Software to the People!
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Communist Cuba joins socialist Venezuela in embracing the concept of open-source software. By the Associated Press.
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The eagerly-awaited Ubuntu Studio has been released, adding another entry into the expanding list of multimedia-optimized Linux distributions. I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but interested readers can peruse some installation screenshots or check out the latest news and information on the Ubuntu Studio Wiki. I plan to review the distro in a future column, along with an update on the latest version of the venerable PlanetCCRMA, but in this entry I'm focused on another very exciting new release. Ardour 2.0 is now available for download. This version is a significant improvement over the 0.99 series (1.0 was never released), with many new features and enhancements to performance and stability. The following article profiles the new Ardour as I employed it for three projects, all involving the program in the processes of composition and arranging as well as the more typical tasks of recording and editing. I've described each project in some detail, and each description includes a link to the final audio output.
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For anyone who has been using open source for a while, the current commercial enthusiasm for communities, collaboration, and all things Web 2.0, is rather amusing.  After all, the idea that users are not to be regarded simply as passive and grateful recipients of whatever is handed down to them from on high, but need to be treated as partners and participants who can make valuable contributions to the formulation and development of new products, is central to the way that free software works.  But some companies that are starting to dabble with Web 2.0 ideas are discovering that you have to be careful what you wish for when you solicit this kind of user feedback.  Just ask Michael Dell.
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Open source is not always the best software.  When it's not, use something else.  Is this complicated?
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Also: Microsoft plans new BizTalk release for this year. [News.com Extra]
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A new product lets workers combine simple bits of software to create business tools.
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It's been a real thrill to watch Loic Le Meur roll out his new video community tool called Seesmic. He's got the French touch, a bit self-deprecating, he's good at seduction, keeps his ego in the background and puts the focus on the users, where it should be.  As he's been seeding people one by one, they create videos which then appear on Twitter (heh) so people who don't have Seesmic get an idea what it's like through the eyes of people they know. This immediately creates a feeling of envy, but if you beg Loic he gives you an activation code, and off you go -- ready to become his next evangelist. Feeling priviledged to be his next evangelist. It's like Tom Sawyer and the fence. He reminds me so much of Jean-Louis Gassee in his prime, when he had all the Mac developers wrapped around his finger, and loving it.  I have an idea of where Loic wants to go with this, and it's going to be big. It'll be a fun ride, and fun to watch a master promoter at work. PS: Here's my latest Seesmic video, a demo of FlickrRiver. You may have to turn up the audio to understand what I'm saying, or use headphones. We're going to do something fun with the people at Le Web 3 and FlickrRivr. Thanks to Loic for also having a curious mind.  PPS: Beware the exclusive.
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Corporate licences make for happy software vendors
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Evan Williams, the Blogger guy and Twitter co-founder, gave a talk at LeWeb3 about keeping software small, and how sometimes you can create a product by removing features from an existing product. He showed how Twitter is less than Blogger, no permalinks, titles, comments, templates, etc. It's almost nothing compared to Blogger, but we're using it and liking it. It's not a new story. When I was coming of age in computer science, the newest computers were minicomputers. They were called that because they were smaller and did less than the mainframe computers that came before. They were followed by microcomputers which did even less and were a lot more popular than minicomputers (which of course were more popular than mainframes). Scaling things down can make them more useful. But it's a paradox because once a feature is in a product you can't take it out or the users will complain so loudly that you put it back in right away. I know, I tried, a number of times to back out of features that I thought of better ways to do. You can always add features to products, it will make the existing users happy. But it often comes at a cost of making the product more complicated for first-time users, and they don't have a voice, they can't complain, they just go somewhere else, usually quietly.  So Evan has a point. Software design, if you're creating wholly new products, is like haiku. Find the smallest subset of a mature product that will attract people and ship it.  But there are certainly features they could add to Twitter that would have no impact on the steepness of the learning curve (i.e. how easy it is for a new user to get started). For example users are good at skipping over prefs they don't understand. But you have to think carefully about what the default should be, so there's no penalty for not caring.  Also features that only appear in the API have no cost in complexity of the user interface. They might make it possible for a developer to build a new product on top of the existing one. Since the user of the base product can't see the feature, it can't make it harder to learn.  Some users say they don't want new features, but I bet most of them would be very happy to use a new feature that made Twitter more fun or useful. And there are  alot of users who don't say anything about it, and don't think much about it. Most people aren't interested in theories about why products catch on, they like it or they don't, and don't know why they do or don't.  It's always good to ask questions about why things work, but if I could offer the Twitter folk any advice, I'd say don't hesitate too much to put in new features that will make users happy. Ultimately users like new features in products they use a lot. There's a reason why products tend to bloat over time, it's because users demand it. The trick is to not compromise too much on ease of learning.
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Before I begin this week's missive, let me just say this: I'm glad to see that the FBI is turning to off-the-shelf software to monitor our conversations rather than spending more money on a proprietary solution. As a taxpayer, I appreciate that.
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Our colleagues over at PC World gathered up a list of products that each of them simply couldn't imagine going through daily life without. Some are relatively obvious, such as Windows 2003,  TiVO and Skype, and others a bit more odd, such as Cyber Systems' RoboForm. Heh?
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Also: Color Sudoku game adds twist to computing. See what people are saying on News.com Extra.
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Fluery still roots for JBoss...Edward Tufte mostly likes iPhone interface...mysteries of Linux's /proc files...multicore compression...Actually *using* mammoth telephotos
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Give people a reliable, robust electronic gadget, and they'll soon start using it to play games. It's a law of nature.
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Make the Internet easy to use, and the consumer will hop aboard. The Y! wants to help.
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I think I've mentioned this before but on Saturday Feb 12th I'll be talking  about the Jakarta FeedParser at CodeCon  in San Francisco.  I published an outline  of the talk on the FeedParser wiki.  I'm hoping to have a 0.5 release done before then and havepotentially another suprise in the works.
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Gone are the days when free software could blithely ignore what was happening in the world of proprietary code.  The two approaches are now inextricably intertwined as more and more users and companies choose to run both.  One paradoxical consequence of this is that as free software becomes more widely deployed, Microsoft's impact on it becomes greater.  Against this background, a recent shift in Microsoft's public statements about open source assumes a particular importance.