My friend Hugh McGuire asked me if there were any privacy concerns with OpenID. Since this is kind of a complex question, I decided to answer it with an essay, OpenID Privacy Concerns, which I think is pretty useful to anyone thinking about using OpenID. tags: openid privacy

Weight weight don't tell me So, I'm in Los Altos at my parents' house for the holidays, and I've been working out at the Page Mill YMCA. Today I went in for my last weight-lifting session of the year. I also weigh myself on weight-lifting days (about once every 4 days), so this was my last weigh-in of the year, too. I'm glad to say that I've now got a body mass index of 29.4 -- down from a measured value of 38 in September. That was a little bit under my goal weight for the year-end, which was nice to hit. It's been a really precipitous drop in weight and increase in fitness this year, which I've been pretty proud of. There's still more ahead -- a "normal" weight is about 25. But I'm feeling healthier, and I look better, than I have in years and years. I think 2008 will see a slower weight loss, more stabilization, and exploration of some different sports and activities to keep the exercise fresh. tags: weightloss bmi exercise workout

We've got a CodeFest 2008 coming up in Montreal on 5-6 Jan 2008 in a few weeks. Should be a lot of fun: the main theme is going to be microformats implementation. Our previous codefest, on OpenID, was a big success, so I'm looking forward to this one. tags: codefest codefest2008 montreal microformats

Microsoftmats Best part about the announcement of the CodeFest was this set of tags: codefest, facil, microsoftmats, cms, groupware, mediawiki, tikiwiki, xo, .... Microsoftmats seems to be a typo, and a quick Google search for microsoftmats seems to show only typos, so I don't think this is a common nickname, but... ooh, it could be sooo snarky if used well. Especially given Tantek elik's former job. Too bad I like microformats so much. tags: microformats microsoftmats

Chris Messina wrote an interesting post on his blog about his OpenID Shitlist, Hitlist and Wishlist for 2008. (I'm going to briefly try to remember if using the word "shit" is cause for alarm on Planet Debian, and then I'm going to ignore the problem and move on.) I think it's a good post and it really identifies some of the key players that are helping and failing in the OpenID space. I got a shout-out for Wikitravel and for the MediaWiki OpenID extension, which yay for me. I think Chris was probably a little unfair about Wikimedia's lack of support. The site is moving very slowly towards a unified login for all its wikis, which is a really difficult task to make happen. OpenID is slated for installation some time after that, so it's going to be a while. But I hope that it will be useful for Wikipedians. My main impression from this blog post, however, is that OpenID's day in the sun might be over. That's not a bad thing -- usually the hard work gets done after the cameras are turned off. Zealots like myself tend to think that if only the world knew about our latest-greatest idea or technology, they'd fall right into line and adopt it immediately. But my experience has been that things work a lot slower than that, and I'd guess that OpenID is probably going to have a similar adoption curve. In thinking about opening up the Social Web, it's probably good to compare the opening of the Web Web in the mid-1990s. At the time, most Americans who were "online" were subscribed to a proprietary network like AOL, Compuserve, Delphi or MSN. (I'm not sure how things were in the rest of the world... Similar? Worse?) Many of these services either walled their users from the Internet entirely, or made it a one-way interaction. AOLers could read stuff from the rest of the Web, for example, but others couldn't see what AOL folks were doing. That system looked impenetrable; after all, AOL was paying millions of dollars to make great content and manage forums and the like, and why would they give that away to Internet leeches for free? But eventually it came apart because the Web became more interesting than the on-line services. (I personally think the watershed was the Ate my balls meme, but others might differ. I just kind of picture hundreds of thousands of AOLers calling up technical support asking to see the Mr. T pictures, and that's what finally broke things down.) Today, on-line service "walled gardens" are a negligible part of the on-line world -- those that still exist are more or less big ISPs. I think that the parallel with the Social Web is probably pretty apt. Today, Google, Facebook and Digg are reluctant to open up their identity silos to a distributed social Web. Their main asset today is their collection of identities and the relationships between them -- why give away the crown jewels? My guess is that it's not going to be until a mature, standardized and distributed Social Web exists outside the walls of the big social-networking players that we'll see them really willing to sit down at the table and come to the party. Of course, by that time, it'll be a moot point. But that just means there's a nice big fat market for somebody smart to take advantage of. tags: socialweb openid walledgardens

I've been thinking about how to do a distributed social network using OpenID. My current thinking on the matter is baked into the page Open relationships. Comments very welcome! tags: openid socialnetwork openrelationships

My friend Hugh McGuire just launched a new Web site: earideas. It's a curated collection of the best podcasts on the Web -- kind of an interesting choice. Hugh's best known for the Librivox project -- a collaborative effort of thousands to make public-domain audio books freely available on the Web. He's also the leader of datalibre.ca and the co-founder of Collectik, the social sharing site for podcast enthusiasts. All of which is to say that he's a massive-collaboration kind of guy. So why the curated collection? Says Hugh, "It s built specifically so that you don t have to do anything much more than you do when you turn on a radio." In other words, they're finding the best stuff for you. I think the site makes a nice complement to Collectik. In any event: the gang at earideas has asked for lists of people's top 5 favorite podcasts. I'm still not very much into the podcasting thing; I don't have a portable digital music player, and I haven't found listening to music on my laptop or desktop really useful. But I do listen some of the time, so I figure I could give my suggestions.

1. Linuxcast by the personable and telegenic Don Marti. Great coverage of software and society in the Free world.
2. FLOSS Weekly. The "weekly" part is a bit of a stretch, but this is a very good interview show about Free/Libre/Open Source Software. I miss Chris DiBona as host, but Randall Schwartz is no slouch, either.
3. Destinyland. Destiny is perhaps one of the greatest pop culture researchers alive today. This very occasional podcast is just like having Destiny corner you at a party and talk for 90 minutes about the suspicious circumstances of Alfalfa's death. It's fascinating.
4. CBC Radio 3 Podcast. Yeah, it may make me terribly unhip, but I like Radio 3.
5. Radio Open Source. I want to hate this show for capitalizing on the name "open source" without actually providing any open content or talking about Free Software. But it's one of the best shows on the Web.

All right, that's my five. Good luck, Hugh and the rest of the gang at earideas.com. tags: earideas hughmcguire podcasts publicradio

Million-dollar idea So, I use a Logitech Trackman Marble for my desktop computer -- sometimes called the one true pointing device. I think it's awesome, and I've had it for maybe 10 years. The only downside is that every 6-8 weeks I have to pop off the cover and clean out all the finger oils, dust, hand hair and cookie crumbs that have amalgamated to a greasy, fuzzy crud inside. It may be one of the most disgusting things I do regularly -- and remember, I have a 2-year-old, so that's saying something. Anyways, here's my idea for a device, free for you to use. It's a self-cleaning trackball (or mouse). Just like a self-cleaning oven, every few weeks you'd click a special button on the device and it would heat itself to 800 F for about 90 minutes until the dang thing is just glowing white-hot and it vaporizes any crud that may be inside. Then, you can go about your business with a smooth, clean mouse (or trackball) again. Viola! I think the idea would work for keyboards, too, but I really rarely clean my keyboard. Filthy keyboards seem to work fine most of the time, and when they don't work well you can just throw them away and get a new one. But there's no accounting for taste and anyways people may want to buy a matching set of self-cleaning keyboard and mouse rather than just one or the other on its own. You, reader, can use this awesome million-dollar idea on your own, free of charge. Enjoy! tags: keyboard mouse trackball selfcleaning productrecall $1midea

One thing that's been interesting me lately is RSS. Yeah, I know, not exactly cutting-edge technology, but the format -- in its three different forms -- has become the default for machine-to-machine transfer of serial information on the Web. So RSS really represents our individual or collective presence on the Web spread across time, space, and theme. I'm particularly interested in RSS because I'm working on themed portals like Keiki. It's one of our goals to pull in the parenting part of a person's personality spread on other parts of the Web, so you don't have to re-enter it in Keiki if you don't want to. It's a fun problem to be solving. But as I was playing with the format, I realized that I'm spread pretty far across the Web, myself. I make most of my contributions to this blog, but I'm also part of other communities and a user of other services. What if I used some software like Planet to pull together the disparate threads of me into one place? So that's what I did. I ended up using a tool called Gregarius instead of Planet, mostly because I originally intended to install it on Godaddy's hosting service, which doesn't support cron jobs, which Planet needs. Once I realized how ad-infested GD's "free" hosting service is, though, I moved all my sites off of it, and back to Antipater. And my personal aggregator is there, too. It was interesting to pull in the accounts I've listed on About Me and see which ones produced RSS feeds. Some I expected (my Flickr feed, my del.icio.us feed) and others I didn't (my Upcoming feed surprised me). I was also surprised by sites that didn't produce a feed. I really expected something from Pownce and Tribe.net), but I couldn't get them to cough up a feed. Most disappointing was Facebook, which has a really nice mini-feed of my activity there that doesn't seem to translate into an RSS feed in any possible way. But otherwise things went very quick. I found Gregarius really easy to work with, although its inability to pull tag (metadata) and categories out of RSS streams. There's an autotagger plugin, but I haven't gotten it to catch any tags yet. Oh, and the OPML output was horrible -- I think it might generate HTML that looks like raw OPML -- totally useless. In any event, if you feel like cyberstalking me or just seeing what I'm doing around the rest of the Web, keep an eye on evanprodromou.info. There's even a handy aggregated RSS feed... just in case you want it. tags: rss identity aggregation gregarius feeds services

I'm organizing a micro-coworking session here in Montreal for 6 December (15 Frimaire). "Micro-coworking session" is just a fancy way of saying "hanging out together and working at a caf ". Folks will be meeting in the back of Caff ArtJava from about 9AM to about 5PM. More info on the subStation Coworking event page on Upcoming. The event is for people interested/involved in (or supportive of) Station-C, the incipient Montreal coworking facility scheduled to open in February 2008. But everyone's welcome to come by -- heck, we'd have a hard time keeping you away. tag: coworking montreal microcoworking upcoming:event=350901 substation station-c

Private and public life in the age of Facebook One of the things I find interesting about life on the Internet is the distinction between public and private life. So much of our lives are on-line today; for many of us, the Web is where we make our living, make our friends, enjoy our social life, and plan our off-line activities. But what about those personal activities that don't jibe with our intended professional image? If we have out-of-the-mainstream political or religious views, or unorthodox social activities, how do we keep them to ourselves? How do you talk about things on-line with friends that maybe you don't want your parents or other family to know about -- or vice versa? How do we preserve our reputation in more than one sphere, in situations where those spheres are very different? I think there are a number of strategies for doing this.

1. Be discreet. In other words, just don't put personal stuff on the Web. Keep up your professional image at all times, and don't use Web sites or tools to make connections in more private ways. This is probably the safest strategy, and the one that most privacy groups and media recommend. But there are some downsides, too. You miss out on the Web's power to enhance your life as a well-rounded human being -- your personal life languishes for the benefit of your professional one. You give up on some important opportunities to connect with other human beings in a deep and meaningful way. Especially if your interests are shared by only a small percent of the human population, it's unlikely you'll run into other people who share them off-line. I also think there's something unhealthy about stifling your personal side for your professional life's benefit.
2. Use pseudonyms. Another way of being "discrete" -- here, I mean separated into different parts. I think this is one of the most common ways to deal with the problem. Use your "real name" for activities, groups, and opinions that you feel safe presenting to the world at large, and use made-up names or handles for activities you might not feel like discussing at a job interview. This can be very successful, but also nerve-wracking. What parts of life require a "secret identity", and what parts don't? What if one part of your life leaks into another? It can also be tedious to set up, say, two or three different Flickr accounts, two or three Facebook accounts, umpteen blogs, etc. Or, you keep a LinkedIn account for work and a MySpace one for your partying set, and hope that Google doesn't make a link between the two. But you can get sick of managing them, and other people don't know which name or pseudonym to use and when to "out" you to their other friends.
3. Integrate. By this I mean: let your personal and professional life grow together. Decide what parts of your personal life you're willing to make public, and bring them into your public persona. Parts of your life that you don't feel you can integrate, consider letting go of. I think this can be risky and difficult, but ultimately I think it's the most healthy psychologically for people who spend a lot of time on the Web. Most often, these people either work for themselves and don't have to answer to others, or they work in industries where offbeat or out-of-the-mainstream lifestyles are tolerated or encouraged (or the need for highly-skilled people makes those "quirks" easier to ignore). Or they just gamble that nobody at their work or in their family is really checking (quite often the case).
4. Wait for better software. I think the main reason that this is a problem is that social software developers aren't very good sociologists. Or, rather, we focus on the software rather than on the social. It would be nice to see the next generation of Web services support the multiple facets of a person's life. I'm an Open Source fanatic, a Web developer, a wikitista, an entrepreneur, a father, a Burner, a Montrealer, a man, a prankster, a partier and a cook -- among many other things. How can social software, or a federation of services, let me reflect these different aspects of my personality to my friends, coworkers, colleagues, relatives and strangers? Could I define finer-grained relationships with others than just "friend", and choose what parts of my life to feature or downplay with each? It's a fascinating design and implementation question, and my hope is that someone will take on the challenge in the future.

I think this is a situation where our society and our software both need to evolve and change. It would be nice -- very nice -- if edgy politics or weirdo culture didn't hurt your chances of advancing in your chosen field. And if friends, family and colleagues could accept us all for who we are, in all our parts. But it will also be nice if software and software usage patterns on the Web let us find a way to adapt to that, too. People have lots of different parts and lots of different personae that they inhabit at different times and in different contexts -- it would be great to match our social software more to that reality. tags: socialsoftware web privacy persona self

One-liners Some other things to note:

• Montr al has had an insane amount of snow in the last few days. I dug out our car for about 90 minutes this morning, and drove for hours in snow-blind traffic. Not an easy time, but boy the city is lovely like this.
• I'm doing a talk on extending MediaWiki at the PHP Qu bec meeting this Thursday, Dec 6. Meeting info is here.
• Pictures from Montreal Santarchy are available on Grimmwire's Santarchy Montreal 2007 set. Great group, fun crowd, loooooong night. Oh boy.
• Speaking of SantaCon, Santarchy in Second Life sounds totally nutso.
• My server overload problems seem to be getting better. I moved Vinismo to its own server on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. I also moved SonaUiki and the Br leurs site to GoDaddy, where I have a ridiculous number of free Web hosting credits. It worked surprisingly well, and GoDaddy supports PmWiki out-of-the-box. Nice! Update: Apparently GoDaddy adds a whole bunch of ads in on their free Web hosting. I didn't notice; I have Adblock Plus installed. Gar. I'll have to move these sites back pronto.
• My light and convenient Toshiba Port g R200 has been throwing I/O errors. So I gotta get a new hard drive. Good news: the thing's still under warranty (yay!). Bad news: I gotta drive through this miserable weather to a place in St. L onard to get the HD replaced. Boo!

tags: montreal snow phpquebec mediawiki santarchy secondlife toshiba port g r200

A few days ago I installed the Flock browser, version 1.0, on my notebook computer. I've been using it as my default browser for that time, and I have to say that I find it very slick and useful. I'd used the early beta versions of Flock and I thought it was a good idea, but I wasn't able to use most of the features. The blog posting tool, for example, doesn't work with my hacked-together WikiBlog system. Also, a lot of my must-have Firefox extensions, like SearchStatus, wouldn't install on Flock. But version 1.0 now installs all my Firefox extensions, and it also has lots of neat features that I find really useful. The feed reader, for example, is very slick, complete, and useful. The integration with social software sites like Facebook and Twitter is amazing, and the People View -- which tracks your friends on different systems -- is huge. The "My World" generated home page has replaced Netvibes for me. All good things. I'm a little disappointed with the narrow range of sites that are integrated into the browser, though. It'd be great to see more and better documentation on writing integration plugins on the Flock Developer site. I'd love to work on ways to make it easier to post to MediaWiki sites, upload files, get notifications, etc. I think getting site owners to make their own Flock plug-ins, or making it easy for users or third parties to do the plug-ins themselves, is going to be key to the success of these features. One other thing I found annoying was the indexer. This is a background task that indexes your browsing history so you can search for stuff you've recently seen ("Where did I read about that new version of JavaScript...?") Although this seems really useful, I found that the indexer was pegging the CPU on my Linux box -- possibly a threading problem? -- and I found the program increasingly unresponsive. Eventually I found the toggle in about:config to turn off the indexer ("flock.service.indexer.enabled"), and once I switched it off my browsing experience has been much less frustrating. I'd like to see Flock succeed -- it's a nice piece of work, and I think it's going down the right path. Getting more contributions from the world Web community will go a long way towards making it more useful for users. tags: flock flock1.0 browser opensource

Yo Gamma Gamma Last night I dropped by the SAT for a great games event here in Montreal. Gamma 256 was a fun party, associated with the MIGS game summit. The event showcases submitted games based on a theme -- this year's theme was 256x256 pixel games (or smaller) -- thus the name. There were a ton of Montreal tech people there. The games were fun to play, especially the insanely violent Bloody Zombies, where your chainsaw-wielding alter ego slaughters the undead and then swims in their blood to reach the next level. Great fun, and a good example of Gamma's concentration on art in games. The music was good too -- lots of bleeps and boops and gamety fun. Congratulations to Heather Kelley and Damien DiFede and the rest of the Kokoromi Collective on their great job with this event. I'm already looking forward to next year. tags: kokoromi gamma256 heatherkelley damiendifede

One-liners Some more things going on with me:

• It snowed here in Montreal this week, and now it's sticking. Lots of hats, gloves, and heavy boots; we're officially in winter.
• On that note, I've posted my first house swapping ads on Craigslist this week. One's is for a Montreal-to-Gulf-Coast swap for February 2008, and the other is for a Montreal-to-Buenos-Aires swap for Winter 2008-9. I don't know if either one will work out, but I'm into the idea of spending a month or so away from home.
• SantaCon Montreal happens tomorrow -- see ARE YOU SANTA? for details. We're all geared up for it, but I still need to go get some more Kringly goods for the event.
• Late breaking news: Maj just finished her novel for NaNoWriMo. With 26 hours to spare! Congrats, baby! I'm proud of you.

tags: 1l snow montreal houseswap santarchy santacon

We had a nice trip the rest of the way home from our Thanksgiving in New Jersey today. This morning we had breakfast in the Holiday Inn Express that we stayed in (very nice, new, clean, good pool and exercise room -- a good value for $109/night dual queens). We then spent the rest of our morning shopping at the Whole Foods Market. It's the closest Whole Foods to our house in Montreal -- hold it, no, it looks like the one in Portland (Maine) is closer. Who knew? We picked up a lot of hippy-dippy personal hygiene items that we can't seem to find in Montreal, and I also got a few bottles of wine to take across the border. I got a bottle of 2003 Andrew Will Cellars Champoux Vineyard -- an interesting Columbia Valley red blend, mostly Cabernet Sauvignon that I think will cellar nicely for a couple of years, but not too urgent. And I also picked up a 2004 Hanzell Vineyards Chardonnay, Sonoma Valley, which I also think will sit nicely for a year or so. We'll see -- I'm not really big on cellaring yet, but I'd like to give a few wines a try. We stopped in Amherst (Massachusetts) for lunch at the Amherst Brewing Company, which has good pub grub, generous portions, and really nice house brews available. We also dropped into a few bookstores. Books are a great cross-border purchase for Canadian residents, since their cover price is usually ridiculously skewed. For example: I got a Paul Auster hardback that was labeled at $22 US, $28 Canada. That's with the loonie trading at US$1.01! Our drive up to Montreal was pretty decent, although we had a ton of rain and snow that made the actual driving kind of sucky. We stopped in a cruddy gas station in Sharon, Vermont that didn't have a bathroom (doh!) and didn't stop much afterwards until Burlington. We got dinner at a great place in downtown Burlington, Burlington Hearth (AKA American Flatbread). Great oven-fired pizza, organic ingredients, nice atmosphere, more microbrew. Fabulous. We got across the border all right, although I needed some time to get my new work permit for 2008. Then a long snowy drive back home, where my friend Damien from Austin is staying with us for this week during MIGS. Should be a fun week -- we have lots to catch up on. tags: travel massachusetts wine vermont burlington amherst montreal

Long weekend of travel and family, and now we're back on our way to Montreal. I spent most of Thanksgiving weekend with my father's family in New Jersey, where he and my mom both grew up and where 4 of his brothers and sisters still live (and their kids, and so on). We left Montreal on Tuesday afternoon, had dinner in Albany, and got down to Newburg (New York) in the early evening. The next morning we spent several hours at the nearby Woodbury Common Premium Outlets, which was about as crass and consumeristic as it sounds. But the loonie is still strong, and it's nice to buy some clothes. I especially like buying things a few sizes smaller than what I had to get a few months ago. Wednesday night we got into Hillsborough, NJ, where my Aunt Barbara lives, and visited with her and her family. Barb has four great kids -- Phillip (16?), Maddy and Vicky (14?), and Nick (13?), who are all my cousins despite being at least 20 years younger than me. When Amita June was too tired to move we hit the hay for the night, and in the morning we all hung around playing Wii sports (even AJ!), and had a hearty dinner in the early afternoon. Then we went to my Uncle Paul's for dessert, coffee, and a nice 2003 Ramos Pinto Vintage Port that we brought along. Friday and Saturday we spent at my Aunt Helen and Uncle Marty's house in Highland Park (New Jersey). They have a great 100-year-old house right by the Raritan River, and it was really nice seeing them. We had dinner with Paul and his wife Eileen on Friday night, and we saw the lighting of the Christmas tree in Princeton. Today we started the two-day trip home. It's not really that long a drive -- about 6-10 hours, depending on the route and kind of weather -- but we like to split it up into two days, since we have a 2-year-old aboard. We stopped in New York (city)/Queens to see our friend Jen for brunch at a nice place called Quaint, where I got a good house-cured salmon and Maj had an excellent bowl of granola. Amita got some nice challah french toast, which she wolfed down with the help of her kind parents. Tonight we stopped in the Pioneer Valley in Massachusetts to sleep over. I like this part of MA, and the New York Times had a recent article about its bookish culture, called In the Valley of the Literate. We had a nice quick dinner at Bueno Y Sano in Northampton, and we'll stick around tomorrow for more shopping (books! Whole Foods!) and a little site-seeing before we head home. It'll be good to be back in MTL, though. I miss my bed, and we only have a few weeks there before we're off again to California for Christmas time. tags: travel thanksgiving newjersey amitajune shopping pioneervalley

Montreal SantaCon Speaking of Christmas, one of the things we'll be shopping for tomorrow is santa costumes. Friday, November 30th is SantaCon Montreal 2007. SantaCon is a world-wide anarchic cluster-together of goofballs and lunatics who go rampaging around their town from bar to mall to bar in full Santa costume (or Mrs. Santa, or elves, or reindeer, or something similar). Everyone's invited, nobody's in charge, and a fun time is had by all. SantaCon started in the 90s in San Francisco (like everything), but I never managed to go. I finally went to SantaCon in Austin in 2001, and had an amazingly good time. My pals at The Ministry of Truth have photo evidence here and here and here. There's nothing like overflowing a bar with 100 of your new best friends, all dressed like Santa, dancing and goofing off and having a good time. It brightens up everyone's day. Anyways, we'll be picking up Maj the beginnings of an outfit here on the US side of the border, so she'll be able to accessorize with her own bits and pieces. I'll probably pick up a couple of spares for friends in Montreal, too. I'm really looking forward to the event -- it should be a good time. There's a Facebook event for people who go for that kind of thing. tags: santacon montreal cacophony santarchy santacon2007 santaconmontreal2007

le Sans Fil to go municipal I was excited to read (via Steve Faguy) that our beloved local community wireless group, le Sans Fil will be providing wireless to many parks and open spaces around Montreal. This is great news for Montrealers -- the city had previous vowed up the street and back that it would never have a municipal wireless program of any sort. So good deal. It sounds like it's going to be a tough job -- I don't think wiring up outdoor spaces for wireless is anywhere near as easy as doing caf s or homes. And I think it's going to be tough to show value -- after all, people are only outdoors in parks in great numbers during the few warm months of the year here. And when people are out in parks, they're not usually checking their email -- they tend to do more outdoorsy things. But my guess is that park culture will adapt to the new resource pretty well. Congrats to SF -- I think they're a great organization that's up to this new challenge. tags: montreal ilesansfil muniwifi

I'm glad to note that there's been a lot of movement over the last few weeks for the Montreal Coworking space. Patrick Tanguay, who's been organizing the project, let me know recently that we're closing in on a space. Which is just fantastic. Coworking is a loose term for a number of different ways of working together. The term is most commonly used for a kind of shared office where participants pay for either a fixed space (their own desk) by the month, or they pay for the use of a pool of free spaces (shared desks) on a daily or part-time basis. There are the kind of office resources, like WiFi, conference rooms, printers, copiers, etc. that you expect from an office, but unlike most shared-office situations, there's also an emphasis on community and communications. It's a great kind of work environment for people who would otherwise work at home or in caf s, such as freelancers, contractors, and startuppers -- or for people visiting from out-of-town. I've been to a couple of the Bay Area (California) coworking spaces -- the one at Citizen Space in San Francisco and the one at SocialText in Palo Alto. Both were convenient, fun, and social -- a good place to get some work done. Patrick's been working on a Montreal coworking space for a while -- talking to the City and neighbourhood development organizations -- and he's settled on a space in Mile End. It looks pretty fantastic. You can see the pictures and a map at the Montreal Coworking Web site. I've been working out of the house for about 5 years, and I really like the freedom and convenience it affords. That said, I'm really looking forward to having a more formal environment to work in than my home office. It's great here, and I feel very comfortable, but it would be nice to be out of the house. I also tend to meet with contractors and partners at local caf s, which can be distracting -- I'm looking forward to having meeting rooms. There's a 5 7 ("sank ah set" -- it's what we call a cocktail party here in Montreal) planned for people who'll be involved in the site planned for this Wednesday, November 21, at Bar Inc. (250 Mont-Royal Est). I won't be there -- we'll be in New Jersey by then -- but I hope others interested in the coworking take the chance to go. tags: coworking montreal patricktanguay

JS-Kit and data portability I've been a big fan of JS-Kit since I heard about it. I featured it in my list of 10 Web APIs for LinuxWorld, and I use it on my own personal site for comments. But one thing that concerns me, and that I've asked for clarification from JS-Kit about, is data portability. If they went out of business (heaven forfend), or if I figured out another cool way to do comments on my site, I'd like to be able to migrate old comments to the new system I'd build/use/buy. But as far as I can tell, there's no interface to download all comments on a site (either in HTML or some other structured format). I think this is going to be a key issue for people building Web sites with UI widgets in the future. It's a really, really useful way to make sites, but I don't think many developers are going to be willing to invest in a platform with no "insurance" that they can be flexible in the future. Sure, it's free of charge, and it seems kind of mean to use the poor JS-Kit folks and then move on to someone else -- but realistically it's an option you need for development. tags: widgets js-kit dataportability webapis

One-liners Some other stuff I'm thinking about today:

• On the "upcoming events" front, we've got some plans to make BarCampCanada1 happen here in Montreal in May 2008. I'm not sure how that's going to shake out, but I'm excited about the possibility of a nationwide BarCamp.
• I'm interested in Heather Ford's and Jimmy Wales's 50 parties idea - having fifty parties in one year to bring together local Free Culture people. I think we should have a party here in Montreal. Maybe in the Spring...? Maybe to coincide with BarCampCanada1?

tags: 50parties montreal barcamp barcampcanada1

I've been getting really interested in the new crop of Linux-based operating systems for mobile devices. I got a Nokia N800 earlier this year, which I've found really useful -- although a little frustrating, too. And I've been following the developments on OpenMoKo with great interest, too. So last Monday, when Google Android came out, I offered to give an experienced developer's opinion of the development kit for Network World. I spent most of the afternoon trying out the SDK, checking out the documentation, watching the presentation videos, and working on sample applications to get a feel for it. I'm pretty impressed with Android, and I think it's got a good shot to become the Open Source mobile application platform. I think that whoever wins in this space has the chance to shape how all mobile phone platforms work in the future, and to take a good chunk of the market. Opening up the phone platform to allow a real marketplace of third-party apps is, I believe, going to be a huge advantage for whoever can make it work. I think the main two contenders in the area are well ahead of Android so far, but they're really going to have to capitalize on that lead in the next 8-10 months before the first Android handsets are set to hit the market (late 2008 -- although we'll see about that schedule). And I'm not sure they've got the means and commitment to do it. Nokia has been screwing around with the N series of Internet tablets for a while. Which is great -- the operating system is clever, the GUI ("Hildon") GTK-based, and development in Python on the platform is a breeze. The basic tools -- media player, RSS reader (ingenious), Web browser, email, etc. -- work well. However, for unexplained reasons, Nokia hasn't put a damn phone into the thing. If there is a similar device that does everything that the N800 (or N810) does, plus has a phone in it, which one are people going to buy? It seems obvious to me. The other interesting OS is OpenMoKo, which I think is a great project with exactly the right goals. However, there's been some disappointment in the enthusiastic community around the OS as schedules have slipped and the developer preview devices shipped without a functioning dialer app. These two projects will have to fight uphill against the fear, uncertainty and doubt generated by the Android announcement and SDK release, even to stay in the game. And, to be fair, Google's announcement was masterful: classic vaporware -- for a product that won't be shipping for at least a year. But they got a pretty solid list of partners for the platform to sign on (albeit with only vague requirements for support). Best of all, they released a one-two punch of a bunch of developer information videos with tantalizing views of a nice-looking potential device, and a good SDK with tons of documentation and developer tools. It even includes an emulator that looks like a little phone. Awww! Android is slick, it's deep, and it's well-designed. The architecture is smart and sophisticated without being too clever for its own good. It's built on conservative -- maybe a little too conservative -- twin pillars: Java and Linux. For hardware providers, there's Linux's tried-and-true driver framework. For applications developers, way up at the top of the stack, there's good ol' boring Java, with new and smart APIs targeted specifically for mobile device apps, all on top of a new virtual machine called Dalvik that (supposedly) optimizes the hell out of Java bytecode. I was really impressed that the emulator emulates much more than just the Java APIs -- you can build ARM binaries in C that run on the thing. Very nice. Am I still going to get an OpenMoKo device? Maybe. But I'm going to continue playing around with the Android SDK, and looking for early developer versions of Android-supporting devices? Oh, yeah. Oh, and the article I did the research for is here; strangely it ended up on ComputerWorld rather than NetworkWorld. OK for me, though. tags: android google mobile linux article java

More about me and my cool life So, I talked yesterday (Journal/27 Brumaire CCXVI) about how much weight I've lost in the last few months, which has been great. Another thing that's been going on for me is that I've started using the Getting Things Done process for scheduling my tasks and my time. I've never been particularly good at managing my time, but at least I've always known that however late or irresponsible I might be, my brother Ted would always be later. But when I visited San Francisco in August, Ted was really doing great. Friends and family kept telling me how responsible and down-to-earth Ted seemed lately. And whenever he had an idea for something to do, he wrote it down in his little Sidekick device. Ted showed me how the GTD system worked for him, and so I went out and bought the book and started reading it. I have been doing GTD for a few months now, and I've found it really satisfying. I don't worry as much any more about little things that I should be doing -- they're all captured in my system. It's really gratifying. I don't know if I've been quite as successful as Ted in improving my personal productivity, but I do know that I'm feeling a lot better about things and about myself. Which is really all that matters. tags: gtd gettingthingsdone tedprodromou productivity

Skating away Maj, Amita June and I went ice-skating today. It was AJ's first time out on the ice, and she really enjoyed it (most of the time). We had a couple of spills, mostly because it was really my first time skating with a 2-year-old, and partly because it was her first time skating with anyone. We went to the indoor rink near our old house on rue Cartier at the corner of Marie-Anne. Pretty soon we'll be able to go outside on the pond at Parc Lafontaine. Maj isn't really a big skating fan, but she seemed to have a good time this time around. Which made three of us. I think we've got the makings of a Sunday-afternoon family tradition. We'll see, at least. tags: iceskating amitajune maj

More one-liners

• I'm glad to see that the Mister Wong logo contest I talked about a while ago (Journal/21 Thermidor CCXV) has borne fruit. The top 12 logos look pretty good.
• Maj and I have been catching up on season 3 of Deadwood lately. Great show, nice to see that season three is as solid as previous ones.
• We've got RecentChangesCamp coming up in San Francisco in February 2008 (I think). Anyone interested should get involved at http://aboutus.org/RCC2008 .
• What's the best alternative to the Sitemaps protocol for people who are into RDF? I'm thinking you could just make a hugantic RSS 1.0 feed -- after all, it is the "RDF Site Summary" format. Best of all, most search engines consume RSS as a recommended feed format. I'm going to try it with Vinismo and let you all know. The downside: I'm not sure many processors will handle a 100,000-item RSS feed very well.
• Norman Mailer died just as I got around to reading the copy of ''Oswald's Tale'' I stole from the Driskill Hotel last year at South by Southwest. I can't help feeling responsible.

tags: 1l misterwong deadwood recentchangescamp rss1.0 rdf sitemaps

So, I've been off blogging for almost three months now -- from about mid-August to now. It's been kind of guilt-ridden, and it's also been kind of a relief. Being a B-list blogebrity is a direful burden, and having some time away was restful and relaxing and energizing. But now I'm ready to come back! One of the reasons that I haven't been blogging is that once you fall behind, it's really hard to catch up. So I've decided to not do the entire task at once. Instead, I'm just going to start a page on my 2007 Hiatus and fill that up as time permits. For those of you who care greatly about exactly what I did each and every day for the last three months, you've got a spot to read it. And, truthfully, I dropped out of the B-list ranks on Technorati during my time away. I'm back to my natural position as a C-list blogger, and baby, it feels good. Get ready for some photos of my cats, coming up soon! tags: blogging blogs me c-list hiatus

Feelings of loss One of the other main reasons I haven't been blogging in the last few months is that I've been losing weight. A lot of weight. I've dropped from a high body mass index (BMI) of about 43 -- dangerously high -- to my current sane but still high 33.6. I'd like to get down to a more reasonable BMI of 30 ("overweight") by the end of the year, and be somewhere around 25 ("normal") by next summer. I can lose weight pretty easily when I put my mind to it. Well, actually, it's still insanely hard, but I'm so damn stubborn and obsessive about things, when I actually sink my teeth into them, that it seems easy to the casual observer. My recipe is simple: reduce the amount of food I eat, do low-intensity exercise about an hour a day, and measure everything as well as possible. I eat 3 good meals a day -- about 50% fruits and vegetables, 25% complex carbs like rice or bread, and 25% protein like beans, tofu, fish or cheese. I steer clear of sweets and I drink alcohol only on occasion, and seldom more than a glass or two of wine. For exercise, I've been running around Parc Lafontaine or on a treadmill three days in a row, then on the fourth day lifting weights at a local gym on rue Gilford. I still have a ways to go, but the results have been good so far, and I'm feeling like I'm getting close to the neighbourhood of what I "should" weigh. I've been getting a lot of compliments from friends and family, which is a great motivator. Most of all, I feel good running, jumping, and playing with my daughter, which is the biggest reward of all. All that said, the exercise is taking an extra 1-2 hours out of my day, and blogging has been the main thing cut out to make room. But I think I can work around that now. tags: weight loss BMI diet exercise

Road trip We're leaving Tuesday for a trip to New Jersey to visit my dad's family for American Thanksgiving. (Yeah, they're my family, too.) We're all looking forward to seeing aunts and uncles and cousins and other extended family, but we're also looking forward to spending our powerful Canadian loonies in the US. The Canadian dollar's gone up and up this last few months, and though it's no longer trading at its ridiculous high of US$1.10 (!), it's still above parity, which means our money stretches pretty well. Coupled with this is the fact that most products here in Canada are still priced as if the loonie were still worth US$0.62. It's not atypical to see a book priced for $7.99 US, $10.99 Canadian. So we're going to do some shopping for clothes, books, music and other goods while we're stateside. I plan on bringing an empty suitcase with me and bringing it back full. (The fact that I've lost a lot of weight makes shopping for clothes particularly enticing.) All within our legal limits for customs returning to Canada, of course! Not to worry, random customs official who's reading this blog for who knows what reason. I'm also looking forward to this trip because we haven't done a driving trip together in a while. Going to Thanksgiving in 2005 was Amita June's second long trip (our overnighter to Ottawa for our anniversary in Oct 2005 was her first), and I think she's going to enjoy it again this time. tags: road trip thanksgiving loonie parity shopping

Painful upgrade I just upgraded my main server, Antipater, from Debian "sarge" to Ubuntu "gutsy". I was getting pretty frustrated by being 3+ versions back from a lot of the important software running on the system. I wanted to get on Ubuntu for my server platform to have more frequent upgrades (about every 6 months). The upgrade went well, mostly. I updated /etc/apt/sources.list to use the Ubuntu archives, then got all the packages. The installation was pretty quick, even for something like 700 packages. However, when I rebooted to use the new 2.6.22 kernel (up from 2.6.8 or so), the server's responsiveness went way down. My guess is that somewhere in the 2.6.x series, one of the new schedulers is causing my particular configuration some grief. I've trimmed my cron jobs and background processes down to a minimum, but the server is still running a little too loaded. The great folks at iWeb have been really helpful, but they don't support Ubuntu, so I've got to brainstorm for myself. I'm going to have to go in over the next few days to reboot the server and experiment with other kernels -- not fun. tags: iweb ubuntu antipater

One-liners Some other odds and ends:

• It's getting cold! We had our first snow flurries a few days ago, and it's been regularly under freezing around here. Time to get winter coats out of the closet -- or, better, buy new ones in the US.
• My friends at Kokoromi are organizing an excellent games+art event called GAMMA 256 on November 28 at the SAT. Should be a lot of fun.
• One such friend, Heather Kelley is going to be talking at the Montreal Geek Girl Dinner on Tuesday. Good for her!

tags: gamma kokoromi weather heatherkelley montrealgirlgeekdinner

Long time no blogging. Yeah, I know that's a weak intro, but I have to put up something to note that I haven't written anything on this blog in weeks. I've got a lot of backfill to give -- life has been exciting, even if my blog hasn't been -- but before I do that, I wanted to make a quick note about a letter I just sent out. It's for the Creative Commons fall fundraiser. As part of their funds drive, they've invited a number of CC supporters to write about their experience and their believes on Open Content. My letter came out first, today. Commoner Letter #1 - Evan Prodromou is my contribution to the series. I hope it helps out with a cause I believe in a lot. And I hope that people take an opportunity to support Creative Commons. tags: cc creativecommons fundraiser wikitravel wiki opencontent

Argh... I know it seems like I've given up on blogging entirely, but that's not the case. I've just been spending a lot of time working on Evan Prodromou instead of on evan.prodromou.name, which has been a whole different kind of world. I'm mostly poking my head up to point to an article in the Montreal Gazette about my new project, Vinismo. Montreal entrepreneur uncorks Wikipedia of wine, says the headline. I guess that "Montreal entrepreneur" is little ol' me. Go figure! The article is nice and balanced -- it covers the obvious fact that one month after launch Vinismo is not the definitive end-all be-all of wine information... yet. Roberto Rocha, the article's author, is doing a great job covering local entrepreneurs and the startup Internet scene, and I'm glad that our site got his vote of approval. And check out the photo they took of me and Niko at the excellent Pullman Wine Bar. How sophisticated. Glad to be getting some press about the site, and good news for Vinismo. tags: wine vinismo montreal gazette me press

BarCampCanada1 I managed to convoke the very busy trio of Sylvain Carle, Simon Law and Fred Ngo yesterday afternoon at La ka to nail down some plans for this fall. (We were lucky enough to get the funny and insightful Madame Woo to help out, too.) The cement's not dry yet, but it looks like we're going to have BarCampCanada1 here in Montreal the 9-10 of Novemeber. That gives us about 8 weeks to plan out what we hope will be the biggest BarCamp ever in Canada. tags: barcamp barcampcanada1 barcampmontreal

It's been a while since I've posted here; I've had a busy two weeks, and posting on my blog hasn't been a priority. Something I should do more often. Of course, as time backs up it seems harder and harder to actually get around to posting. I wanted to bring the attention of my friends and colleagues, though, to a notice that Maj put on the Wikitravel shared logbook. As of 15 August 2007, Maj is no longer working on Wikitravel. In addition, my time has been curtailed quite a bit, and I'm concentrating only on community and content issues -- no more programming or sysadmin work. This is all coming about for several reasons. The main one is that Internet Brands, the company that now owns wikitravel.org, wanted to have their own staff do the programming and sysadmin work. The end of our service contract seemed like an ideal time to effect this change. On our side, it's been challenging for us to work with a large organization not specialized in Open Content and wiki sites. We've gotten along really well with the IB people, but we haven't always seen eye-to-eye on the best way to grow and develop the site. As the decision was made to remove us from our technical roles, Maj decided it was a good time to opt out entirely. I'm going to miss her tremendously. As most people reading this already know, we started the Wikitravel project together, and over the last 4 years it's been a constant important part of our family life. Maj's information-architecture skills and dedication to travel have been crucial to the development of the site. She's been a strategizer, a spokesperson, a content organizer and a content builder. Probably most important for the future of the project, she developed almost single-handedly the Wikitravel Extra personal experience component of the site. We've got a lot to keep us busy, though. We recently launched Keiki, a project to create an Open Content parenting guide. For myself, I've also started Vinismo, an Open Content wine guide (sensing a pattern here...?). And we'll be working with our partner Jani P. on Wikitravel Press, an independent project to publish printed travel guidebooks based on Wikitravel articles. Despite the shakeups, I anticipate that the future of Wikitravel will be good. We have an incredibly strong and smart community, dedicated to an important and noble purpose. I'll remain involved on a part-time basis. We've got a lot of traction in public opinion and great Web traffic. I don't think that IB is going to make any bad decisions about the site, but if they do there's a local and global community of people that take Wikitravel and Open Content travel guides extremely seriously. I think things are probably going to be OK. tags: wiki wikitravel opencontent maj work ib

On the subject of wiki The South by Southwest 2008 Panel Picker app is up for public review right now. SXSW Interactive, in Austin, is one of the best tech conferences of the year. I've got a panel proposal up, on Wiki 2.0 -- I really want to talk about some of the interesting new wiki apps, new wikis, and new wiki business models coming up. There are a couple of other wiki-related panels proposed -- including one on commercial wikis, which I presented about last year (Talks/SXSW07). Folks who are interested in wikis, or in SXSW, should take some time to give their feedback on the proposed panels and improved the level of discussion for 2008. tags: sxsw wiki vote panel sxsw08

Congratulations to my friends at AboutUs, who've just announced that they have a new logo. I think their old logo, the listening man, was a little too literal. Good to see a nice new look on this great community site. tags: aboutus logo wiki design

QuartzSlate Speaking of graphic design and UI on wikis... Jet lag and deadlines had me working late into night in Taipei last week at Wikimania 2007. I really wanted to get Keiki ready for people to look at by the time for my presentation. The other people up at this time were folks from Wikia, working to get their new QuartzSlate skin ready for lease. I think this is a beautiful skin and a nice UI. And it's another piece of convincing evidence that you can make a usable, enjoyable Web site from MediaWiki. An MW site doesn't have to be just the MonoBook skin plus a logo in the upper-left corner. I'm glad to see people breaking the mold. tags: wiki wikia design quartzslate skin

Wooooooow Speaking of redesigns (and I don't know why I started, actually), Vu d'ici, m-c turgeon's blog, is looking fan-effing-tastic. It's always a good read, and now it's prettier, too. tags: m-c mcturgeon blog design

So, a few weeks ago (Journal/22 Prairial CCXV) I expressed some discomfort about the Mister Wong logo. I'm very happy to see that the company has taken my and other people's uneasiness into consideration and removed the logo from their site. They've started a new Mister Wong logo contest with a grand prize of $6000 (American, assumably) and two second prizes of $3000. That's a pretty good cash-out for a logo contest; Mister Wong is also a high-profile and growing site. I hope some of my designer friends and colleagues decide to jump in. (Yeah, Brigitte, Marie-Claude, Patrick, and Mark, I mean you!) I think it's definitely an interesting challenge for someone doing identity work. I'm not going to join the contest, though. My only idea right now is to do a copy of the current Mister Wong logo (same gray suit and tie) but with a Caucasian man's face instead. The sub-title? It can't be Wong when it feels so white. Yeah, that's why I don't get the big bucks in the corporate identity biz. tags: misterwong graphicdesign logo logocontest

Back on Planet So, I got a lot of feedback about removing my blog from Planet Debian -- all of it bad. People really felt that it was important for all Debian developers to be able to say their piece on PD. So, I re-instated it this morning. I'm going to try to make some changes to fix the main thing that seems to bother people: that my post titles are the current date in the French Revolutionary Calendar. For some reason, that really gets under people's skins. Unfortunately, a few things on my (hand-coded) wiki-blog site expect that format, so it's going to be a little tricky. One thing I might do is create and distribute a Greasemonkey script for planet.debian.org (and p.d.net) that seeks out titles that look like French revolutionary calendar dates and replaces them with a random selection from an array of more typical blog post titles:

• "Some thoughts"
• "A funny thing happened today"
• "What I've been doing lately"
• "Depressing thought"
• "Haven't blogged in a while"
• "WTF!?!?!"
• "My opinion"
• "Random notes"
• "IMHO"
• "Snapshots from my life"
• "Further proof that we live in a crazy world"
• "Memo to myself"

Any other suggestions for all-purpose blog-post titles to add to the array are welcome. tags: planetdebian blogging greasemonkey capitulation

Once again, someone suggests banning feeds with low debian-specific content from Planet Debian. (lists.d.o) This time, it's led by Steve McIntyre, whose blog comments about his work, friends, family trips and pub challenges, among other things. This purge saw Evan Prodromou unlink his journal (which comments about his work, friends, family trips and wikipeda, among other things) in reaction to hate, commenting:

"I've heard from people who really like reading my blog posts on Planet Debian, and people who really hate them. The people who like my blog can add it to their feed readers directly. I believe I've followed the rules for PD, but there's no point antagonizing people who don't want to read it"

I'm sad to see one of the more interesting "off-topic" authors disappear from the site like this. Hatred wins again? Updated: Evan's back. Yippee! (2007-08-09: 1 comment)

Great day today. It's been beautiful here in the South Bay, and I'm glad to get some regeneration. I miss Amita June and Maj pretty badly, but they're coming to California on Saturday, so the end is near. Tonight I'm heading up to San Francisco for the Creative Commons Salon. Should be really fun. tags: cc sanfrancisco amitajune maj ccsalon

Planet Nowhere So, I've had some complaints from people that my blog posts on Planet Debian weren't about Debian enough. Although that's not the mission of PD -- it's stuff by Debian developers, not stuff about Debian -- I decided to remove my feed from the list there. Life's too short. So, if you're used to reading my blog there, you'll need to add my feed to your reader directly. tags: debian planetdebian blogging

Meanwhile... I just got back from the CC Salon. Excellent time! I hadn't been to one in SF, although I helped to organize the first one in Toronto. The presentations were all by the summer interns from CC. I was shocked and astounded that all the interns were doing cool, important things, like desktop integration, enhancing the CC Wiki, and developing best practices for marking CC-licensed content. These are all things that CC users have actually been asking for and need a lot. I'm concerned that this is breaking with the tradition of summer interns everywhere doing meaningless tasks that help no-one. Is the future of summer internships in jeopardy? One of my favourite pieces of info, of course, was that you can now log into CC Wiki with OpenID. Coolio! tags: cc wiki openid ccsalon