Linux News: Developer : OSDL Offers Cash for Linux Development

Funding news is always important for Government and Open source developers:

Linux News: Developer : OSDL Offers Cash for Linux Development: "The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) has moved to boost Linux kernel development with the launch of a fund to provide financial support for open source Latest News about open source software developers.

The pro-Linux organization's OSDL Fellowship Fund aims to provide resources to engineers working on Linux and open source community projects who do not otherwise have access to financial support."

Linux News: Developer : Eclipse Adding Tools to Manage App Life Cycle

This project is still "on the way" but is a very interesting development if the different development products can be brought together. ITIL, PRINCE and RUP have all got strengths, but none are really open source. The Institute of Government Business has made a key point about ensuring that the business process reengineering is properly addressed in the development process. If there is any information on how Eclipse will handle this, please let me know:

Linux News: Developer : Eclipse Adding Tools to Manage App Life Cycle: "The Eclipse Foundation detailed plans to expand its traditional focus on individual open source development tools by adding a project for managing the entire application life cycle.

During its EclipseCon conference, which took place in late March in Santa Clara, Calif., officials of the open source community provided further information on the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Project under development by several of its members.

The Eclipse ALM system promises to tie together development tools from multiple vendors without requiring point-to-point integration.
Single Platform

Eclipse is targeting users like Loren Larsen, chief architect at World Wide Packets in Spokane Valley, Wash.

Larsen said he would be interested in using Eclipse's ALM project to help his company avoid having to buy an integrated suite from the likes of Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Latest News about Microsoft or IBM's (NYSE: IBM) Latest News about IBM Rational Software unit. Larsen said he would prefer to use best-of-breed tools for the elements in the life cycle.

'[Open source ALM] is the only way we will get a lot of the different tool vendors to come to the table and provide a single platform everyone can use,' he said.

Larsen said his company, which provides Ethernet products to telecommunications carriers, now uses incompatible requirements management, scheduling, defect-tracking, compiler and software configuration management tools.

The Eclipse Foundation planned to roll out proof-of-concept code for ALM at the EclipseCon conference, said Ian Skerrett, the organization's director of marketing.

More than 30 vendors have signed on to support the project, which was launched by Eclipse member Serena Software last spring. The completed ALM code is expected to be available in October, Skerrett said."

crankygeeks

John C. Dvorak - the thoughtful, irritatingly prescient columnist from PC Magazine has started a new video site - can I call it a vlog? - not technically, I suppose. Anyway, it's a great way to keep across new trends and social issues related to ICT. JD gets a pretty knowledgeable crew together for each show. I'm in - and it's free.

crankygeeks
Today's Guests:

Sebastian Rupley – West Coast Editor, PC Magazine

Peter Galli- Senior Editor, eWeek

David Spark – Host of ‘The Communications Insider’



The Topics:

CeBIT... Dvorak dissects the massive trade show hosted in Germany.
Origami: More powerful than a PDA, smaller than a laptop Who's gonna buy it?

RFID Chip Infection: Nothing new here, or yet another thing to worry about?

Web 2.0... is Web 3.0 here already?

I, Nanobot

Alan H. Goldstein writes a compelling plea to look at what we are experimenting with when we don't yet understand what we are doing or risking. The prose is a little off-putting but the article is worth perservering with. Nono biology is the new ICT.

Salon.com Technology | I, Nanobot: "Scientists are on the verge of breaking the carbon barrier -- creating artificial life and changing forever what it means to be human. And we're not ready." .............

"Quick. What's the difference between artificial life and synthetic biology? Don't know? Neither does anyone else, but that isn't stopping nanobiotechnology researchers from building them -- or it, or that, or whatever. To stay up to speed, there is always Artificial Life, the official journal of the International Society of Artificial Life. According to the editors, the humble mission of the journal "is [to investigate] the scientific, engineering, philosophical, and social issues involved in our rapidly increasing technological ability to synthesize life-like behaviors from scratch in computers, machines, molecules, and other alternative media." Whoa!"

Geotagging photos

Synchronise clocks on your GPS and your camera so that you can match photos to location by time. To place on web:
Solutions from PC Magazine: Location, Location, Location: "users of the Flickr photo-sharing site can also make use of extensive user-contributed scripts available in the Geotagging group ( http://flickr.com/groups/94823070@N00 ) to tag their images for use with either the aptly named Geobloggers site ( www.geobloggers.com ) or Google Maps."

Apply the Snark Rasp to the sharp corners of your writing

Why would I link to a Literary Agent site? Especially one that is described as "In which Miss Snark vents her wrath on the hapless world of writers and crushes them to sand beneath her T.Rexual heels of stiletto snark.". Because Miss Snark provides brutally honest and therefore immensely valuable insights into the world of writing. In this archive Miss Snark runs her "crapometer" over 101 synopses submitted by brave authors for comments.

The blog has created arguably the most incisive collection of accessible, critical but uplifting analyses of writing that I am aware of. Although the focus is on fiction, reading the whole blog will show examples to help almost any form of writing. It is now so large that reading the blog takes a determined effort, but the content provided by so many contributors and the knowledgeable, dry wit (even drier than her Gin) creates a compelling read. If you are serious about your writing - even report writing - then read this blog. Now.

Thought for the Day: Design and Products

We've had a number of comments about the cumbersome name of the Institute of Government Business Analysis and Process reengineering. Quite valid too. "IGBAPR" doesn't roll off the tongue easily. But the reason underneath this is our concern that the IT discipline and the Business discipline must work together if the outcome is to be successful. BA's that just automate the existing process do no-one any favours. That's why I've linked to this entry:

ryskamp.org | brain | Design and Products

"Thought for the day: It’s not hard to create good designs; it’s hard to create well-designed products.

The difference? Any industrial design student can create a beautiful design, but to become real products, a design has to make it through a company’s entire product creation chain. Companies that make this process easier (read: Google), or have champions/dictators to force things through (read: Apple/Steve Jobs), will end up with better-designed products.

Good design depends as much on business process as it does on designers."

Well... how true. It applies to all our ICT projects. Ultimately they almost all relate to business processes.

The dot com domain allocated with price hike provisions

Hot Points – A blog by Go Daddy founder and president Bob Parsons

Something that will affect us all has been noticed by Godaddy.com. They've said:
"
Go Daddy opposes ICANN-VeriSign agreement

Yesterday, February 28, ICANN announced that its Board of Directors met and approved the pending deal with VeriSign for the .COM registry. The agreement will let VeriSign raise registration fees by 7% annually in four of the next six years. It will also give VeriSign control of the .COM registry indefinitely, as it extends VeriSign's "presumptive renewal" right when this agreement ends in 2012."

If you are a US citizen you may be able to have a say before final ratification. Go to Bob's blog to read more.