04 February 2009

Light Blue Rebel Code

Cambridge University is celebrating its 800th anniversary in 2009. The official history tells the tale of the buildings; but what about the ideas?

Down through the years, Oxford has produced many powerful men and Cambridge many iconoclasts – scientists, philosophers and revolutionaries. The polarisation is by no means total: Oxford's alumni include the reformer John Wyclif and the father of economics Adam Smith, while ours include the Prime Minister Charles Grey, who abolished slavery and passed the Great Reform Bill. But we've long produced more of the rebels; way back in the Civil War, for example, we were parliamentarian while Oxford was royalist. Why should this be?

Read on for the rest of this splendidly iconoclastic history of Cambridge University by Ross Anderson, a man who managed a fair bit of iconoclasm in his undergraduate days, as I recall.... (Via John Naughton.)

Syria and Lebanon Go Open Source

Here's a useful post on what's happening with regards to open source in the Middle East:

A good news for the open source scene. Two great events are running -or going to run- this month in the Arab region. The first one it’s called the iFoss09 and it’s currently going on in Damascus, Syria at the SCS Center, Tishreen Park in Omaween Square.

...


As for neighbouring Lebanon, Beirut is going to host Open Sesame, the first ever Arab barcamp on feb. 28th (the place is still in discussion but most probably will the very cool Rootspace of Dave Munir Nabti).

(Note to self: must learn Arabic.)

Volantis Who? - a UK Open Source Success Story

Guildford is not famous for being a hotbed of open source, but that's where the British open source company Volantis is based. It's not as well known as it ought to be, probably because it sits astride the computing-mobile divide, helping mobile operators and others to display Web content on their devices....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Microsoft Issues "Microsoft on the Issues"

Here's an interesting site I'd missed:

Today we are launching "Microsoft on the Issues" to open another, more direct line of communication that will enable us to quickly and succinctly provide our perspective on the pressing technology matters of the day. We do not want this to be a one-way conversation. We want to create a transparent dialogue with readers and stakeholders. We want to enhance our participation in discussions that propel policy-making at local, national and international levels.

In the weeks and months ahead we’ll pay particular attention to the next wave in the computing revolution and its potential to use the power of software and the Internet in new ways to enhance choice for consumers, businesses and governments. We’ll share our thoughts on how this computing revolution can accelerate economic growth by enabling companies and individuals to increase productivity, collaboration and job creation. And we’ll outline the policy framework that we believe will give this next wave of computing the greatest chance of success

What I think this shows is that Microsoft recognises that it is losing the battle for the minds of the public, and wants to try to engage with more of them more directly. Put another way, it realises there are a lot of critical voices out there that are beginning to convince people there may be a reality beyond Microsoft's old mythology.

This will be a site to watch in the months to come, since it will function as a canary in the coalmine, flagging up those issues that Microsoft is most concerned about.

Canadian Government Considers Open Source

The Canadian Government has put out a "Request For Information" (RFI) - essentially, a formal invitation for feedback on the topic.

Rather amusingly, the RFI speaks of "No-Charge Licensed Software":


Canada has a Request for Information (RFI) related to No-Charge Licensed Software (typically referred to as Free and Open Source Software or FOSS and also applicable to freeware). For the purpose of the RFI, No Charge Licensed Software means Licensed Software that is available at no charge for the Licensed Software and is typically made available as a free download from the Internet. No Charge Licensed Software may also have No Charge Software Support Services (NCSSS) available at no charge from the Internet.

The general aim of the request is as follows:

The purpose of the RFI is to help the Government of Canada (GC) put together guidelines related to the planning, acquisition, use and disposal of No Charge Licensed Software (NCLS). While there is already significant interest for No Charge Licensed Software within the Government of Canada there are many questions being asked, see below. There exists operationally a requirement to produce common guidelines that are fair, open and transparent and can be applied consistently across departments.

The objective of the RFI is to provide an opportunity for those interested to provide information they feel Canada should be aware of when developing internal guidelines related to the planning, usage and disposal of No Charge Licensed Software. Information that would be relevant to the development of guidelines will be appreciated. The information provided will be reviewed by Canada, as part of a process of producing No Charge Licensed Software Guidelines for Government of Canada End-Users.

There are also a series of specific questions the Canadian Government would like answered, which give a better idea of what its thinking about:

Q1. In the Overview, the Crown provided a definition for No Charge Licensed Software. Is this an appropriate definition?

Q2. What are reasonable criteria that the Crown should consider in a decision process for acquiring No Charge Licensed Software? Are there circumstances in which the acquisition of No Charge Licensed Software would not be advisable?

Q3. What factors other than price should be considered as part of an evaluation guideline for No Charge Licensed Software? Are there other factors beyond those outlined in Appendix A & B that the Crown should consider?

Q4. How should existing Government Furnished Equipment, Services, Service Level Agreements and internal resources be considered when evaluating the usage of No Charge Licensed Software?

Q5. How practical is No Charge Licensed Software? Are there hidden costs that need to be considered as part of the process of evaluating the alternatives available?

Q6. What are the general financial, technical and security risks associated with acquiring and using No Charge Licensed Software?

Q7. How do Open Standards and interoperability factor into evaluation considerations?

Q8. How does the technology factor into the evaluation consideration, such as ability to maintain and evergreen?

Q9. How does the Crown evaluate the flexibility of the licensing models for No Charge Licensed Software?

Q10. What impact will No Charge Licensed Software have on Government Licensed End-User Networks?

Obviously the Canadians are taking a rather cautious approach here, but it seems that they are seriously considering using more free software. You can submit your comments (in English or French) until the 19 February.

03 February 2009

Now Brazil Goes Big on the GNU/Linux Desktop

At the end of last year I wrote about a big Brazilian project to provide 150,000 GNU/Linux notebooks for schools. Now the Brazilian Ministry of Education has topped that by ordering 324,000 "green" workstations running on GNU/Linux (although I can't quite tell whether this is as well as or instead of - anyone know?).

Here's the announcement by the Canadian company Userful, which is providing the very cool technology:

Userful, ThinNetworks, and Positivo today announced that they have been selected to supply 324,000 virtualized desktops to schools in all of Brazil's 5,560 municipalities.

This initiative will provide computer access to millions of children throughout Brazil. It is a historical achievement being: the world’s largest ever virtual desktop deployment; the world’s largest ever desktop Linux deployment; and a new record low-cost for PCs with the PC sharing hardware and software costing less than $50 per seat.

The workstations are "green" because they are virtual desktops consisting of just a screen and a keyboard/mouse, all plugged into a central unit; up to 10 such low-energy setups can run off one PC. The claimed savings are considerable:

Userful's ability to turn 1 computer into 10 independent workstations will save the Brazilian government an estimated $47 million in up-front costs, $9 million in annual power savings and additional savings in ongoing administration and support costs. The computers will use 90% less electricity as compared to a traditional PC-per-workstation solution.

Modern desktop computers sit idle while we check our e-mail, surf the web, or type a document. Userful's PC sharing & virtualization technology leverages this unused computing power to create an environmentally efficient alternative to traditional desktop computing. Up to 10 users can work on a single computer by simply attaching extra monitors, mice and keyboards. "This deployment alone saves more than 140,000 tons of CO2 emissions annually, the same as taking 24,000 cars off the road, or planting 35,000 acres of trees”, said Sean Rousseau, Marketing Manager at Userful. Turning 1 computer into 10 reduces computer hardware waste by up to 80%, further decreasing its environmental footprint.

Sounds like a pretty impressive solution, in terms of cost and energy. It's particularly suitable for schools, where large numbers of users need to work at the same time, but not intensively. The size of the deployment should ensure that other countries get to hear about it, and maybe even try it. Are you listening, UK?

Update 1: As you may have noticed, the link above to the press release no longer works; all references have been pulled. I'll try to find out what's going on and update this post.

Update 2: Apparently the original press release had some "errors", currently unspecified. I hope to have the revised press release soon, and I will update the story as necessary. It seems that the gist remains unchanged, which is good.

Update 3: Press release has now reappeared.

Spreading the Spreadfirefox Effect

One of the most powerful forces in free software is the community behind the code. Its potential can be seen most clearly in the Spread Firefox site, which has mobilised hundreds of thousands of Firefox users to spread the word about the browser. One of the ways they have done that is through coming up with designs for various uses.

Mozilla has (somewhat belatedly) taken note of that tremendous success, and hopes to produce a more directed version, called the Mozilla Creative Collective. As John Slater, Creative Director at Mozilla explains....

On Open Enterprise blog.

02 February 2009

Into Africa

If there were ever a region that could benefit immensely from open source, it is Africa. And yet South Africa aside, not much seems to be happening there, partly for lack of support for those evangelising there. This should help:


The Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA) has received a grant from the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) towards the FOSS Advocacy for West Africa (FOSSWAY) project. FOSSWAY is a one-million dollar project which is intended to entrench advocacy for free and open source software in the Western part of the African continent beginning January 2009.

FOSSWAY will advocate for FOSS and its use at all levels including academia, the media, and secondary, vocational, and technical educational institutions. The project will also advocate for consideration of FOSS issues in the formulation of policies and standards in the sub-region. The project shall not just promote, but also actively enable all participating agencies, schools, universities, standards bodies, media groups, advocates, groups and individuals to use and benefit from FOSS. Having drawn its project team from among the best of advocates, practitioners, technicians, developers, and trainers in FOSS from the region, FOSSWAY promises to push the benefits of FOSS beyond the boundaries attained so far, and increase the adoption and use of FOSS in the West Africa. FOSSWAY, in its cross-cutting nature, shall include FOSS research, hands-on training, competitions, media campaigns, on-the-ground roadshows, and prizes.

Let's hope this marks the beginning of big things for open source story in Africa.

Is This the Solution to Spam?

I think I may have come up with a possible solution for spam. But first, some background.

On Open Enterprise blog.

01 February 2009

The Open Bank

We need openness everything - even in banks:


It would feature radical transparency: full disclosure of performance and compensation. The group decided that a banker should not sell a product unless he could pass a test about it. They even decided that there had to be a means to confirm that customers understood what they were buying. They proposed collective risk assessment, creating a means for its constituents to select and perhaps vote on investments. They explored how to offer transparency on each product and customers’ performance with them so that you could compare your returns with fellow customers. And they argued that bankers should be compensated on profit. It wouldn’t be an easy business to run; being answerable is hard. I said later that its slogan should be, “the only bank you can trust.” That is what would make it successful. When I asked, most in the room said they would be such a bank’s customers; many said they’d work for it; almost everyone said they’d invest in it.

Right, that's banks sorted: who's next?

31 January 2009

I'm Sorry, Joi, I Can't Do That

Is Joi Ito barking?

In the future according to Ito: "Every object on the Internet will have a licence and copyright information and the author and the owner attached to the object, and if it's a derivative work, where it's a derivative work of." The licence Ito has in mind will be a Creative Commons one, but there seems no reason why other classes of licence couldn't use similar mechanisms.

And, "what will happen is, once we start building it into all the tools, into your camera, into Adobe Acrobat, into Google, you don't need DRM and watermarks. As long as it's built into the HTML, most of the people who matter will follow it."

In what way will they do this? "You downloaded some music, and say, 'I want to use this in my YouTube video,' it [the software] will say, 'Bap-bap! You can't do that because the copyright says you can't.'" Which does kind of look and feel like DRM, but as Ito says, it's not, it's a way to get away from DRM.

Great: we do away with DRM and end up with an even more intrusive and repressive system of total digital control for everything on- and off-line. That's what the Creative Commons is working towards? Where's Larry Lessig when you need him?

Update: Confused of Calcutta takes these ideas further in his great post "A simple desultory philippic about copyright".

Flatworld: Open Textbooks

Flatworld, a open textbook publishing company, has finally come out of private beta. Here's what makes it different:

We preserve the best of the old - books by leading experts, rigorously reviewed and developed to the highest standards. Then we flip it all on its head.

Our books are free online. We offer convenient, low-cost choices for students – softcovers for under $30, audio books and chapters, self-print options, and more. Our books are open for instructors to modify and make their own (for their own course - not for anybody else's). Our books are the hub of a social learning network where students learn from the book and each other.

Flat World Knowledge. Because great minds are evenly distributed. Great textbooks are not. Until Now.

This isn't entirely new - for example, Rice University is doing something similar with its opencourseware - but it's probably the first time it's been made the basis of a startup.

Of course, the approach is eminently sensible: you give away what's abundant, and sell what's scarce. You create communities around learning, including teachers and students. And, crucially, you let people build on the work of others to improve existing texts - all of which are/seem to be under a Creative Commons licence:

Is the book close to what you need, but not perfect? Now you can make it perfect for you. You can customize your book before you adopt it, or anytime afterward. Think of it as your book – you’re in control and you can modify what you want, when you want.

You will find “Customize This Book” links on the catalog page and on every book page. Click and we load the book you are looking at into our “Build-a-Book” platform (you’ll need to register to do this – we need to save your work somewhere). You can click and drag chapters and sections into a better order that's right for you. Change the order of chapters or sections - or delete them altogether. Beginning Summer 09, you can add large chunks of information like a case study or an exercise set. You can search our database for material and add that. You can click the pencil icon and load that section of the book into our online editor, and actually make changes at the sentence level. Do you now have the perfect text? Great. Click “Save” and we’ll give you a unique URL, and put it in your “My(flat)World” page.

It's too early to tell how this particular implementation will do, but I am absolutely convinced this open textbook approach will do to academic publishing what open source has done to software.

30 January 2009

Open Source Mathematics

Maths is a famously lonely discipline - I should know, having spent three years of my life grappling with a single equation (the equation won). Mathematicians meet, and collaborate, it's true; but what would a truly open source approach to the process of solving mathematical problems look like? Maybe something like this:

Suppose one had a forum (in the non-technical sense, but quite possibly in the technical sense as well) for the online discussion of a particular problem. The idea would be that anybody who had anything whatsoever to say about the problem could chip in. And the ethos of the forum — in whatever form it took — would be that comments would mostly be kept short. In other words, what you would not tend to do, at least if you wanted to keep within the spirit of things, is spend a month thinking hard about the problem and then come back and write ten pages about it. Rather, you would contribute ideas even if they were undeveloped and/or likely to be wrong.

Do read the rest of the post if you can: (a) because it's thought provoking and (b) it's written by the Trinity man and Fields medallist Timothy Gowers.

Defining the Limits of Digital Britain

“Digital Britain” sounds like one of those embarrassingly feeble attempts to make dull things trendy, like “Cool Britannia” a few years ago. Alas, that impression is not dispelled by the contents of the interim report of the same name, released yesterday. It's got lots of the right words, but doesn't really seem to have grasped what they really mean to a digital native.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Why Adware Authors Love IE and Windows

An adware author explains:


Most adware targets Internet Explorer (IE) users because obviously they’re the biggest share of the market. In addition, they tend to be the less-savvy chunk of the market. If you’re using IE, then either you don’t care or you don’t know about all the vulnerabilities that IE has.

IE has a mechanism called a Browser Helper Object (BHO) which is basically a gob of executable code that gets informed of web requests as they’re going. It runs in the actual browser process, which means it can do anything the browser can do– which means basically anything. We would have a Browser Helper Object that actually served the ads, and then we made it so that you had to kill all the instances of the browser to be able to delete the thing. That’s a little bit of persistence right there.

If you also have an installer, a little executable, you can make a Registry entry and every time this thing reboots, the installer will check to make sure the BHO is there. If it is, great. If it isn’t, then it will install it.

(Via Bruce Schneier.)

29 January 2009

Open Access Astro-Observatory Runs GNU/Linux

Montegancedo Observatory is the first free open access astronomical observatory in the world. It is located in Building 6 of the School of Computing. The dome is equipped with a computer-automated, robotized 10” telescope, and several computers operating as a web applications server. The observatory also links and broadcasts images and videos captured by the webcams arranged around the dome... All servers run on GNU/Linux systems.

Providing open access to facilities, mediated by the Internet; providing (presumably) open access to the results in real-time; using free software to run the whole thing: this is the future of science. (Via Open Access News.)

The Naming of Parts/Property/Privilege

Words matter, which is why one of the shrewdest moves was the labelling of copyright infringement - an act that, when carried out by individuals (not criminal gangs), is so innocuous that it's almost boring - as "piracy". This elevates that trival velleity to blood and guts on the high seas, typhoons ripping the mainsail, the rigging cracking, and - well, you get the (exaggerated) picure.

But another of the more subtle acts of subversion was pushing the warm and fuzzy label "intellectual property" to describe the utterly boring legal concepts of copyright, patents and trademarks. As readers of this blog know well, it's not a term I'm prepared to accept, for many reasons. And I was pleased that another defender of software freedom, Sun's Simon Phipps, also has problems with "intellectual property":

The term is used widely in the business and legal communities, and it becomes second nature to speak of patents, copyright, trademarks and trade secrets collectively in this way. The problem with doing so is that the expression is factually wrong, and a legion of open source developers (you know, the ones working on free software) take the use of the phrase "intellectual property" as a genetic marker for "clueless PHB-type" at best and "evil oppressor of geeks" at worst.

Why is it wrong? Well, none of those things is really "property". In particular, copyright and patents are temporary privileges granted to creative people to encourage them to make their work openly available to society. The "social contract" behind them is "we'll grant you a temporary monopoly on your work so you can profit from it; in return you'll turn it over to the commons at the end of a reasonable period so our know-how and culture can grow."

Using the term "intellectual property" is definitely a problem. It encourages a mindset that treats these temporary privileges as an absolute right. This leads to two harmful behaviours:

* First, people get addicted to them as "property". They build business models that forget the privilege is temporary. They then press for longer and longer terms for the privilege without agreeing in return to any benefit for the commons and society.

* Second, they forget that one day they'll need to turn the material over to the commons. Software patents in particular contain little, if anything, that will be of value to the commons - no code, no algorithms, really just a list of ways to detect infringement.


Spot on, Simon. He then goes on to ask what we might use instead:

Various suggestions have been made, but each of them seems to me to be so slanted to the opposite agenda that there's little chance of practitioners using them.

However, the term "intellectual privilege" seems to work. It's got the right initial letters, which is a huge win! But it also correctly describes the actual nature of the temporary rights we're considering.

Hmm, I'm not so sure that backward compatibility with "IP" is such a virtue here. Indeed, choosing the same initial letters might actually make it harder to get the important point that Simon is making across.

I also think calling it "intellectual privilege" is confusing in another sense. He's correct that it *is* a privilege, but it's easy to imagine the forces that rebranded copyright infringement as "piracy" would have a field day spinning this new "IP" to mean that it's a privilege for *us* consumers to have access to this wonderful stuff.

Far better, in my view, to tell it as it is, and to pick up on Simon's description that this is nothing less than "a temporary monopoly", granted by the state in return for the eventual release of this stuff to the public domain. Calling it an intellectual monopoly also has the advantage that it includes the "intellectual" part of "intellectual property", so it's clear what we're talking about - not anything remotely *physical*.

Moreover, bringing people face to face with the reality that these things are monopolies, generally recognised as bad things, is one of the fastest ways to convince the general public and politicians that we need to shorten their terms, not lengthen them, as has been happening time and again over the last century. After all, who wants longer monopolies - apart from monopolists?

More Evidence that File Downloaders Buy *More*

One of the central fallacies in the argument that sharing is bad for business is the idea that every file downloaded is a sale lost. In fact, there is growing evidence that the contrary is the case - that people who share stuff, buy *more* stuff. Here's some more:

The Institute for Information Law in the Netherlands reports that the average downloader buys more DVDs, music, and games than people who never download. Illegal downloaders represent 45 percent of consumers who purchase content legally, the institute recently reported.

The Institute estimates some 4.7 million Dutch Internet users 15 years and older downloaded hacked and pirated DVDs, games, and music in the last 12 months. This would imply a staggering 25 percent of the Dutch population (from the 2008 figure of 16.5 million) who view illegal downloading and sharing as socially acceptable, even as they're also legally acquiring content in parallel.

So that seems to say that 25 per cent of the Dutch population share stuff, but that they represent 45 per cent of the sales. In other words, they are buying quite a lot more than people who don't.

Perhaps one day the content industries will realise that they should be *encouraging* sharing, becuase it boost their sales: it's called marketing.

28 January 2009

The Net Net of Netbooks

Netbooks have been one of the surprise successes over the last year. They have also been one of the most contentious areas of computing. There are conflicting reports on most aspects of the sector – in terms of market share, rate of returns etc. - and it is easy to assume that it's all fad and fashion. Against that background, it's good to have some figures – any figures – that might throw a little light on this promising sector.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Academic Earth's Global Academy

One of the interesting applications of openness has been to education. The potential is plain: why re-invent the wheel when it comes to creating educational materials? It's not as if the facts change much from year to year. Moreover, when there are acknowledged experts within a field, it makes sense to draw on their work so that as many students as possible have access to top-flight teaching.

This has led to opencourseware, most famously at MIT, but increasingly, elsewhere. It takes two main forms: the texts of lectures, and recordings of the same. There's now a good body of such videos, enough to allow for the creation of a site dedicated entirely to them: Academic Earth.

Academic Earth is an organization founded with the goal of giving everyone on earth access to a world-class education.

As more and more high quality educational content becomes available online for free, we ask ourselves, what are the real barriers to achieving a world class education? At Academic Earth, we are working to identify these barriers and find innovative ways to use technology to increase the ease of learning.

We are building a user-friendly educational ecosystem that will give internet users around the world the ability to easily find, interact with, and learn from full video courses and lectures from the world’s leading scholars. Our goal is to bring the best content together in one place and create an environment that in which that content is remarkably easy to use and in which user contributions make existing content increasingly valuable.

Most of the videos are issued under a Creative Commons licence, with varying options in terms of what you can do with them.

Interestingly, Academic Earth is not, despite its name, an academic institution, but a start-up. As its founder, Richard Ludlow, told me:

I was originally starting this as a non-profit project (I previously started a non-profit public health organization and magazine), but switched to for-profit when I decided I would have an easier time raising the initial funds and recruiting people as a for-profit. In addition to the non-commercial content, we plan to host some videos we will commercialize, though the hope is to always keep everything free.

Certainly, an idea to, er, watch.

Take this Survey: It's the Law

As I've noted before, free software stands in an odd relationship with the law that governs it. On the one hand, free software could not exist sustainably without copyright - the GNU GPL depends on it for its power. On the other, copyright - and, even more, patents - are intellectual monopolies that represent the antithesis of everything that free software stands for.

Given that tension, it's clearly a good idea to understand how that works out on the ground, among the people who have to negotiate the legal minefields hemming in the act of coding. Sadly, there's not much research in this area, an omission that Thomas Otter hopes to remedy:


I’m labouring away at what must be one of the longest part-time PhDs ever. My research is looking at how software code and law work or don’t work together. However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. In order to add a bit of empirical juice to will be a rather dry theoretical legal tome, I’ve decided to do a survey.

He's particularly keen to get people from the world of free software participating in order to complement those from more traditional areas. You can find the survey here: it's not very onerous, and doesn't delve too deeply into anything heavy (I've filled it in and lived to tell the tale). And if you're looking for an incentive to do so beyond adding to the cairn of knowledge, both the raw results of the survey and Otter's analysis will be freely available later this year.

27 January 2009

The Water Commons

One of the most valuable functions of the concept of "the commons" is that it reframes the terms in which we think of resources. For example, think of water as a commons, and you begin to realise why it really must be shared, and never owned:


One clear lesson emerges from the struggles of the world’s water warriors — water management remains a leaky endeavor unless it adheres to the principles of the commons — the gifts of society and nature that are shared by all, for generations to come. Effective water management must be based on such water commons principles as community control, democratic participation, ensuring the earth’s right to water, public water delivery and accessibility for all.

This comes from the new site Our Water Commons. There's also a freely downloadable report on water commons principles: “Our Water Commons, Towards a New Freshwater Narrative” by Maude Barlow.

It's both fascinating and thorough; drink it up.

Tories Back Open Source Software...They Say

Evidence that open source and the more general concept of openness is becoming trendy: the politicians are bandying them around again. There was a flurry of this stuff last year, and here is the latest effort from the Tories....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Wanted: the First GNU/Linux Distro for the Cloud

As this amazing chart shows, there are basically three great families of GNU/Linux distros: those based on Red Hat, Slackware and Debian. The last of these was created as a reaction to an even earlier distro, SLS, as Debian's creator Ian Murdock (the “Ian” in “Debian” - Deb is his wife) told me a few years ago....

On Open Enterprise blog.

26 January 2009

Of Blogs and Microblogging

The eagle-eyed among you (everyone, surely), will have noticed the sudden excrudescence of a widget to the right. Since this represents the rude irruption of that upstart Twitter among the peaceful glades of Blogger, I feel some explanation is in order.

I've only been using Twitter for about a month, but I've found a what seems to me a fairly natural use for it alongside Open... and my Open Enterprise blog: posting stuff that doesn't really merit a full-on blog post, but is worthy of a quick mention.

So the idea of including a few tweets on this blog is to offer a few quick links or ideas that might be of interest to readers of this blog, without them needing to subscribe to Twitter or even leave this page.

It's meant to add, not take away, and nothing else will be changing in terms of what I blog about (except that I probably won't be posting anything really short, since that is likely to end up on Twitter.)

I intend running this page in its present form for a while to see how people like it. Please feel free to let me know whether you love or loathe it. I may also tweak some of its parameters - number of tweets etc. - so thoughts on that, too, would be welcome.