07.31.06
Posted in Social Media at 10:17 pm by
The excellent New World Notes Blog has an interview with Julian Dibbell, author of Play Money: Or How I Quit My Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot. mutednoise readers first heard about Julian and his project back in March of 2004 and the book chronicles his experience.
Buried at the bottom of the interview comes a very interesting question: Do you think real-world companies will create more ‘play-like’ experiences in the name of profits?
Julian’s answer is key:
My answer is framed first of all, that I think open-source software is really the first major example of a production system driven by ludic energy. ‘Ludergy’ I think was the term me and Howard Rheingold settled after too much coffee at a conference. So I think to the extent that corporations like IBM et. al. are trying to catch that train, they are already sort of doing what you’re talking about– looking toward more game-like models of production.
He has a powerful point. He’s inferring that much of the open source world is driven by a desire to play with software. To capitalize on this natural human tendencies we’ve since begun creating avenues to capatalize on that. It’s important to remember why this works – software has some very unique properties: electronic distribution, low barriers to creation, minimal costs for replication, etc.
There are lots of things that people feel are fun to do but they certainly wouldn’t fit this model. For example, would we ever see open-source carpentry? Something that consumes scarce goods? Doubtful, or is it?
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Posted in Social Media at 11:12 am by
I’ve mentioned John Robb and his excellent Global Guerrillas blog before (several times, in fact). His analysis of how Hezbollah’s ‘open source’ techniques allow them to stall the otherwise impressive Israeli army.
The central secret to Hezbollah’s success is that it trained its (global) guerrillas to make decisions autonomously (classic 4GW), at the small group level. In every area — from firing rockets to defending prepared positions to media routing around jamming/disruption — we have examples of Hezbollah teams deciding, adapting, innovating, and collaborating without reference to any central authority. The result of this decentralization is that Hezbollah’s aggregate decision cycles are faster and qualitatively better than those of their Israeli counterparts.
In other words, loosely coupled small groups acting autonomously allow faster decision making than a centralized structure. We also see this in the business and software worlds. Also worth noting is that this decentralized structure allows for rapid collaboration in response to need; tactics can turn on a dime and they tap the collective for input instead of one or two generals (ideally, leading to a better decision).
It is vital to underscore this with how harmful the violence in the region is to all parties. I’m not reveling in the lessons learned here. However, this latest set of horrible events underpin how the world is changing toward one focused on agility through collaborative communities.
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07.26.06
Posted in Social Media at 3:41 pm by
Via Boing Boing comes the story of Odd Job Jack, a Canadian Flash animation. The creators are releasing all the master files and bitmaps – that’s all characters, props, and backgrounds – used on the show under a Creative CommonsWe love animation and we just know you do too. We’re proud of Odd Job Jack and we’ve put lots of work into our show. Our art deserves to live beyond broadcast and who better to give a free gift to than the entire planet?
When: Every Monday during our 13 episode broadcast we will release a new set of files. First episode air July 22nd. The torrent will be available the following Monday. [/quote:64d913c330]
Powerful stuff. In one decision they’ve raised boatloads of whuffie (goodwill) for the show, attracted eyeballs, and have guaranteed that the characters will live on in other spaces. They’ve made what they do valuable by giving it away.
Now if only I had time to animate… 
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07.25.06
Posted in Social Media at 3:30 pm by
In a bit of pre-conference buzz Google has been rumored to be unveiling a new open source service at this year’s OSCON. The presenter, Greg Stein, has a history in the open source community; his was one of the main leaders on the popular Subversion code repository project.
Initial speculation posits that Google will be unveiling some kind of online repository for open source projects. How this will differ from usual open source destinations, like SourceForge or newer upstarts like Ning remains to be seen (if at all). It is also possible that this could be a tit-for-tat move with Microsoft’s recently unveiled Open Source Directory, Ohloh.
Lets just hope that unlike a number of recently demo’d Google efforts (with the exception of Google Calendar) that this offers something new or innovative. The count down till Thursday is on.
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Posted in Social Media at 3:22 pm by
SocialText today announced that they’re released their enterprise wiki solution as open source (minus the enterprise management and enterprise integration tools).
While more software options for communication and collaboration are great I’d be curious to know how SocialText’s feature set compares with the very popular (and equally free) MediaWiki (the wiki that powers Wikipedia). The first thing that I noticed from the release is that SocialText has an SOAP API that would further extend the community remixing possibilities.
Any other differences?
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07.24.06
Posted in Social Media at 5:14 pm by
On ScienceAddiction.com they’ve posted a thesis (or screed, or manifesto – whatever the kids are calling it these days) of 95 things that are musts for Geek Activism.
They’ve got a some good things there, some others that are a little naive, and even some that are down right wrong. However, the real interesting bit comes from the very first paragraph:
Geek activism has not taken off yet, but it should. With the gamers recognizing the need for a louder voice, EFF gaining momentum and Linux taking on the mainstream on the one hand and recent severe losses in privacy, freedom of speech and intellectual property rights on the other, now seems to be the best time to rally around the cause.
The doubting tomas in me sees gamers still largely apathetic, my mother still can’t be expected to use Linux, and the EFF treading water (which is fine, it does very well as a reactionary group instead of overtly-proactive like the Down Hill Battle guys or the video-Democracy crew). Still, the question remains – why aren’t more geeks political? Is it because we hate the A-type personality clashes? Because we don’t want to ‘hang’ with the business and lawyer types that these roles typically invite? Or, as a subculture, are we really that unimpressed with any percieved advantage political involvement might gain us?
I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on this.
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Posted in miscellaneous at 4:55 pm by
I coined the term ‘Blinker’ a few weeks ago in a fit of rage but never got back around with sharing my venacular gymnastics to other people. A ‘Blinker’ is a Blog Linker – someone who claims to blog (itself a mashup of web log) but, in reality, does nothing more than link to stuff.
It’s true that there is value in pointing out great content. But an algorithm (ala Google) or communities (ala Digg) can do that. If I take the time to read a blog its because of the insight and experience that the writer can lend to the day’s events – the time it takes to hunt down the RSS feed and add it to my feed reader is an investment in something more. Of course, being a blinker is easy and substance is hard – that’s why there are so many blinkers out there.
With that said my wife has ended up dropping the term and has actually spun it into something positive. Then she went and one upped me with mirl – as in meet in real life. I can feel our wikipedia entry with our contributions to engrish coming already!
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07.22.06
Posted in Social Media at 12:29 pm by
The Gizmo Project, just a little more than a year and a half old, was always sort of neat. It is attempting to build an entirely open, standards based VOIP system (unlike the more familiar Skype). While that is interesting they really induced whiplash when they announced that calls from PCs to phones would cost nothing. The destination phone needs to belong to a registered Gizmo user but that’s nothing a quick registration couldn’t solve. They have integrated one click recording (something I shelled out $20 to get for Skype interviews) and some kind of partnership with FreeConferenceCall.com
But guess who is involved? * Sigh. Yes, that’s right: Michael Robertson. The love hate relationship with the pariah of original business continues.
More thoughts available from Om Malik:
This free voice movement had me thinking – what kind of a loss is acceptable to these companies? Though it is hard to get a straight answer, Jajah officials say they can make up all the losses in premium services such as scheduled conference calling, or other such services.
Originators aside, free communication is a boon for those trying to collaborate. The problem becomes trying to find anyone that uses Gizmo. Are you using it?
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Posted in Social Media at 12:15 pm by
Recently the insanely popular YouTube reworked its license agreements and almost immediately the chicken littles piped up. Apparently detractors were quick to jump on the apparently more possessive wording:
Â…by submitting the User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube’s (and its successor’s) businessÂ… in any media formats and through any media channels.
Others were quick to point out that just taking single paragraphs out of context didn’t give the whole picture:
I hate to be put in the position of trying to defend an onerous license… but the excerpt you posted on BoingBoing is a little misleading. It continues, “…The foregoing license granted by you terminates once you remove or delete a User Submission from the YouTube Website.”
That last little bit is pretty important. It means that if you remove the work from the YouTube site, they have to stop using your work. So there is some protection for users who have uploaded original content. If YouTube were to sublicense your content to an advertising agency, for example, and you were to remove the content–thus revoking the grant under the terms of the agreement–then the agency’s license would be revoked as well. That’s not really a tenable situation for advertisers or businesses, who are unlikely to sublicense content with such strings attached.
It is apparent that YouTube is trying to cover itself when sites (like this one) grab content and incorporate as their own. It also appropriately reminds us that there are other video sites out there – Archive.org and Revver, for example – that offer more producer friendly licensing from the get-go.
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07.20.06
Posted in Social Media at 11:54 am by
Brad Silverberg, over on CNet has a thought provoking piece on the future relationship between open source and intellectual property. He (correctly) points out that the future will not be dominated by either but instead a clarifying segmentation. From the piece:
open source can lead inventors, engineers, architects and business strategists to focus on areas where software is not a commodity. This often means that open source optimizes the creation of IP to focus on the problems that pain customers the most–for instance, where customers are willing to spend the most money–rather than technology that fits a particular business plan or strategy.
It’s as if open source applies evolutionary pressure to business plans, in the Darwinian sense. Because open source eliminates whole categories of obvious commodity software plays, we in the investment community see fewer “better mousetrap” propositions that retool commodity categories and more focused and innovative plans for unserved markets.
After a pause this makes a lot of sense. The common problems are the ones that have large communities available to create open source solutions. The more specialized (or undesirable) the problem the more appropriate it will be for paid software (and the associated ip to it).
Open source isn’t a panacea for all. A quick browse through all the abandonded projects on SourceForge is a testiment to that. By having the correct perception of where open source sits in the software spectrum we’ll be able to best apply it.
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