Chris Pirillo » open-source

Christine Peterson – Life Extension for Geeks

Chris — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:04:14 +0000

Christine Peterson – Life Extension for Geeks is a post from Chris Pirillo

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Compared to our computers, our bodies are mind-bogglingly complex systems. There’s no “life extension pill” available today, and none is likely to arrive soon. Fortunately for us, we can use our technical skills to evaluate and implement today’s life extension techniques, some of which can be fun – at least from a geek perspective.

Christine Peterson catalyzes new technologies: first, focusing on atoms, she co-founded Foresight Instituteto advance the field of nanotech. This work is accomplished by providing balanced, accurate and timely information to help society understand and prepare for nanotechnology through public policy activities, publications, guidelines, networking events, tutorials, conferences, roadmaps, and prizes.

Her work is motivated by a desire to help Earth’s environment and traditional human communities avoid harm and instead benefit from expected dramatic advances in technology. This goal of spreading benefits led to an interest in new varieties of intellectual property including open source software, a term she is credited with originating.

More recently, having noticed that — as some crudely put it — “aging sucks”, she works to further life extension, especially within the tech community.

She serves on the Advisory Board of the International Council on Nanotechnologyand the Editorial Advisory Board of NASA’s Nanotech Briefs, and served on California’s Blue Ribbon Task Forceon Nanotechnology.

Christine is the co-author of one book on nanotech, and another on collaboration technologies. She is a member of IEEE, and an alumna of MIT.

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What is Google Wave?

Chris — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:25:14 +0000

What is Google Wave? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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I ran into Ben from Mashable recently, and asked him for his thoughts on Google Wave. Google Wave is a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year.

Ben says that Google Wave is a “very, very interesting project”, and that it could be the next big form of communication. His favorite feature is Windows – style editing. Say you have a group of friends and want to plan a party. Instead of sending a bajillion emails back and forth, you can just edit the original email in the bottom “pane”. You can edit messages at any point, and see everyone’s conversation at once. It’s a completely new way to communicate, and more effective.

With Gmail and Exchange… it’s just different. For attachments, you would have to click, add the attachment, download the attachment… blah! With Google Wave, you simply drag and drop whatever you need to share among the group. You can embed your own Wave into things like YouTube, your blog, and more. It can replace a normal commenting system! There’s even an iPhone App being released along with Wave.

Google Wave is open-source, so you can build anything you want with it. Create desktop apps, web apps, an Adobe Air app… or make it work for your Exchange account (like I rely on!). This is definitely going to be something to watch unfold, and sounds like it’s going to be an absolutely amazing service.

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Cross-Platform Open Source Video Game: Nexuiz

Chris — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 06:06:03 +0000

Cross-Platform Open Source Video Game: Nexuiz is a post from Chris Pirillo

I’m all about open source – and I know my community is all about gaming. Put these two things together, and it’s a formula for success (usually). Not every project shines, but Samual wanted us to know about this one in particular…

Hey, I’m in a community of developers and game enthusiasts who created the game Nexuiz, built on the Darkplaces game engine (derived from the Quake I game engine). I know you may not normally review open source game projects, but take a look at this game. The physics in this game are the most unique, allowing for strafing and weapon jumping. Since this game is open source and uses OpenGL, you can imagine it has been compiled for quite a few platforms. Including, but not limited to, Windows, OS X, Linux and UNIX. There has been talk about moving the game to a console, but no action has been taken yet.

The community has created a full tournament system (The Ladders) where people can enter into competitions of our many game types. Public multiplayer servers usually have about 20 to 100 active players at one time – if not, bots can be placed into the game. Single player has a large amount of levels which get harder with each stage. In total, the game has 12 game types, most popular being: LMS (Last Man Standing), CTF (Capture the Flag), DM (DeathMatch), TDM (Team DeathMatch), 1v1 (One versus One, mainly on private servers), Race (because of the physics in this game, you can accelerate yourself at very high speeds, allowing you to race through checkpoints in maps), and many more. All in all, the game is developed by professionals with some free time, and is, in essence, able to compete with the industry’s standards.

Are the Best NAS Options Free?

Chris — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 14:55:21 +0000

Are the Best NAS Options Free? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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I’ve reviewed a few different NAS devices in the past. Do you have a PC sitting around with hard drives in it, that isn’t being used for anything? There’s a utility that can turn any old PC into an NAS device. The utility at FreeNAS is open-source!

FreeNAS is a free NAS (Network-Attached Storage) server, supporting: CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, AFP, RSYNC, iSCSI protocols, S.M.A.R.T., local user authentication, Software RAID (0,1,5) with a Full WEB configuration interface. FreeNAS takes less than 32MB once installed on Compact Flash, hard drive or USB key.

They run through everything you need to get you up and going. You can boot off of a CD or even a USB stick. You’ll have probably the most extensive interface you’ve ever seen for NAS. I’ve had paid programs for this in the past, and they weren’t even this extensive. This is running from Linux, and is just seriously extensive. Everything you can think of you might need from a file storage machine, you will find within Free NAS.

If you have an old computer sitting around collecting dust, you might as well convert it into something. Serve yourself up some files! Don’t leave them on your computer. Turn your old machine into a file server, and make your life easier.

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What Free Media Center Software Do You Use?

Chris — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 08:57:43 +0000

What Free Media Center Software Do You Use? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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Have you ever tried to view your media on your computer through your television? You could either connect your computer to your TV, or use software designed to collect this media for you. Where can you get this software? Giovanni sent me the following email:

I have just published a study comparing 10 of the most prominent FLOSS Media Center projects, under a Creative Commons License. This might be useful for a lot of people to get state of the art information in this area, and know more about the beautiful Media centers in the free software community. It is available for download in English, Portugese, and Italian.

The Telematics Freedom Foundation was set up to bring in the age of telematics, Internet, mobile phones and the web, all those freedoms and rights that the Free Software Movement has already brought to PC users worldwide.
To achieve this purpose, we promote the consolidation and widespread adoption of models for development and deployment of telematic services which are under the full control of their users. We are also developing software for remote democratic organization, which will constitute a touchstone for the model of production, sharing and full control outlined by the idea of Telematics Freedom we are defending.

I didn’t even know all of these existed. And best of all, they’re all open-source. The differences between the programs is simply that they may access the media in a different way. Try them all out.

I am SO impressed with this. I would love to see this .PDF reside on the Internet on its own website one day in the future. Everything you can think of in the media-sphere resides on computers around the World. How else are you going to access your stuff?

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What Other Free Software do I Need?

Chris — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 00:54:57 +0000

What Other Free Software do I Need? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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I find great software pretty much every day. I tend to let all of you know as soon as I can. I want to start doing a video each week that has a roundup of cool software that I find. So let’s get to it with our first roundup!

HTML Tidy When editing HTML it’s easy to make mistakes. HTML TIDY is a free utility for cleaning up your code. Tidy is able to fix up a wide range of problems and to bring to your attention things that you need to work on yourself.
PSPad This is the universal freeware text editor for developers for Microsoft Windows systems.
Balthisar Tidy Balthisar Tidy is the beautiful Macintosh OS X implementation of HTML Tidy.
Precipitate Precipitate lets you search for and launch your cloud data from within Spotlight or Google Desktop for Mac. It supports Google Bookmarks and Google Docs both at this time.
Garage Buy Now you can use a slick, full-featured client application for all of your search and purchasing on eBay. Search eBay and even place bids or buy right from Garage Buy.

So there you go, just a few freeware picks this week. If you have any good freeware that people may not have heard of, I’d love to hear about it.

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Have you Tried the Google Open Source Android Emulator?

Chris — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 07:15:58 +0000

Have you Tried the Google Open Source Android Emulator? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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What operating system is running on your phone? At some point in the future, it may be Google’s operating system… dubbed Android. It’s open-source, and available for all operating systems. Those of you who don’t really know what an SDK is. In light terms, it’s a package of tools and examples given to software developers so that they can develop platforms.

I downloaded Android, and didn’t even really have to install anything. I simply clicked on it, and up pops this Android virtual device. Normally, this would be a touch-screen device for your phone, of course. On this emulator, it will show you what the dialer will look like. The interface is very clean thus far. Google maps is integrated into Android, as well! There’s a satellite mode, and a traffic mode.

Android will ship with a set of core applications including:

an email client
an SMS program
calendar
maps
browser
contacts

The Android platform is a software stack for mobile devices including an operating system, middleware and key applications. Developers can create applications for the platform using the Android SDK. Applications are written using the Java programming language and run on Dalvik, a custom virtual machine designed for embedded use which runs on top of a Linux kernel.

If you’re interested in developing something for Android, feel free to download the SDK. What operating systems and phones do you have? What do you prefer, and why?

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The Future of Software is Open Source

Chris — Sat, 03 May 2008 23:35:08 +0000

The Future of Software is Open Source is a post from Chris Pirillo

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You are an absolute fool to believe that the future of software is anything but open. Are we there now? Obviously not… but in good time, proprietary software will become a thing of the past. That’s a pretty bold statement, yes. But, watch the trends. Watch what’s happening now. Watch what’s been happening. Some of the more powerful efforts to be spearheaded by like-minded individuals have happened because of the open ethos.

Do you care much whether software is open-source or proprietary? Sometimes it may boil down to a matter of cost for you. Keep in mind that just because something is free, doesn’t mean it’s ‘open’. There’s a huge reason why open is better than just free. If I create a proprietary (closed) piece of software, and refuse to share the code with others, that goes away when I die. When you share code because it’s an open collaboration, there is always room for someone to step in and take over. If one developer knows of a way to make a piece of the software work better, they can add to it when it’s open-source. An open-source program can be enhanced upon until the end of time, basically.

The more you tie yourself into a proprietary system, the more difficult it becomes to remove yourself from it, because of the momentum inside. Closed systems are scary, at least to me. Think about it. Who’s able to check and re-check the software that is running in the world? Yes, you can trust one firm or another. But, what if the software is dealing with extremely sensitive data? Wouldn’t you rather see the community as a whole… those of us who care the most about software… are the ones able to check that the software works the best way it can, instead of some corporation?

I bet you have open-source software on your computer right now, and you may not even know it. Do you run the FireFox browser? There you have open-source. With a proprietary software, once a company decides they no longer want to make it, it’s dead. They don’t care if you still like using it, they will just stop making it.

There are alternatives to traditional ways of thinking… even when it comes to software. So many people still believe that the only good software available is that which is found on a shelf in a store. That is such a lie. The best software doesn’t come in a box! It’s just out there. Everything you do in one way, shape, or form is being influenced by open mechanisms. One day soon, as far as software is concerned, it will be open. Cut. Print. Period.

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Don’t Let Software Die

Chris — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 23:02:25 +0000

Don’t Let Software Die is a post from Chris Pirillo

This email landed in my inbox last week, but it’s taken me this long to post it…

Dear Resellers,
I’m writing to you today to give you a long overdue update on our Blogware and Web Site Builder services.
Over the past year Tucows has been working to refine its overall reseller strategy, putting greater emphasis on the four core services we see as essential for the success of resellers and Tucows alike. The services we’re focussed on are the “traditional” Tucows Domain and SSL Services, our new Email Service, plus our recently launched Personal Names Service.
Despite our love of Blogware and Web Site Builder, we just haven’t found the interest from Resellers in these services we had hoped and we’ve decided to de-emphasize them going forward.
What does “de-emphasize” mean?
Essentially, these services are no longer part of our growth strategy and as a result we are no longer actively marketing or selling them to new resellers.
What does this mean to you as a Blogware and/or Web Site Builder reseller?
Probably less than you might expect.
We will continue to operate and support the services for the foreseeable future. You and your customers should not see any change in the quality of service or the level of support you receive. Essentially it is “business as usual”.
We are however not planning any updates to Blogware beyond maintenance windows and major bug fixes that might required to maintain the service at its current state. Our Web Site Builder vendor continues to enhance the service and we expect to pass through these updates.
Should you have any questions about this, please contact your Account Manager or, if you prefer, me.
We thank you for your continued support of Tucows.
Ken Schafer
VP Product Management and Marketing
Tucows

I migrated from MovableType (another locked platform) to Blogware a few years ago, and ultimately saw stagnation in product development – which put me in quite a pickle, as I really didn’t want to go back to hosting my own blog. It was around then that I decided to make the leap into WordPress, which is what this blog is running today – and I couldn’t be happier. I’ve not yet upgraded to WP 2.5, but that change is coming as I’m working on a new template for this very domain.

What worries me most about building communities on closed platforms is that as soon as those platforms change direction or stop innovating, you’re locked into a toolset that has nowhere to go but down. A blog is only ONE community tool to use – but not the only one that the community may need at any time.

For anybody still using Blogware on my earlier recommendation, I deeply apologize. Tucows has given absolutely no indication that they’re interested in opening the platform at all – leaving you in more of a no-win situation. My “continued support of Tucows” is completely contingent on what they decide to do with Blogware now… aside from abandoning it.

Don’t let software die, please? If nobody wants to pick up the ball and run with it, at least you would have given them the opportunity to do so. This is what worries me most about spreading more of my data across more of these networks that have little (if any) chance of surviving another digital downturn.

The Open Source Community Project Named Gnomepal

Chris — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 15:00:19 +0000

The Open Source Community Project Named Gnomepal is a post from Chris Pirillo

The last few days have been a whirlwind of backchannel (and front-facing) activity surrounding my call-to-action. 95% of the feedback has been positive AND productive, with some of my favorite responses coming from people who had working code to donate – and a nod from Dries on one of Adam’s follow-up posts.

It was most heartening to see that Hans pretty much echoed our same concerns and directives – which means we’re definitely scooting down the right path.

In about an hour, we’ll officially be starting down the path of live dogfooding the project that is now known as Gnomepal. This means, we will be building out our needs as a community for this particular community project. Like anything, we have to start somewhere – and Gnomepal.org is it. If you’d like to join the discussion list, we have one set up.

We are planning to be active in #drupal-gnomepal on irc.freenode.net, and anybody can download the living code on the Assembla page (which contains a wiki that needs fleshing out, Trac, svn, trouble tickets, Milestones, etc.). If you would like to join the effort in development, documentation, organization, etc. – just let us know (and I could certainly use some help in wrangling folks). I’m working on getting a mailman list set up on my server, but for some reason it hasn’t been cooperating with us lately.

That’s all for now. I need some coffee to wake up. You?

We’re Taking an Open Direction with Web Communities: Are You In?

Chris — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 11:03:41 +0000

We’re Taking an Open Direction with Web Communities: Are You In? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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For the community of community owners, operators, moderators, and members: we need better options, and I believe we need them to exist on open platforms. We all have different tastes and we all use different tools, but I think we all can accept that community software should help us grow and flourish. One potential platform for us is found in Drupal, an open source content management system (CMS) that can be molded into a powerful, integrated suite of community experiences – something that can help us make sense of all these social networks we belong to.

For the geeks: Drupal has so much power in its core, and enough fantastic community-contributed modules, that I think it’s time to assemble an Install Profile, complete with beautiful (accessible, microformat’ed, high quality) themes, pre-set Views for any Web community to either install on their own or have hosted at any given Web host that supports Drupal with optimizations. The benefits to you should be more than obvious.

And I don’t mean just the framework for the community platform, I mean… like, it’s ready to go. “It’s not the features, it’s the implementation.” This all started when we began to migrate the existing Lockergnome community to Drupal (5.x, as 6.x had not yet been released and many favorite modules have not yet been brought up to speed). OpenSocial, OpenID, OAuth… just there.

I’m posting this because it’s my hope that I can find partnerships, angels, brain-power, etc. – either from other communities or businesses willing to take part in an open source project that could benefit everybody and themselves at the same time.

My idea is not a unique one, and therein lies its greatest potential.

I don’t want a social network, I want a socially *RELEVANT* network (both on-site and beyond). I don’t want a community platform, I want a participation platform where members are rewarded and ranked appropriately. I don’t want a place where people can just blog, because I’m going well beyond the blog. It’s not just about hosting videos, audio files, or any piece of random media – it’s the discovery mechanisms between them that make them more relevant.

It’s discovery – no matter the community, no matter the type of content. Imagine coming to a site and not just reading about what other people are interested in, but what interests they SHARE with you! Imagine coming to a site and seeing how someone ranks in answers pertaining to your own questions! Oh, I’m confident you may have seen these features elsewhere – but what about for your own site, what about for your own community, what about for your own ideas?

Imagine that, instead of being taken to a “404 Page Not Found” error, seeing a list of potential results – or simply being redirected to the likeliest result if there’s only one in the search index? It’s already possible, but only if the developer makes it possible – or the project leader suggests it as a feature that enhances the user’s experience when things aren’t optimal.

SEO’ed URLs, nimble templates that adhere to a guideline for communities (colors and layout), identity flow, rating, voting, posting, gathering, embedding… a structure that supports both ad hoc and category-driven content… something that is centered on the user instead of the community s/he is involved in. On one type of page, you’d see related links to all the other sections and people throughout the site. To do as much as possible to de-geekify administration so that it’s not so overwhelming to people who just want to have a powerful tool (without needing to be a power user).

It’s not about user-generated content, it’s about their direct and indirect involvement. It’s not about locking them in, it’s about freeing them and giving them tools that they can use or further mold for their own specific needs.

I’m not a startup – I’ve been in business for 11 years, creating my own content, helping create content for other people, and helping people create content for themselves. I’m a community and marketing consultant, and I know full well that my clients could make use of the specific interplay of the modules I’m wanting to bring together.

That’s probably one of the most maddening issues I’m facing: great software that’s only accessible if you go through the company that built it, or if you go through a consultancy that has customized it to resell to high-paying clients. But, here’s the thing: those same people could use some of the things that I want to do with the platform. We all have to put food on our tables, I know – but maybe with enough wisdom and work, we can accomplish something together (helping ourselves and the world beyond our own walls).

When hovering over an avatar, one should see relevant information about that person (name, age of account, recent content, similarities, syndication, etc.). And where’s the intelligent relevance when I happen to be visiting someone’s profile page? Are they like me? Have they visited my blog before? Have they commented on something I’ve done before?

Why can’t a user see more rich statistics about his / her contributions throughout the network? Why can’t someone know where people are coming from, and use that generic intelligence to further foster relationships with others?

The front page of the site should be a rich mix of photos, text, video, tags, a call-to-action, and other relevant information. But what if the community wants to grow organically rather than through pre-set categories or forums? Let each tag page be a “front page” all its own, mirroring the same kind of data that’s related to the tag. Recent blog posts, latest comments, most commented over various periods of time, highest trafficked blogs / questions / groups, related tags, images / audio / video, popular people, newest people… and a user’s profile page could be a compilation of similar data (their own newspaper, if you will).

Of course, if a community or group wants to have predefined categories, they could easily be applied – choosing to elevate the content of certain roles over others. The creation of a subdomain could happen quickly should the community wish to create a group with tools targeted to them – their own wiki, their own forum(s), their own whatever.

When a photo can’t be found for a story, why not dive into properly CC licensed photos from Zooomr or Flickr (and attribute them accordingly) – especially if it was uploaded by the user who created the content that’s tagged with a similar keyword? Let the system help them automatically match all of their content created on disparate sites! Give people an incentive to make external data ecosystems much more complete – your photo on Flickr and your video on YouTube tagged with the same keyword would automatically get sucked into your post if so desired.

Why leave it to the user to figure this stuff out? And if you (reading this) ARE the user, isn’t this something that you’d love to see in all of your various Web communities?

When I’m viewing someone’s lifestream, and I happen to see that they listened to a song on Last.fm, why can’t I click a permalink and find out other people in the network who have also listened to that song – and see which ones I share interests / tags / etc. with?

Why don’t I have the options to set the colors site-wide, or per content type? Why don’t user avatars indicate my relationship with them at a glance (either with a tiny corner color or border change)? Why do I have to load a completely separate page to launch a contact form, to sign up, to sign in? Why aren’t my notification mails filled with more information? Why can’t I… make this relevant?

Monetization can and should go beyond Google AdSense sharing – to any other affiliate network (Amazon, ShoppingAds, Kontera, etc.), or to a dedicated ad network all our own – perhaps through Google Ad Manager since they have a backfill of inventory at their disposal. OpenX, too – the flexibility to swap, built into the theme (dunno, maybe at some point it’ll flow easily within the CMS itself).

For accounting scalability, the member must provide their own account IDs. Essentially, the member receives x% of the impressions that come to any page s/he has created 100% of the content for – potentially adjustable after meeting certain criteria (points, etc.). Imagine leaving a comment in someone’s blog, answering their question, etc. and when that comment exists on a separate page on the system, the person who contributed the comment having a percentage of the ad inventory? No longer are they relegated to living in their own blog, but feeling like they’re getting something back by participating in the network and providing value. All with restrictions and relationships controlling the mechanisms.

And if a community doesn’t want to be monetized, fine – they can turn that feature off. If they don’t want to share ad revenue with their members, fine – they can turn that feature off. At least they’ll have the option!

What’s more, shouldn’t there be a shared license for all content contributed to the community – and the user may define his or her own CC terms for it? It’s such a grey area right now, and I don’t know how that looks in a legal sense. I’m hoping to add all the necessary components that a community site might need before it goes live, so that it’s quite clear what’s going on – let the community leader set ‘er up how they see fit, but at least integrate a wizard to generate a base structure for the legalese.

The bottom line is freedom and flexibility – the freedom to choose, the freedom to grow, the freedom to leave (and take your profile data with you, or easily transfer it to another system). The flexibility to add features that pivot around the user or groups of users – whatever new tool may come along.

I’m not quite a newspaper or a magazine (or a company that owns several of them), but what I’m wanting to create could certainly be used for traditional press outlets. On the Web, you’re a television studio, a radio station, a newspaper, a magazine… you’re a publisher with a vibrant community, where editorial and viewer interaction can intermingle.

We’ll need information architects, developers, designers, quality assurance, copywriting, leaders, and other roles crucial for the initial and ongoing guidance and assistance. I don’t care to fork Drupal (that’s not what this is about) – having recently donated funds to send a couple of developers to Drupalcon, the last thing I want to do is split efforts. It’s great to have a moldable piece of clay, but even better when that clay has been molded into a beautiful statue for all to admire. Drupal is a modular CMS, so anything done within its framework can be deployed to any other Drupal-run site (community-oriented or not).

Adam Kalsey has been assembling the project and helping put many of my suggestions together – but I realized quickly that if we’re going to turn this back over to the community-at-large anyway, it’d make massive sense to let ‘em in on sooner rather than later.

I love brainstorming, but I love seeing ideas come to fruition even more. I do plan on live streaming as many of the efforts as allowed, if only for the greater part of the Drupal community (or “community development” community in general). I see a few things that Drupal.org could use, itself… if only to attract other people to the platform, not just those who use it now. Not trying to step on any toes, just suggesting that if the tools are up to scratch, they should be shared and deployed as living examples of what’s possible.

I have to take action on something, and right now from everything I’ve seen in “the community,” I’ve gotta go with the platform that’s most nimble and hands-on as possible. It’s going to take a good amount of tweaking to get to the point where I’d say it was ready to be “packaged up” and passed out to any other Web community that wanted to use it.

If you’re familiar with svn, can communicate well, can work well with others remotely, need something like this for your own needs (and can’t or don’t have the time or resources to do it alone), wanting to build your resume, understand community / social media, and are hip to doing something with the rest of us… then stay tuned. If you’re someone who has financial resources to contribute so that we can do this more effectively, I’m all ears – as this could give you a tool to use for your own communities as well as be seen as a “good will” gesture. No VC funds, please?

We’re already set up on Assembla, and have just released the Activity Stream for any compatible Drupal site. If the Drupal community moves quickly, they can populate the default list to the most comprehensive social networking outline on the Internet. The FriendFeed API suddenly got a bit more interesting for you, I bet.

Bottom line is: we’re VERY serious about putting this together. We’ve been at it for quite a while.

This weekend, I’ve invited a very small group of people over to my home to “sprint” on this – a project that can still be molded, a project that can still be grown, a project that could help make someone else’s project better. Some of those sprinters may opt to work remotely, and I will start to scout for a public space for the next sprint. If you know of someone in the Seattle area that might be up for something between 9am on Saturday through to Sunday evening, let me know. I can only accommodate so many people in my home (sorry, I don’t have a “real” place to gather), so I’d just as soon it be through a trusted network for in-person interaction.

It’s taken on an official name, and that’s “Gnomepal” – as inspired by TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington. It’s a mashup between my ol’ nickname and the platform of choice for this particular project… I guess it’s fitting? We’re going to be using Gnomepal.org for live dogfooding, so every time you load ‘er up – you’re going to see something different. Expect falling rocks for a while. :)

I have Lockergnome.org, Lockergnome.net, and Lockergnome.com – and each may play a role in all of this. If I were to map it out right now, I’d say that “.com” would become an active deployment of the latest working version of the install profile. I’d relegate “.net” for hosted communities and custom domains. I’d use “.org” for the non-profit arm of this thing. Of course, everything is subject to change – that’s the nature of software and development.

We already have an IRC room open at irc.freenode.net in #gnomepal (just for a regular flow of backchannel chatting). This is a massive undertaking, I understand – but I see such an overwhelming need for it (personally and professionally). There’s a lot of variables at play, and many chances of losing the user in this experience – and I’m trying to bring everybody closer. This is a world full of great software, great people, great experiences, great platforms. We have to imagine big, because that’s the only way we’ll be able to achieve big – but it’s not big enough if it’s not open.

Thoughts? My email is chris@pirillo.com – and I’ll be at the Drupal Co-work on Thursday (and sprinting with other folks this weekend – which is sure to be the first of hundreds). Donations will be funneled through a yet-to-be-set-up non-profit (we already have PayPal).

I hope that the discussion in the greater community is fruitful, if nothing else – and I’m also hoping that holy wars don’t break out over which platform is better, because the best platform is always the one that works well for the person or company that uses it. For my personal blog, I’m quite happy with WordPress (can’t wait for v2.5 to go final). For my communities, it’s going to be Drupal.

My biggest fear isn’t that people will talk about it – it’s a fear that they won’t.

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How and Where to Find Free Software

Chris — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 22:01:18 +0000

How and Where to Find Free Software is a post from Chris Pirillo

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Software can be expensive these days. Thankfully, most types of software have excellent alternatives that are either free, or Open-Source. Here are some tips sent in by Chris G to help you find these alternatives.

Google is a geek’s best friend. We use Google to find everything in our geektastic lives, so it makes sense to use it to find our free software. However, this must be used with extreme caution. Googling “Free Photoshop” may not lead to Open-Source/Freeware… but to torrents. With torrets, you may certainly get a free version of Photoshop… just not legally. Refining your search to something like “Free Photoshop Alternatives” will help a great deal.
Indexing sites are also a good option, allowing you to search inside of all the applications available as Open Source/Freeware. This, again, should be used with extreme caution. Only download from trusted and reputable sites, as not doing so may lead to malware installed on your PC. This is bad.
There are also many websites whose sole purpose is to find good software to recommend to their readers, as well as tips and other bits of content. Such sites are Lifehacker and 43Folders are particularly good for offering productivity tools. They also recommend other software. Whilst not everything is free on here, I have found many good pieces of freeware here.
New/Social Media/Podcasting or whatever in the world you want to call it. Whilst these may not be the best option if your specifically looking for a bit of software, they are great for just picking up bits of advice and tips along the way…. and most importantly: providing entertainment.
Communities. Real people are your best option. Having had real experience with the application, they will know which they think is best. This will allow you to bypass the downloading, installing, using, not liking and uninstalling of the countless apps you need to try in order to find the best one. Communities like Chris’ do amazingly well for this kind of thing. With the extremely friendly and well-educated people there, you’re to get hooked up with a few sites for the software you need.

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How to Create Your Own Wallpapers with Oxidizer

Chris — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 04:36:05 +0000

How to Create Your Own Wallpapers with Oxidizer is a post from Chris Pirillo

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I normally get my wallpapers from a variety of different web sites. That’s about to change right now, though. The wallpaper you’re seeing on my desktop right now… I made myself! It was made in about 10 minutes, using Oxidizer. Oxidizer is an open-source application for Mac OS X which allows you to generate your own wallpaper.

Fractal flames take many shapes, here’s some crude examples made almost literally at random by Oxidizer. Only the colour scheme and the positioning have been altered. Here are some of the features you will see in this release:

Increased Leopard Compatibility.
Oxidizer now starts in the centre of the screen.
Fixed Crashes related to colour selection from the Color Well palettes.
Fixed an issue where Genomes generated in the Breeder or GenePool that used Final XForm could render differently in the main editor.
Fixed a Core Data issue where the first genome loaded into the editor would not get a preview render.
Copies of each genome rendered is now saved in ~/Library/Application Support/Oxidizer rather than log

You can find all of my new daily wallpapers (along with the poems to go with them) in my blog.

3d Wallpaper Art - Digital Art Wallpapers.

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Top Ten List of Free Windows Programs

Chris — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 07:54:40 +0000

Top Ten List of Free Windows Programs is a post from Chris Pirillo

Josh sent in an excellent list of his top ten recommended Windows programs… all of which are absolutely free! Here they are, for your use if you wish.

Audacity is a free program that allows you to edit your music and sound files. It is open source and it is very to use. For someone looking to start podcasts, this program is for you. You will get used to the features it has in a matter of minutes. This is perfect for starting off in editing music and sound files.
Winamp is a great music player for those looking for a alternative to the common “iTunes” software. It comes with many features and plug ins as well. You can play all your music files and save play lists as well. It also plays many music files that other music software cannot normally play.
Trillian is an all-in-one messenger that uses very little resources. It includes, MSN, AIM, ICQ, JABBER(G-Mail Chat), YAHOO, and even IRC. This is for you if you are a person that always has at least 4 messengers running at a time. There is a Pro edition to this, which is sightly better, but the basic one is just as good because it is free.
CPU-Z is a small program that displays your current computer specs. For example, it can show you your Motherboard name and even how much RAM you have. This is good to know when you are looking for those drivers and you forgot the name of your motherboard.
WinRAR is a great program that allows you to compress your files to a smaller file size. I suggest using this as a default compression program. There are others such as Win7, but this does the same job.
UltraVNC is a client to server based program that allows you to access another computer. Just start the server on the computer you want to gain access to, and then use the viewer on another computer to view that computer. I suggest getting UltraVNC and not RealVNC. It seems to be faster and overall more robust.
TrueCrypt This software allows you to encrypt any drive you want to and as you move files to that drive, the files encrypt automatically. I suggest using this if you need to keep important information away from people that want to know things.
Skype is a voice over IP program that allows you to communicate for free for pc to pc calls. The only downside to this of course is that you need credit in order to call to land line phones. However, the price is cheap to do so.
HiJack This will search your registry for errors and possibly anything that could be wrong with it. Not only that, it logs all of the information it changed or found.

EDITOR’S NOTE: be VERY careful when using HiJackThis. It can be a very powerful tool, and do serious damage to your computer if you don’t know what you’re doing. NEVER fix “everything” that HiJackThis finds… most of it is harmless, and even essential system files.

SuperAntiSpyware scans your computer for known Spyware, Adware, Malware, Trojans, Dialers, Worms, KeyLoggers, HiJackers and many other types of threats, and allows you to remove or quarantine them. It offers daily (manual) definition updates, as well as home page hijack protection and customizable scan options. Furthermore, the program includes a Repair feature that allows you to restore various settings which are often changed by malware programs, but usually not corrected by simply removing the parasite. The free version lacks real-time blocking and protection as well as several other advanced options.

Open Source Wii Software

Chris — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 07:33:21 +0000

Open Source Wii Software is a post from Chris Pirillo

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Minutes after I sliced my finger on the Wii box, I decided to download an Open Source program for Mac OS X. The DarwiinRemote is an application for Mac OS X v10.4 which allows Wii Remote to fully control applications on a personal computer. Essentially, you connect your WiiMote via Bluetooth to any Mac running OS X. The software includes a desktop application and a developers’ framework, allowing for additional functionality. To use the software, the computer must have Bluetooth enabled.

DarwiinRemote employs most of the features of the Wii Remote. All three accelerometers feed information to the computer. All of the buttons on the Wii Remote, including the Nunchuk attachment, can be used, but the control stick is not supported. The rumble features and LEDs are fully programmable. In addition, DarwiinRemote can accept the infrared signals from the Wii Sensor Bar. However, to use this feature, the bar must be plugged into a powered socket on Wii.

If you know of other cool free things for the Wii, please let me know! You can leave me a follow-up comment to this video, or shoot an email to me at chris@pirillo.com.

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How to Handle Remote Tech Support

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 06:30:00 GMT

Using GoToAssist is the easiest way to view and control another person's computer online. Use it to provide instant technical support to family, friends and customers. Start a session with just one click, and instantly connect with the other party.

Network Tools for Windows

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

You need these network tools, no matter which operating systems and networks you have to support. SolarWinds ipMonitor: Affordable Network Monitoring for SMBs. Get turnkey network, server and application availability monitoring with SolarWinds ipMonitor v9.0. This easy-to-use, reliable solution for SMBs delivers out-of-the-box availability monitoring so you always know exactly what's up with Active Directory, DNS, Exchange, FTP, Web, IMAP, MS SQL Server, and SMTP. Download your free trial today. Or, try their totally free tools! And, through 2/29, save 20% when you purchase ipMonitor 9.0.

Get Your Own Web Site

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

Starting at just $3.99/month, web hosting from GoDaddy includes 99.9% uptime, 24/7 support and free access to GoDaddy Hosting Connection, THE place to install over 30 FREE applications sure to help you get the most from your hosting plan and Web site. Enter code CP2 at checkout, and save an additional 10% on any order.

Plus, as a friend of Chris Pirillo, enter code CHRIS7, that's C-H-R-I-S and the number 7, when you check out, and save an additional 10% on any order. Get your piece of the internet at GoDaddy.com.

VMware and Parallels for Virtual Machines

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

It doesn't matter if you're running on Windows or Mac OS X - every power user needs either Parallels or VMware (or both). There's never been an easier way to test software without destroying your primary operating system's stability. Think of how many times you wish you could press a 'reverse' button on your computer. Plus, there's no easier way to try new Linux distributions - see what all the fuss is about. Run Windows in OS X, run Linux in Windows, but the best way to do either is with VMware and/or Parallels.

Coupons for Online Shopping

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 07:56:13 GMT

This feed is fueled by Lockergnome Online Shopping and Coupon Codes

Before you shop next time, see if we have a coupon first.