initiative

Just how targeted can that targeted ad be? Ad networks set new guidelines

Social media and Web-surfing habits have made it possible for advertisers to target their campaigns at the narrowest of niche audiences. But what happens when targeting goes beyond relevance and into insensitivity? That's something that a big digital-ad trade group has addressed in a new set of guidelines that effectively ban behavioral targeting pertaining to certain medical and psychological conditions.

The Network Advertising Initiative (NAI), which encompasses ad networks like AOL's Advertising.com and Tacoda, Yahoo's BlueLithium, and Google's DoubleClick, published the draft of its "Self-Regulatory Code of Conduct for Online Behavioral Advertising" guidelines … Read more

What I learned from OSBC 2008

Having had a day to ruminate about the Open Source Business Conference 2008, a few key takeaways suggest themselves. It was by far the best OSBC yet, with a far more diverse audience and speaking faculty that we've had before. This naturally leads to a diverse set of "conclusions" arising from the event:

Enterprises love open source but the business models necessary to fuel both their happiness and that of the vendors still need a lot of work. Jon Williams of Kaplan Test suggested in his keynote, as Dirk Hohndel captures, that the more happy he is with his commercial open-source software, the less likely he will be to pay for it. Why? Because his developers will acquire the expertise over time to support themselves and because the product will mature to the point that support will be less necessary.… Read more

Two quick-launchers for Palm apps

Having something come to you is always better than having to go to it. Like Launchy for Windows and Quicksilver for Mac, Duh Button Launcher Plus and Initiate save you time by getting your apps open fast. OK, it's not like the Palm OS app launcher is an irrevocable time suck, but these apps just make the process smoother.

Duh Button Launcher Plus

Let's start with Duh Button Launcher Plus, because it's the free one. With just a little bit of work, you can map a list of your favorite apps to pop up with the press … Read more

Changing the rules of enterprise software

I spent some time on the phone Wednesday with Mike Herrick of the Collaborative Software Initiative. I knew Mike back when he was at Liberty Mutual, building out its open-source team. When Mike left to join CSI, I wondered what would cause someone with a great job in a Fortune 100 enterprise to join a start-up.

Today, things became a bit clearer.

Remember Avalanche? It was an open-source co-op formed by several major enterprises (Best Buy, Wells Fargo, etc.) to share code in areas of common need (call centers, for example) but little to no competitive overlap. The idea was to share code and thereby improve innovation while lowering costs.

CSI is similar in its aims, but I think it's a better approach to the problem because it should do a better job of coordinating collaboration. CSI's mission is to:

build communities of like-minded IT leaders to reduce software development costs, accelerate compliance and consolidate project timelines.

CSI does this by helping to bring different companies to collaborate on IT projects that each individually needs, but that can be done more cost effectively as a collective. So, for example, perhaps CSI found that Credit Suisse needed to develop a trading platform. As it turns out, this is a common need for Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and other financial services companies. So, CSI would then approach these other companies to gauge interest and then to coordinate the development.… Read more

Governors sign on to Climate Savers efficient PCs plan

The nation's governors are jumping on the bandwagon of energy efficiency in computing.

The governors of Minnesota and Kansas on Wednesday committed to buying energy-efficient PCs, part of a partnership between the National Governors Assocation and the Climate Savers Computing Initiative.

Launched earlier this year, the Climate Savers Computing Initiative is a group formed by Intel and Google to promote use of energy-efficient power supplies for PCs.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas said that new PC purchases for their states will meet the EnergyStar 4.0 rating, which could result in a 50 … Read more

In Tokyo, arcade games use real cars

Imagine that you're strapped down in a full-scale Toyota Trueno, Subaru Impreza WRX or Mazda RX7, sweaty palms glued to the steering wheel. Your eyes are fixated on what's beyond the windshield, desperately trying to "drift" your way through the narrow Japanese countryside roads. Yes, we are referring to the Japanese cult anime Initial D. Now Sega is redefining the arcade gaming experience with its life-sized Initial D Arcade Stage 4 Limited system.

This giant motion simulator has all three of the aforementioned vehicles lined up in front of a movie projection screen and installed with … Read more

IBM, Google detail joint initiative

IBM and Google on Monday released details on their "academic cluster computing initiative" to provide data centers for remote computer programming.

The centers would allow a larger number of students and programmers to have access and processing power for writing software code involving massive amounts of data over the Internet, a practice known as "cloud computing."

The program, which is already under way at the University of Washington, will also be rolled out at Carnegie-Mellon University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Maryland. IBM and … Read more

Mark Radcliffe and the rule of open-source law

Ashlee Vance over at The Register has a nice profile of Mark Radcliffe, partner at DLA Piper and one of the top legal minds in open source, if not the top legal mind. Mark is a friend and colleague at the Open Source Initiative, and deserves the attention.

Despite his influence over commercial open source, few know just how deeply involved he has been. The Register, however, captures his influence succinctly:… Read more

The license proliferation canard

Canard: a deliberately misleading fabrication.

That's the word I thought of when I read this article on how open-source license proliferation threatens adoption of open source in the enterprise. I stopped thinking of license proliferation as a serious threat to open source back in 2004 when the Open Source Initiative last beat this drum. Since then it has been very clear that license proliferation is a minor threat at best.

The analyst Saugatuck disagrees:… Read more