From their site:

"OLPC San Francisco Bay Area Summit 2009 is a OLPC-SF community event designed to primarily foster collaboration amongst deployment teams in the SF Bay Area. We also hope that the event will help in improving the visibility of OLPC and Sugar to a wider group around this area.

The event will be a "Birds of a Feather" type event but largely run as an unconference. Claim your session!

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OLPC President and COO, Charles Kane (http://laptop.org/en/utility/people/charles-kane.html) and Paul Commons (OLPCorps) will be in the SF Bay Area this week. There are two events: one on UC Berkeley campus on Thursday, and one on Stanford University campus on Friday. Both events are open. Details are posted online at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_San_Francisco_Bay_Area#Events

The US Department of Defense has released a memo stating that open source should be considered alongside commercial software when assessing department needs. The memo also debunks some myths regarding open source software. From the article:

 "Open source can be compared directly with commercial software and it offers unique advantages for rapid prototyping and sharing across the military. Those are the key takeaways in a new memorandum now circulating the Pentagon from deputy CIO David Wennergren (right). While it’s not a complete endorsement of open source, it does give people a green light to go get some."

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Note: This is an event open to all.

Come learn about how technology driven social entrepreneurship is changing the world – from the experts at SF State

The STEPS Initiative presents

Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala is out. The demand for ISOs is incredible, so bit torrent is the preferred method. The mirrors are:

Ubuntu 9.10

• ubuntu-9.10-alternate-amd64.iso.torrent
• ubuntu-9.10-alternate-i386.iso.torrent
• ubuntu-9.10-desktop-amd64.iso.torrent
• ubuntu-9.10-desktop-i386.iso.torrent
• ubuntu-9.10-server-amd64.iso.torrent
• ubuntu-9.10-server-i386.iso.torrent
• New: IPv6 only torrents for users of IPv6 (learn more about IPv6)

Even getting to the torrent file via http is incredibly slow. I have a copy of the torrent file (not the ISO) at http://opensource.sfsu.edu/files/ubuntu-9.10-desktop-i386.iso.torrent It should be a lot faster to get the *.torrent on campus :-) I also have a couple of bit torrent downloads running on campus. I'll leave these running in the hopes that if you decide to download Karmic's awesomeness you'll get the bits from within 130.212.0.0/16

What: OLPC-SF August 2009 meeting

OLPC-SF will meet on August 22, 2009. Items on the agenda:

• Meet and greet - 10:00 am to 10:30 am
• South Africa deployment update - 10:30am to 11:30am
• eSibonisweni primary school / Saint Mark’s school
• Location: Kwangwanase, Manguzi KZN
• South African contact: Thulani Madondo, Kliptown Youth Programme
• Project organizers: Jennifer Getz, Norm Lyons, Stacey Kertsman; San Francisco, CA

• Starr King Elementary - 11:30am to 12:00noon.

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Can stuffed elephants and large lakes run on many many computers? Read on.

I've been hearing a lot about Hadoop, so I decided to read up on it. Its an interesting project of distributed proportions :-) From the wikipedia page:

Apache Hadoop is a Java software framework that supports data intensive distributed applications, free licensed.^[1] It enables applications to work with thousands of nodes and petabytes of data. Hadoop was inspired by Google's MapReduce and Google File System (GFS) papers.

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Just came across http://www.opensourcetesting.org/ which list a whole bunch of FOSS tools used for testing. Here's the list. My favorites are JMeter and Selenium, and both came up in context of some OLPC systems at a meeting today. Selenium looks promising. We use JMeter for testing Moodle on campus. Here's the full list:

• Abbot Java GUI Test Framework
• Anteater
• Apodora
• Arbiter
• Autonet
• AutoTestFlash
• Avignon
• Blerby Test Runner
• Canoo WebTest
• Concordion
• Crosscheck
• csvdiff
• CubicTest
• Cucumber
• DBFeeder
• DbFit
• DejaGnu
• Dogtail
• Doit: Simple Web Application Testing
• Eclipse TPTP
• EMOS Framework
• Enterprise Web Test
• Expect
• Frankenstein
• GITAK
• GNU/Linux Desktop Testing Project
• Harness
• httest
• IdMUnit
• Imprimatur
• ItIN - Infopath testing in .Net
• ITP
• ItsNat, Natural AJAX
• ivalidator
• Jacobie
• Jameleon
• jDiffChaser
• Jemmy
• JFunc: JUnit Functional Testing Extension
• JSystem
• jWebUnit
• Latka
• Linux Test Project
• LogiTest
• LReport
• MActor
• Marathon
• MaxQ
• miTester for SIP
• Mockito
• MozUnit
• OLVER - Open Linux VERification
• Om
• Om
• org.tigris.mbt
• PAMIE
• Pounder
• pywinauto
• QAT (Quality Assurance Tests)
• QMTest
• Rasta
• Robot Framework
• Sahi
• Samie
• Sauce Labs: cloud-based Selenium service
• Scalable Test Platform
• Selenium
• SharpRobo
• soapui
• Software Automation Framework Support
• Software Testing Automation Framework (STAF)
• Solex
• SWAT (Simple Web Automation Toolkit)
• SWTBot
• Systin
• tclwebtest
• TestGen4Web
• TestPlan
• TextTest
• Tomato
• Toster - The Object-oriented Sofware Testing Environment
• Watij
• WatiN
• Watir
• Web Form Flooder
• WebDriver
• WebInject
• WebTst
• WET
• Win32::IEAutomation
• XML Test Suite

As a kid, I loved James Bond movies (I still like the old ones), especially the gadgetry. A shoe compartment, a multi-purpose watch, a micro camera. Needless to say, a lot of money has gone into ThinkGeek purchases Imagine my pleasure when I recently had to introduce the OLPC project to someone (potential funding source for a deployment). I pulled out a 8GB microSD card from a secret zipper in my shirt, placed it squarely on the table, and said "We won't be needing the Internet for now. This little piece of technology holds well over 100 albums and hundreds of books that are freely distributable. It also has a web server, a database server, a collaboration server, backup software, and a bunch more. We won't be needing the Internet to get this deployment off the ground".