I’ve expanded my earlier posting about Google+ and you’ll find not five but seven tips over on ComputerWorldUK today!
Filed under: ComputerWorldUK | Comments Off on ☝ 7 Google+ Tips
☆ New OSI Directors
Posted on March 19, 2012 by Simon Phipps
The OSI Board held a meeting on Friday to fill three vacancies on the Board. This was the first time we have had Affiliate Members, so we decided to ask them to nominate candidates to fill some of the vacancies. They came up with some great candidates, and we voted to have Eclipse’s Mike Milinkovic and Mozilla’s nominee Luis Villa join the board, along with government open source community advocate Deb Bryant. I know and greatly respect all three and I’m delighted to have their collective wisdom and ability on the new Board to help progress the steady shift over to member-based governance.
I will be at the FLOSSUK Spring 2012 conference on Wednesday and Thursday, and speaking on Thursday morning about the changes we’re working through at OSI. If you’ll be there in Edinburgh, come and find me at the Open Rights Group table where I’ll also help you sign up for ORG membership! Alternatively, come to London next Saturday for ORGCon and I’ll see you there instead.
Filed under: OSI | Comments Off on ☆ New OSI Directors
☆ Making Google+ Work
Posted on March 18, 2012 by Simon Phipps
I sometimes see complaints by people that Google+ is not as exciting and/or useful as a social media service they are already using, like Twitter or Facebook. They both looked just as perplexingly dull when you started using them as an outsider – you’ve just become comfortable there and forgotten that experience! Treasure the chance to once again experience social media as ordinary users do when they first discover it…
Google+ is a different medium to the other social networks you’re using, and the techniques and expectations you’re bringing with you may not apply – you need the right horse for the right course. That feeling nothing is happening is unlikely to continue for long if you engage on Google+ in ways that make it work well as a social environment. My take is those are:
- post interesting stuff publicly, preferably with pictures – Google+ is not a great place for private networking;
- comment on what you post, don’t just post unexplained links or pictures;
- engage in intelligent and respectful discussion on other people’s posts, as well as your own;
- respect other people’s discussion threads as you would a conversation you were drawn into at the next table in a cafe;
- track ripples (a feature on the context menu of any post that’s been re-shared) and cultivate new relationships by adding those who repost the same things that interest you to your circles;
- use the delete-comment button to prune comments on your posts where necessary – always to remove spam and sparingly to sanction trolls.
What other suggestions would you make to new users, especially those with good experiences of other social media systems? The Google+ thread for this post is public…
Filed under: Social Media | 2 Comments »
☝ Why Cuban Hates Patents
Posted on March 16, 2012 by Simon Phipps
Why does a successful entrepreneur like Mark Cuban hate software patents so much? Surely they are just the sort of business tool he would value? I explain why in my Friday column on InfoWorld today.
Filed under: InfoWorld | Comments Off on ☝ Why Cuban Hates Patents
☝ FLOSS Weekly 204 – DeltaCloud
Posted on March 15, 2012 by Simon Phipps
Randal and I interviewed David Lutterkort from the Apache DeltaCloud Project yesterday on FLOSS Weekly and the show is already live for online viewing and listening. DeltaCloud is an abstraction layer that allows you to write cloud applications that are cloud platform independent, so you are both future-proof and not locked in. It’s an interesting project and we had a good discussion – check out the show.
Filed under: FLOSS Weekly | Tagged: DeltaCloud | Comments Off on ☝ FLOSS Weekly 204 – DeltaCloud
☆ Not So Shire
Posted on March 14, 2012 by Simon Phipps
The Hobbit is one of our local pubs. It’s a rather seedy student-focussed music venue that serves cheap booze under fanciful names taken from Tolkien’s books. Their web site had (now removed from the pages but still on-site) of publicity material derived from the Lord of the Rings movie stills. I had always wondered how they managed to license the copyrights and trademarks from their owners and now we know the answer. They didn’t. And the Nazgûl have come home to roost.
This turns out to be quite an interesting case. In terms of trademark law for the name and copyright law for the recycled movie stills, I’ve little doubt the pub are in the wrong and have had this coming for a long time (possibly so long that if they went to court they might make a case that the trademarks have been abandoned…) But in terms of popular culture, there’s an arguable case that Tolkien’s work now forms a cultural bedrock in the UK that should allow the names and ideas it has popularised to be used freely.
This is one of the areas I think we have a problem with current copyright and trademark law. It’s all framed by short-term thinking where every motive is a business motive of comparable scale and intent. It has no trapdoor for modern cultural artefacts – the songs that have entered the national psyche, the stories that have become every child’s nursery, the images that wallpaper everyone’s memory – to be released from the dragon’s grip and mutate from wealth artefact into cultural jewel.
Worse, the trend is in the opposite direction – longer monopolies, more draconian punishments for violating them (even unknowingly), the permanent annexation of popular culture by the companies lucky enough to have got away with stealing it before the law got this way. The idea of these ‘intellectual monopolies’ being a temporary gift to further the public good is all but lost, especially in the minds of the companies getting rich from them.
So while I don’t think the pub has a chance, I do think it’s worth highlighting the case in public. Sometimes the public good is served by the end of monopolies rather than by their continuation. As a friend said, can you imagine how Britain would be if Shakespeare’s estate still controlled all his works?
[Updated March 16: They’ve removed the loyalty card images from the web site, probably as part of the settlement they have been offered. From the tone of their statement I don’t think they really understand, though, and the poster artwork is still there]
Filed under: Trademarks | Tagged: Lord of the Rings, Southampton, Trademark | 2 Comments »
☝ Worsening Patent Wars
Posted on March 14, 2012 by Simon Phipps
Yahoo’s litigation against Facebook is one more example in an unending sequence that demonstrates patents are now primarily a weapon to chill competition rather than a protection for innovation. Read more over at ComputerWorldUK.
Filed under: ComputerWorldUK | Comments Off on ☝ Worsening Patent Wars
☆ Writing For InfoWorld
Posted on March 13, 2012 by Simon Phipps
You may have spotted two posts by me on InfoWorld in the US recently (one about LibreOffice and one about OIN). I’m pleased to say that I was approached by them to take over the widely-read “Open Sources” column. Naturally I accepted their proposal and I hope to write every Friday for them. Thanks to Savio Rodrigues for the excellent work he has done to build the readership there – those will be big shoes to fill. All story ideas welcome!
Filed under: InfoWorld, Webmink | Comments Off on ☆ Writing For InfoWorld
☆ Free Money!
Posted on March 12, 2012 by Simon Phipps
Kiva are giving away $25 to anyone who asks today. It’s true. The catch? You have to loan the money to someone who has far, far less money than you do and who will use it to bootstrap their business. Like everything, Kiva has a deeper story, but I am an enthusiastic supporter as I believe investing in local small entrepreneurs who will grow their economy is by far the best way to tackle poverty long-term.
I recommend you go to their site and claim your $25. Be quick, these offers “sell out” amazingly fast. First-time Kiva lenders only, obviously.
Filed under: Zeitgeist | Tagged: Charity | Comments Off on ☆ Free Money!
☆ Sunday Cabbage
Posted on March 11, 2012 by Simon Phipps
Close-Up Cabbage, originally uploaded by webmink.
I was cooking for 10 today, so decided to sauté red cabbage as a side-dish. Sliced into half-centimetre ribbons, I cooked it in melted butter with a little balsamic vinegar, plenty of pepper and a handful of sultanas. I cooked it until it was shiny and floppy but still crispy. Seemed to go down OK, except with the children at the table.
Filed under: Links | 2 Comments »
Wild Webmink 
