What if officials of a government publicly stated something along the lines of: “proprietary formats will no longer be acceptable in communication between citizens and government?”

For people that are already in tune with Open Source, this seems very reasonable – I know it does for me.

The thing is, it is being reported that statements such as this have already happened in Norway, where their Minister of Modernization Morten Andreas Meyer

has charged all government institutions, both at the national and local level, to by the end of 2005 have worked out a recommendation for the use of open source code in the public sector. Further by the end of 2006 every body of the public sector in Norway must have in place a plan for the use of open source code and open standards.

Firstly, I think this is cool (I know I’d love to see the Canadian government look at such an initiative). My real question is, “will this make a difference?”

What if many other governments around the world did this, and actually encouraged the use of open source and open standards to the public? How much influence would this have on personal/home/business computing? Would this have any impact at all on those companies whose business model relies on proprietary formats?

I’ve been travelling a lot lately, and in some cases I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find free wi-fi access in some of the hotels I’ve been at. In many cases, though, I’ve been hard pressed to find anything offered by the hotel and have had to rely on jumping on to an open connection from a nearby company. Many times I’ve had to go to a local mall to get connected, even just to download files.

With a little planning, however, it doesn’t have to be that way.

The Geektels resource (found over at GeekTools.com) lists over 4500 hotels and tells you what kind of access you can find there – whether it be free, wi-fi, RJ-45 or whatever.

The entries are added by people just like us, so if you stay at a hotel (anywhere in the world), add it to the directory. It really is a useful resource…

Yes, some geeks are Windows users, and yes, some geeks do design type work, and yes, some geeks love getting things for free.

No, this is not a freepowertools.com promo (hmmm, I wonder…), it is a powertool for your Windows computer that I’m sure will come in handy. Not only does the Virtual Magnifying Glass magnify, but it also includes tools for graphics types that let you pick out colour at a pixel level.

The best part of it is that it isn’t confined to your graphics program, or your browser – it goes anywhere. You can invoke it with a hotkey (Ctrl+Alt+E by default) and when it is activated, you can use keystrokes or your mouse to move, zoom in/out, or change the size of the magnifier.

Go check it out – its definitely worth a download

No doubt you’ll see this in a few places today, but it appears that this is real and not some April Fool’s Joke after the fact.

Mike Chambers of Macromedia says that their companies are coming together, Adobe says they are acquiring Macromedia. Either way you look at it, the two are coming together in an all stock deal that came out of nowhere.

This move sees the two most proprietary formats in terms of web-based delivery of content (PDF and Flash) come together under one roof. Each company has often argued about the ubiquity of their format – does this just make their penetration that much deeper?

What does this mean for their graphics programs? Fireworks vs Photoshop? Will they maintain both products? Illustrator vs. Freehand? This is going to be huge.

I’m almost tempted to watch and listen:

The management teams of both companies will host a financial analyst and investor conference call today at 8:00 a.m. ET (5:00 a.m. PT). The call can be accessed at 888-278-5324 (U.S.) or 706-643-3100 (outside U.S.) with conference call ID #5643249. A live Webcast of the call will also be provided at http://www.adobe.com/ADBE and http://www.macromedia.com/MACR.

Where, oh where, do you think this is going? Will this have any impact on you at all? I suppose for me it will depend on what happens with their product lines…

I’ve heard of this kind of thing before, but really only when people hand-crafted bogus research papers.

Jeremy Stribling said on Thursday that he and two fellow MIT graduate students questioned the standards of some academic conferences, so they wrote a computer program to generate research papers complete with nonsensical text, charts and diagrams.

The trio submitted two of the randomly assembled papers to the World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI), scheduled to be held July 10-13 in Orlando, Florida.

To their surprise, one of the papers — “Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy” — was accepted for presentation.

Can’t. Stop. Laughing.

How many of you played with LEGO when you were a kid? OK, better question – how many of you still play with LEGO? That’s what I thought – “No, really honey, I bought this Death Star LEGO kit for the kids…”

Here’s LEGO for grown ups – jewelry that puts the inner child geek in you up front. Check out the “Forever Young” Collection to see a complete line of LEGO based cuff links, bracelets, rings and necklaces. I’m sure they aren’t exactly cheap, but who cares? Its LEGO!! How can you go wrong?

I’ve been a BlackBerry user for over 4 years now, and in that time I’ve seen the handheld units improve from being a “new thing” to something that actually allows me to be productive while I’m away from the office. Even with those improvements, there are still things that could be improved. With that, here’s a look at my likes and dislikes for my BlackBerry 7250.

Read the rest of this entry »

BlackBerry Patents Patent Genius provides complete listings for all patents held by Blackberry including full patent text, patent drawings and patent information

OK, check this out. As the population ages, many elderly people end up living in “isolation” for lack of a better word. As friends and loved ones pass away, often the elderly end up alone.

Social Netorking to the rescue! Here’s a piece of hardware to plug in to stay plugged in. The Japanese i-POT:

… not only boils water for his instant miso soup and green tea but it also records the times he pushes a button and dispenses the water. A wireless communication device at the bottom of the i-pot sends a signal to a server. Members of the service can see recent records of i-pot usage on a Web site. In addition, twice a day the server e-mails the most recent three usage times to a designated recipient.

Apparently the makers of the i-POT originally conceived of the idea after some tragic deaths in the community. Since making tea and soup is so much a part of the daily routine, having the ability to know that the routine is still happening is a way of checking up on family members and friends remotely.

I still find it a bit freaky that it might be used as a life signs monitor of sorts, but that might just be me… What do you think about this one?

Been working all night on a geek-like project? Been playing WoW for 16 hours straight? Worried that you’ll instinctively keep hitting snooze on your alarm and end up sleeping through – well, whatever it is that you might sleep through?

Then you’ll need to get one of these new alarm clocks when it hits the market:

two-wheeled “Clocky” automatically rolls off the bedside table when the alarm goes off and the snooze button is pressed.

It travels around the room and its carpet-covered surface bumps into objects that come into its path, until it finds a resting place.

Yes, it forces you to get out of bed to turn it off, and it is built so that it finds a different resting place every day. Of course, it doesn’t really stop you from finding it and resetting the alarm for an hour later, or from just putting the pillow over your head – but hey, at least it forced you to get out of bed…

I’m not one for rules, but I found this gem the other day that I found to be quite a good read.

In Basics of the Unix Philosophy – part of Chapter 1 of The Art of Unix Programming, Eric Raymond outlines 17 key “rules” that form the foundation of Unix programming.

The nice thing is – the rules also apply to other programming as well. Here are a couple to whet your appetite:

• Rule of Modularity: Write simple parts connected by clean interfaces.
• Rule of Least Surprise: In interface design, always do the least surprising thing.
• Rule of Repair: When you must fail, fail noisily and as soon as possible.
• Rule of Optimization: Prototype before polishing. Get it working before you optimize it.

The full list is the kind of thing you need to print out and read every few months just to remind yourself how you’re actually supposed to be doing things.

(P.S. “The Art of Unix Programming” is available freely online, along with many other of pieces of Eric Raymond’s writing)

What happens if you take an Open Source PBX system (say Asterisk PBX, for example), add in a group of worldwide users that share their telephone resources a la Napster et al?

Simple – you get The Bellster™ Network’s Phone Sharing Service. Here’s the scoop, straight from the Bellster™ FAQ:

The Bellster™ Network’s Phone Sharing Service is a worldwide association of users who want to exchange small amounts of their local phone service in exchange for the use of each other’s phone server.

For Instance, Erik lives in New York City, and he gets free local phone service, his family is in Holland. Joe is an ex-patriot from New York living in Holland that calls New York on a regular basis. Using the Free World Dialup Phone Sharing Service, Erik shares his number. Joe also shares his number. When Joe calls New York, he uses Erik’s line and Erik uses Joe’s Line. The sharing is not done on a one-on-one basis, members share with the entire community and accumulate credits when their line is used. These credits can be used to place calls through other member’s phones. Free World Dialup maintains the tallies so that no line is used more than the owner has permitted.

Now that would be a cool thing to try out. I’m game if others are. Any takers?