The following story has caught my eye.

“For reasons such as this, Maeda is now a “repentant” technowhiz and a leading apostle of simplicity. In 2004 he founded the MIT Simplicity Consortium at the Media Lab, which works with major corporations to design technologies for simplicity-driven products.”

E have probably all become familiar with Open Source software. The Open Source concept has extended its reach to what can only be described as remotely sensible areas of life. Take, for example, Open Source beer, an Open Source Cola drink recipe (PDF warning) and… Open Source journalism.

Inevitably, journalism will go online. Nobody denies this fact. The press as we know it must evolve to take advantage of new informartion delivery systems—those which facilitate collaboration. Yes, with the Internet, collaboration is finally facilitated and feedback can be obtained and made public in real time. Blogs exemplify this whilst their rising popularity (readership) makes traditional publishers nervous.

An article I read on the WSJ over a year ago stated something like “Journalists and newspaper publishers come to realisethat all rivers run dry”. This was said in reference to advertisements, audience, classifieds, etc. The quote to stress here is: “evolve or die”. Open Source journalism is about adaptation to change, which keeps things competitive and gains avid readers. These readers usuaully appreciate the added value of comments and TalkBacks (like the ones you would find in ZDNet and C|Net). There’s a two-way pipe that prevents the reader from being muted.

I have a little announcement to make: I joined NewAssignment.net a couple of weeks ago. This site is committed to leading the way as it explores a new paradigm for journalism. Trailblazer it might not necessarily be, but many eyes are watching the concept of Open Source journalism as it stands in practice. My active (and visible) participation appears imminent and I truly look froward to it. I don’t know yet if I’ll be premitted to dump copies of the material submitted there onto my blog (much like Matt Asay, whose writeups on Open Source I always enjoy, does in InfoWorld. I noticed that he also changes the title for SEO-related advantages).

My heavy involvement in social bookmarking sites such as Digg.com and Netscape.com seems to have paid off. Social bookmarking is one thing that enriched my life tremendously. My participation in Netscape has had people sign up merely to leave a comment on something I had submitted. Mailing lists as a form of communication is another thing which, along with newsgroups, has opened many doors. I recently received a thank-you from Red Hat for defending them in the Microsoft/Novell mess.

IEBOLD machines—or more generally—closed-source E-voting remain problematic. There must be transparency for trust and validation. A standard, old-fashioned and paper-based election has the whole protocols recorded, so votes involve supervision and public understanding. Likewise, algorithms should be made public. The public can then spot bug and make suggestions (patches) until the code is bug free and can be trusted. Is there any ‘paper trail’? If so, how is it encoded? Proprietary formats? Many question clearly arise.

EMOCRACY has returned to Digg.com, all at the expense of arguably-deserved rewards (power and advantage) given to top site contributers. These latest algorithm changes affect me as well, though I have not been submitting any stories for a fortnight.

Will this prove to be a wise move by Digg’s administrators? Was it well overdue? History will tell. But here’s a sure bet: top users, whose labour contributed the most to Digg, are utterly dissatisfied by the large.

I noticed that fellow Diggers are unable to get front pagers. The frustration and loss or power is likely to discourage further participation. The problem is thus resolved not only by changing the rules, but also by demoralising regulars. It’s somewhat of a scare tactic, which is a bad idea no matter how you look at it. Good for newbies perhaps, but it drives away the “power Diggers”—those who care the most about the Web site, know it best, and submit the least duplicates. A shame really…

used to envision myself coding for the rest. Of. My. Life. many times I thought I had it all figured out. And nevertheless, experience suggests that preferences, trends and prospects always change. The industry nowadays is dynamic, volatile, and ever-changing. Thus, predictions that are long-term are utterly silly.

I have neither stopped coding, nor began to neglect purely technical things, but I refuse to ‘reinvent the wheel’ so to speak. Apart from packaged (often closed-source) applications that are out there mimicking each other and achieving virtually the same thing, one can turn to Sourceforge and see that not many project code is being re-used, let alone used (downloaded and run). There is a certain exhaustion in the market due to saturation, as well as the ability to duplicate good software for free. That’s why I advocate Free software, albeit not at the same level of capacity that equates to activism per se.

I content that companies which ignore Open Source will not survice. Let’s take Opera for example. Opera needs to open up in order to attract enthusiastic volunteers (for plugins & testing, among other contributions). Only then will it match Firefox. Internet Explorer is all about monopoly abuse, so the same rules don’t apply. It does, however, come to show that proprietary software evolves slowly and often plays catch-up.

Maintenance and support will soon exceed programming and development in terms of capacity. Systems administration and architecture are the next big wave. “Open Source” becomes more of a vernacular term whilst hordes of programmers will stampede toward that development paradigm. Wither your right to survive in your career? Why? Better evolve; sooner rather than later.

Linux with KDE in its Baghira glory

HENEVER I approach kde-look.org (site), I feel like a kid at the candy store. So many themes and customisations are available there—to accumulate and use for free. Surely, there are also sites such as gnome-look.org and kde-files.org (among other other sister domains), but they are not quite as relevant to me.

Recently I spotted an applications site for the Linux-based Internet tablet from Nokia. Free goodness; community-driven. It may be just another sister sites of that large network that’s a candy store to those who love to shop for applications and themes (FreshMeat and SourceForge are less properly integrated). To those interested, here are some links:

KDE-Look.org
KDE-Apps.org
KDE-Apps.de
KDE-Files.org
GNOME-Look.org
Xfce-Look.org
Maemo-Apps.org

HILE Ask transforms itself into a search engine with technical merits (rather than many ads), Internet leviathan Google continues its climb. It appears as though this duo comprises the only prominent players that still gain market share. I have become rather fond of the Linux/Open Source news feed that Ask is offering.

Also while on the issue of search engines, various sites build content from RSS feeds in a supposedly legal fashion. This transforms the way search engines operate. Have a look at this discussion that is a good roundup. Google has already been sued in Europe over its news aggregator

Lastly (yes, more on the subject of search engines): Politicians beware – Internet prolongs blunders