Here’s a summary of a post with a similar title by Dion Hinchcliffe:

1. OpenSocial offers the lowest common denominator, not the full richness of each platform. Like Java, write once, test everywhere is the name of the game for OpenSocial. Using the OpenSocial model, developers can create apps to run on dozens of different social networking sites, but can’t leverage the full capabilities of the site it runs on. To create a competitive product with the full richness of the underlying platform, custom coding is needed.
2. OpenSocial is largely based on open standards. OpenSocial uses the essential browser open standards of XML, HTML, Javascript, and the data formats are all ATOM and RESTful/WOA. It also supports Flash content and functionality and most of the really popular development platforms, including Ruby on Rails. OpenSocial documentation and sample code all uses the Creative Commons licensing and Apache 2.0, and everything will be open sourced at some point.
3. OpenSocial is a doorway to data portability AND potential security holes. A site that supports OpenSocial applications provides that application with all the people data in that user’s account. Their own info as well as their friends. Users can import/export their social data to/from sites and 3rd party app developers can knit together a person’s social data across other social sites that support OpenSocial. Michael Arrington has reported that the first OpenSocial app has been hacked.
4. OpenSocial is simple but also capable of full-blown, rich Internet applications. And without server-side infrastructure. Developers can innovate with a few bits of markup and procedural code and drop it into the OpenSocial ecosystem and leverage the massive audiences and scalable infrastructure of OpenSocial compliant sites. OpenSocial even supports powerful interactive Web user interface models like Ajax explicitly. Amongst a few real gems, mountains and mountains of relatively useless, uninteresting apps will also be created.
5. OpenSocial is from Google. OpenSocial will ultimately be very good for Google, if not outright bad for a few others (probably Facebook). The outcomes may not always be to the benefit of everyone playing under the OpenSocial umbrella. User beware.
6. A new era in competency in social software is being ushered. Building successful social applications is a lot different prospect from building traditional business and consumer applications. Understanding people is the key to building effective social networking applications, and that is often the hardest thing for an industry obsessed with connecting with each other via 1s and 0s.

Who’s that? Why did s/he do that? How did s/he do that? How to stop her/him from doing the same thing again?

Nexus promises to be “a highly interactive conference where we discuss fundamental changes happening in business and technology, and how you can take a lead in them!” AND to make the event better, Nexus organizer is now using a WYSIWYG wiki to elicit and compile ideas (for example, on Session Discussions and Community Gatherings) from everyone.

What sets this event apart from prior local events seems to be the strong government, stat board and industry backing that this one managed to harness — sponsorship by StarHub and Accenture, partners from NTUC Youth and TiE Singapore, advisors from IDA, NUS, ISS, SMU, etc. and speakers from Microsoft, Salesforce.com APAC, Yahoo! SEA, Google, CNET Networks Asia Pacific, Intel China, IDC Asia/Pacific, Insead, etc. Local Web 2.0 representatives include Tomorrow.sg and Stomp.com.sg.

HOW DID The Digital Movement manage to gartner so much sponsorship and support from so many industry players? What’s their secret weapon? When asked, one of the organizers laughingly wrote: “Haha, we got no secret. Just hardwork, a lot of leveraging on windows of opportunity, and a garang just do it spirit. ”

Anyway, the topics to be covered include:

• Asia Pacific 2.0: Regional Technology Leaders on Emerging Opportunities
• Crowdsourcing The Media: Mainstream Media and Bloggers
• Future of the Web: Web Giants Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Salesforce.com
• The Mobile Web Explosion: Opportunities ahead in the convergence
• Open Source Communities: Innovation Unlimited
• Global Startups: Share Their War Stories

Really geeky Web 2.0 speakers include:

• Nathan Torkington, OReily Radar, Perl Foundation Board Member
• Andreas Weigend, Former Chief Scientist, Amazon.com

In fact, there will be a Geek-Out session on 22 March evening where local technologists can show their products/services to Nathan and Andreas if it is:

• A technological innovation
• Related to the web, mobile or the latest technologies out there
• Or just damn cool.

Will you be there? I know I will. Will Nexus 2007 become an effective catalyst and leader for Web 2.0 in Singapore? What do you think?

FOR A LONG TIME, I’ve believed in the free culture espoused by Lawrence Lessig and the open sharing of ideas, theories, studies, research advocated by Terry Vessels (above). I’ve therefore downloaded and consumed (installed, used, read, watched, listened…) lots of free software, ebooks, video, podcasts, news reports, in-depth analyses, research studies, etc. on the Internet over the past few years.

Recently, however, I’m beginning to ask myself, “Do I really believe in free culture and free exchange of ideas? Have I’ve been more the taker than the giver?” Granted that I’m normally a frank and open person. Yes, my work has been almost invariably very demanding. And yes, I’ve been blogging from time to time, sharing new things that I’ve learnt. Still, there were times when I’ve hesitated and held back. For example, I’ve kept my research study (begun in 2005) under wraps on the Net until a few days ago. Another example, I’ve been adding lots of useful information to a wiki on a sub-domain for almost two years now. Yet so far, I have chosen not to link them from my blog.

PERHAPS MISTRUST FIRST set in when a Masters program classmate asked quite pertinently some time ago, “But how could we share our research ideas, especially in a public domain? What if someone else were to steal our ideas and claim them as his/her own?”

Our eminent Trade Minister George Yeo probably spoke for many among us when he said on BlogTV (Episode 12: Big Boys Blogging) a few days ago:

“If they expect me to say things which I’d only say very privately, then they will be very disappointed because the blogosphere is not private space… There are things which you will say to your wife which you would not say to your friends, there are things that you would confide in your teacher which you would not confide even in your classmates. That’s part of life, we all have circles of trust…”

The minister was answering young blogger Gayle Goh’s very frank comments that (1) people who read blogs want fresh new perspectives and a strong, personal voice; and (2) people might find it very difficult to trust what politicians have to say especially when they won’t deviate from the party line at all.

Gayle’s response? She looked quite skeptical, even a little disapproving.

At first, I smiled at her youthful audacity and seeming naivete. Upon reflection however, I think Gayle raised an excellent point. Yes, indeed. Just who, in their leisure, would be interested to read a party manifesto? Even though it comes in blog postings?

Jeremy Wright, in his book Blog Marketing, wrote (paraphrased initially, words in brackets below are mine):

“Most blogs are expected to have these qualities — an authentic voice, honesty, and authority… this holds true even more so for the corporate blog…. This presents unique challenges for business leaders who want to understand blogging (connect with readers), as the concepts of transparency and authencity are not often associated with corporate communications practices….

“Blogging is really about three things:

• Information: Telling your customers what you’re doing and finding out what they are thinking.
• Relationships: Building a solid base of positive experiences with your customers that changes them from plain-old consumers to evangelists for your company and products.
• Knowledge management: Having the vast stores of knowledge within your company available to the right people at the right time.

“Without blogs, company messages can get so filtered by public relations or the media that CEOs and other senior management have decided to talk directly with customers — whether it be in the company’s stores, on the company’s airplanes, or at special events set up specifically for communicating with customers. The value of direct customer feedback is obvious, and blogs provide that [one-to-one and daily] on a global scale.”

In “Chapter 3: The Power of Blogs for Business”, Wright wrote:

Be Real: The Scoble Story

“…sometimes the most important person to be blogging in your company may not be an executive. For Microsoft… the most important blogger is arguably Robert Scoble… Scober started blogging before he joined Microsoft — his existing blog was actually a major force in landing him the job. In his role as a technical evangelist, Scoble has to be both authoritative and honest.

“One of Scoble’s rules is to tell the truth, even if it means admitting that a competitor’s product is better or if it means Microsoft is doing something wrong. This can be scary for an executive to do — though Sun’s Schwartz does it quite successfully (another story in the book). For Scoble, this comes naturally, and the net effect is that he has become one of the most influential people in a company with more than 55,000 employees. The external effect is that Microsoft now has a trusted voice who will give the straight and passionate answer to even the hardest questions.”

Finally, BG Yeo himself had observed in the first part of the BlogTV show:

“It’s strange. The emotion connected with blogging is very different from that connected with say, giving a speech or addressing an audience. For some reason, there’s an intimacy associated with going into the blogosphere which you don’t associate with a public meeting.”

Hmmm…. Can BG Yeo really maintain a public, party-line stance and yet achieve that “intimacy” with young people in Singapore? What do you think?

Roles - Moodle has a complete new architecture for assigning people permissions. It’s very flexible, allowing you to give just a single person the right to delete posts in one particular forum… Thanks to Open University…

XML database schema – Moodle now supports a single way of specifying database structures using XML [for easier development and wider database support]… Moodle can now run out of the box on Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle… Thanks to Microsoft…

New admin interface – admins get… a new interface designed to make it much easier to find settings and configure Moodle properly… Thanks to Google…

Unit testing framework – developers can now easily write unit tests that can be run as part of a system check to make sure Moodle code is performing as expected… Thanks to Open University…

In Downes’ words:

“The drawing depicts the often unnoticed assumptions that inform our understanding of groups, inform our sometimes slavish devotion to groups, and shows how these contrast with my own understanding of how interaction ought to occur, in networks. It’s not just a web theory (though it is that), it is a theory about life and society in general.”

Moodle is a software package for producing internet-based courses and websites. It is open source software, which means that it has no licensing costs and is available for modification by users and developers. It offers students easy access to course content and online resources such as the library, digital reading rooms, and forums for online discussions between instructors and students.

“Moodle’s great strength is that it provides all the functionality and features of sophisticated, expensive, learning management systems, but it has a user-friendly, intuitive interface that requires only a gentle learning curve,” says Dr. Derek Briton, a member of the Moodle evaluation committee. “Also, student reviews of Moodle are exceedingly positive, and for a University that is student-focused, that is important.”

For more information see the Athabasca press release dated March 31, 2006. (Note: Not news anymore, but just for the record in my space.)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp. Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates on Wednesday mocked a $100 laptop computer for developing countries being developed with the backing of rival Google Inc. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The $100 laptop project seeks to provide inexpensive computers to people in developing countries. The computers lack many features found on a typical personal computer, such as a hard disk and software.

“The last thing you want to do for a shared use computer is have it be something without a disk … and with a tiny little screen,” Gates said at the Microsoft Government Leaders Forum in suburban Washington.

Reminds me of one of those famous last words (negative predictions on ultimately successful technologies). As one of the list members, Yisahy Mor, put it, “Thinking of technologies Gates went to the trouble of playing down. Some examples that come to mind: Mac, Linux, Internet standards…”

“Free entry-level products are rapidly become de rigueur in many areas of software, notably in programming tools where there are hundreds of thousands of freely available goods. On Monday, IBM introduced DB2 Express-C, a free database aimed squarely at software developers. It is a trimmed-down version of its commercial product, and IBM limits its deployment to two-processor servers.

“Oracle and Microsoft also recently introduced free versions, joining a number of existing open-source databases, such as MySQL and PostgreSQL, that can be freely downloaded. The moves by the big three corporate database providers–Oracle, IBM and Microsoft–reflect some of the changing economics of the software business, where freely available open-source products are forcing established vendors to adjust the way they do business, analysts and software industry executives said.”

Note: Last November, Microsoft announced SQL Server Express, a free stripped-down version of version of SQL Server 2005. Oracle also introduced a beta of its own free offering, Oracle Database 10g Express Edition. Both editions limit usage to only a single CPU, a 4GB database and up to 1GB memory, making them suited only for development of lightweight applications.

The most popular web server over the past 10 years has always been FOSS-based, according to Netcraft’s statistics from Aug 1995 – Dec 2005. Apache is the #1 web server, currently with over three times the market share of its next-ranked (proprietary) competitor.

An edited extract from a FOSS primer, written by Tan Wooi Tong (2004) for the United Nations Development Programme-Asia Pacific Development Information Programme (UNDP-APDIP):

Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) is a recent phenomenon that has the potential to revolutionize the software industry. It has already gained a strong foothold in the server software segment, with a leading market share worldwide in some software categories. It is also gaining ground in desktop applications and it has been predicted that its use on the desktop will become significant in the near future.

Interest in FOSS is growing globally, particularly in developing countries…. There are clear indications that the use of FOSS in government, industry and other institutions is growing [even in developed countries] and that there will be a need for graduates familiar with FOSS.

Lower Costs, Viable Alternative to Illegal Copying. The cost of providing computing and networking hardware, and the necessary software can be daunting not only for developing countries but also for underprivileged sectors in developed countries. Educational institutions that cannot afford to pay for licensing fees may resort to using illegal copies of the proprietary software. Students, who can ill-afford the purchase of licensed copies of proprietary software, may use illegal copies to do assignments at home or on their laptop computers. With its zero or negligible cost, FOSS can lower such barriers and discourage piracy tremendously. Unlike proprietary software, there is also no licensing fee for each user or computer. FOSS can be freely distributed once a copy is downloaded or made available on a CD-ROM.

Reliability, Performance and Security. Many studies have suggested that FOSS, especially more mature ones, have better reliability, performance and security. For example, FOSS database MySQL has six times fewer defects than proprietary databases (Reasoning Inc.), FOSS file server Samba running on GNU/Linux significantly outperforms Windows 20003 by about 100% (PC Magazine, 2002) and more (IT Week Labs, 2003). The development methodology, the availability of the source code and the large numbers of developers enables bugs, performance glitches and security vulnerabilities to be identified and resolved quickly by third parties. An independent audit of code is also possible only with FOSS and not with proprietary software.

Learning, Innovating and Verifying. The open philosophy of FOSS is consistent with academic freedom and the open dissemination of knowledge and information common in academia. Unlike most proprietary software, the source code in FOSS is available for users to examine and to modify. This gives students the opportunity to learn from studying high quality real-life programmes. An academic environment where FOSS is prevalent will encourage staff and students to tinker and experiment with, and participate in the development of FOSS that may eventually lead to innovative solutions. In addition, the validity of research findings arrived using FOSS can be verified, because the source code is available for examination.

(See also “Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS, FLOSS, or FOSS)? Look at the Numbers!” by David A. Wheeler (2005).)

Although many of these folks may never grace the pages of the high-gloss pubs, they will most certainly be keeping an independent eye on those who do. As we’ve all witnessed, this is already happening. Both Dan Rather and CNN news chief Eason Jordon were handed their walking papers after being busted by bloggers.

(2007-03-01 note: The AlwaysOn link above is now broken. See The 2006 AO 100 instead.)