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Impact Mozilla Challenge: Firefox Wants Your Marketing Strategy
Introducing our newest open source marketing project—a contest that gives you a chance to make your mark on Mozilla. We're looking for innovative ways to make sure people who download Firefox become regular users.
Interested? Start by sending us a summary of your ideas and an overview of how you and your team will carry them out. If your initial strategy makes the cut, we'll ask for a complete plan detailing your solution.
If your plan is selected as the winner, you'll have the opportunity to manage a marketing campaign for one of the top brands in the technology world. We'll give you the resources to enact your solution, plus $3,000 for the winning proposal.
Here's an overview of the first steps you'll take to Impact Mozilla.
Propose a Plan
Impact Mozilla is an open contest—we're giving anyone and everyone a chance to solve a critical Mozilla marketing challenge. We're even allowing contestants to use internal data and resources to address this key marketing issue. Once you've looked at our problem, submit the summary of your solution along with an executable plan. Whether you're a student or a start-up, this is your chance to make a difference.
Solve a Critical Issue
Retention marketing is one of Mozilla's key challenges. Currently tens of millions of Firefox users download the browser, but about 75% of those users are not active after that initial download. How do we get these past users back? And how do we keep future users active once they've downloaded Firefox?
Your team can tackle this retention challenge or pinpoint another marketing challenge and propose a solution. Acquisition marketing? Social media marketing? International marketing? As long as your strategy is thoughtful and quantifiable, the choice is yours.
Deadlines
* Monday, September 29 — Impact Mozilla Contest Begins
* Friday, October 24 — First Proposal Due
* Wednesday, November 5 — Finalists Will Be Notified By Mozilla
* Friday, December 5 — Final Proposal Due; Community Voting Begins
* Wednesday, December 17 — All Voting Closes
* Friday, December 19 — Winner Announced
Deliverables
First Proposal (due 10/24)
Your first step is to prepare a two-page overview of your marketing plan. State your overall goal, creative and analytic strategies and propose action items. Briefly explain how you will quantify and track the success of your campaign.
Final Proposal (due 12/5)
A detailed marketing plan (around 10 pages) must be submitted by the teams who advance to the next level of the contest. This presentation should include a thorough explanation of each strategic element, analysis and application of relevant data, line–by–line budget allocation, team resumes, portfolio of past projects, and recommendations. Introducing our newest open source marketing project—a contest that gives you a chance to make your mark on Mozilla. We're lookin... more -
La Baia dei Pirati, oscurata agli utenti italiani
L’ultimo mese ha portato sotto i riflettori della cronaca di settore il sito “The Pirate Bay”, uno dei maggiori portali per il download di qualsiasi tipo di materiale (nella maggior parte dei casi protetto da copyright tradizionale, “tutti i diritti riservati”, quindi in contrasto con le intenzioni degli autori e distributori) attraverso il protocollo tecnologico BitTorrent. L’ultimo mese ha portato sotto i riflettori della cronaca di settore il sito “The Pirate Bay”, uno dei maggiori portali per il downloa... more
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Copyleft festival 2008 - Open source e PA
http://copyleftfestival.net
Copyleft festival 2008
"Be right, copyleft"
Tavola rotonda: "Open Source e pubblica amministrazione: utilizzo delle licenze open source nella Pubblica Amministrazione"
con: Gabriella Cecchi, Ilario Nocentini, Miranda Brugi, Flavia Marzano http://copyleftfestival.net Copyleft festival 2008 "Be right, copyleft" ... more -
'Google phone' shown at conference
A Google executive gave a sneak preview of the company's new mobile phone yesterday at a developer's conference in London.
Attendees were shown the handset as part of a presentation on Android, the new operating system the company has developed esecially for the mobile platform. Identifying marks on the phone were reportedly covered up, and Google has since refused to confirm that it was in fact a demonstration version of the product to be released imminently. The handset is believed to be manufactured by HTC, and provisionally called "Dream".
The phone is expected to be formally announced at a joint press conference held by Google and T Mobile in New York next Tuesday. The UK release date is speculated to be sometime next month, and handset manufaturer HTC hopes to ship 600,000-700,000 units this year worldwide.
The operating system is open source, allowing developers to create their own software for the phone. The handset has a slide-out keyboard, and features such as the inbuilt accelerometer and global positioning system will put it in direct competition with Apple's iPhone in the run-up to Christmas. A Google executive gave a sneak preview of the company's new mobile phone yesterday at a developer's conference in London. ... more -
VLC 0.9.2 claims to play any video, ever
...at least according to techDigest. The new VLC media player update has been super-boosted to play just about any video format you can throw at it, including some damaged files. The latest version also gives more flexibility with formats you can convert media files to.
A damn good little open-source traffic cone. I'm hoping this latest upgrade will mean I can finally open those messed up Flash/iMovie projects I've got stored on my external hard drive... ...at least according to techDigest. The new VLC media player update has been super-boosted to play just about any video format you c... more -
OpenSimulator goes alpha
OpenSimulator aka OpenSim is an open source server for hosting virtual worlds similar to Second Life. OpenSimulator uses libsecondlife to handle communication between the client and server, so it is possible to connect to an OpenSim server using the Linden Lab Second Life client. Other clients for Second Life are also interoperable, since Second Life and Opensim use the same communication protocols.
OpenSimulator is currently considered to be alpha level code. Please don't expect to run it in production environments without giving it a lot of care and attention. This is especially true if you follow the Subversion trunk or overnight builds, since the OpenSimulator developers are directly adding new features to this code. At the cutting edge, important functionality may stop working for short periods of time. OpenSimulator aka OpenSim is an open source server for hosting virtual worlds similar to Second Life. OpenSimulator uses libsecondlife... more -
Meet Google's new Open Source Web Browser, Chrome
Google is creating it's own web browser from the ground up. It's all open source and based on Webkit (Safari's engine). Each tab in the browser is its own process. So if one slows or crashes, you don't lose everything. It also makes things safer by not allowing websites to screw with your machine. Also included are a start page like Opera has, a smart address bar ala FireFox 3, and a private browsing mode via Internet Explorer 8. And lastly, it's open source. All the source code will be available at launch and anyone is free to download, use, and modify it for themselves.
There's no launch date for it yet, but when it comes out, you'll be able to find it at: http://www.google.com/chrome Google is creating it's own web browser from the ground up. It's all open source and based on Webkit (Safari's engine)... more -
Code-a-thon Decoded
The Free Software movement is spearheaded by ultra-elite computer programmers who have developed their own radical ideology-- that all software should be free. This pod is a glimpse into their world, as we cover the Frozen Perl 2008 conference, organized by die-hard enthusiasts for the Perl programming language. The conference culminates in a frenzy of simultaneous programming called a "hack-a-thon". The Free Software movement is spearheaded by ultra-elite computer programmers who have developed their own radical ideology-- that all... more
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Court protects open source use
Advocates of open source software have hailed a court ruling protecting its use even though it is given away free.
The US federal appeals court move overturned a lower court decision involving free software used in model trains that a hobbyist put online.
The court has now said conditions of an agreement called the Artistic Licence were enforceable under copyright law.
"For non-lawgeeks, this won't seem important but this is huge," said Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig.
" In non-technical terms, the Court has held that free licences set conditions on the use of copyrighted work. When you violate the condition, the licence disappears, meaning you're simply a copyright infringer.
"This is a very important victory." ...read more after the jump Advocates of open source software have hailed a court ruling protecting its use even though it is given away free. ... more -
Open Source Electronic Voting | News - Security - CNET News.com
It is pretty much agreed that electronic voting systems need to provide a paper receipt for auditing, but what if instead the electronic voting system printed out a unique ballot that could be scanned and tallied before the leaving the voter left the polling station?
On Thursday Alan Dechert, President and CEO of the Open Voting Consortium, Brian J. Fox and Parker Abercrombie of The Okori Group, and Brent Turner, met with CNET News and offered a sneak peek at a different kind of electronic voting system to be demonstrated live at this year's LinuxWorld in San Francisco.
Currently private companies provide electronic voting machines and services throughout the country, among them Premier Elections Solutions (formerly Diebold), and Sequoia Voting Systems. But doubt exists on the accuracy of these systems, in part, because the companies refused to allow third-party scrutiny. In 2007, the California Secretary of State Debra Bowen instituted a third-party review of the electronic voting systems used in the state and found various irregularities. In 2004, former California Secretary of State Kevin Shelly decertified several voting systems under increasing concerns over the integrity of those systems.
The Open Voting Consortium advocates the use of open source tools to provide election officials with accurate electronic voting systems, systems which they say will save countries nearly 90 percent of the cost of current electronic voting machines. They are currently concentrating their efforts within California. They hope to announce soon adoption by at least one large country in the state and perhaps be in a position to provide services to the entire state in time for the 2012 Presidential Elections.
The Orkori Group has designed a Web-enabled service for county officials to create their ballot design, with templates for multiple candidates, yes or no proposition, and other contests likely to appear in an election. Drawing upon a database of eligible local candidates and issues, an election official creates a ballot with the Orkori Group's online tool.
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Clink the link for the rest of the story. It is pretty much agreed that electronic voting systems need to provide a paper receipt for auditing, but what if instead the electron... more -
iPhone apps: why we still need the iPhone app black market
A year ago, we said that no iPhone SDK meant no killer apps. It came, and the apps are here in staggering numbers. But many of the amazing apps and concepts we grew to love as unofficial apps aren't here, and only about 100 of the 500+ apps at launch in the official store are really useful or desirable—the rest are dupes or just bad. There are no less than five apps to turn my iPhone into a flashlight, yet I can't turn it into a 3G-powered Wi-Fi hotspot. Why? Because the SDK has more restrictions than Guantanamo—devs can't integrate with the OS and have to steer way, way clear of copyright and trademark issues—so the most innovative, game-changing apps might not ever make it to your squeaky clean iPhone. That's why we need more than Apple's official app store—we still need jailbreaking, Installer.app (now Cydia) and the best unauthorized third-party apps to make the iPhone an ultra-powerful open platform we really want. Here are the roadblocks: A year ago, we said that no iPhone SDK meant no killer apps. It came, and the apps are here in staggering numbers. But many of the ama... more
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CIA-funded university program trains the next generation of spies
When classes at the University of Washington resume this fall, some students at the school will be under the watchful eye of a Central Intelligence Agency spook. In fact, some of them will even be learning from him.
This fall, Dr. Tim Thomas, a CIA agent specializing in "open source" data mining, will begin a two-year stint as an officer-in-residence at the UW's Institute for National Security Education and Research (INSER), which is financed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. That office is an umbrella organization for groups such as the U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the CIA—which will provide the university with $2.5 million in grant money over the next five years.
It's not unusual for political or military organizations to recruit on campuses, but it seems strange for the UW to align itself with an agency most recently in the news for overseas kidnappings and harsh interrogation tactics such as waterboarding. When classes at the University of Washington resume this fall, some students at the school will be under the watchful eye of a Central... more -
VIII: Thou Shall Not Steal (Is Free, Open-Source the Solution to the Sin?)
We've been stealing software ever since companies began charging for it.
Not that there's anything right with that. Just because someone decides to demand $50 -- or $500 -- for something we want or need doesn't mean we can just take it.
Except ... that it kind of does. Making things easy to steal makes them more likely to be stolen.
The music industry learned that. The lengthy boom they enjoyed by digitizing their entire catalogs for CDs in the '80s only meant that people would swap those digital bits incessantly once technology (broadband Internet, writable CDs) allowed them to do so.
Computer software used to be what companies bundled in the box so they could sell their hardware.
Apple still pretty much works this way. The company's software -- OS X, iTunes -- is brilliant, but it's only there to get you to buy Macs, iPods and ... digital music.
See, in this case a brilliant software product, combined with equally brilliant hardware, has somehow made a market for legitimately sold digital music.
But we're still stealing.
Since the first computers came as a complete package -- hardware and software -- we were conditioned to pay for one and not the other. Most of us aren't about to march into Wal-Mart and carry out a large computer box without paying for it. That's shoplifting. And that means getting caught.
But installing Microsoft Relevant Products/Services Office from our friend's disc is also stealing. It's easier. We're not likely to be arrested. MS Office is wicked expensive. We don't use it all that much ... but need it sometimes.
I did it, too. Everybody needs to generate Word-compatible documents, Excel-compatible spreadsheets, and now PowerPoint- compatible presentations. (PowerPoint is evil, but that's another column for another day.)
I used to maintain that huge software behemoths like Microsoft wouldn't be subject to so much thievery if they just lowered their prices.
It's not that simple. Microsoft charges what it does because that's what the corporate market is willing to pay. And if the average guy sitting at home can pay hundreds of dollars for software, they'll take his money, too.
To a company like Microsoft, they'd prefer that home users steal its software and become familiar with it rather than use anything else. That way, when those same people go to work, they'll demand their bosses pay for the programs they know.
Long ago, I began moving all of my machines over to as much free, open-source software as I could. I use the OpenOffice suite, the lightweight AbiWord word processor Relevant Products/Services, the excellent Notepad++ text editor, FileZilla for FTP file transfers over the Internet, the GIMP to edit images, and the Pidgin IM program to bring my Yahoo, AOL and Google instant-messaging accounts under one application.
I still use some programs that are free but not "open source," meaning you can't see the code behind them, nor can you modify it. The great IrfanView image editor, Avast's antivirus program and the online Google Docs office suite are among those.
And while I spend time in Windows and OS X, more and more of my computing is done in free Linux-based operating systems. Again, another column for another day. We've been stealing software ever since companies began charging for it. ... more -
Radiohead video created from data vizualization, Code open sourced
Laughing Squid calls this one to attention. Sweet!
"The new Radiohead music video for 'House of Cards', directed by James Frost, was created entirely using data visualizations without traditional cameras or lights. 'House of Cards' has been released as an open source project hosted on Google Code." Laughing Squid calls this one to attention. Sweet! ... more -
BREAKING NEWS! Castle Project Lead Hamilton Verissimo Joins Microsoft « don’t give...
In a strategic move on Microsoft’s part that has the open source community buzzing, the well-known and respected founder of the Castle Project Hamilton Verissimo has accepted a position with Microsoft’s MEF group. In a strategic move on Microsoft’s part that has the open source community buzzing, the well-known and respected founder of the Castle... more
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This generation's 1984, download it for free
From the book:
Marcus, aka "w1n5t0n" is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works-and howto work the system. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of his networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high schools intrusive but clumsy security systems.
But his whole world changes when, having skipped school, he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison, where they're mercilessly interrogated for days.
When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state, where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: Take down the DHS himself.
Can one teenage hacker take fight back against a government out of control? Maybe, but only if he's really careful... and very, very smart.
"A wonderful, important book... I'd recommend Little Brother over pretty much any book I've read this year" - Neil Gaiman, author of Sandman and American Gods.
"A worthy younger sibling to Orwell’s 1984, Cory Doctorow’s LITTLE BROTHER is lively, precocious, and most importantly, a little scary." - Brian K Vaughn, author of Y: The Last Man
"Scarily Realistic... Action-packed with tales of courage, technology, and demonstrations of digital disobedience as the technophiles civil protest". - Andrew "Bunnie" Huang, author of Hacking the Xbox
"Read this book. You'll learn a great deal about computer security, surveillance and how to counter it, and the risk of trading off freedom for 'security'. And you'll have fun doing it." - Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media.
This is one of my favorite books if not my favorite book. Everyone in this generation should read it, because we might need it should things go wrong. From the book: ... more -
Open-source video marketplace
Jon Labes, the founder of a new video marketplace called Plentitube (pronounced like “plentitude, if you change the ‘d’ to a ‘b’). Jon is probably best known as being the creative mind behind Wallstrip, the financial podcast that was later famously sold to CBS Interactive for a tidy sum.
Through his experience in New Media production Selling-Entertainment-Online Jan-08 as well as the experience of taking a show like that from concept to completion to exit, he was made aware of the wide variety of issues that arise for successful independent video producers that we’re just not equipped to deal with. Legal issues abound, as do business decisions Neuroeconomics-How-Executives-Think , odd technical issues, and sales situations; most of the time indie producers just want to, well, produce.
Plentitube is a marketplace built with that in mind. It’s currently still in an invite only beta situation, but their goal is to take top notch producers and pair them with advertisers, resources and potential investors and owners for the content. In this interview, we explore the history that led Jon to this venture, as well as the intracies of the marketplace, and how it can benefit the New Media video producer set. Jon Labes, the founder of a new video marketplace called Plentitube (pronounced like “plentitude, if you change the ‘d’ to a ‘b’). Jon... more -
Java will be free this year, says Sun
The struggle to open up Java completely is finally coming to an end.
Following the announcement of Sun's plans to make Java free and open under the General Public License (GPL) at JavaOne 2006, there have been a few struggles on the path to open source. At the time of the OpenJDK release in May last year, around five per cent of the code -- the portion not owned by Sun -- was still closed.
Simon Phipps, the chief open source officer at Sun Microsystems, said: "We released under the GPL everything we had the rights to release under the GPL and that was last summer. There were a couple of holdouts there. One was the area to do with raster graphics and 2D graphics. That turned out to be owned by a company that didn't want us to release that code as open source. We negotiated with them and because they've said 'yes, you can open source the code', I can tell you they're Codec […].
The only element that's left now is actually a sound-related component within Java. We finally decided that the vendor that's involved there just isn't going to play ball and we're rewriting the code from scratch. That's going to be done within the next couple of months."
Phipps says Java is expected to be completely free within the coming few months.
"I'm expecting that certainly by the end of this year and hopefully sooner we'll have all of the source code for Java under the GPL", he said.
Red Hat also introduced its IcedTea project in June 2007, with the aim of making OpenJDK a part of Fedora, as well as other Linux distributions, without constraints.
The IcedTea project reached a breakthrough this week when the latest OpenJDK binary included in Fedora 9 passed the Java Test Compatibility Kit, a set of tools designed to verify whether a particular implementation is consistent with the Java specification.
OpenJDK, now a part of Fedora 9, contains all the necessary Java APIs of a Java SE 6 implementation. The plan is to now make OpenJDK, a part of the next Red Hat Enterprise Linux edition -- 5.3. The struggle to open up Java completely is finally coming to an end. ... more -
Beyond open source software
Most people think "software" when they hear open source - but there are plenty of other things using open source principles to distribute their intellectual property. We've covered some of these: the OpenMoko phone, the Open Graphics Project, VIA's OpenNote, and even the RepRap self-duplicating machine. But they're just the tip of the iceberg. Here are five more projects that show how healthy open source is beyond the software arena.
The Multimachine is an open source machine tool. Starting with old automobile engine blocks and other salvaged bits, anyone with reasonable mechanical skills and access to some tooling can put together their own combination lathe, mill, drill press, and more.
The Open Prosthetics Project is applying open source principles to the design of prosthetic limbs. They've got a number of active projects on their wiki, and have put together some prototypes.
The Open Source Green Vehicle project is probably the most ambitious of the ones listed here - an attempt to develop a 100MPG hybrid SUV with open design specifications (though with restrictions on building the actual vehicle). It looks as if the project is largely moribund, though.
The OpenStim project wants to build an "open noninvasive brain stimulator." That is, you'd wear this helmet with its magnets and electronics, flip it on, and stuff would happen inside your cranium as a result. They're wiki-based with a fair number of people interested in moving the project forward.
Finally, Flying Dog Brewery's Open Source Beer Project encourages anyone to try out their recipe and suggest tweaks and improvements. They're currently soliciting suggestions on how to go about putting together Open Source Beer 2.0. Most people think "software" when they hear open source - but there are plenty of other things using open source principles ... more -
By Open Sourcing Symbian, Nokia Kicks Off the Mobile Age
The mobile software age is here.
Symbian co-founder Nokia announced Monday night that it is buying the 52 percent of the software maker that it doesn’t already own and releasing its mobile operating system under an open source license.
With that move, Symbian joins two other major platforms -- the Google-backed Android operating system and Apple's OS X iPhone -- that give programmers tools for creating and deploying software for smartphones.
The Symbian OS dominates the world market, with about 60 percent of the installed base among smartphones. According to Nokia, more than 200 million phones currently in use worldwide are running Symbian software. But Symbian trails in the United States, where Research in Motion, Palm, Windows Mobile -- and now the iPhone -- are the major players.
Nokia uses Symbian software across its range of mobile devices, primarily with the extremely popular S60 interface. Other handset companies also use some variety of the Symbian operating system, including Sony Ericsson, Motorola and NTT DoCoMo.
"Nokia could, if they found inside the corporation the resolve to do so, come out with the definitive open platform," said Bruce Perens, an open source advocate and CEO of Kiloboot. "They would have a platform of the type we haven't seen since the original Palm. When that was dominant, there were 16,000 applications available to install. The question is, can they find the corporate resolve?"
The prospect of thousands of mobile apps -- instead of the few dozen typically available through most wireless carriers -- is something new in the wireless world. And the 6 million iPhones sold to date show that mobile users like having open, unfettered access to web applications and online content.
In short, what matters to handsets now is not so much features, graphics chips and innovative interfaces -- though those do help. What's critical is an easy-to-use development platform that enables programmers to create a wide range of software quickly and easily, so that they can give consumers the content and the software they demand. The mobile software age is here. ... more
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