Open Source at SF State University - News

A report on the OLPC-SF August meeting

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:15:15 -0700

This is a report of the OLPC-SF meeting held on August 16 2008 at SF State University's Downtown Center.

The focus of this meeting were two major and complementary presentations. One was Bruce Baikie's talk on how he got a stack of OLPC XOs to a village in Senegal. The other was about mesh networks, the pixie dust that makes these wonderful computers talk to each other once they get to a village like the one in Senegal.

IDEA awards for Sugar and XO

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 11:16:40 -0700

The Sugar User Interface which is currently used by OLPC project's XO-1 laptop and will probably be used by a few others won a silver medal in the Interactive Product Experiences category at the International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA). The XO laptop won a gold medal in the hardware design category.

BBC covers FOSS as the alternative

Mon, 19 May 2008 10:05:04 -0700

The BBC has an article and an interview extolling the virtues of the Free and Open Source Alternative Christian Einfeldt of the Digital Tipping Point calls it a mini tipping point in itself.

From the article:

Harvard -begins- to teach Open Source...

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 23:02:54 -0700

...and we beat them to it by three years :-)

We started teaching a course called "managing Open Source" offered both in the undergraduate and graduate programs as a MIS elective a good three years ago. Here's a link to the first announcement.

From the article:

"It's about time that United States elite academic institutions finally got around to not only using open-source software, but also teaching it. In the April 2008 edition of Harvard Business Review, Harvard gives its MBA students a taste of the decision facing every company that leverages technology as part of its business (namely, everyone):

The OOXML saga continues

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 10:36:42 -0700

Yes, its not over as yet. Not by a long shot. What is even more painful is the politics behind the approval of a standard that will benefit -one- company. Slashdot has its usual coverage, and so does Groklaw. Requisite grain of salt and other garnishes suggested. The following is a list of items (with links, except for #10) on the possible manipulations of the ISO voting and approval process. If you don't vote, its counted as a Yes (go Poland!), if you vote No, then your vote gets counted as a Yes (speak up, Cuba!), and other fun voting semantics. In true computing fashion, the list begins at zero. I say, vote with your file formats! Here's the list as seen on Slashdot:

Enterprise grade network management systems

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:31:13 -0700

I recently came across OpenNMS, a network management system, similar to Nagios. Their site is at http://www.opennms.org/index.php/Main_Page with a demo site that shows you how it works. From their web site:

OpenNMS is the world's first enterprise grade network management platform developed under the open source model. It consists of a community supported open-source project as well as a commercial services, training, and support organization.

OpenOffice 2.4 is out!

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:20:52 -0700

As seen on Slashdot a few minutes ago:

"The multiplatform, multilingual office suite OpenOffice.org has announced the release of version 2.4. New features include 5 PDF export enhancements, text to columns in Calc, rectangular selection in Writer, bug fixes, performance improvements, improvements supporting the growing library of extensions such as 3D OpenGL transitions in Impress, and much more. Downloads are available either direct or P2P. In September, OpenOffice.org 3.0 will add PDF import, Microsoft Office 2007 file format support, and ODF 1.2."

Feb 9 OLPC meet at SF State - a brief report

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 08:39:25 -0800

The second OLPC meet at SF State was interesting. We now have a momentum that is reassuring. Initially I was not sure about attendance. Many people tend to lose interest in their XO laptops after two to three weeks. However, we had a little over 20 people who attended the get-together.

We managed to update some XOs to build 656, which is labeled Ship2.2. This build is considered stable and is being pushed by OLPC automatically in batches to different laptops (See item # 9 at http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/community-news/2008-February/000098.html). You can either wait for the push from OLPC or ask one of us to help you update it. For instructions, see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Update_paths . Also see helpful instructions from Doug Jones at http://frombob.to/XO/

Brian writes from Davos

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 00:03:56 -0800

Long time FOSS activist, retired president of the Apache Software Foundation and co-founder of CollabNet, Brian Behlendorf has taken off to Davos once again. His last visit was in 2006 at the World Economic Forum. He posts about his days at the meeting. Here are some excerpts:

Here's a town that's essentially stuck in Lake Tahoe in the 70's, turned upside down once a year by a massive operation resembling a temporary convening of the UN. It's like the opposite of Burning Man - where once a year a barren dry lake bed two-hours' drive from Reno is turned into a Rorschach-like fantasyland. Instead of a dry lake bed, we have a cozy ski hamlet; instead of trying desperately to stay hydrated, you try desperately to stay warm and upright while skating the road ice between hotels and sessions; and instead of a ban on commercial activity (except the sale of ice and coffee at Center Camp), you have the biggest industrialists in the world coming to proclaim both the triumph of and the end of traditional capitalism, and the coffee, wine, and champagne are free.

Feb 9 OLPC meet at SF State

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 13:13:20 -0800

Calling all San Francisco Bay Area OLPC enthusiasts! If you have an XO laptop, or are just interested in seeing how they work, come on down to SF State campus for a get together on Feb 9, 2008. If you have an XO or two (or ten), bring them! If not, bring your enthusiasm.

What: OLPC meet at San Francisco State University

Why: Curiosity, strength in numbers, plain fun! Build a mesh network, share activities, pictures, measure distances with acoustic tape measure!

When: Saturday, February 9, 2008 from 10am to 2pm

Keep jabbering

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 10:54:43 -0800

A long time ago in a far away land there was Jabber. In the same era in a strange land (SF State) we installed Jabber and had fun with it. This was a time when PDAs ruled and Handspring was king. Remember that time? It was a long time ago indeed.

I had a Handspring that had a modem powered by two AAA batteries. I was tinkering with messaging protocols, but the problem with most IM protocols was that they were proprietary, so there were no apps for Handspring. That led me to Jabber. First, I signed up for an account on their server and got the IM going on two different computers. It was fun to watch the XML stream going between the two ends. Next, I downloaded the code and got it running on a server at home. I remember that just like everything else back then, there were several attempts at the "three steps to nirvana": ./configure, make, make install

One Laptop Per Indian Child

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 21:08:18 -0700

OLPIC - One Laptop per Indian Child. Has a nice ring to it

In the early days of the OLPC proposal, the Human Resources and Development Ministry in India had declined participation in the OLPC project. Their reasons were related to suspect pedagogy, lack of interest, and appropriate use of funds. Here's an excerpt from an article on the Register:

Nokia's N810 to be released soon

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 17:51:36 -0700

I still use my Nokia 770, a rugged tablet that runs on a Linux-based platform called Maemo. Call me "behind the times" but the device works quite nicely and does what it is supposed to do. The 770 has had a successor in the N800 from Nokia. The N800 uses the same platform with updated apps and kernel. See details here.

A few complaints with the N800 were the lack of a tactile keyboard (visual accessibility falls flat (pun intended) on the iPhone, 770, 800 and many others). Well, the N810 will be out soon, and it looks like this one will have a slide out keyboard that you can actually feel. Its also has the GPS feature built in. i rely on an external Bluetooth based uint, but this one has it all packaged in one device. I am tempted by the N810, but I still love the ruggedness of the 770. Hmm...

The ultimate steal

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 16:29:02 -0700

I got an e-mail from a colleague about how students can get a copy of Microsoft Office 2007 for US $59.95 only. They are calling it the ultimate steal. "Steal" is a strong word. Stealing makes you a thief. While $ 59.95 may be the ultimate low that Microsoft is willing to go, to get you reeled into their ribbon menus, a better ~~steal~~ deal is at the Open Disc, where you not only get OpenOffice.org office productivity suite, which supports the Open Document Format (Microsoft Office 2007 does not), you get bunch more, such as web editing software, graphics packages, astronomy titles (a night under the stars!), kids software and even health related software that tries to prevent repetitive stress injuries (RSI), all running on Windows for an even better deal (or is it steal?). Wait for it...

OpenMoko in the news

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 00:28:25 -0700

Its been a while since I wrote about the OpenMoko project. Well, its still on. Now that the developer phones are out, the discussions center around UI issues, usability and of course, cool apps that can be built on top of this platform. Michael Shiloh was interviewed by ABC about the effort. The clip also contains information about the Homebrew Mobile Phone Club, which is also looking at the OpenMoko platform.