Welcome back to another edition of the Wikinomics Roundup: Week in Review, where I capture in brief, some of the thoughts, discoveries, and discussions that graced the blog throughout the past week.
This week in the roundup:
Jeff DeChambeau revealed the new beta of the Wikinomics blog
Ian Da Silva uncovered the power of the social web for consumers
Patrick Harnett introduced us to Wesabe and money management on the Web
Andrea Bettello shined the light on a different type of TV experience
In case you missed it, you can catch the last roundup HERE.
If you’re anything like me, you tend to enjoy things that may be a little beyond your budget. And if you’re really like me, you tend to enjoy them far more often than you should. But I’m going to avoid any discussions of my own indulgence, but use them as a segue to mention Wesabe. It’s an open source community that tracks your spending habits and shares them with the group. If prediction markets are for harnessing the “Wisdom of Crowds”, this truly does try to capture the “Frugality of Crowds”.
Portal is my favorite videogame, it came out just about a year ago. For the uninitiated, the game is built around a new gameplay mechanic: portals. In a twist on the standard First Person Shooter (FPS), instead of having a bang-bang gun, you have a portal gun. It shoots two things, a blue portal and an orange portal. The portals form on any flat surface and anything that goes in one instantly comes out the other. Here’s the trailer:
Valve, the company who developed Portal, has a long history of openness with their games. With their first game, Half-Life, Valve released a Software Development Kit (SDK) that allowed amateur game designers to build their own games on top of the existing engine. Counter-Strike, arguably the most popular FPS game ever, was the result of a fan-made project built on top of the Half-Life engine. Valve ended up hiring the team behind Counter-Strike, and eventually made a sequel. Read More »
Bravo to Quebec’s open source software association for suing the provincial government for not tendering software purchases. Turns out the government used a rule that allows them to avoid tenders when there is only one option (in this case, Microsoft). I guess no one told them about the other options, you know, the free ones.
This brings up some interesting questions. Whose responsibility is it to submit a tender bid for open source? Do governments have the responsibility to consider it even without a bid? And can governments really justify spending a lot of money on things they can get for free (even if the free version has an interface that is intimidating to white-haired public servants)?
But more importantly, governments are missing a tremendous opportunity by ignoring open source. Imagine if even a fraction of the millions of dollars most governments spend on proprietary software was spent on open source initiatives. First of all, the software would become far more customized towards what government needs. Second, rather than funneling tax payer money to one company, it would be an investment for every company in the economy. Third, it would create skilled jobs. Fourth, it would help create the critical mass necessary for open source to overtake proprietary software: something that would benefit the entire economy.
As citizens, I say we start demanding that our governments leverage open source software to save money and invest in our economy.
Welcome back to another edition of the Wikinomics Roundup: Week in Review, where I capture in brief, some of the thoughts, discoveries, and discussions that graced the blog throughout the past week.
In case you missed it, you can catch last week’s roundup HERE. Friendly reminder: the Wikinomics Roundup has a nice new home on the left side of the page, under Regular Features.
Last month, Jude Fiorillo wrote about a new video game called Spore. Spore was created by EA and is unique because it lets gamers participate in the design process of the game. Users get to create their own detailed characters from scratch. As mentioned in Jude’s blog, this feature was pre-released to give gamers a sneak peak of the game and to get some early feedback. In addition to creating new characters, users are encouraged to share their new creations via YouTube.
An article on CNN.com today announced some recent developments in this story. There has been widespread participation in the game’s pre-release. This comes with an interesting twist though: Along with the normal characters created and shared on YouTube, many people have created pornographic characters also known as “sporn”. For a more detailed (and vulgar) description of the “sporn,” see the CNN article. YouTube and EA have already removed most of the pornographic content from YouTube. This was achieved with the help of the YouTube community, which has the ability to flag content that they feel is inappropriate.
Whenever users are given the freedom to create what ever they want, it is clear that they will do just that. This is always a risk when initiating an open source project. Luckily an open source community is just that: a community. Community members monitor the content, and keep the environment enjoyable for all. This is why Wikipedia and YouTube have been so successful. Administrators are necessary to have the final say in what content stays and what goes, but it is largely a community affair, which is nice to see.
It is upsetting that a few perverted minds have tried to ruin the fun for all, but it is great to see the greater open source community triumph over the few social deviants.
Last week, O’Reilly Media hosted the 2008 Open Source Convention (OSCON) in Portland, Oregon. The conference is described as “the crossroads of all things open source, bringing together the best, brightest, and most interesting people to explore what’s new, and to champion the cause of open principles and open source adoption across the computing industry,” and featured speakers from all over the open source community. The talks and panels are (of course) available online.
Ongoing, a blog focused on truth, technology, and business, wrote a profile of one OSCON talk in particular, one given by Christine L. Peterson, on the topic of open source security in elections. Peterson argues that the US Government thinks that the best way to safeguard rights is to accumulate as much data as possible through numerous types of surveillance, and that the issue of transparency versus privacy is not even on their radar. Furthermore, Peterson thinks that this approach is fundamentally misguided, as terrorism is a bottom-up problem, and “they’re trying to solve a bottom-up problem with top-down tools.” This leads her to suggest that we need bottom-up physical security — and that the open source community is best tasked to develop this new breed of security systems. Read More »
Today, games are usually released for purchase both in stores (on CD/DVD) and online for download. The disc version of the game usually has a check built-in to make sure that the disc is actually in the drive, confriming that you’ve actually bought the game. Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 was no different, except that the downloadable version of the game also had this disc-check left in — clearly a problem for gamers who opted for the download.
Usually, online piracy groups release “no-cd cracks” that allow games to be played without a legitimate (or any) game-disc. These groups are violating the game developers’ terms of service agreements, and enabling the theft countless games — but, they write good code! So much so, that in order to fix the disc-check issue with Rainbox Six: Vegas 2, Ubisoft released a no-cd patch that contained code written by the piracy group named RELOADED. This was revealed by a user on the Ubisoft Forums. Read More »
Whether you’re a regular reader, or just pop in occasionally, it’s not always easy to keep up with our Wikinomics blog content. With this in mind, we have created the Wikinomics Roundup: Week in Review, to try and capture in brief, some of the thoughts, discoveries, and discussions that graced the blog from the past week.
A few weeks ago, the popular news aggregator site Reddit went open source. This struck me as pretty surprising, as I know that reddit is competiting with Digg, and I was under the impression that both had algorithms to determine which stories were deemed most popular that were kept secret and well guarded. Opening the source of reddit for all to see would allow anyone to instantly copy the site. Given that the site is coded in and run on languages and software that are themselves open, giving the entire world their proprietary code seems like an easy way to add competitors to the market.
The guys at reddit gave three reasons for why they’ve opened their source:
Even faster development.
Total transparency.
They <3 open source.
All three of these are great reasons, but the fact remains that they’ve effectively handed all of their would-be competitors everything that they need to very quickly launch knock-off or competitive sites. Or maybe they haven’t. As I see it, reddit has two things going in its favour. First, the loyalty of it’s users (something solidified even further by a move like going open source). There’s no reason for any of these users to splinter off to their own reddit-clone sites, after all, they’re part of an open and transparent community.
The second thing strikes me as much more interesting. Earlier today, Alan and I were discussing how important the algorithms of these pop-news sites are when it struck us that the algorithm is only half of the puzzle. These social news sites improve over time not because their algorithms change drastically, but because the weighting of the variables in the algorithms has a chance to be refined over many years.
My hypothesis is that the reddit team doesn’t have to worry about knockoffs stealing their lunch because it would take a few years and many, many users for the weighting variables in the clone sites to become anywhere near as refined and useful as in the original. Giving away their source code is really giving away very little. In exchange, they get all of the accolades of openness that come with bearing all to the world, and legions of users who then want to engage in making the site even better — for free of course!
Very, very smart. Unless I’ve completely missed the mark and don’t understand how the site works. Have I?
It appears that Google has discontinued its use of Browser Sync, an extension for Firefox that continuously synchronizes your browser settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across your computers. It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions. After the announcement, many requested that they release the code for further development. And that’s precisely what they did. Available at code.google.com, you can keep working on it. And if you want to work with it on Firefox 3, you’ll need to work on it. The app isn’t supported yet.
Why would Google dump this? They claim that it was so they could focus efforts on other products, like Toolbar and Gears, and to extend the capability of multiple browsers. I wonder though, is this really the reason? Think about it. With with the ever-increasing prevalence of mobile computing, and with social bookmarking managers such as del.icio.us, will people in the near future really need to be able to access the same bookmarks on the same browser? Information is voluntarily placed in (organized?) repositories in a centralized databases with better searching capabilities from individual access points.
The other issue is without Google hosting the information any more, you will need to host it on your own, or find someone you can trust with your information. The thread on Slashdot where I picked this up is pretty funny. Chrisq makes a point of stating,
with Google you knew where you stood. They might use your info to to target advertising. They might reveal it to the government if ordered to do so. They would not be likely to sell it to spammers or pass on lists…
I do think the best line though is about releasing Windows ME in the interest of tragic comedy!
Please note that the wikinomics blog team in no way supports violence towards those who suggest open source projects. As always, you can check out the original (and all the other mash ups) at www.dilbert.com.
Within hours of the release of the Firefox 3.0 web browser, a vulnerability was found in the code that puts all PC users of Firefox at severe risk. The press release from TippingPoint’s DVLabs is sparse in detail for security reasons, but it does explain that the vulnerability could enable “an attacker to execute arbitrary code.”The good news is that an unnamed researcher did find the problem and sell it to TippingPoint’s Zero Day Initiative. TippingPoint’s Zero Day Initiative is currently working on a patch to correct the problem, which it will then sell to Mozilla. The Zero Day Initiative is an open call for researchers to find potentially devastating program vulnerabilities. TippingPoint will then pay the researchers for their discovery and develop a solution to the problem.
This situation is open source collaboration at its finest. Mozilla made the source to Firefox open source. This allows them to harness the researching power of thousands without employing any of them. In addition they don’t even need to employ full time programmers to fix the problem. TippingPoint programmers find a solution to the problem and sell Firefox only what they need. The researchers are also happy because they are compensated for any discoveries that they find. Every one is a winner.
Many people believe that it is impossible to make a profit using open source, but this is clear evidence that the belief isn’t true. TippingPoint and Mozilla are utilizing open source to achieve greater profitability than would be possible using traditional business methods. In addition, they are able to create a safer, higher quality product. The benefits of open source are undeniable, and you can expect more companies to utilize this power in the near future.
For readers that might have missed it last week, I just wanted to highlight the very interesting conversation going on in regards to Naumi’s post Who needs analyst firms anyways?There have been about 20 comments so far, and it’s one of those cases where a great post has been made even better by the thoughtful insights from the community. Here’s a few quotes from the post to show you what drew people in - and encourage you to go and have your say on the issue as well:
Officially, IT analyst firms are a $2.5 billion dollar business, of which about $1 billion belongs to the industry behemoth Gartner. As impressive as this number might seem, it represents only a fraction of the total IT analysis actually being traded. There is a social media undercurrent running just below the surface of the IT analysis industry—call it “IT Analysis 2.0” or “Open Source Analysis,”—where insightful content is not bought and sold, but rather offered up for free…
Like MySpace and YouTube in the entertainment industry, the social media undercurrent in the IT analysis industry is threatening to build up to tsunami proportions.
… my point is that online research reports and white papers – like a great deal of other digital content – are becoming commoditized. Open source analyst firms understand this and are disrupting the market by offering basic content for free and shifting revenue models to value-added services.
Everyone’s favorite open-source browser turns three today. Here’s the download link. It’s been a long and trying 34 months, but the browser has finally arrived. And while Internet browsers, as a rule, do not excite me, Firefox 3 is the best browser that I’ve ever used.
Hardcore geeks (like me) have already been enjoying the new “awesome bar” (not my term) in previous release candidates for Firefox 3. Whatever you type in the “awesome bar” is used as a search string against your favorites and history. For instance, If I want to see someone’s Facebook profile, I can just type their name in the bar, and if I’ve previous been to their profile page, it’s the first suggested drop-down result. Pretty cool!
David Meyer has posted an interesting story on ZDNet, where Dr. Ari Jaaksi (Nokia’s VP of software) argues that open source developers targeting the mobile space need to learn business rules - including DRM. Here are a few of his relevant quotes:
“There are certain business rules [developers] need to obey, such as DRM, IPR [intellectual property rights], SIM locks and subsidised business models.”
“Why do we need closed vehicles? We do. Some of these things harm the industry but they’re here [as things stand]. These are touchy, emotional issues, but this dialogue is very much needed. As an industry, we plan to use open-source technologies, but we are not yet ready to play by the rules; but this needs to work the other way round too.”
Like the music industry and the publishing industry, the writing on the wall is bold, capitalized, and neon for yet another industry reluctant to change in the face of Web 2.0 forces far too powerful to ignore.
Officially, IT analyst firms are a $2.5 billion dollar business, of which about $1 billion belongs to the industry behemoth Gartner. As impressive as this number might seem, it represents only a fraction of the total IT analysis actually being traded. There is a social media undercurrent running just below the surface of the IT analysis industry—call it “IT Analysis 2.0” or “Open Source Analysis,”—where insightful content is not bought and sold, but rather offered up for free. Examples include enterprises like RedMonk, Freeform Dynamics, MWD, and Enterprise Irregulars, as well as community-driven sites such as IT Toolbox and Wikibon (IT analysis a la Wikipedia).
Like MySpace and YouTube in the entertainment industry, the social media undercurrent in the IT analysis industry is threatening to build up to tsunami proportions. Witness the most recent Institute of Industry Analyst Relations poll results below. While the top three analyst firms are predictable, open source analyst firms RedMonk and Freeform Dynamics are making significant gains. Notably, two of the top five individual analysts are from RedMonk.
The motto of Boy Scouts America is elegant in its simplicity: “Be Prepared“. As reported on ComputerWorld (which i found via Slashdot), the 98 year old organization has decided that “Open Source Software, built for the community, by the community” will help them better live up to this motto. This is no small endeavor - the software will aim to support the almost three million Scouts in America, in addition to the 1.1 million adults in the group. Interestingly, it appears that their decision was made based on the advice of a group of corporate CIOs (remember the days when corporate CIOs were the ones against open source?), and the open source site went live a month ago to help centralize and streamline application development. To quote Gregory Edwards (a contractor who helped create the site):
“It’s a true golden opportunity for the open-source community, too… by connecting it with a large group of interested adults and tech-hungry children who can be inspired to use and learn about open source. The open-source community and the Boy Scouts can spread the word on it.”
This post in no way supports open source violence of any kind. To see the original, the rest of the mash ups, or to perhaps create your own, visit www.dilbert.com.
Technology and the US election I've written several times about the impact of social networks on this year's US Presidential election - see here and here. And let's be honest, the use of such networks and new web 2.0 technologies has been dominated by Obama. He’s embraced social networks like no other candidate in an attempt to connect with [...]
