News. Technology. Ramblings.

Okay! I have been procrastinating on lot of things, and blogging is the last on my list.

However I tend to come across interesting things that I promise to myself I will blog about, but seldom end up doing and often find myself hard to track what I found. So from now on, I’m going to write micro posts about all interesting things that I find.

The first one I found today, is iFolder. Its a Novell product and now open source. According to their website

iFolder is a solution that allows people to easily share folders of files of any type with other users, whether they use the same or different operating systems. Thus, Linux, Windows and Macintosh users can all use iFolder and share folders. The iFolder client runs in two operating modes, enterprise sharing (with a server) and workgroup sharing (peer-to-peer, or without a server).

I have not been able to contribute to the the blog for a while…..(yup! I mean a while on planet Venus ).

I have been busy in a couple of projects.

1. We updated our website from its 1000 year old look to a new shiny web 2.0 style look. Heads up to our web designer Renate Ferreira, who helped me get the ideas from my head to Photoshop.
   
2. Like everyone else , we tried our first shot to get onto the facebook application bandwagon and created our first facebook application.
   
3. I have been working on my project and trying to finish off my degree. I have been working on Ruby on Rails, the new ‘kewl’ thing in programmers around. However I have found it lives up to its hype. Soon, I plan to move the blog from Wordpress to some rails blogging engine like Mephisto or Typo.
   

On personal side, I’m in love with Ruby. I have found it to be the most natural programming language for anyone to learn.

There is a lot of other stuff, I’m working on too. I’ll keep you guys posted as it rolls.

Any of you having a profile on Friendster, take care of any important information. Friendster jumped on facebook.com’s shoes and has started allowing profile searches using search engines like Google. Unlike Facebook though, I found no privacy settings to disable that. Take care of your info, before its bare in the search engine caches, for predators:).

An article discussing legalities every blogger in US should be aware of.

Nice written article; Click here to access it.

PS: Just by linking the article, I violated law 2 :). So here is the disclaimer - The above linked article is owned by Directory Aviva.

Here are a couple of inten oppertunities I came across open at the moment for journalism students:

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On May 2, 2007, at 12.32 am when most of the readers/reporters are asleep or finishing next days’s stories,  an event is happening on the internet that will become an example to news organizations.

Thousands of geeks and free speech enthusiasts used digg effect to bring Digg server down.

The feud started when Digg deleted a post containing protected HD-DVD ’s hacked key, that would allow any HD-DVD to be copied.

Digg deleted this post to save itself from infringement issues.

What resulted, Digg had never thought about. Diggers took this action as an action suppressing free speech, and by 11 pm on May 1, all the top 10 stories had nothing but the HD-DVD key. Wikipedia had to lock articles related to Digg and HD-DVD.

For the last 4 hours, every single story on the front page of Digg was related to HD-DVD. The wave went so crazy that Kevin Rose, CEO of Digg had to post an apology on the official Digg blog, redefining his stand taken on deletion issue.

Now, why the heck a techology site’s event should be noticed by News Corporations going online.

Because, these are exact examples of what they are going to face tomorrow. Remember, news organizations/social sites are promoting exact copy of what geeks have been doing since decades using message posts, Usenet and discussion platforms - E-EXISTANCE, where you consume, participate and respond.

As its already visible, readers have started asking for the same rights they have in real world - Right to free speech, to be most prominent.

Who would write the constitution of such existence, which would appeal to authorities across all borders? Who would define the rules defining rights? If a news site gives complete speech rights to user, how will they save themselves from legalities following defamatory statements? Who will define what should be the right opinion, perspective or taking on sensitive issues in citizen journalism?

There are a lot of questions that need answering.

In the meantime news organizations can learn from tech communities how they handle, what are going to be the future problems of news organizations.

Interestingly, none of the major news players(1, 2, 3) had the event in its technology headlines even after 24 hours of its start.

If you want to use the power of citizen journalism databases, like Washington post’s US Congress Votes database , here is a list of citizen journalism databases that can come handy.

In a world where large volumes of information can be produced in the blink of an eye, citizen journalists need tools to access and cross-reference information. Several online database applications have sprouted up to fill that need. Here is a run-down of sites that are making it easier for citizen journalists to connect the dots:

Click here to goto the list

An interesting review by Time Magazine reveals about web 2.0

But the latest data on Internet participation reveals that only a very small percentage of Internet activity is related to users creating and publishing content. The 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto Principle, states that 80% of all consequences stem from 20% of the causes. If true, the rule would then suggest that 80% of this new form of content is created by 20% of the users. The rule, subject of countless business books, has no application when it comes to consumer-generated content. Far less than 1% of visits to most sites that thrive on user-created materials are attributable as participatory, the remaining 99% are passive visits.

Which side are you - in front of the monitor or behind the monitor?

I came across this video yesterday.

I would suggest it is a must watch for all those, who want to know what open source is all about and how sharing of information can help both the parties involved, tremendously.

Out of many solutions that you might be using everyday as a result of Open Source revolution are about 60% of the websites you browse, most of the emails that your servers host, your users using Firefox, etc etc etc.

One of the Open source products I’m eying, that can benefit a lot number of media Centers is Ubuntu Studio , expected to launch in couple of days. It will enable media centers with small fundings to establish multimedia centers at marginals costs compared to proprietory solutions.