I was talking to a new freelance writer for LDN this afternoon, and when the subject came up about how I decided what topics to cover.
Explore by tag: general
Week 46: Rock the Linux Vote!
The US elections are (blessedly) over, and like any political junkie, I am suffering from withdraw symptoms. After months of polls, blogs, and cable news, I find myself craving the process of democratically electing something, anything.
So you can imagine how excited I was to see that some LDN users were starting taking advantage of our Brainstorming tool. I wanted to take this opportunity to explain what this section of the LDN is all about and encourage everyone to participate!
Week 45: Open Source as a Linux Feature
For the record, I like the Twitter. But darned if I can figure out how someone would make money from it.
The concept of micro-blogging is straightforward: in 140 characters, you tell the world at large what you're doing, how you're feeling, or why your life is so good/bad. I know quite a few people who use it, and like it, but I know quite a few more who think the whole exercise is just silly.
Week 44, 2008: Don't Be Hatin'
There was a little bit of schadenfreude in my heart this week when I surfed over to the Linux Hater's blog and discovered that its author has decided to close up shop.
Community-cation: A Look Back at Week 42, 2008
One of the recurring themes at this year's End User Summit was this whole notion of consumers vs. prosumers of Linux and open source software technology. "Prosumer" is not one of my usual words... I got it from Monday keynote speaker Anthony Williams, one of the authors of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything.
LinuxWorld Is No More
Well, this wasn't unexpected, but it's sad news nonetheless. According to an announcement from IDG today, the show known as LinuxWorld has gone into the history books.
Community-cation: A Look Back at Week 40, 2008
Here in the US, it's been an interesting week in the financial and government worlds. And I mean "interesting" in the Chinese-curse sense of that word. Like most folks in the country, I've been watching the news with one eye on politics and the other on the ticker tape. Lost in some of the conflaguation of news was the announcement of our new event, LinuxCon, scheduled for September 2009 in Portland, Oregon.
A New Event for the Community
I gotta say, I'm pretty excited today. We've announced the 2009 event schedule, and we've added a new event for the Linux community: LinuxCon.
This is a conference that, like our other summits, is specifically geared towards a certain segment of the Linux community. The Kernel Summit we just hosted, as one example, is for the kernel developers. The upcoming End Users Summit, as another example, will be an opportunity for corporate end-users of Linux to share their goals and wishes for Linux in their organizations.
Message and Intent
I read this morning that Microsoft has hired a former colleague of mine, Peter Galli, to be a Senior Communications Manager on Microsoft's Platform Strategy team.
I was glad to hear Peter had landed somewhere after Ziff Davis went through its latest round of layoffs a couple of months ago. Granted, not so happy he landed at Microsoft, but it appears his role there will be similar to my role here at the Linux Foundation: community manager.
Community-cation: A Look Back at Week 37, 2008
Since coming onboard with the Linux Foundation, one of the things that I have missed is taking a look at the week gone by to see what's what. I'm glad to say that things have settled down enough that I can now take the time to provide some analysis to what's happened this week.
OSCON Ignores World Outside the Bay
A former co-worker of mine just passed along the news that OSCON was going to move to San Francisco next year.
For people who went to OSCON this year, myself among them, this was hardly a surprise. It was pretty much the buzz on the conference floor at this year's show... a buzz that continued a couple of weeks later at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in San Francisco. O'Reilly, the event organizers, cited travel as a reason for reason not to go.
Grandma's Nice, But What About the CIO?
Most of us have stories about how we have done right by some family member and installed Linux for them in place of that other operating system. I myself have rescued my parental unit from the clutches of Vista.
Ubiquitous Firefox
So yesterday I was getting that "must-fiddle-with-my-computer" feeling again and I heard about this new extension for Firefox called Ubiquity. Good timing, I was in the mood for a new toy.
Ubiquity is really brand new: its release from Mozilla Labs is 0.1, this baby is right out of the delivery room. Despite that, it's a pretty solid piece of software, as prototypes go.
Planting a Tree
This morning I was rolling through my blog feeds, catching up the latest news in the world o' Linux, when I noted an interesting piece of artwork in Celeste Lyn Paul's obso1337.org blog.
Masters of No Domain
So there, on the front page of the Wall Street Journal Thursday morning, I read that Jerry Seinfeld will be participating in a $300 million PR blitz-o-rama to promote Vista. (A PC Pro article reports the same thing.)
Really? Has it come to this?
With Great Power...
One of the things that still challenges me as a long-time Linux user is dealing with source tarballs. While I have no problems with simple make and make install commands, there are times when dependency he--er, heck still drives me nuts (though, admittedly, that's not a far drive).
Such was the problem when I was faced with a new Linux computer, a couple of long trips, and a need for some mental junk food.
Uncovering the Mysteries of the Linux Kernel
A couple of weeks ago, I was on the MAX in Portland, heading back to my hotel after an... interesting post-OSCON party hosted by Sun. (Sumo wrestler suits? Really?) I was riding the train with a friend who lives downtown and I was explaining to her just exactly what my new job with the Linux Foundation was and what we wanted to do with the Linux Developer Network.
The Start of Something
I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be there at the beginning of something big. Like when three guys from Seattle decided to open up a new coffee store in 1971. Or when some kid decided to build a new operating system for his PC to do a university project.
It's easy to look at things that are huge now and remember that once upon a time, all of the hubbub was just an idea.
If you're lucky, though, you might just have a chance to be there at the beginning. When something huge begins as somethng small. Today I feel pretty lucky.