community

Where tells you what's around

If you don't know, Where is a location-based application full of widgets that deliver essential information about what's close by you such as restaurants, gas stations, or even your friends. Basically, whatever you're after, the day-to-day stuff that is, Where is designed to deliver. The application gathers information from other social Web sites including Eventful, Yelp, GasBuddy, Zipcar, ShopLocal, Starbucks, and Buddy Beacon, and makes it available to your mobile device.

And Where is not picky when it comes to mobile devices. It's available on virtually any major mobile platform and carrier: Alltel, AT&T, … Read more

Eventful offers free iPhone application

Eventful Inc., an event-driven social Web site, announced today its release of Eventful For iPhone application. The software works on both iPhone and iPod Touch and makes it easy for users to find events and things to do in their local communities.

The application basically provides access to all of the Eventful Web site's key functions through an iPhone-friendly interface. It automatically tailors search results and recommendations based on the user's current location and integrates with the iPhone's built-in applications such as Calendar and Contacts so users can easily share the events with friends or sync those … Read more

HP beats its chest over Linux contribution

Open source has become so commonplace, about the only time that one sees press releases around it is when a company releases all or a significant chunk of its software under an open-source license. The other time is when a company new to open source releases code, and wants to tell the world that slowly but surely it is getting a clue.

All of which makes HP's announcement that it is contributing its Tru64 Advanced File System (AdvFS) to the Linux community a bit puzzling. It's a significant contribution, yes, but it's not as if HP hasn'… Read more

Devunity: Open community for open-source developers

Collaborating on a code project with other developers can be a nightmare, but the team at Devunity is trying to fix that.

Devunity is a social-development platform for open-source coders. Imagine a chat room alongside your code editor, with experts at hand ready to give you feedback or add valuable logic to your code. That's the idea. The site allows you to work simultaneously with other developers without overwriting each other's changes.

If you want to start a project by using a common API (application programming interface), like one from Yahoo's Flickr, Amazon.com, Facebook or Google … Read more

Intel launches visual content, game site

Intel has launched a Web site to help game and visual content developers create software for its graphics silicon and processors. Intel's next-generation Larrabee graphics chip is also slated to become part of the focus.

"Supporting the new Intel 4 Series chipset family introduced at Computex, Intel has launched the Intel Visual Computing Developer Community, a technical resource to enable developers...to create innovative graphics and video applications," Intel said in a statement.

The Intel 4 Series includes the G45 Express chipset and GMA X4500HD graphics media accelerator, which has built-in support for Blu-ray 1080p high-definition video … Read more

GPS device tests your skills on the slopes

If the people at Flaik are to be believed, they've created a product that's the next best thing to a personal guide on the ski slopes--and maybe even an entire posse to boot.

The Australian company's namesake product is a GPS device that can monitor your every move and log your performance, presuming that you're a good enough skier to want to keep track. Then you can keep score by posting your numbers to Flaik's online community to compare your speed, distance, air time, and other stats. By the way, don't even think about … Read more

Microsoft seeks open-source community manager

Microsoft has announced that it's hiring an open-source community manager, declaring that "Microsoft is committed to the long-term growth of open source." Microsoft seems to be more committed to a certain type of open-source growth than general open-source growth, but let's not quibble.

I like it. It's classically Microsoft: push forward with limited hand-wringing about the past. Give it credit for being gutsy.

As we continue to grow our investments around open source, we're looking to add a new Community Manager to our team. This position will be part of the Platform Community team … Read more

Putting wind to work on farms

Financing company MMA Renewable Ventures is branching into wind energy, betting places like family farms are underserved.

The company on Wednesday is expected to announce the launch of its wind business, which will provide financing and project management for installations between 10 megawatts and 50 megawatts.

Its first customer is a planned 10-megawatt project, the PaTu Wind Farm in Oregon, which is expected to go up by 2009. MMA Renewable has a pipeline of deals worth 200 megawatts, said Moira Geraghty, vice president of wind finance at MMA Renewable Ventures.

In general, the deals will be structured so that MMA … Read more

The enemy of my enemy is...not really my friend (?!?)

Zack Urlocker picks up on my growing frustration with the self-appointed "community" police.

These are the people who hound companies and developers into a slavish devotion to One True Way of participating in open source, a way that may not bring the financial return necessary to fuel the next generation of open-source development. I'm sympathetic to this mindset because I've shared it. But of late I've grown weary of the monoculture, one seemingly inimical to money.

Infoworld's Bill Snyder picks up on the meme and runs with it:

...[F]or too many members of the open source community money is, well, icky. I pick that word deliberately, because the snarky elitists who want to keep open source pure -- and poor -- remind me of children.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with Bill's nomenclature, the gist of his argument is dead-on: By prefabricating all the possible business models for open source, the "community" guardians may well be shackling open source's potential. They are like the Henry Fords of open-source choice: You can have any open-source business model that you want, so long as it's support.

There's got to be a better way.… Read more

Negroponte passes the Windows "virility test"

Wow. Some things are better left unsaid, but since Nicholas Negroponte, embattled founder of the One Laptop Per Child project, said it, I'll quote it:

When I talk to people and tell them we can run Windows, they are very impressed. You pass a sort of virility test.

Until you're emasculated by ceding control of the project to Microsoft, which has a long practice of bullying the hardware vendors who carry its Windows operating system. As for being proud that he runs Windows, why? Since when has it been hard to do that? I guess if you set your sights low enough....

But then Negroponte really crams his foot in his mouth, arguing that he needed the open-source community to get started, but only to do the early heavy lifting to pave the way for Microsoft:… Read more