The content on this site is my own and does not necessarily represent my employer’s positions, strategies or opinions.
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Linden Lab Announces Management Changes — SAN FRANCISCO, June 24 /PRNewswire/ –
“Linden Lab®, creator of 3D virtual world Second Life®, announced today that company founder Philip Rosedale has been named interim CEO, and CFO Bob Komin has assumed the additional role of COO. Linden Lab also announced that Mark Kingdon is stepping down as CEO.”
tags: second-life
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Red Hat Integrates Server and Desktop Virtualization – MarketWatch
“Red Hat, Inc. (RHT 30.91, -0.45, -1.44%) , the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the next step in the integration of its enterprise-grade server and desktop virtualization portfolio with the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 2.2. In addition to providing the first release of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops, the 2.2 update includes new scalability capabilities, migration tools and features to expand the performance and security of the solution.”
tags: red-hat
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Firefox update brings protection from Flash crashes
 “Mozilla is rolling out an update of its Firefox Web browser that adds support for plugin isolation. Version 3.6.4, which includes the new feature, was officially released on Tuesday and will be deployed soon through the browser’s automated update system.
It is unusual for Mozilla to deploy a major new feature in a minor point update, but the plugin isolation capability is a worthy exception to the rule, since it will significantly improve the browser’s stability. In the new version of Firefox, plugin components like Flash and Silverlight will run in external processes. When these plugins crash, the browser itself will not be terminated.”
tags: firefox, flash
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Eclipse project releases major update of open source IDE
“The Eclipse project has announced the Helios release train, a major update of the open source Eclipse integrated development environment (IDE) and many of its key components.
Due to the modularity of the software and the diversity of its community, Eclipse is developed like a platform. There are a multitude of independently-developed components that supply specific kinds of functionality. The most widely-used components are collected into a set of standard Eclipse packages that are targeted towards specific kinds of development.”
tags: eclipse, open-source
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iPhone 4 – Part 3: First Impression | patrickWeb Archives
“The Fedex delivery man pulled up at 10:30 this morning with an iPhone 4 in his hand — there were 15 more on his truck. The packaging is elegant and simple to open. After syncing the iPhone 3GS and Stainless Shuffle to be sure iTunes was up to date, I connected the iPhone 4. The first screen to appear showed my mobile phone number and asked me to enter my zip code and last four of the social for authentication. After agreeing to the Apple and AT&T terms and conditions the phone was activated and the copying of apps plus thousands of songs and music began. I went out for an errand and when I got back the iPhone 4 was loaded with my data. The next step was to set up the Google accounts for over-the-air syncing of my 1,500 contacts plus all the calendar entries and gmail. Minutes later I was good to go. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.”
tags: iphone
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Brazil Wants To Be The Next India and Open Source Is Their Secret Weapon | NetworkWorld.com Community
“Though Brazil has several disadvantages they must overcome to compete with the likes of India and China as an outsourcing world power, they do believe they have an ace in their sleeve, open source.”
tags: brazil, open-source
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Migrating from Sun to Novell | NetworkWorld.com Community
“Novell has made a great move: If you own licenses for Sun software, such as Sun IM, you can swap those licenses, for free, for Novell licenses. All you pay is maintenance.
Smart move.
The real fear for many of our clients, and for you in the field, is not just the current upfront costs, but the long-term costs associated with being aligned with Oracle products.”
tags: sun, migrating, novell
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Linden Lab Restructures to Generate Efficiencies and Support Investment in New Platforms — SAN FRANCISCO, June 9 /PRNewswire/ –
“As part of the restructuring, Linden Lab will also improve its geographic and cost efficiencies. The company’s product and engineering divisions will be combined. The software development teams will be consolidated in North America and customer support will be reconfigured to provide more scalable services. As a result, Linden Lab anticipates staff reductions of approximately 30 percent.”
tags: linden, second-life
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Ten years of IBM mainframe Linux – Computerworld Blogs
“And, while IBM has done very well by Linux on the mainframe and its other servers, Frye isn’t ruling out the desktop. Frye said, “We’re seeing tremendous interest in Linux on the desktop. A recent global survey showed that Linux desktops were easier to implement than IT staff expected if they targeted the right groups of users, such as those who have moderate and predictable use of e-mail and office tools. Netbooks with Linux provide a low-cost computing option to small businesses and emerging markets around the globe. This customer set–even those that typically cannot afford new, expensive personal computers–can now legitimately consider netbooks running Linux instead of PCs for business use.”"
tags: ibm, linux, mainframe
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Dropbox – Features – Online backup, file sync and sharing made easy.
“Dropbox allows you to sync your files online and across your computers automatically.”
tags: dropbox, backup, sharing, storage
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Will Microsoft unleash its secret weapon against Google Docs? – Computerworld Blogs
“Microsoft has a little-known and little-used piece of free software that can help it in its battle against Google, especially against Google Docs, called Windows Live Sync. Inexplicably, Microsoft rarely publicizes it, and doesn’t embed it directly into Microsoft Office. Will Microsoft ever unleash this secret weapon?”
tags: microsoft, google
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Uptake of native Linux ZFS port hampered by license conflict
“A group of open source software developers working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have implemented a native Linux port of Sun’s ZFS filesystem. Although the code is functional and available for download (but not production-ready yet), it cannot be merged upstream or shipped in binary form with the Linux kernel due to a licensing conflict. Sun distributes the OpenSolaris source code under its own Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL), which is incompatible with GNU’s General Public License (GPL).”
tags: linux, zfs, oracle, sun, cddl, gpl
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The Flavor of Android’s Open Apps | ITworld
“I started wondering… which license was this application using? Turns out, after a little bit of digging, the NPR Android application is released under Apache License 2.0. This was cool by me.
But then, I got to thinking some more. Which is always a precursor of trouble.
Hm, I thought, I wonder how Android applications are licensed?”
tags: android, apps, open-source
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Document Freedom: How to know when you have it
“Today is Document Freedom Day. In the five years since Open Document Format (ODF) first was approved in OASIS we have certainly made progress, but there is still work remaining to be done. How will we know when we have arrived? At what point can we declare victory and say “Free at last”? I think that when we can agree that all of the following statements are true, then at that point we have achieved the substantial benefits of document freedom.”
tags: odf, document, freedom, standards, formats
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Second Life 2.0 goes live today – Massively
“As we previously predicted, the Second Life 2.0 viewer is going live today, meeting the originally slated release target of Q1 2010, if only by a few hours. The 2.0 viewer has been in public beta since 23 February.”
tags: second-life, virtual-world
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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SUSE Linux Enterprise 11’s renewal plans – The H Open Source: News and Features
“Other important features in Service Pack 1 are kernel resource management and support for up to 4096 CPUs and 16TB of RAM in a system. Xen is updated to version 4.0 and Novell SLES SP1 also supports the alternative KVM virtualisation solution. The drivers which Microsoft released as open source for paravirtualised operation when running as a Hyper-V guest are included.”
tags: linux, suse, novell, kvm
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Red Hat Moves Into Desktop Virtualization – PCWorld Business Center
“Open source enterprise software company Red Hat has updated its virtualization platform, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (REV), to include support for desktop virtualization, the company announced Monday.”
tags: virtualization, desktop, red-hat
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Red Hat KVM Virtualization Finds Early Adopters – Virtualization Blog – InformationWeek
“Citrix and VMware have been leapfrogging each other in virtualization features, but virtualization is more like a marathon than a 100-yard dash. Perhaps the new kid at the back of the pack is going to be closer to front by the time we get to the finish line.”
tags: virtualization, kvm, red-hat, linux
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451 CAOS Theory » Please break our open source business strategy model
“It included a partial explanation of my theory that those strategies do not exist in isolation, but are steps on an evolutionary process, and also introduced our model for visualizing the core elements of an open source-related business strategy.”
tags: 451, open-source
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An Easy and Inexpensive Quad-Core System for Debian or Ubuntu GNU/Linux
“My son’s hand-me-down motherboard recently gave up the ghost, and I decided that was a good excuse for an upgrade. Shopping around, I found that multi-core CPUs were finally in my price range, so I decided to build him a quad-core system. This build worked out extremely well, with almost no configuration problems, not even for accelerated 3D graphics or ALSA sound — all using the latest Debian GNU/Linux (which means it’ll also work with Ubuntu or other derivatives). This one has that “classic” feel — everything just clicked into place. So I wanted to document it here. This also serves as a technology update to my earlier article on selecting hardware for a free-software-friendly system.”
tags: debian, ubuntu, linux
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How to get content for a business grid – Hypergrid Business
“One of the common problems I hear about opensim is that if you create a private grid, you’ll have to create all your content from scratch. That was the case a couple of years ago, when OpenSim was still new, but for most users, this is no longer the case.”
tags: opensim, second-life, virtual-world
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Do You Need Absolute Privacy? | BloggingPro
“The Absolute Privacy plugin by John Kolbert does exactly what it the title suggests; it turns your blog into the ultimate private blog”
tags: privacy, blog, WordPress
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Questioning open-core licensing for open source software | Open Source – InfoWorld
“Until, or if, the cloud becomes the leading monetization route for open source vendors, I’d argue that selling product licenses, as is the case with open core licensing, is the best approach for open source vendors and their customers — oh, and their VCs.”
tags: open-source
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Tunisia Online News » Tunisia takes part in Linux exhibition in Paris
“At the initiative of the Free Software Unit under the Ministry of Communication Technologies and with the support of CEPEX and the National Federation of ICT, nine Tunisian companies took part for the first time, at the European exhibition “Solutions Linux / Open Source” held in Paris from March 16 to 18, 2010.”
tags: tunisia, open-source
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Sony calls Nintendo 3DS ‘a little bit of a stretch’ | The Digital Home – CNET News
“For its part, Sony believes that the future in 3D is in the console. Koller said Sony intends to invest in 3D gaming for its PlayStation 3. A firmware update bringing 3D gaming to the PS3 is coming at some point in the future.”
tags: sony, nintendo, 3d
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VatorNews – Avatar Reality raises $4.2 million
“Avatar Reality, developer of the virtual world platform Blue Mars, announced it’s raised $4.2 million from venture capitalists including Henk Rogers and Kolohala Ventures. The startup says it has raised more than $13 million to date.”
tags: Blue Mars, virtual-world
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Phasing Grace | Social Architecture and Virtual Worlds: Linden Lab Leaping the Chasm?
“This last week I read the Harvard Business School case study entitled: Linden Lab: Crossing the Chasm Rev. August 3, 2009. If you’d like to follow along, the pdf will cost you $6.95 USD and if you have anything more than a passing fancy about the virtual world of Second Life and/or start ups in this space it’s almost worth it.”
tags: linden, harvard, chasm, second-life, virtual-world
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Ex-MySQL chief Marten Mickos lands new CEO job – BusinessWeek
“Marten Mickos, the longtime CEO of MySQL who eventually sold the open-source database company to Sun Microsystems for US$1 billion, has taken a new job as CEO of Eucalyptus Systems, the company said Friday.
Mickos is staying in the open-source world but jumping on a newer computing trend — cloud computing. Eucalyptus makes an open-source software platform for building private clouds, or data centers in which workloads can be moved around across different systems to maximize efficiency.”
tags: mysql, mickos, cloud, eucalyptus
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7 (More) Free and Open Source Finance/Accounting Software for Linux | TechSource
“Since our collection of Free and Open Source finance/accounting software for Linux has been quite popular, I would like to add 7 more to that list. As I’ve said before, finance or accounting software will prove valuable for those who have small or medium-sized business as it will allow users to do important tasks like recording and processing accounting transactions within functional modules such as accounts receivable, accounts payable, payroll, and trial balance.”
tags: open-source, accounting, finance, software
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Terrain, Part 1 – Twenty Sided
“My goal is to write a terrain engine from the ground up, using entirely new code. In most situations, something like this would be a component of a computer game. I will approach this project as if it was.”
tags: terrain, graphics, 3d
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Procedural City, Part 1: Introduction – Twenty Sided
“The city will be entirely procedurally generated. That is, the program will contain no art assets. No textures. No models. Everything must be built from scratch at startup.”
tags: 3d, graphics
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Making Worlds: Introduction | Steven Wittens – Acko.net
“So with Ogre as my weapon of choice, I’ve started a new project: Making Planets. More specifically, I want to procedurally generate a 3D planet, viewable from outer space as well as the ground (at flight-sim levels of detail), which can be rendered real-time on recent graphics hardware.”
tags: 3d, graphics, ogre
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A Face Lift For The MPL | Linux Journal
“Now, more than ten years later, 1.1’s number is up — or at least will be going up. According to Baker, 2010 will be the year of the revision, with Mozilla seeking public comment from community members on what the next version of the widely-used license should say. She notes that Mozilla has received a great deal of input on the license in the past decade, and will utilize it, along with preliminary comments from the community, to create a working draft from which further comment will stem.”
tags: mozilla, license, open-source
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Project Wonderland finds new home – Hypergrid Business
“St. Paul, Minnesota, March 10, 2010 – Today Ken Miller, the CEO of Virtual Learning Labs, announced the formation of the Open Wonderland Foundation and the creation of the Open Wonderland virtual world platform. The Open Wonderland platform is a “fork” of the Project Wonderland toolkit originally developed by Sun Microsystems Laboratories. Miller, who will serve as the Foundation’s first President and Chairman of the Board, explains that the non-profit Open Wonderland Foundation will provide direction and governance for Open Wonderland (http://OpenWonderland.org), a free and open source platform for creating 3D virtual worlds for education, business, and government applications.”
tags: virtual-world
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OpenSim security 101 – Hypergrid Business
“Enterprises rolling out new opensim grids are often concerned about security issues of running OpenSim, and justifiably so. OpenSim is alpha software and still poses some security challenges. However, the security level of a particular OpenSim deployment depends quite a bit on how it is configured.”
tags: opensim, security, virtual-world
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Federal Virtual World Challenge Reviews and Evaluations
“Below are the candidates for the Federal Virtual World Challenge. You are welcome to read about and review each entry.”
tags: virtual-world, government
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30 game scripts you can write in PHP, Part 1: Creating 10 fundamental scripts
“PHP is an easy-to-use, easy-to-learn, widely accessible programming language. It’s well suited for developing simple scripts you can use to help you in all kinds of games. Whether you play simple pen-and-paper games by yourself, complex tabletop role-playing games with a group of people, or online games of any kind, this series will have something for you. Each article in this “30 game scripts you can write in PHP” series will cover 10 scripts in 300 words or less (3d10 stands for “roll three 10-sided dice”) simple enough for even a beginning developer, but useful enough for a seasoned game player. The goal is to give you something you can modify to suit your needs, so you can impress your friends and players by busting out your laptop at your next gaming session.”
tags: game, scripts, php
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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Second Life’s virtual money can become real-life cash – washingtonpost.com
“Last year, as the physical economy withered, Second Life’s economy blossomed, with user-to-user transactions topping $567 million in actual U.S. currency, a 65 percent jump over 2008. About 770,000 unique users made repeat visits to Second Life in December, and the users, known as residents, cashed out $55 million of their Second Life earnings last year, transferring that money to PayPal accounts.”
tags: second-life, virtual-world
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What to expect from HTML 5 | Developer World – InfoWorld
“HTML 5 aims to change all that. When it is finalized, the new standard will include tags and APIs for improved interactivity, multimedia, and localization. As experimental support for HTML 5 features has crept into the current crop of Web browsers, some developers have even begun voicing hope that this new, modernized HTML will free them from reliance on proprietary plug-ins such as Flash, QuickTime, and Silverlight.”
tags: HTML
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Major League Baseball to Stream ESPN Events – NYTimes.com
“ESPN had previously used the services of Move Networks, based in American Fork, Utah. But Move’s system required that customers download a special video player that uses Microsoft’s Silverlight technology, said John Kosner, senior vice president of ESPN Digital Media. The network wanted to make its site easier to use by moving to a supplier that used Adobe’s popular Flash software, which operates within the Web browser.”
tags: baseball, espn, silverlight, microsoft
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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W3C pulls former Novell CTO for CEO spot
“Filling a position left open since 2008, former Novell CTO Jeffrey Jaffe has taken on the role of chief executive officer for the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium).”
tags: novell, w3c
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Second Life’s virtual money can become real-life cash – washingtonpost.com
“Last year, as the physical economy withered, Second Life’s economy blossomed, with user-to-user transactions topping $567 million in actual U.S. currency, a 65 percent jump over 2008. About 770,000 unique users made repeat visits to Second Life in December, and the users, known as residents, cashed out $55 million of their Second Life earnings last year, transferring that money to PayPal accounts.”
tags: second-life, virtual-world
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What to expect from HTML 5 | Developer World – InfoWorld
“HTML 5 aims to change all that. When it is finalized, the new standard will include tags and APIs for improved interactivity, multimedia, and localization. As experimental support for HTML 5 features has crept into the current crop of Web browsers, some developers have even begun voicing hope that this new, modernized HTML will free them from reliance on proprietary plug-ins such as Flash, QuickTime, and Silverlight.”
tags: HTML
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Major League Baseball to Stream ESPN Events – NYTimes.com
“ESPN had previously used the services of Move Networks, based in American Fork, Utah. But Move’s system required that customers download a special video player that uses Microsoft’s Silverlight technology, said John Kosner, senior vice president of ESPN Digital Media. The network wanted to make its site easier to use by moving to a supplier that used Adobe’s popular Flash software, which operates within the Web browser.”
tags: baseball, espn, silverlight, microsoft
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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IT PRO | Q&A: Mark Kingdon on Second Life for business
“At the CeBIT conference in Hanover this week, Kingdon told IT PRO that more business functions would move to worlds like Second Life, for meetings, simulations and more – especially after the launch of more user-friendly systems, like the beta of its new viewer, which allows document sharing.”
tags: second-life, virtual-world
Gamasutra – News – BigWorld Debuts New Indie, Academic Engine Licenses
“Hoping to offer its tools to a new userbase, engine developer BigWorld is launching three new licenses geared for indie, student and small commercial MMO developers.
BigWorld Technology suite intends to offer a “complete technical architecture” for online game and virtual world developers, and includes BigWorld Server Software, Content Creation Pipeline, 3D Client Engine Package, and Live Management Tools & Instrumentation.”
tags: bigworld, virtual-world
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Hands-on: a close look at Ubuntu’s new non-brown theme
“Canonical is updating Ubuntu’s look and feel with a new style that departs from the popular Linux distribution’s traditional brown theming. The new theme, which was announced yesterday as part of an initiative to overhaul Ubuntu’s branding and visual identity, will be used in the upcoming Ubuntu 10.04 release, codenamed Lucid Lynx.”
tags: ubuntu, linux, theme
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IBM brings memory flexibility to x86 servers
“IBM’s eX5 servers will come in blade and rackmount configurations, with the first ones being released later in March. IBM is taking the Intel architecture and adding a chip of IBM’s own design that reduces latency between memory and processors. IBM claims the new servers will improve database performance by a factor of 30 over current systems, while greatly improving performance-per-watt and virtual server density.”
tags: ibm, server, ex5
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IBM Unveils eX5 Servers — InformationWeek
“IBM on Tuesday introduced a new server technology it says will dramatically increase performance and cut computing costs for businesses that run their applications and storage on industry-standard, Intel-based servers.
Big Blue’s eX5 chipset, announced at the CeBIT industry conference in Hannover, Germany, promises to reduce the number of servers required for a given workload by 50%, cut storage costs by 97%, and lower licensing fees by half, according to the company.”
tags: ex5, ibm, server
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IBM is innovating in servers again | The View from Forrester Research | ZDNet.com
“We also applaud IBM’s aggressiveness in announced the new System x lineup ahead of the official launch of Intel and AMD’s new processors. The usual routine calls for the server vendors to wait for these components to be announced in order to avoid pre-empting details of these new parts. IBM deftly sidestepped this concern opening a window in the press just for itself.
Welcome back System x.”
tags: ibm, server, system-x, ex5
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Real-world woes shuttering virtual world There | Geek Gestalt – CNET News
“There’s departure from the scene will mean that the environment for immersive 3D social virtual worlds, already increasingly barren, will now be even more so. But perhaps because it chose a different financial model, privately-held Second Life publisher Linden Lab has managed to stay ahead of the recession and is said to be profitable.”
tags: virtual-world, there.com
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New York State Trout Season Opens April 1 – NYS Dept. of Environmental Conservation
“Trout season opens April 1 in New York State, and anglers can again look forward to a great year of fishing, thanks to the natural diversity of angling opportunities within New York and management of the state’s fisheries by DEC.”
tags: NYS, fishing
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How Sun’s need to control the code cost them the company | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com
“Real Free Software projects like Linux completely give up centralized control and ownership, in favor of a decentralized model that means contributors keep ownership and see direct benefits to participation, with no one party being able to take advantage over others.”
tags: linux, open-source, sun, oracle, solaris
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Twitter Drops MySQL For Cassandra — Cloud databases — InformationWeek
“Guess what? Cassandra is going to tweet. The open source Cassandra data management system is going to replace the MySQL database system at Twitter, the latest of several MySQL replacements at social networking sites, according to Ryan King, a software engineer at Twitter.”
tags: twitter, cassandra, mysql
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Release Notes/Second Life Beta Viewer/2.0 – Second Life Wiki
“Thank you for downloading the Beta release of Viewer 2, the next generation Second Life viewer that combines an easy browser-like experience with complete shared media capabilities. This new viewer is designed with the average resident in mind, so it has nearly all the capabilities currently available in Viewer 1.23, but it’s been reorganized into a friendlier and more intuitive user experience. This guide is designed to help you quickly reorient yourself to the new viewer and allow you to take full advantage of the new features available exclusively in Viewer 2 – in particular, Second Life Shared Media and the new enhanced Second Life Search.
On this page you’ll find highlights of many of Viewer 2’s basic features, but there’s much more to learn for Second Life content creators, developers, and other power users.”
tags: second-life
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451 CAOS Theory » Dual of denial – on the success and failure of dual licensing
“Where we do see dual licensing used, it is more often in enabling users that are unwilling or unable to use the GNU GPL to make use of the underlying code. In that way, dual licensing can be used to serve two different user groups, rather than attempting to cross- or up-sell open source users with a commercial version.”
tags: 451, open-source, license
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Raph’s Website » Are virtual worlds over?
“Now, I am a virtual world person, obviously. I don’t see much distinction between the game worlds and the non-game ones like Second Life. I have been working with them since the text muds, for over 15 years, which doesn’t exactly put me in the true old dino category where Richard Bartle and Randy Farmer reside, but I think it is fair to say that I have been closely identified with the space for a long long time now.
And I think that they aren’t over, but the form that they have taken is.”
tags: virtual-world, second-life
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The Maria Awards – Hypergrid Business
“Can’t wait for Oscar night? I know I can’t. So here at Hypergrid Business we’re doling out our own awards. First, a little video introduction. This is a little sailboat trip that opensim’s own Bri Hasp took across a few virtual worlds. Yes, it is now possible to sail a boat from one virtual world to another without logging in again.”
tags: opensim, open-source, virtual-world
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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Linux kernel R&D worth over 1bn euros • The Register
“How much would it cost the European Union to cobble together the Linux kernel from scratch?
The development costs would reach over a billion euros (or about £900m, or $1.4bn USD), according to researchers from the University of Oviendo, Spain. Jesús García-García and Mª Isabel Alonso de Magdaleno are set to present this open source thought experiment at the European Union’s Conference on Corporate R&D next month.”
tags: linux, open-source
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Hungry? How About An Open Source Restaurant | NetworkWorld.com Community
“Imagine just finishing a great dish at a restaurant and wishing you could make that at home. Well at the Instructables Restaurant you can do just that. In fact not only can you get the “source code” of the dish you ate, but you can download the plans to the furniture and fixtures as well.”
tags: restaurant, open-source
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A word of caution when trying the Second Life Viewer 2 Beta with current OpenSim | justincc.org
“However, according to John Hurliman the version of the OpenMetaverse library currently being used by opensim has a problem dealing with at least one of the new inventory packets in the 2.0 Viewer. This means that it’s not impossible that using the viewer with OpenSim today could inadvertently destroy some of your inventory items.”
tags: opensim, second-life
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The Leader – News from Wrexham & Flintshire – ‘Second Life’ director talks social networking at Glyndwr University
“More than 100 budding businessmen and women are expected to attend the first ever pan-Wales virtual business conference at Glyndwr University.
The event, part-funded by the Welsh Assembly Government, will hear from virtual business experts and top young entrepreneurs.
John Lester, operations director at Linden Labs, founders of Second Life, is set to deliver a talk on opportunities in the virtual world from the United States via a video link-up.”
tags: second-life, virtual-world
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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VMware vs. Red Hat: The Next Virtual Machine Management Battleground — ServerWatch.com
“Two areas where Thadani said he believes Red Hat’s KVM-based virtualization currently has an advantage over VMware are price and application support. Exact costs depend on the number of hosts and machines being virtualized, as well as the operating systems concerned. However, using RHEV instead of VMware could result in between 40 percent and 80 percent costs savings, he claimed. Red Hat guarantees that, because RHEV is built from the same kernel as RHEL, any Linux application that runs on RHEL will also run in a RHEL virtual machine virtualized on RHEV. If it doesn’t run properly in this way, Thadani said Red Hat will provide support to fix it so that it does.”
tags: vmware, red-hat, virtualization, kvm, rhev-h
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Novell Cloud Security Service Nears Launch | The VAR Guy
“Novell continues to push beyond the SUSE Linux market. Among the major moves: The company is beta testing Novell Cloud Security Service, which is scheduled for general availability in May or June, according to Novell sources attending the Parallels Summit in Miami. Here are the implications for hosting providers and cloud integrators.”
tags: cloud, novell, security
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Safari 4: Installing and Running it on Ubuntu Linux | Daily World Buzz
“Here’s an interesting tutorial that we would like to share with you on Daily World Buzz. It was written by Jun Auza of TechSource from Bohol. It’s a simple step by step tutorial with screenshots of how to install Safari 4 and use it in your Ubuntu Linux OS.”
tags: safari, ubuntu, linux, browser
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Microsoft Plays Catch-up — Sub-$70 Linux Virtual Desktop
“Userful Corporation, the world leader in multiseat Linux desktop virtualization, today announced that 30,000 schools worldwide have chosen Userful virtual desktops to reduce computing costs and improve computer-to-student ratios. Microsoft recently announced its own multi-seat solution, Microsoft Windows MultiPoint Server 2010, seven years after Userful pioneered the technology on Linux back in 2002. Another classic case of Linux vs. Windows, only this time Linux has the upper hand with Userful having already sold 750,000 seats.”
tags: linux, desktop, virtualization
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What if content management were 3D? – FierceContentManagement
“During our conversation, I began thinking about what it would be like if someone designed a content management system in three dimensions. Think about how useful it would be to get all your company’s content laid out in front of you in a graphical view in which you could literally walk inside the system. How cool would that be?”
tags: content-management, 3d, virtual-world
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10 Ideas for Leveraging Virtual Events – Joerg Rathenberg : Target Marketing
“While more cost-effective than physical marketing events, virtual events offer another huge advantage: detailed information. As opposed to physical events, where often the only lead data consists of business card content, virtual events enable marketers to track and evaluate every move of each attendee within the environment, resulting in highly qualified sales leads.”
tags: marketing
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New World Notes: Second Life 2.0 Analysis: Epic Win for Userbase, Competition Killer… But Not Mass Market Game Changer (Yet)
“We keep using the web because we already know the answer to the why question — we use the web for destination sites, for locating information, online shopping, etc. etc. With a service that looks and acts like the world, the why question is more profound, and overwhelming. It’s why I believe an achievement system, or even an leveling ladder with experience points for exploring the world, creating content, and so on, is necessary. Not to turn Second Life into an MMO, but to give new users an activity structure that will inspire them to get the full breadth of Second Life and its possibilities.”
tags: second-life, virtual-world
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Second-day thoughts on the new Second Life viewer – Computerworld Blogs
“And search won’t solve the what-to-do problem. The only solution is to connect newcomers with like-minded people. The best communication mechanism for Second Life is the oldest one on the planet: Word of mouth. You find out about things because your friends tell you about them.”
tags: second-life, virtual-world
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Five essential design sites | Create | Creative Notes | Macworld
“When it comes to working on creative projects, even professional designers need a little help now and then. There’s no shortage of Web sites they can turn to for visual inspiration and advice. And, for the most part, civilians like me can take advantage of those very same resources. Whether I need specific technical instruction or just some good ideas, these five sites are where I turn to first.”
tags: design
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
A little overagressive on the links today, but there’s a lot going on …
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The Apache Software Foundation Announces the 15th Anniversary of the Apache HTTP Web Server : The Apache Software Foundation Blog
“The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) — developers, stewards, and incubators of 138 Open Source projects — today announced the 15th anniversary of the Apache HTTP Web Server.
The ASF’s first project became the world’s most popular Web server software within the first six months of its inception. The Apache HTTP Server today powers nearly 112 million Websites world-wide.”
tags: software, apache, open-source
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Red Hat News | Red Hat Enterprise Linux: A Decade-Shaping Technology
“Last week, eWEEK Labs published their picks for the top 25 technologies that changed the decade. They judged their selections on the impact the technologies had on the past 10 years, while also considering the affect that these technologies will have on the future of IT. Among the winners – which included innovative technologies such as the iPhone, the Blackberry, Blade Servers and Bluetooth – was our leading operating platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux.”
tags: linux, red-hat
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A handbook for the open source way, written the open source way | opensource.com
“Write a book about building community the open source way… and write it with a community, the open source way. Meaning, open the text up, allow interested users to contribute, and see what happens.
Brilliant.
The book is entitled The Open Source Way: Creating and nurturing communities of contributors and you can access the current text here and the wiki for contributors here.
I caught up with Karsten Wade, who is leading the project, to learn more.”
tags: open-source, books
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The Open Source Way – Red Hat
“This guide is for helping people to understand how to and how not to engage with community over projects such as software, content, marketing, art, infrastructure, standards, and so forth. It contains knowledge distilled from years of Red Hat experience.”
tags: red-hat, open-source, community
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Julian Lombardi’s Blog: Better Cover Your Assets
“I really liked Metaplace and used it as part of my virtual worlds course here at Duke last semester. I’m so relieved that the shutdown happened between semesters! I’m also relieved that I didn’t invest much time in building Metaplace-based educational environments for my students (which I was seriously considering). The rapid fall of Metaplace really underscores that any effort to invest in a platform where content (or the organization of content) is stored on a third party’s servers is a very risky proposition.”
tags: virtual-world
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For Developers (The Chromium Projects)
“Find information about how Chromium works, how to participate in the development of Chromium, or just how to build it yourself.”
tags: Chromium, open-source
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OOoCon 2010
“The 2010 OpenOffice.org Conference will take place from August 31st to September 3rd in Budapest, the capital of Hungary.”
tags: ooocon, openoffice.org
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MISYS Open Source Solutions Enters Strategic Partnership with Markit – MarketWatch
“Misys Open Source Solutions (“MOSS”), a division of Misys Plc (FTSE:MSY.L), today announced a partnership with Markit, a leading, global financial information services company, to promote the Misys Environmental Registry System (“MERS”), the new carbon management emissions reporting solution that will be released March 31, 2010.”
tags: open-source, environment
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Second Life seeks mainstream adoption – Computerworld Blogs
“Viewer 2.0 is far more organized than before, and that makes it easier to use. It brings the most important functions to the surface, while less frequently used tools are hidden in menus, available when needed but not jumping out to confuse the beginner.
The top of the viewer now looks like a Web browser, with an address bar that contains the 3D coordinates of your avatar’s location, in a form resembling a URL. As with a Web browser, you can embed bookmarks (“landmarks” in Second Life jargon), in the horizontal space below the address bar.”
tags: second-life, virtual-world, viewer, browser
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Second Life 2.0: sneak peek of the new viewer : The Metaverse Journal – Virtual World News
“Overall, Linden Lab deserve kudos for delivering a significantly revamped viewer that should make using Second Life markedly easier for new residents in particular. Linden Lab have consistently stated their commitment to improving the user experience and this is one of the more concrete examples of how that is now being delivered. The proof of Viewer 2’s success will only come with widespread use, but initial impressions are positive. Of course, Linden Lab need to pull off a usability coup to ensure ongoing growth. Combined with potential improvements in grid performance, the horizon seems a little brighter than it has been in a while.”
tags: second-life, virtual-world
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Macmillan’s Future Of Textbooks Looks a Lot Like Wikipedia – DynamicBooks – Gizmodo
“More to the point, it’s a step toward electronic textbooks, and away from the bizarre economy of print textbooks. DynamicBooks textbooks, which will accessible on an computer, as well as the iPhone (and presumably the iPad) will be much—about 50%—cheaper than print textbooks, which are sold at high prices with the expectation that they’ll later be resold.”
tags: textbooks, macmillan, ebook
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
It’s been about three years since I posted a tip of the day for the Second Life virtual world, but since I’m attending a virtual meeting in IBM right now, I’ll put this one up:
You can turn off the (annoying) typing animation and sounds by going into Edit | Preferences | Text Chat and unchecking the box next to “Play typing animation while typing.”
You might also want to go into Audio & Video and lower the sound for UI and turn up the sound for Voice.
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Stanford mathematician: In reality, simulation is key to math education
“A massively multiplayer online game requiring players to employ mathematical concepts could revolutionize the teaching of mathematics at the middle school level, according to Stanford mathematician Keith Devlin. That’s the age when math and science proficiency plummets among U.S. students. Devlin says the game project would be so complex and expensive that the federal government would likely have to spearhead it. But, he said, a pilot project showed such a game would be doable.”
tags: stanford, mathematics, education, virtual-world
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Ubuntu Netbook Remix enlightens ARM support
“With a lack of open source 3D graphics support on ARM devices impeding Ubuntu’s use in ARM-based netbooks, Canonical turned to the Enlightment project’s libraries to add visual panache to 2D interfaces. The Canonical project to use the open source Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL) was announced in a blog post by in Canonical Ubuntu Mobile Developer Jamie Bennett, and then echoed by a post at the Enlightenment project. Bennett’s blog post posted two examples of Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) interfaces based on the EFL technology that should appear in the Lucid Lynx Ubuntu release in April.”
tags: linux, ubuntu, arm, remix
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Sorry, English major, the engineers have triumphed
“In 2008, Nicholas Carr took to the pages of The Atlantic to make the provocative case that Google might be “making us stupid.” His basic worry was that a reliance on the Web was rewiring his brain, that he was skimming along the surface of links, facts, and ideas, but now had trouble engaging in more focused thought and in reading longer pieces of text.”
tags: google
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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Joe Sanchez and Leslie Jarmon – The Educators Coop » Second life Learning Curve
“This first video focuses on overcoming the learning curve in Second Life. Over the years I’ve conducted quite a bit of research in this area and i wanted to provide an avenue for current and potential teachers in Second Life to hear directly from students about their experiences.”
tags: virtual-world, video, education, second-life
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Lego creating multiplayer online game | ITworld
“The game will have multiple Lego-based worlds to be explored. Some worlds will have traditional Lego themes, such as pirates, ninjas and castles, while others will be novel for the Lego space. Users can assemble semi-completed components from these worlds into entirely new designs, or they can build new components from scratch, using standard bricks.”
tags: game, lego, virtual-world
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Red Hat Headlines Southern California Linux Expo – MarketWatch
“Red Hat, Inc. /quotes/comstock/13*!rht/quotes/nls/rht (RHT 28.35, -0.83, -2.84%) , the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, and the Fedora Project, a Red Hat sponsored and community-supported open source collaboration project, today announced they will deliver a keynote address and additional presentations at the eighth annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE). SCALE is one of the largest Linux conferences in the region, attracting enterprise and industry professionals along with smaller businesses, non-profit industries and Linux enthusiasts.”
tags: red-hat, conference
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Feds look for their avatars in 3-D — Federal Computer Week
“The Agriculture Department plans to award multiple contracts under a program to develop a fully-immersive, persistent 3D experience in a virtual world populated by avatars that can be customized to resemble real-life users, according to documents published on the Federal Business Opportunities Web Site.
The virtual world’s features would need to be at least as good as or better than what’s offered publicly by Second Life or World of Warcraft, according to the statement of work for the project.”
tags: virtual-world, government
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The World’s Most Expensive Island–Online – Forbes.com
“While Storey’s example is extreme, buying and selling virtual goods in videogames and virtual worlds is becoming mainstream. The virtual goods market in the U.S. is estimated to reach $1.6 billion this year, up from $1 billion in 2009, according to research firm Inside Networks. And the U.S. is just a part of the worldwide market, which some experts put as high as $10 billion; countries like China and Korea are major players.”
tags: virtual-world, entropia
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ProtonMedia Upgrades ProtoSphere, the Leading Virtual World for Business | .NET Developer’s Journal
“Today ProtonMedia released ProtoSphere v.1.4, a milestone update of the company’s market-leading 3-D virtual world for business. The new release boasts the seven major features most requested by global life sciences companies to meet their most demanding meeting, collaboration, and learning requirements”
tags: virtual-world, press-release
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OU announces Linux course – The H Open Source: News and Features
“The Open University has announced ‘Linux – an introduction’ a ten week course on the open source operating system aimed at absolute beginners.”
tags: linux, open-source, education
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Chrome OS vs Ubuntu Netbook Remix | News | TechRadar UK
“Although Chrome OS is based on Ubuntu, Google has no intention right now of targeting the mass market.
Instead, Chrome OS will be certified to run on specific hardware, which at the very least will need either an x86 or ARM CPU and a solid-state drive (SSD) for storage.”
tags: ubuntu, linux, chrome, google
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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Eleven is Louder: OpenSource Operating Systems
“Well, I figured that I should take an opportunity to introduce a few opensource OSs that really haven’t been in the lime light much. We all know about Linux and many of us also know about Darwin and BSD. Still some know about OpenSolaris. Which ever ones you know or don’t here’s a chance to get the scoop.”
tags: open-source, operating-system
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Discussing Unity, Realxtend, Opensim, Blue Mars and Second Life | The ARCH Network
“This blog is all about discussing architecture and design in virtual worlds – so lets discuss it! What’s up with Blue Mars? How is Architecture Islands in opensim coming along? What’s the coolest new architecture-related build in Second Life? What about Unity3D – have you tried it yet? So many platforms, so little time..”
tags: opensim, realxtend, virtual-world, architecture, second-life
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Need some space, or some help getting your architecture-related virtual world project started? | The ARCH Network
“If you’re totally new, and would like to learn more about what virtual worlds are, how they work, and the features of each platform, you can book a 2 hour workshop to help get you started. If you understand the platforms, but need help learning how to build, we can set up weekly appointments to review both basic and advanced building techniques.”
tags: second-life, virtual-world, architecture
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
As a complement to my Life with Linux blog series, I’m introducing another series which explores what I can do in virtual worlds and immersive Internet environments on Linux.
In the previous installment in this series, I discussed setting up a very basic four region world in opensim. Other than a rather badly dressed avatar, there was nothing in the world except flat land. Once you start building things, you’ll want textures to apply to parts of your creations. For example, you don’t make a brick wall by creating hundreds of little red bricks and stacking them, you make one of more large rectangular sections and then apply a texture with images of bricks on them.
A texture can be almost any image, but many of the interesting ones for building are tiled: the right and left, and often the top and bottom, edges line up when two objects having the same texture are placed next to each other. I’m assuming the sizes of the objects and various stretching factors of the textures are correct.
Some texture images are created artificially in programs like PhotoShop or GIMP, others are just photographs, and yet others are photos that have been adjusted so that the textures can be tiled. If you create your own textures consider making them freely available to others.
In the spirit of Linux and open source and free things, here are some resources for getting textures at no charge to you. I’m going to include some in-world Second Life locations since the Second Life viewer runs on Linux desktops with appropriate graphics hardware.
Continue reading Virtual Life with Linux: Free textures
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Q&A: IBM’s Alistair Rennie on the big picture for Lotus | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com
“IBM is spreading access to its Lotus social and collaboration software all over the various computing platforms. But what’s the big strategy here?
I spoke with Alistair Rennie (right), IBM’s Lotus general manager, about trends like the consumerization of IT and the grand plan for his unit. Here’s the recap.”
tags: lotus
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IBM to support iPhone, Macs with new software | Software, Interrupted – CNET News
“Big Blue is expected to announce Thursday at Macworld San Francisco that it will soon be delivering its enterprise social platform, Lotus Connections, and Lotus Quickr team collaboration package for use with the iPhone and Mac.”
tags: ibm, mac, iphone, lotus
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Groklaw – Packaging Open Source, by Mark Webbink
“There is an article by Mark Webbink, Esq., “Packaging Open Source”, in the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review, Vol 1, No 2 (2009) that I think you’ll find interesting. It compares various FOSS licenses and how they handle compilations and collective works. The context of the article is specifically packaging Linux with an application into a software appliance, but the descriptions of the licenses and how they work are broadly useful in other contexts as well. I am republishing the article here because many of you face choices about what license you will use on your works, so you also need to understand, and others of you are lawyers who would like to understand FOSS licenses better.”
tags: open source
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RHEL 5.5 advances KVM, WiFi
“Red Hat released the first beta of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.5, providing memory allocation enhancements to the KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) hypervisor. RHEL 5.5 also introduces new storage and WiFi drivers, and supports new AMD, IBM, and Intel processors, says the company.”
tags: red-hat, linux, kvm
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Open Innovation: Accessing a canon of open source research
“So one of the things that’s clear is that even though the room represents hundreds of open source conference and journal papers, few of them have read any of the social science research on open source.”
tags: open-source, innovation
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LinuxPlanet – Interviews – What Matters to Open Source: Licensing or Community? – More to FOSS Than Licenses
“For instance, beyond open source’s licensing components is the idea of its community, which in many cases can be the ultimate arbiter of the success or failure of an open source effort: Simply making an application available under an open source license may not necessarily be enough for a project to succeed, nor is adopting an open source license some kind of magic pixie dust that you sprinkle onto a project to make it successful.”
tags: open-source, community, license
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451 CAOS Theory » Open source evolving with the cloud
“Interestingly, the OpenECP project chose to license it under the Affero GPLv3, and we’re watching licensing moves to see if cloud computing prompts more use of AGPL.”
tags: cloud, GPL, open-source
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Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer Week
“The Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer is Ubuntu Community Manager Jono Bacon’s pet project. The idea behind the project is to enable developers to write quick, scratch-an-itch application and making development on Ubuntu fun and more accessible.”
tags: ubuntu, linux
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Yale Daily News – Virtual world, real money in ‘Second Life’
“Yale owns two islands. But you can’t get to either of them by air, land or sea.
They exist only in Second Life, an online universe where people can buy land and trade services.
The University purchased its first virtual island, Elihu, in 2007. While the second island lies fallow and Elihu Island currently has only two projects, people involved with the projects said Yale’s presence on Second Life is a cost-effective teaching tool — each island costs $700 to buy and $147.50 a month to maintain — that they hope the University expands.”
tags: second-life, virtual-world, yale
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
As a complement to my Life with Linux blog series, I’m introducing another series which explores what I can do in virtual worlds and immersive Internet environments on Linux.
Last night I decided to play with OpenSim, aka OpenSimulator, which is, according to its website:
OpenSimulator is a 3D Application Server. It can be used to create a virtual environment (or world) which can be accessed through a variety of clients, on multiple protocols. OpenSimulator allows you to develop your environment using the technologies you feel work best – we’ve designed the software to be easily extendable through loadable modules to build completely custom configurations. OpenSimulator is released under a BSD License, making it both open source, and commercially friendly to embed in products.
I’ve fiddled with it before, but never really got something up and running very long. My new plan is experiment with opensim locally and then install it on my SliceHost account so I can access the virtual world regions from anywhere. My goals for last night were simple:
- Download and install OpenSim on my desktop running Ubuntu Linux 9.10 “Karmic Koala.”
- Create four regions arranged in a square and start them off with perfectly flat terrain. I planned to call the four regions Zeus, Hera, Athena, and Poseidon.
Continue reading Virtual Life with Linux: Standalone OpenSim on Ubuntu 9.10
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