

After the crowd of job hunters cleared from around John I spoke with him about badgeware, open source, and OSI. He seemed defensive initially, but as soon as I convinced him I wasn't out to 'get him' and that I was only interested in understanding his position he lightened up considerably and we had a friendly chat for about thirty minutes. He described his point of view and I described mine regarding attribution licenses. John wants to protect his and his team's work. He feels attribution is the right way to do this. I feel attribution is unnecessary and I reiterate my original question, which I never did get a good answer to, what if every open source project required attribution? For example, PHP, Linux, MySQL, etc. How would this impact companies like SugarCRM or MindTouch? It seems ridiculous, but I think it's a valid question. The fact is the forces driving innovation today in technology on the web, you know this thing we call Web2.0, is open source and open standards. Period. Developers can very quickly create compelling applications because there is a wealth of open source components available to us. Also, thanks to open standards you can throw an API or two into the mix and you have something pretty cool. If it's not particularly useful it will likely become a component of something that is useful at a later date. What if all these components had attribution licenses? Even trivial applications would end up looking like NASCAR race cars. I suppose that's not the worst thing in the wo
r
ld.

John suggested attribution is similar to what open source packagers like RedHat are doing when they bundle software and brand with the RedHat logo. I disagreed because removing RedHat branding is trivial and there is not a licensing requirement that the RedHat logo be present. At least, not to my knowledge. The conversation with John was friendly, but at times I felt like I was talking to Ari Fleishcer because so many of my questions were being deflected or were met with canned responses that didn't quite answer the question and were barely applicable. John was warm to note that the entire SugarCRM application was developed by his team and it's not a fork of something or a repackaging. I'm sure this is true, but it's still using a lot of additional open source components and libraries. There are many people who are passionate about open source who believe John thinks open source is whatever helps him to make money. I told John this and he sincerely informed me that he and his team are engineers who believe in open source and are simply trying to protect their hard work.

The final point I pressed John on was OSI. I think OSI performs a useful service to us as open source developers. They educate the public and attempt to ensure standardization of licensing, which prevents confusion. Also, they're a useful resource and community that can be tapped when people have questions about copyright and software licensing. By SugarCRM not seeking OSI certification of their license they're, in effect, turning their back on what is widely accepted to be the organization that is the keeper of the open source definition. John said he had tried to engage with OSI and had not gotten anywhere. He was interested in participating and claimed that some of the people he had spoken with had unfairly labeled the SugarCRM license as being a rehash of the Berkeley advertising clause (I'm recalling from memory), which personally I don't think is an incorrect assessment. John also posited that OSI is non-inclusive and difficult to work with. Moreover, John asked who are these guys and who voted them into office? How do they vote? Why are they the keepers of open source? Who appointed them? Can I participate? How do I? These are valid questions. Some, but not all are answered by the bylaws and there is an, albeit slow, movement underfoot to create membership, which in my opinion is long overdue. I'm glad to be able to point out the board is now posting their minutes too. The very interesting point John made was that the FSF was being especially helpful and inclusive in approving his attribution license. This surprised me because of the previously linked to article put out by GNU on the Berkeley advertising clause (re-link), which describes a history identical to my aforementioned NASCAR example.

For the record I think John is a good guy who is trying to do what he thinks is right for him, his team of engineers, and his company. Also, I think SugarCRM is a good product worth buying. I'm not sure yet if attribution licenses are bad. I think they're unnecessary. I am suspicious of this new crop of licenses because more licenses means there is more to be confused about. Moreover,  it seems strange to me that an application should be given special concessions that other components required by it are not given. In other words, what makes SugarCRM or one of the other twenty applications with an attribution clause different from the more than dozen open source components they're building on? Should they honor these components and libraries similarly to how they're demanding by prominently displaying all their logos on their application's interface?

The last bit worth covering regarding my attendance at  Web 2.0 Expo is the AllThingsD launch party thrown by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher of The Wall Street Journal that Graeme and I attended. It was held at the Mountain View Computer History Museum. There was great food and good drink. Graeme blogs about my driving. Also, the Web2Open party was fun, but I'm afraid I had quite a lot to drink there.

One final note. Ross Mayfield attended Ken's wiki session. If you read my blog you know he had some harsh words for me at the Gilbane conference in San Francisco a month ago. Granted, I've been critical in the past of Socialtext espousing open source. When Ross saw me he came over and shook my hand and said: "Hi, my name is Ross. We got off to a bad start previously. Let's drink a beer some time and chat." That was nice of him. We bumped into each other throughout the event and we were friendly. I had planned to take him up on that beer offer and discuss with him badgeware, to get his opinion as I did John Roberts, and my opinion his company has approached open source incorrectly. However, the fact is his team has helped define open standards, adheres to them, and has helped several other open source projects monetarily and otherwise. Nonetheless, I don't agree with his approach to licensing or that Socialtext claimed for several years to be open source, but didn't release any source code.  

Little Itally ArtWalk

Bring Your Check Book!
You will find that some of your favorite artists do not accept credit cards. There are ATMs all around LIttle Italy, but a personal check may be more convenient for purchasing art.

Well, if that doesn’t tell you what this is about I don’t know what will. Urg, I’m cynical? Perhaps. However, there has been some pretty decent music thus far. I caught a killer Spanish guitar trio and a hot blond strumming out some poignant folk reminiscent of Jesse Sykes, but less transcendent. DamienH and SteveB recorded some other interesting acts. I’m watching Punk: Attitude as I write this and it makes me realize how much I miss Joe Strummer. Don Letts is alright.

Red Herring just ran a piece on the recently launched MindTouch Nexus product. It cites the ill-fated LA Times wiki.

RED HERRING

Using open-source wiki software, then-editorial page editor Michael Kinsley opened up an Iraq war editorial to anyone who wanted to edit it. The story quickly degenerated into a porn-infused, obscenity-laced fest.

The already-cautious industry took note, and wiki experiments were shelved in favor of somewhat less controversial community-building features, such as social networking, blogging, and, most recently, user-generated video.

But now, newspaper wikis could be on the rebound, starting with a foray by the San Diego Union-Tribune. That development is being pushed by wiki platform startups offering tools that require community editors to register and allow for management oversight.

I spoke about the benefits to the newspapers and community members here previously. MindTouch Nexus isn't about enabling newspapers to leech content from the community nor is it about replacing journalists with an amorphous mob. MindTouch Nexus is about helping newspapers to own the local content space by empowering their users to participate in the creation of the most comprehensive local resource sites. This is a symbiotic relationship that both the newspaper and the community benefit from. Newspapers provide a trusted editorial voice. They also provide nationally syndicated content. Finally, with MindTouch Nexus they're able to extend their content offerings by stewarding a community site around specific local communities of interest. The local community members benefit from a great local resource and local businesses and events get more play than what would normally be possible because the community members can participate in providing coverage. It's a beautiful thing that wouldn't be possible without both parties.

As for the LA Times wiki debacle..err…experiment. They launched a wiki that allowed anonymous editing and didn't even prevent spam-bots from contributing nefarious content. Of course it was a mess. Simply requiring a login and preventing spam-bots would have gone a long way to making this a more successful experiment. Also, the topic they picked was a rather contentious issue: the war in Iraq. Anyone who contributes to Wikipedia knows this is just looking for trouble. Many contributors at Wikipedia refuse to edit contentious topics like this because it frequently leads to edit wars and a lot of angst. Of course, with MindTouch Nexus the community of editors selected by the newspaper or online publisher has some useful tools for preventing and controlling these kinds of edit wars; although, if you're launching a wiki about your local music scene, sports club, or tourism they aren't really needed. Clearly, a universally editable op-ed about the most contentious national issue is an entirely different beast than creating a comprehensive "localpedia".

We're seeing a lot of excitement about this kind of wiki based community offering from both members in the community who want a voice in shaping their local online resource and from online media, newspapers, and commerce sites who want to engage their audience in a more meaningful manner than is possible with comments on blogs. 

I was recently notified that I'm currently being honored with a photo in Sitterson Hall, which is the Computer Science building of my alma matter UNC Chapel Hill. You can see the photo to the right. I'm holding up one of our early DekiBox prototypes. This was before the front had a custom chrome bezel and before our primary focus was on MindTouch Deki the software appliance product. The photo was taken in September, 2006 at the DEMOFall conference. I'm really flattered by this. I've been in some newspapers and magazines, but nothing beats being on the wall of Sitterson Hall. A place I spent many many all-nighters sweating blood, studying, and writing code.  I'm not sure who suggested they put up a photo of me, but thanks to whoever it was. This is very cool.

I just returned from NEXPO, which I'm told is the largest newspaper conference. The exhibition floor was the largest I've ever seen. There were several huge printing presses there. The event was definitely different from the conferences I'm accustomed to attending. There may have been five geeks in total. It was entirely business and traditional media types and I've been on the road so long I haven't had a chance to get a much needed haircut. 🙂  I did have a great time. We were demoing MindTouch Nexus (see press release below). MindTouch Nexus is a wiki based community service geared to online media, publishing, newspapers and ecommerce. This provides the third component readers expect from online media and newspapers when they visit their website or online properties. Already these sites have trusted editorial content. They're also fulfilling the syndicated content requirement. With Nexus they can provide what their readers are demanding: the ability to participate in a very real way; specifically, in the creation of the most comprehensive encyclopedic directory of local resources. This is about getting the community involved in helping to create the most comprehensive hyper-local content repository.

We presented two properties at Nexpo: AmplifySD and the Orlando Sentinel Wiki. The AmplifySD site is almost certainly already the most comprehensive resource for local music, bands, and venues in San Diego and will continue to grow. The Orlando Sentinel Wiki is a generic proof of concept site we launched in just a few days prior to NEXPO, but it's been very well received and already has some great hyper-local content.

There was a ton of talk at the conference about hyper-local content and empowering communities. Most traditional media outlets are beginning to understand the need and value of this. Newspapers are realizing they have to own the local content space if they wish to be viable. Other online media, publishing, and ecommerce sites are realizing the power and benefits of enabling a community. Most of the folks I spoke with at NEXPO either have blogs and forums attached to their web properties or are just now beginning to launch these tools. Blogs and forums are a great start, but a wiki makes a lot more sense if you want to encourage participation, and if you want to own the local content space.

Blogs are great for one person or a few people to publish to many readers. This is really about providing a rapid publishing tool mostly for featured topics and enabling your audience to comment. This is great for reviewers, critics, etc. However, this enables very limited community participation (comments only) and information is only able to be presented anti-chronologically. This is to say that the most relevant information is always the newest. In reality blogs are a single thread forum engine. Forums are wonderful for question/answer kind of topics. However, forums too are limited to an anti-chronological information architecture. Both forums and blogs quickly become difficult to navigate and find what you're looking for. Neither technology is suitable to collaborative authoring or developing a reference site. Enter wikis.

Wikis are wonderful for online collaboration and are the obvious choice for developing reference sites. Take Wikipedia for example. Newspapers that deploy wikis can provide a very useful service to their readers. They can give them the opportunity to participate in creating the most comprehensive encyclopedic directory of local resources. This benefits everyone. Newspapers can't do this alone. They couldn't afford it and it wouldn't be authentic. Moreover, the community would have difficulty creating a "localpedia" without the help of the newspapers. Newspapers can provide the infrastructure, editors and journalists to assist in shaping the quality of the content, the very important initial or seed content to get the wiki started, and an incentive for local businesses and community members to participate. It's a mutually beneficial partnership.

For newspapers a "localpedia", whether topic specific or generic in nature, might be the holy grail with which they can empower, reward, and benefit from citizens' input. Local businesses benefit by having a medium to make their presence known on a contextually relevant basis to readers who are seeking their services. Readers benefit by having a useful and comprehensive encyclopedia of local events, businesses, history, places, sports, and whatever else. Wouldn't it be wonderful to be vacationing in San Diego and to have a wikipedia like resource of local events, places, and historical reference at your finger tips to guide your planning?

I mentioned previously a "localpedia" that might be either topic specific or generic. I think this is keenly important because the more narrowly you focus your "localpedia" the less seeding of content is required. For example, the AmplifySD site focuses solely on local music, bars, bands, and venues. The San Diego Union Tribune only had to seed content on these topics. It's critically important for them to do so because when readers/participants visit the site they need a framework to operate in; otherwise you run the risk of confusing them. The San Diego Union Tribune is launching many narrowly focused "localpedias" using MindTouch Nexus. Also, by focusing the topics there is a lower barrier for the users to contribute–they have to think less. Moreover, if they've arrived at a narrowly focused "localpedia" they've almost certainly done so because it's a topic that interests them and the content is focuses solely on this topic; therefore they'll be more inclined to participate.

NEXPO 2007

MindTouch Nexus is a turnkey hosted service that integrates with SignOnSanDiego’s website and publishing system. It enables SignOnSanDiego readers to easily contribute content on subjects that interest them and collaborate with other readers and editors with an intuitive WYSIWIG editing tool. They can post text, images, video and MP3 clips. MindTouch Nexus provides many tools for SignOnSanDiego editors to manage how user-generated content can be blended with editorial and syndicated content on the site. Pages can be set to edit, comment or read-only mode, and are indexed and linkable, searchable and taggable. Contributions can be submitted on their own or in context of an article or other editorial content.

“We believe MindTouch Nexus will generate large volumes of fresh content which will in turn build traffic, increase the ability to post more targeted advertising and deepen our connection with the dynamic San Diego County community,” said Chris Jennewein Vice President, Internet Operations of Union-Tribune Publishing Co. “The need to harness user-generated content is the new reality for all online media, and MindTouch Nexus provides us with a powerful tool to fulfill that need in a controlled way.”

The agreement with SignOnSanDiego calls for a continuous rollout of sites and topics, starting with AmplifySD (www.amplifySD.com), a site dedicated to the vibrant and influential San Diego music scene. Visitors to the site can post articles, images, video and MP3 clips of their favorite bands, and i
nclude their history, music reviews, tours, discographies and more. MindTouch Nexus provides a central platform for music lovers to edit or comment on each other’s contributions and interact with the musicians and others involved in the business. Its targeted launch is in May, 2007.

“We selected MindTouch due to its extensible technology, customer-friendly business approach and business model,” said Ron James, Content Manager of SignOnSanDiego. “MindTouch Nexus does not require any capital investment or large upfront expenditure, and is immediately deployable with an attractive pay-for-performance model. All these factors made its selection easy for us.”

“We are proud to have SignOnSanDiego, a well-known innovator in the online media world, as our launch customer for MindTouch Nexus,” said Ken Liu, MindTouch’s CEO. “We are excited by how their long-term vision for community-generated content meshes with our capabilities, which we will showcase in a continuous stream of new features and launches in the coming months.”

Why would a newspaper, online publishing/media, or ecommerce site use MindTouch's technology over the countless open source wikis and few other commercial vendors out there? There are many reasons why MindTouch Nexus makes the most sense. Visit www.MindTouch.com for a complete picture or contact MindTouch directly (866) MindTouch or (866) 646-3868. I'll mention just a few reasons why Nexus is the best choice here. The first reason is that MindTouch Nexus is a platform that has been specifically designed for the needs of this space–it's completely customizable and easily integrated with existing systems. The product is vendor backed and you have multiple support options. MindTouch Nexus and other MindTouch wiki products are the most easy to use in this space and this means the barrier to participate is dramatically lower than other offerings. Try out the competitions' offerings and you'll undoubtedly agree. Also, and perhaps most importantly, MindTouch Nexus is designed to make it very easy to integrate with other systems. Not just for things like single-signon, but also to weave the community content into the editorial content and vice-versa.

The following are the three most asked questions about MindTouch Nexus at NEXPO:

Will we have to change our existing systems? Absolutely not. MindTouch Nexus is easily integrated into all of your existing systems and MindTouch can turn on a new in a few hours to a few days depending upon the level of integration and customization. None of your existing technologies or tools need to be changed.

If I launch MindTouch Nexus as a hosted service does this mean I will have new or different traffic analytics, different ads, and will I still get traffic rank increases from this new property? MindTouch Nexus will integrate with your existing analytics, advertising engines and you will receive the Nielson or Alexa ranking for the traffic. If you're new to this space and need help with analytics or advertising MindTouch can help.

How do I control the community? Without getting esoteric on controlling a community I'll just state succinctly: MindTouch gives you very fine granularity in controlling who can edit what. You also have the ability to create trusted users that don't get put into moderation. Moreover, MindTouch has been doing this community thing for a while now and can help in establishing the best strategy to creating a successful deployment.

If you have more questions about MindTouch Nexus or another MindTouch product email sales@mindtouch.com.

PC World

I downloaded MindTouch Deki, which lets you collaborate on documents wiki-style. I expanded the archive and then double-clicked on the resulting file. The appliance booted its operating system, configured itself, and was ready to use in about a minute.

Looks like PCWorld picked up the MindTouch Deki piece too.

Macworld

Virtual Appliance: VMWare’s virtual appliances are fully configured and ready-to-run software programs—such as MindTouch Deki, shown here—that you can download.

MindTouch Deki was recently used to demo the new VMWare Fusion on MacOSX. I heard from some friends they had seen this in the print magazine. If I heard correctly, I also heard it was in a presentation somewhere. Very cool.

Linux News

MindTouch specializes in providing enterprise wikis. “Wikis are perfect for bottoms-up and ad-hoc cooperations,” said MindTouch CEO Ken Liu. “It is a very viral tool, meaning it is a light word processor inside a Web browser. Using a wiki avoids buying a big application from a vendor. One key aspect is the collaboration feature that allows multiple users to share written information at the same time.”

This is a somewhat belated post. I just realized Ken was interviewed by LinuxInsider.

If any Gardeners are attending the Web 2.0 Expo this week, track me, or another MindTouch(er) down. We’re exhibiting and you’ll likely see me roaming about. You can track my presence at Jaiku, as always I’ll blog the event here (but I recommend Steve or Graeme though, they’re pros, I’m not), and I’m providing a photo of myself here because if you are a Gardener and you find me, I’ll reward you with a prize!