Jack handy gave the IBM press conference. Bored my as off.

Martin Fink.

for linux the value shift... snore...

It's such a stgruggle not to fall asleep.

Back in the 1950s, McGraw-Hill ran a famous ad with this copy:

This was a business-to-business ad.

In a totally bad ass move Councilmembers Eric Garcetti, Wendy Greuel and Jack Weiss introduced a motion today to divert millions of dollars spent on potentially unnecessary software expenditures into a fund dedicated to the long-sought-after expansion of Los Angeles' police force. Anyone with half a brain knows this is a good idea, unfortunatly it's been a long time since anyone with half a brain was making those decisions.

The press release says,

Councilmembers Eric Garcetti, Wendy Greuel and Jack Weiss introduced a motion today to divert millions of dollars spent on potentially unnecessary software expenditures into a fund dedicated to the long-sought-after expansion of Los Angeles' police force.

The motion asks the Information Technology Agency to report on how the city could forgo paying for proprietary software licenses and instead transition to open source platforms and programs. "Open source" means that any programmer can see the software code and propose changes; a community of users creates, supports, and freely distributes applications. Some users pay a fee for technical support, but free support is available on internet message boards. The city spent $5.8 million on proprietary software licenses in FY2003-4.

"For taxpayers, this is a no-brainer," said Councilmember Eric Garcetti, member of the Information Technology and General Services committee. "By engaging this online community, we can make our own communities safer. Free open source software can be as capable and more secure than products that cost the city millions."

In the comments, Jim

Open the Pod(casting) bay doors, Steve.

Don't believe Apple is the Microsoft of music? I tune, You Tune (PITA subscription required), by Chana R. Schoenberger, is a feature in the latest Forbes with the subhead A youthful duo wants to merge Wi-Fi with portable music. Nice idea, except for something called Apple. The duo has a company, MusicGremlin Inc., that "hopes to launch this year what they say is the first mobile music subscription service". It's proprietary and full of DRM; But that's not the issue here. It's who gets to play Microsoft (or Wal-Mart, or any other Market Dominator) in stories the trade press tells. In music players (which constitute radio's replacement), it's Apple. Witness the final paragraph:

One little problem: Have these guys ever heard of Apple? With 84% of the market for hard-drive-based players, according to NPD Group, and 200 million iTunes songs sold, it could easily take its iPods wireless (it's not commenting now). Plus, a handheld MusicGremlin player sucks up battery power. And its wireless chip, at $40, is "a pretty expensive component to put into something you're trying to sell for $200 to $300," says Forrester analyst Ted Schadler.

Forenote to folks who say I don't "understand" Apple: 1) I do; and 2) This isn't about Apple.

This is about a marketplace that needs to be free. Apple doesn't just dominate the music playing marketplace; it has a silo so huge and comfortable (so long as you don't leave) that it works like a Truman Show for millions.

Which is fine, if you like living inside the silo.

Podcasting will best thrive in a free markeplace that includes but is not limited to Apple's (or Microsoft's, or Sony's, or MusicGremlin's) platforms and the silos built on them.

Here are a few links (courtesy of Jim Thompson) that provide hope for free market expansion in podcasting:

• Paul Boutin on the HE-AAC (aacPlus) codec. Question: Is there a grenade in this pony? Meaning, is there DRM in here somewhere?
• AudioCoding.com's page on FAAC (Freeware Advanced Audio Coder).
• Amarok, which Jim says "will almost sync to an iPod and supports func,post/do,reply/replyto..." et. al. Here's the freshmeat page, and a release on Amarok's latest rev.

Plus, of course, Ogg Vorbis.

Got any more? Put 'em in the comment section below.

DIY -- Do It Yourself -- is still more the exception than the rule inside IT organizations. "IT shops want vendor-independence, more than ever before" says Phil Windley, Associate Professor of Computer Science at Brigham Young University (but still best known as the former CIO of Utah). He adds, "But IT shops still get most of their technology from vendors. Because they have to. And because that's a big part of How They Do Things."

Doc

Just read your great Linux Journal article re: Technorati and some of the open source tech/tools they are using. Great to see ink on stuff like memcache, spread etc

Keep writing about it; there are so many more great open source tools/frameworks available (we are heavily into Struts, OJB, Axis, etc)

Dave
Dave Hodson
CTO
MessageCast Inc
[email protected]
http://www.messagecast.net

I've been mostly lurking in a small email conversation between three alpha geeks whose opinions on technical matters are far more qualified than mine: Phil Hughes, Linux Journal's founder and publisher; Don Marti, our Editor in Chief; and Jim Thompson, who's one of the reasons Wi-Fi is so widely deployed today.

independent it really intersting development. quite aside from novell and sun, on grander scale.

when you're a cio, having support is how most compnies work. when youbuy sap you don't buy a cd and puti t in the omcpute config script. hire somebody like Cedar to come in and make it owrk.

systems integration

that's how it shops work. with that kind of help from the outside. having that sprin =gup around open source. imp developement.

go to the contractor who konws how to do what you do.

cedar won the bid to put in SAPs payroll system. By taking the cedar bid, they

ecosystem where it shops depend on ext sys integs to do heavy lifting. don't have the people on staff to change out the payroll system. need system integrators who work with open source to even have that possiboility.

Jonathan Schwartz makes a good case for why PCs will be as free as give-away cell phones. What he doesn't visit is the question of what operating system they'll be running.

Rex Hammock writes about Why iPod/iTunes won't be killed anytime soon. It's a long and interesting post, from an admitted 'phile of all things Apple, Macintosh and iPod. In the post he defends the iPod against "technology writers who spend thousands of words explaining how some feature-set or subscription model or, perhaps adding video or a cell-phone, will help another company unseat the iPod". He adds, > I wish for an editor's red pen when I see them displaying a degree of cluelessness that allows them to totally miss the forest as they describe the trees.

I agree with most of what Rex says — about the iPod's peerless aesthetics, about the substance of its style, and especially about what he calls "the design of the iTunes platform".

DIY phone code environment?

Digital Squeeze has a brief and helpfully linky write-up on the Gillmor Gang podcast on identity. Other nice follow-ups from Marc Canter, Phil Windley, Craig Burton (posted just in time for the show, actually), Kim Cameron (also here and here), Simon Grice (who couldn't make it, and was missed)

Jim Thompson just pointed me to Phonetasia,

Ten quesitons for CES

Apple and the Open Source conversation

I've never been big on speculating about what Big Vendors are up to, since mostly I cover what IT folks do for themselves. But since Apple has made it clear that they're planning a big new release ("Panther") for OS X, with a rejuvenated Safari browser, I'll be interested to see if Steve Jobs and company still thinks open source is great, which steve said (and I reported on) two Macworld/San Franciscos ago.

So, some questions:

Over at IT Conversations, Doug Kaye has a Wiki section called That Business-Model Thing, with the subhead "How Should I make IT Conversations Self-Susttaining? He begins, The one question I'm asked about IT Conversations more than any other is, "What's your business model?" After 18 months, nearly 300 programs and now with the New Year looming, the time has come to answer that question.

He's looking at two revenue sources: 1) advertisers and sponsors; and 2) listeners. Obviously, he can do either or both. There are lots of approaches on both sides. The more interesting, however, are on the listener side. Nearly all the responses so far have supported listener-side models like tip jars, per-download charges and membership fees. More importantly, they express a market — a demand — for Doug's excellent product.

I think the basic problem, for Doug and the rest of us who want to be in the same business, is technical. Tip jars, memberships, even PayPal-facilitated transactions... are all too lame, too complicated, or both.

We're planning on doing podcasting here too (in fact, we already have one sponsor lined up). But what I want to see, in the long run, for the business of peer-to-peer 'casting that doesn't exist yet, is a simple system by which anybody can pay, on a volutary basis, for everything.

I would like, for example, when I listen to anything I download on the Web, to be able to pay automatically for it. Usually the amount would be small. But the important part is, it would also be volutary. Like we have now in public radio and television, but efficient.

And I think we need technology for that. Maybe it's nothing more than a standard that already exists and hasn't been implemented. Maybe it's more complicated. Whatever it is, it needs to address the willingness, which we see among comments on Doug's wiki, of listeners to be customers.

Think about how a simple tag <enclosure> in RSS 2.0 uncorked podcasting. I'd like to see a similar standard supporting a whole new listener-driven economy in podcasting. And perhaps in other categories as well.

keynote on Tuesday, Wil Wheaton talked up blogs, and was at his most eloquent when reading (very well) from his book. He's a terrific writer. Especially moving was his story of a friend who recovered from cancer with the encouragement of countless concerned bloggers.

He even quoted me at one point, which surprised me. Ken Coar later said "his talk picked up for you right after he mentioned your name, right?" Guilty as charged.