Journal: Oracle Up, Google Down, Band Plays On…

Commercial Intelligence, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Mobile

Oracle Growth Plans Worry Rivals and Customers

Full Story Online

ASHLEE VANCE September 21, 2010

EXTRACT 1:  But Oracle’s annual takeover of San Francisco pales against its larger ambitions — to supply just about all the technology, software and hardware, that businesses might need. This sweeping agenda has rattled the nerves of customers, who fear that Oracle has its own best interests, not theirs, at heart. The worry is that instead of saving money, customers will end up paying more over the long term, and that Oracle, already known for its aggressive tactics, will use its strong position in software to gain even more leverage over a larger array of products.

EXTRACT 2:  Like it or not, many of the largest technology companies — H.P., I.B.M., Cisco Systems and Oracle — have made their data center conquest plans clear. Oracle now competes directly with its partners H.P. and Dell, as does Cisco, the networking specialist, through its move into computer servers. Meanwhile, H.P., once one of Cisco’s closest allies, has begun a major assault in the networking arena.

Phi Beta Iota: In our view, secure reliable continuous interoperability with constantly-changing customers and constantly-changing networks of temporary partners–and real-time decision-support from across unstructured constantly changing multi-media multi-lingual information, is going to define the communications, computing, and public intelligence challenge of the 21st Century.

Journal: Electromagnetics, Bees, & Agriculture

Commerce, Government, IO Sense-Making, Law Enforcement, Military, Mobile

June 30, 2010  Study links bee decline to cell phones

Bee populations dropped 17 percent in the UK last year, according to the British Bee Association, and nearly 30 percent in the United States says the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Parasitic mites called varroa, agricultural pesticides and the effects of climate change have all been implicated in what has been dubbed “colony collapse disorder” (CCD).

But researchers in India believe cell phones could also be to blame for some of the losses.

Continue reading “Journal: Electromagnetics, Bees, & Agriculture”

Journal: Google Expands Open Source Platform

03 Economy, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Mobile, Technologies

Source Seeker

Google Code wants to become a bigger source forge by Julie BortGoogle Code hosts more than 250,000 open source projects but until last week, only allowed projects that used a limited number of licenses. But on Friday, Google announced it would leave the license discrimination to the folks that do it best, the Open Source Initiative. It will now accept into its forge projects covered by any OSI license. Open source licenses are abundant because a developer that creates something has the right to choose the conditions on a project when sharing it. Phil… 2

Journal: Open Source Software Gains in Government

Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, IO Sense-Making, Mobile

Uncle Sam meets open source with open arms

Collaboration for the common good — what open source is all about

Eric Gries

It seems everywhere I look, I see another example of government adopting open source.

Earlier this month, a consortium of public and non-profit organizations launched Civic Commons, a public-private partnership that will help governments share software they have developed. It's a terrific idea that will foster innovation, eliminate duplicate effort, and save money. And it's another great example of the growing adoption of open source software in governments.

Examples of open source in the U.S. government abound. The Smithsonian and Search.USA.gov use Solr/Lucene open source enterprise search. The White House re-launched whitehouse.gov using Drupal. The DoD and the Intelligence Community have proposed an Open Technology Development roadmap “to increase technical efficiency and reduce software lifecycle costs within DoD,” and the DoD has developed forge.mil to “enable continuous collaboration among all stakeholders including project managers, developers, testers, certifiers, operators, and users.” In fact, my own company, Lucid Imagination, is funded in part by In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA, further evidence that open source and government are going hand in hand.

Examples of open source abroad is equally as evident. The EU's Open Source Observatory and Repository provides public administrations with access to more than two thousand free and open source applications and the open source CASPAR (Cultural, Artistic and Scientific knowledge for Preservation, Access and Retrieval) research project is making mounds of data stored in EU archives accessible.

Read Balance of Posting

Tip of the hat to Bob Gourley at LinkedIn.

Phi Beta Iota: While good news, the above is over-stated.  Free/Open Source Softwaare (F/OSS) needs a champion with weight, such as Microsoft or IBM or one of the telecommunications giants who sees that the value chain has moved from connectivity to content.  There are eight tribes of intelligence, the government is the least important.

MakerFaire Africa 2010 Project Showcase

03 Economy, 04 Education, 05 Energy, 07 Health, 08 Wild Cards, Mobile, Technologies

Maker Faire Africa is a celebration of African ingenuity, innovation and creation. Here you will find the Makers who showed their work at the 2010 event in Nairobi Kenya. Work ranges from time saving devices for agriculture to alternative energy sources from design with recycled objects to social media applications for mobile phones. Per maker you will find a short synopsis of their work, their contacts details plus a possibliity to collaborate with them.

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"Digital Tank" (kiosk)

Terra Weikel from Uganda came with briliant idea on how to improve the digitalization of rural Uganda, and they concluded that the best material would be to use a drum which is readily available. They then converted it into a digital tank (kiosk). He was here to create awareness of the digital drum and inspire its use in other African Villages! To inspire for a better Africa, in terms of digitalization.

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"Village Telco"

The Village Telco is an initiative to build low-cost community telephone network hardware and software that can be set up in minutes anywhere in the world. No mobile phone towers or land lines are required. He was here to create awareness of the product and it entrepreneurial sense! To inspire for a better Africa, in terms of Tele-communication.

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Continue reading “MakerFaire Africa 2010 Project Showcase”

Journal: Tim Berners-Lee Says “Free Internet for All”

About the Idea, Autonomous Internet, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Historic Contributions, IO Sense-Making, Key Players, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Threats, Topics (All Other)
Tim Berners-Lee Calls for Free Internet for All -- Full Story Online

BBC 15 September 2010 Last updated at 05:58 ET

Tim Berners-Lee calls for free internet worldwide

The inventor of the Web has called for everyone to have access to his creation for free.

Tim Berners-Lee said that he would like to see everybody given a low-bandwidth connection “by default”.

He said the web could be instrumental in giving people access to critical services such as healthcare.

Currently, he said, just one-fifth of the world's population has access to the web.

“What about the other 80%?” he asked the audience at the Nokia World conference in London.

Tip of the Hat to Pierre Levy at LinkedIn.

Phi Beta Iota: Sir Tim is on target but misses the critical point, which is that the Internet is already free, what is NOT free is the handheld device needed to access it.  Earth Intelligence Network and its 24 co-founders are committed to the idea of free cell phones for the five billion poor, along with national call centers that educate them “one cell call at a time” while also providing access to the kinds of Internet application that the Grameen AppLab is creating.

Journal: Open Mobile, Open Spectrum, Open Web

Augmented Reality, Autonomous Internet, Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Geospatial, Methods & Process, Mobile, Real Time, Reform, Standards, Strategy, Technologies, Tools
Open Moko Home

Openmoko™ – Open. Mobile. Free.

Openmoko™ is a project dedicated to delivering mobile phones with an open source software stack. Openmoko is currently selling the Neo FreeRunner phone to advanced users and will start selling it to the general public as soon as the software is more developed.

Phi Beta Iota: We've had our say on “Open Everything” GNOMEDEX and again at “Open Everything” UNICEF, and it just keeps getting better and better.  The cell phone is the principle device for Hacking Humanity, in part because it enables micro-everything including directed micro-giving and micro-trading with Open Money.

Below are two related items:

Updated Chart on Mobile Phone Applications (by sunset eastern)

Trip Report from Burning Man's Open Cellular Network

EXCERPT: Today I bring you a story that has it all: a solar-powered, low-cost, open source cellular network that's revolutionizing coverage in underprivileged and off-grid spots. It uses VoIP yet works with existing cell phones. It has pedigreed founders. Best of all, it is part of the sex, drugs and art collectively known as Burning Man. Where do you want me to begin?

The Open Source Subnet
Cell towers that blend vs. those that offend

“We make GSM look like a wireless access point. We make it that simple,” describes one of the project's three founders, Glenn Edens.  The technology starts with the “they-said-it-couldn't-be-done” open source software, OpenBTS.