RichardRadio

HBS Working Knowledge: Technology: The Simple Economics of Open Source

Finally an economist’s take on Open Source software. This article is however writen in everyday language.

“Altruism is just a nice by-product.” Open Source Development brings “specific, tangible and very favorable economic benefits: benefits that are sensible, potentially quite lucrative and, in a word, simple.”

Gmail is a bit of an island at the moment. if you want to use its interface – for its rapid search and the ‘available from anywhere’ nature maybe. You are locked-in to a Gmail domain address, and your messages can’t be exported once received. I’ve covered this theme before Gmail Lock-in

However I just stumbled across this Gmail help desk posting: How can I access Gmail from another email provider, or access other email accounts from Gmail? Apparantly this lock-in is not an intentional ploy and functionality will be added to allow inter-operability. Google really does intend to do no evil.

Lets us be sceptical until it happens tho’…

£650,000 for something openk ish

Press Release

Ask Ken Site

Derek wrote a book Design for Community (2001). Judging by my current cash flow I might have to go down to the library to see if its there. But on his home page there are links to various articles which I guess must sumerize the book, at least to some extent.

Snippets: Make it harder to post by making the link less prominent and you will get fewer but higher quality posts. Make the rules clear so people understand if you have to delete anything. Provide good quality content and responses to get it going.

Also the psychology behind why reviewers post on Amazon confirmed my own feelings. Funny I’ve never stubbled across anything to confirm this before – most reviewers concentrate on the technology and take the user interaction as a given, which is of course rubbish.

Derek Powazek is …

Snap.com

Info.com – Displays results from 14 search engines

Thanks Evhead

Netimperative – Napster to sell pre-paid cards

Pre-paid cards aren’t easy to get going, you need to get them onto the street. Will the Dixon’s outlets be numerous enough and with enough kiddy footfall to be popular?

oswd.org

This is amazing – I wish I’d have found some of these designs earlier I would have gone straight ahead and used one

Jeffrey Veen: Making A Better Open Source CMS

I’ve spent the last 2 days looking at bulletin boards assessing functionality. I need one but they all look square and tabled. I mean it can’t take me too long to write my own… so I was going to download phpBB to try it out. It offers a lot of functionality, some useful some not, but can I integrate it into what I’ve already got? And that means in graphic design as well as php code.

So then I find out that its not easy and I should use a Content Management System (CMS) to integrate them. But they are even more design imposing….

At last I see some others have the same problem. This post is great hopefully it will lead me to some solutions. The sites that I have been lead to are at least elegant in design – so smells like I’m in the right place.