From the monthly archives:

November 2007

Online Courses

by Pearlbear on November 6, 2007

I’ve been thinking a lot about giving online courses in the use of open source software. That was one of the big reasons I had been looking for good web conferencing a while back (I’m still looking…)

I’m starting my foray into this territory by giving a free course in the database management system, PostgreSQL. It will be given under the auspices of Linuxchix, an organization I’ve been a part of since 2000. The course is a 12 week course, starting on November 19th (with time off for the holidaze.) Check out our Moodle page for more details (the outline, and information on how to participate is there.)

I’ll be following this up with an Open Source 101, starting in early 2008, on my own Moodle site.

Open Social Networks

by Pearlbear on November 5, 2007

As I’ve mentioned before, there has been a lot of thought and interest in the issue of opening up social networks, outside of what has been, until last week, totally closed silos. I linked to a great thought piece a while back on opening up the social graph (that is, your network of friends.) Jon Stahl pointed me to a great article, also about opening up the social graph. There is a Google group (called Social Network Portability), that you should definitely join if you are at all interested in these issues. Of course, OpenSocial has blown the doors off of all of this, and what’s come out of it is quite interesting. Folks on that list are beginning to talk about how to implement portability.

There are an amazing number of new sites that have launched over the weekend (I imagine people sitting in their home offices with lots of caffeine and pizza.) Here are some I’ve found so far, that I’ll be following:

OpenSocial Zen – meant to be a place for developers to share ideas. They haven’t really started yet, but hopefully it will be an interesting place to watch
OpenSocial Directory – a directory of the apps that already exist to use OpenSocial (talk about caffeine and pizza!)
OpenSocializr – a Ning social network on OpenSocial (I guess that’s logical)
OpenSocialBlog – an interesting blog about OpenSocial

Why do I have the feeling that every domain with “opensocial” is taken (opensocialblog.com, opensocialcats.com …)

So why is this important for nonprofits? First off, it means that in the short term, it will be possible to write just one application, and reach multiple social networks, thus expanding reach. In the long term, if the whole web 2.0 cyber world becomes, instead of a bunch of walled gardens where data moves in only very limited ways between them, a fully permeable space where data flows freely, it will be possible for nonprofits to have much greater reach and impact, whether it be for fundraising, advocacy or constituency-building.

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More good news from Google: Open Handset Alliance

by Pearlbear on November 5, 2007

This isn’t actually, nptech news, per se, but it’s good news for nonprofits: Google, along with other partners, such as T-Mobile, Qualcomm, and others, have created an alliance called the Open Handset Alliance, and a phone operating system called Android, which will put open source software on mobile phones. This is big. This means that anyone can hack their phones – and a raft of developers can create really interesting kinds of software for phones. The SDK will be available later this month.

Of course, the bottom line is that this makes it more likely that Google can get their ad platform onto phones. But they seem to realize that the key to their success is being open, and they are doing their best to move that into as many places as possible. And just like OpenSocial was a great answer to Facebook, this is a great answer to the iPhone.

Why is this good news for nonprofits? Katrin over at MobileActive.org weighs in, and I agree:

So what does this mean for the ‘mobile for good’ field? We hope that this will spur development for more social applications and mashups as well as better distribution of these applications worldwide. For example, HiV Aids rapid information and testing services built on mobiles, climate and poluution monitoring applications, mobile information services that provide consumers with point-of-purchase environmental or other information services about products, mobile human rights monitoring applications, mobile social and organizing networks for trafficking or domestic abuse victims – the list of potential applications is as endless and varied as there are civil society causes.

I’ll be watching the Open Handset Alliance, and wondering when I can replace my Blackberry with an open phone.

Why I won’t be buying Leopard

by Pearlbear on November 1, 2007

As many of you know, Apple’s newest version of the Mac OS, 10.5, shipped just a few days ago. I have been an Apple user since 1980, and a Macintosh owner since 1987. I have owned about a dozen Macintosh computers (or clones) over the course of 20 years. I still own a Mac mini, which I expect will be my last Macintosh, and I won’t be upgrading that Mac mini to Leopard.

Those of you who are loyal Mac users are gasping. I’d gasp if I read this a couple of years ago. The Macintosh operating system has without question, the best, most intuitive user interface ever invented, built on top of the best OS invented, UNIX. Things “just work” (for the most part – apparently Leopard has been having issues.) And I’ve been quite happy that the Mac OS is gaining market share over Windows – it would be great to see that continue.

There are a number of reasons for my deciding to slowly leave the Macintosh platform:

I want to focus more energy and time on free and open source platforms – I might donate what I would have spent on Leopard to some deserving projects.
I’m not liking Apple’s increasingly closed and monopolistic tendencies when it comes to the iPod and iPhone.
I don’t use my Mac much anymore – I migrated to Linux as my main desktop, and will be sticking there. I do have a few things I need to migrate, including time tracking (I’m starting to use GnoTime to do time tracking,) PIM data (I haven’t decided which avenue I’ll be going, but I’m definitely migrating that data this month to Linux), and music (which will be hard – I have quite a number of DRMed iTunes Music Store albums I will have to painstakingly convert.) The only thing that will be left is games.
I like building my own systems – I need a new desktop, and I like the idea that I can build my own easily, and get a fair bit of power fairly cheaply.

It’s been fun, these 20 years with Macintosh. It seems a fitting moment to say goodbye to Apple.

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What OpenSocial Means

by Pearlbear on November 1, 2007

The buzz of the blogosphere is the announcement of Google’s OpenSocial. I thought that it would be a good idea to describe what it is, and what it might mean for the nonprofit sector. Marc Andreessen, who is, of late, connected to Ning, has a great blog entry with details.

OpenSocial is a set of APIs. It’s aimed primarily at developers. Google has a number of partners, including social network sites like LinkedIn, Friendster and Ning, as well as Salesforce, which does have very interesting implications given the increasing use of Salesforce in the nonprofit sector.

OpenSocial is a set of APIs that handle three different kinds of user data: profiles, social graph (who your friends are) and activities (the stuff of the Facebook news feeds.) And the language of these APIs are standard HTML and Javascript. Any application written for OpenSocial will work on any partner social network – any OpenSocial “container”. That means developers need only write an app once, and it can get used on any of the networks involved, like Orkut and LinkedIn. Basically, if the more social network sites that adopt OpenSocial, the more open the whole thing gets.

One of the big issues about social network platforms was that once Facebook made its platform available, and MySpace and LinkedIn followed, it looked like developers would have to port their apps to each social network. OpenSocial means, basically, they can port to a whole lot fewer of them. Hopefully, eventually, they can write their apps just once. Facebook has quite the motivation to keep people on Facebook, and keep the eyeballs there, because of their revenue model, which is ad-based. This breaks the whole thing open.

I’m not so clear about how this helps users. I expect, that because the APIs allow connections to profile, social graph, and activity data of users, that portability and permeability between social networks is bound to happen. But the path to truly portable (with adequate privacy controls) profile, social graph and activity data is still not entirely clear.

What does this mean for the nonprofit sector? Allan, in his inimitable style, talks about how most nonprofit organizations will not be able to take advantage of OpenSocial. No question about that. Most nonprofits haven’t even begun to take advantage of the Web 2.0 world in general, let alone the bleeding edge of OpenSocial. And I’m not entirely clear yet how many should be jumping on this bandwagon to either do fundraising or community-building. Friendster, Orkut, Hi5 and LinkedIn have very different demographic and geographic reaches. Ning, which is the social network of social networks, could end up being a very important player here.

I think that the inclusion of Salesforce in the mix will be very interesting for web-savvy nonprofits who are thinking about, or have started writing apps for social networks. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out – what kinds of integration will be possible between social network data and CRM data?

Anyway, OpenSocial is something I’ll be watching, playing with, and writing about as time goes on, and considering what it means for those of us in this sector.

Update: MySpace, SixApart (LiveJournal, Typepad and the newish social networking blog platform Vox), and Bebo have now all joined OpenSocial. This is getting really interesting!