A very useful little book from various developers and others: things they wish they'd known before starting out. A very sensible contribution from Debian's own Evan Prodromou amongst other names I knew and recognised and some interesting folk I'd not heard of.

http://open-advice.org/Open-Advice.pdf is the downloadable PDF although source and so on is also available. There are likely to be forums for comments and improvements.

[UPDATE - I've just had a go at the training exercises listed at openhatch.org which are linked from the site. Not a bad revision on patching/SVN/git and generally using the tools needed initially to contribute to FLOSS. A good job well done]

Identi.ca is one of the contestants in the Internet March Mayhem e-Tournament. We're up against LinkedIn in the first round. Help us out by clicking the "Identi.ca" link in the lower left-hand part of the tree. tags identi.ca marchmayhem voteforus

Ada Lovelace Day FAIL Updated. I signed up for the Ada Lovelace Day pledge a few months ago, so I wrote a churlish, short, and ill-tempered blog post on the subject. (Since redacted.) Among other things, I said, "I dislike the canonization of Ada Lovelace as a patron saint of women in computing. [...] Hundreds of thousands if not millions of women have written more code that mattered more for people's real lives than anything Ada Lovelace did. [...] Maybe instead of honoring Ada Lovelace, we need to honor these other women instead." But on re-reading the pledge, I realized that I totally missed the point of Ada Lovelace Day, and that this is exactly what people are supposed to do. Oops. See #ald09 for some nice posts about women in computing. Oh, and to pick a woman in technology I admire: Eve Maler, one of the co-creators of XML. I met her when she was chairing the SAML committee, and she led that group of competitive egos through some very difficult security and protocol design issues with great intelligence and diplomacy. tags: women technology adalovelace adalovelaceday AdaLovelaceDay09

I was listening to Tech Nation today on the treadmill -- the episode from Jan 13 2009 with Darrell Rhea of Cheskin Added Value. He made a great point: that when people give money to charity, they feel good about themselves. But when they pay their taxes, they feel really bad -- even though their taxes go for schools, hospitals, fire departments, and other important societal services. And that made me think about a few things. One reason for this discrepancy is probably a feeling of control. When I make a charitable donation, I choose the charity. With taxes, I don't have much of a choice where the money goes. Well, I kind of do, but it's a really circuitous level of control: I vote for representatives who express certain values (pro-education, anti-waste) during the election cycle and hopefully defend those values when the time comes to make a budget. That's a pretty loose connection. So I had an idea: what if, when you're paying your taxes, you got to specify a suggested earmarks for using your dollars? You could pick from a list of (say) 20-30 high-level programs (like "Education", "Health care", "Foreign aid") and make some allocations. "20% education, 10% education, 10% defense, 2% foreign aid, the rest for whatever." Entirely voluntary, no obligation on the part of taxpayers. Obviously these would be different for different levels of government -- cities might have "Police", "Parks", "Roads" as their programs. The tax agencies could publish the numbers on these mini-budgets, and citizens could compare what they collectively set up as priorities versus what their representatives actually allocate money for. Sure, there'll be some natural discrepancies -- no one is going to like allocations for boring stuff like servicing debt or administrative costs. And there are some costs involved, although I think they'd be pretty low if you're already collecting tax return forms and generating statistics. And there'd be lots of people who'd write-in their pet projects ("100% UFO research") which would skew things significantly. But I think the general idea would be really helpful. People would see tax time as a time to use their voice, and politicians would have a clear idea what people want their money spent on, and in what amount. Most of all, it's closing the loop on paying taxes and making budgets, and I think that's a good thing for democracy. tags: democracy taxes budget idea

I got tagged in the bunnymeme. I even got nagged about it. I have to admit, drawing a bunny is kind of a relief from a busy week. Here are the rules:

1. Draw a Bunny (or more)
2. Post it to your blog with the rules
3. Name three other bloggers that should draw a bunny

Here is my bunny: And here are the three blogger friends I can think of who aren't too uptight and full of themselves to post a picture of a hand-drawn bunny:

• Hugh McGuire
• Michele Ann Jenkins
• Nicolas Ritoux

Update: there's a nice graph tracking the meme's progress. tags: bunnymeme bunny meme splitbrain

Montreal Startup invests in Control Yourself, Inc. On a more serious note, I'm glad that GigaOM has published a story about venture investment in my company, Control Yourself, Inc. ("Identi.ca Gets Funding to Make Open-source Twitter Variant"). I'm psyched to be working with Montreal Start Up to build CYI into a viable Open Source business. They've been really supportive of the Open Everything strategy, including building the OpenMicroBlogging standard. Thanks to everyone who's sent private and public congratulations. The fun part starts now! tags: identica controlyourself investment montrealstartup openmicroblogging

Open Source Jaiku The news came out on the same day that Google announced they're going to release the Jaiku code as Open Source software. I think this is great news. Hopefully, we can work together to build a federated network of microblogging sites running Open Source software connected with open standards. It's so important to have multiple implementations of any open standard, and I think Identica and Jaiku can be a good team for the microblogging world. tags: jaiku opensource openstandard google

I really like the This American Life podcast. It's probably one of my favorite pieces of public radio, and having a full high-quality public feed is fantastic. However, I've been a little grumpy about the long forewords that have been put into the show lately, asking for donations from podcast listeners. Here's the scoop: apparently WBEZ (Chicago Public Radio) is spending US$150K just on the bandwidth to keep the podcast on the air (not counting servers, staff, or whatever). This is not just small potatoes for WBEZ; they just laid off a dozen workers. So, podcast listeners should pay their fair share and help out Chicago Public Radio. Now, I'm a big fan of public radio, and I think everyone should become a member. However, I find the premise of this solicitation kind of faulty. First, there are a lot of technical ways they could cut down on their bandwidth requirements. Providing an alternative BitTorrent RSS feed, for example, would reduce their bandwidth requirements a lot. They'd need to put a bit of documentation on their site, but is that really harder than getting people to pony up $$? I think not. Second, they could change the redistribution requirements and let other people or organizations mirror the episodes. A Creative Commons license would let other people distribute the files, saving WBEZ a lot (possibly all) of the distribution costs. But that second option is probably not that interesting to WBEZ. Why not? Because they make money selling "This American Life" to other public radio stations. If they put it under a free-redistribution license, they wouldn't be able to get that income. So, in reality, the service announcements at the beginning of the podcasts aren't really asking listeners to keep the podcasts running. There are lots of ways to do that. What the announcements ask is for listeners to support a particular "business" model. There are even ways (like BitTorrent) to have their cake and eat it too. I'm still going to contribute to WBEZ, since I like the show and I'm glad it's produced the way it is. But I regret the disingenuous guilt-tripping that's going on. It's not a fair way to treat listeners and supporters. tags: thisamericanlife wbez publicradio podcast cc bittorrent

I've been working on some code cleanup with Laconica, and it's making me think of an anti-pattern that really gets under my skin. I call it the ActionDoer anti-pattern, but there's probably a better name for it. The anti-pattern is where you have a class with just one public method -- or, maybe, one major public method. You typically use the class by setting a bunch of attributes on an instance and then firing the method. Something like this (in PHP, because, hey, why not?):

  $foo = new ActionDoer();

  $foo->x = 10;
  $foo->y = 'bar';
  $foo->z = 'baz';

  $foo->doTheAction();  

  $result = $foo->result;

What bugs me about this is that it's just a long and tedious way of doing this:

  $result = equivalent_function(10, 'bar', 'baz');

It's using OOPiness to simulate a basic part of structured programming: the function call. The ActionDoer does let you set defaults or ignore some parameters. But optional parameters, and keyword parameters, can usually do this more effectively. Probably what bugs me most is that textually it most resembles hand-coded assembly language:

  MOV ax, 10
  MOV bx, 'bar'
  MOV cx, 'baz'

  INT 21H

  MOV result, dx

If we're simulating function calls, are we moving forward or backwards in computer science? tags: oop programming anti-pattern

I noted today, while writing some bit-masking code for the umpteenth time, that it's not always easy to remember how to do bit-masking. For myself and others, I've written a quick Bit-masking Cheatsheet to remember more easily. tags: bitmasking programming cheatsheet

Since the launch of Identi.ca a few weeks ago, I've had a very busy time. Not much sleep, but lots of fulfilling and exciting work. It's invigorating to work on something that is popular and that you believe in. And I'm glad that the Franklin Street Statement so succinctly encapsulates those beliefs. As some people may have read in my previous blog post about the motivations behind creating Identi.ca (see Journal/14 Messidor CCXVI), I was part of a group convened at the FSF to discuss the impact of the growth of software as a service on user autonomy. It was a very loose organization of hackers, activists, and scholars who come from different backgrounds but all share an interest in user rights online. As computing moves into "the cloud" (see cloud computing), what power does the user retain to control their own computing experience? As much of our social lives -- romance, family, work, friends -- becomes Web-enhanced, what can we do to assert our right to manage that data and its use? How can software developers and service providers gauge their own proper ethical behaviour, and how can users of services judge what is and is not acceptable to use? We didn't come up with any easy answers, but we've summarized our thinking in a new document: the Franklin Street Statement on Freedom and Network Services. In essence, we've tried to point a direction towards what software developers, service providers, and software users should think hard about when thinking about network services. Our group will continue to explore these issues on our new group blog, http://autonomo.us/ . We're going to concentrate on the effects of software services on user autonomy -- people's ability to make their own informed choices about their data and creative works and the software that processes them. It is a realm that as a society -- a cluster of societies -- we're only beginning to understand, and I think that there is still a lot of exploration to do. Autonomo.us includes a wiki where we'll be exploring some of these ideas, and the blog will feature guest submissions about the subject. We're a loose and unofficial group with some smiling benevolence but no sanction from the FSF or any related organization, so we're really going to dig into some of the gray areas of this issue without worrying about making official statements for any one organization. I'm looking forward to the coming months and I hope this issue captures the imagination of the Web's Open Source and Open Content communities. P.S. You can see the FSF press release about the statement and the launch of autonomo.us. tags: autonomy franklinstreet softwareasaservice

Open Service Definition On a related note, one of the first organizations to approach the issue of Open Services has been the Open Knowledge Foundation. Today they've launched the 1.0 version of the Open Software Service Definition (OSSD). I think the OSSD 1.0 is a great step. It's a bar against which we can start measuring Open Software Services. For example, I think that Identi.ca meets the requirements of the OSSD. Other sites, like Wikipedia, are also clearly compliant. Some services that I really like, such as OpenStreetMap and geonames.org, seem to be compliant. But are they? It's good to start this investigation. I think other kinds of services are on their way there. The announcement by Reddit that their code will now be Open Source is a great step for user autonomy in the social news arena. Now, Reddit needs to consider what an Open Content/Open Data policy would mean for their service... or see others implement it on other sites. I look forward to a rich ecology of open software services growing, now that we have a name for it and a clear community of people interested in the topic. tags: autonomy ossd openknowledge

I've been working hard on a new project for the last couple of months, which I'm glad to be able to share with you now. For the impatient: today my company Control Yourself, Inc. is launching Identi.ca, a new microblogging service. (There's a press release on the Control Yourself site). Users can post short messages about themselves to Identi.ca, which are then broadcast to friends in their social network using instant messages (IM), RSS feeds, and the Web. The difference between Identi.ca and other services like Twitter, Jaiku, or Pownce is that it is Open Source software. I tried to meet the requirements of the Open Service Definition -- Free Software and Free Data. In the same spirit, Identi.ca supports open standards like OpenID and OpenMicroBlogging, to integrate with other Web sites and services. A little background: in March of this year, I was privileged to take part in a summit at the Free Software Foundation about open network services. The summit brought together a number of people involved in Open Source and Open Content to discuss problems with "software as a service" and how to solve them. More and more, people are depending on Web sites and other network services "in the cloud" to do much of their computing tasks. Examples: using Yahoo! Maps instead of a desktop mapping application, or using Google Docs instead of Microsoft Word. Software-as-a-service can be extremely convenient -- data on remote servers stays up-to-date, software gets updated regularly, and you can use different computers or mobile devices to get at the same data. The sacrifice, however, is user autonomy. If you decide that Google Docs doesn't work the way you want, you can't tinker with the software and fix it. If you want to share a map on your Web site, you need Yahoo!'s permission. If you want to use a new social networking site, you have to re-enter all your personal data and re-invite all your friends. The data and code belong to someone else, and they're hidden behind servers that you, the user, aren't allowed to touch. There aren't a lot of clear answers to this. But our loosely-organized summit group is moving forward to promote and support Free/Open Network Services. These are Web sites (or other services) that use Free/Open Source software (with the source available) and provide Open Content data (except for data that users mark as private). There are a lot of them popping up -- like OpenStreetMap and Wikipedia. Others are close on the software side, although the data side is a little less clear -- like Wordpress.com, Reddit, or LiveJournal. After the summit, I wanted to try to see what I could do personally to further this mission. I think several of the sites I work on now -- like Vinismo and Keiki -- would qualify. But I also wanted to break some new ground and challenge people's assumptions about software services. And the services I was using, and getting invited to, the most were microblogging sites. Clearly that was the area to dig into further. To do it, I started Laconica, the software underlying Identi.ca. It's AGPL'd PHP using MySQL as a backend -- probably the most accessible platform on the planet right now. I used lots of existing libraries to make development easier, and I hired a great designer (Montreal's Marie-Claude Doyon) to give the site a professional look. Almost as important as the Open Source and Open Content is the distributed nature of Identi.ca. I designed an open protocol called OpenMicroBlogging, based on OAuth, to make it easy for users on one Laconica server to subscribe to notices by users on another server. I hope this will make the service more robust, develop a rich and diverse social network, and stimulate innovation. Because in the end, that's the Internet that we all want to be part of. As a society we rejected "walled gardens" like AOL, Compuserve, and MSN in the early 90s in favor of the distributed, open nature of the World Wide Web. And I think that the new walled gardens like Facebook and Google, need to be replaced with open protocols and standards. Will Open Network Services be the basis of "Web 3.0", the next stage of Web culture? I truly think so, but that's still an open question. People have been using Identi.ca for a few weeks now, although I've asked that folks wait until the software was more mature before posting public links. Today I'm lifting that embargo and asking friends and colleagues to join and participate in the conversation. I hope that people who are sympathetic with the ideals of Identi.ca will take the time to blog about it, invite their friends, and start using the site regularly. And of course I'd love to get feedback on bugs, requested features, and ideas for the future. Please also subscribe to me on the site -- see http://identi.ca/evan -- so I can see who's out there. There are still so many standard services on the Web that I'd like to see open sourced, open content, and distributed -- advertising, storage, image and file sharing, comments, portal pages, social news, social bookmarks, search engines. There's a real business potential for taking the lead in these areas, and I hope more people jump in.

Quick shout to announce an event here in Montreal. In response to the announced introduction of legislation to change Canadian copyright, commonly called the "Canadian DMCA" since the drafts presented so far have closely resembled that American law, the Montreal Chapter of Fair Copyright for Canada is holding an emergency organizational meeting Thursday, June 12th from 6-8PM. The event will be at Station C, 5369 Saint-Laurent #430, in the Mile End neighborhood of Montreal. It's open to anyone interested in learning more about this bill and helping to oppose it. tags: dmca canada freedom faircopyright

There's a interview with me in the local weekly Hour. It got right most of what I do for a living. So often with interviews I talk and talk and talk and the reporter ends up extracting the least pertinent statements. I'm glad that didn't happen this time. I even like the photo. I was supposed to send some source code to the photographer to put over my face, but I never got around to it. I can't see what they put over my face; can anyone make it out? tags: me press interview work hour wiki

I'm happy to point to the announcement that Wikitravel Press now has a guide to Paris. Paris has long been a targeted city for Wikitravel Press, and I'm really happy we were able to get this book out. Bonus: the Wikitravel Guide to Paris includes maps from OpenStreetMap, the Open Content geo database and mapping system. We've got some new software to overlay Wikitravel listings onto the maps, and it's working really well. Thanks to OSM, editor Mark Jaroski, and managing editor Jani Patokallio for getting this great book out... just in time for Paris spring! tags: wikitravel wikitravelpress paris guidebook opencontent openstreetmap

Podcasts I asked a couple of days ago (Journal/30 Germinal CCXVI) about podcasts on the subject of Open Source and Open Content. I wanted to summarize a few that came in through comments on my blog:

• The iCommons Podcast, which (like many podcasts) seems to be running a little slow -- no updates in about a year. Still, an interesting project to be watching. (thanks Brianna)
• Wikipedia Weekly, the really great show by Andrew Lih and Liam Wyatt. I should have thought of WW before -- I was interviewed for the show last year! (thanks Padraic)
• Also worth noting is Not the Wikipedia Weekly, which is, uh, not the Wikipedia Weekly. I got this one from an episode of WW!
• LUG Radio, which I found from another podcast, LQ Radio.

This has turned into a pretty decent list, but I'd love to see some more diverse discussion of Open Content and Open Source in general. Please, feel free to send more tips. tags: podcast linux opensource opencontent

Vinismo For some reason Vinismo went over some tipping point with StumbleUpon this weekend, and we had a real flood of users from that bookmarking site. I can't say why that happens; I find SU to be a totally opaque Web site and service. In other news, Stevey likes our business cards. Me too! I think they look great. M-C Doyon, the Montreal graphic designer who laid out our Web site, also did our paper branding, and I think she did a great job. tags: vinismo stevey marieclaudedoyon cards

Yay Firefox 3.0 I don't know when it happened, but Firefox 3.0 beta does non-ASCII characters in the address bar correctly. So, if you're reading this entry on my site with FF3, you'll see the in "Flor al" rather than the URL-encoded "Flor%c3%a9al". I also like seeing Japanese Wikipedia pages in the address bar showing up correctly. Nice job, FF3 team. tags: firefox firefox3 utf8 url

Planet software should preserve categories So, apparently there's once again rising problems with content drift on Planet Debian. Personally, I think this is a problem with a technical solution. All three main flavours of RSS support post categorization. Many, many kinds of feed software provide categories (see, for example, this feed). If the Planet software would preserve these categories and pass them through to the output RSS feeds, then people who really only want to read about Debian could filter the output feeds for category "debian". People who wanted to know about other parts of their fellow Debianistas' lives would just leave the feeds unfiltered. I'm not sure if the Planet software doesn't support categories in output at all, or if it's just an option that's turned off on Planet Debian. If nobody else wants to take a look, I can look into making this work. It seems like a pretty simple fix. tags: planet planetdebian rss categories

So, I'm really getting into the podcasts lately. I got myself a personal music player (one of these) in winter, and I've been using it to listen to podcasts while I run. Earideas has been a huge help in finding new podcasts to listen to. I've kind of graduated from the best of earideas feed, which covers a wide variety of podcasts, and I'm trying to dig into things that really matter to me. Three things in particular, of course: wine, parenting, and Open Source/Open Content. I've found a good number of podcasts on the first two subjects, but only a few on the last. Right now I listen to:

• the infrequent and misnomered FLOSS weekly, which isn't the same without Chris DiBona.
• LinuxCast, featuring the mellifluous tones of Don Marti
• LQ Radio, from Linux Questions.

So, what else is out there for Free, Libre, Open kinda people? Any podcast suggestions? tags: lazyweb podcast floss flossweekly linuxcast lqradio

I got my FON router delivered to my house about 2-3 months ago, but I didn't realize what it was until I was cleaning up my office to leave for Buenos Aires. Glad to have a project, I set it up on my home network while I was waiting for the taxi to the airport. I've only really started playing with it since we got back. FON is an international effort, originally based in Spain, to share extra network capacity with roaming wireless users. You set up a router in your home (or wherever), and any other FON user can connect to the Internet through your network. Conversely, you can connect on any other FON network. There is a lot of grass-rootsiness to FON, but it's a commercial project, which turns some people off. I originally heard of FON at Wikimania 2007, where FON provided wireless routers for each attendee's room. It was a nice service, although the doubled-up ESSIDs were kind of confusing at the time. They make a lot more sense for home use. I was impressed by how many FON spots there are on the Montreal/Plateau (see http://maps.fon.com/ for details); about one ever 2-6 blocks in any direction. I think there's an opportunity here to see a higher concentration, though. I'd love to see co peration between FON and, say, le Sans Fil, possibly involving the Ville de Montr al. Apparently there are already FON cities in different parts of Europe, so it's not impossible. I think FON is an interested development for WiFi -- a hybrid between community-based initiatives and a commercial venture. I'm not sure if it will be successful, but I think it's a step in the right direction. tags: fon wifi wireless network

I'm pretty impressed with the new Geotag Icon Project. The well-known feed icon has become ubiquitous, and it makes sense to have a free-to-use icon for geographically-tagged information. I can see it being very useful for hcard and geo microformats, for example. tags: geotagicon geo microformats

Relayed for your review without comment For all those who think Open Content guidebooks like Wikitravel are by definition less reliable than proprietary ones: "Travel writer tells newspaper he plagiarized, dealt drugs". "A Lonely Planet author says he plagiarized or made up portions of the popular travel guidebooks and dealt drugs to supplement poor pay. [...] He didn't travel to Colombia to write the guidebook on the country because 'they didn't pay me enough. I wrote the book in San Francisco. I got the information from a chick I was dating.'" Cough, cough. tags: lonelyplanet travel guidebook plagiarism

Jeez, I wasn't involved in the nomination process this year, so I completely missed the fact that Wikitravel is a nominee for the Webby Awards this year. I'm now a part of IADAS so there's a conflict-of-interest for me, but I'd recommend checking out the People's Voice Webby Voting. tags: wiki wikitravel webbyawards

Sign your mail I find it a little mind-boggling how many people complain about problems of email identity, like spam, e-mail spoofing and phishing, yet don't do anything on their own side to encourage strong identity on email. Everybody should use digital signatures on their email as a matter of course. It is absurdly easy to set up a GnuPG key for your email address. It takes only a few minutes. And you can sign up for an S/MIME key, too -- about $20/year, and supported even more widely by email clients. And organizations should send out email with signatures, too. Welcome email, password updates, and the like should all be signed. Phishing gets a lot harder when consumers are used to digitally-signed mail. If we're really serious about email abuse, we need to take the extra step at the client level. tags: email pgp gnupg smime phishing spam

It's been a long time since I've written on my blog; longer than I'd like. I really want to get back in the swing of it, if only to keep this entire site from bitrotting interminably. My Alexa ranking has dropped to like >1M, which in my Web-addled state means that my personal worth has dropped, too. I know, I know. tags: blog me alexa

Conference of the Americas: Cancelled I was sorry to see that the Wikimedia Conference of the Americas, scheduled for mid-May, has been canceled. There was some controversy when this conference was announced last fall; it partly originated from a bid by the Atlanta Wikimedia community to host Wikimania. I'm kind of sad to see that it's not going to happen. I like Atlanta a lot, and I think there is a really good case to be made for regional (or at least continental) Wikimedia conferences. I hope this isn't a nail in the coffin for such a regional event in North America. On the flip side, it'd be really nice to see a more detailed explanation of what happened; of what future plans for the COTA are; and just generally a little more communication. tags: cota atlanta wikimedia wikimania wiki

Elsewhere in wikidom That all said, things are looking really cool for Wikimania over the next 12 months. I'm really glad to see that my South American home-away-from-home, Buenos Aires, won the chance to host the 2009 Wikimania event. With 2008's event in Alexandria, Egypt, I think we've got some seriously interesting ground to cover Wikimedia-wise. Also of importance: if you haven't received an invite yet, get yourself over to RecentChangesCamp 2008. The wiki unconference will be happening for the first time in the Bay Area (California). We'll be meeting over May 9-11 in the offices of SocialText in Palo Alto. I can't say enough good things about RecentChangesCamp. It has been instrumental in my understanding of wikis and my connection with the worldwide wiki community. If you are at all interested in wikis or related concepts, you should think hard about coming to this conference. tags: wikimania recentchangescamp rcc2008

Brain bits

• I think microrevie.ws is pretty cool. I got the 100th review today! Yay for me.
• Speaking of twitter stuff, I dig twittermap, but I don't always remember to update. IWBNI there was a portal to/from Fire Eagle.

tags: microreviews hreview twitter twittermap fireeagle

Since we launched Vinismo a few months ago, I've been watching the world of wine blogging with great interest. One thing I really like is Wine Blogging Wednesday, wherein wine bloggers around the world pick a topic or theme and all blog about wines that match that theme, once a month. On Wednesday. Thus the name. I'm surprised I have to explain this. Anyhoo, this months theme is just seven words: the reviews of wines have to be exactly seven words long. I figured, heck: if I'm ever gonna do a WBW review, this has gotta be the easiest to do. Oh, and the wine theme was reds from Italy, which may be the easiest drinking wines in the entire world. So: Niko picked up a bottle of 2005 Pio Cesare Barbera d'Alba before coming over to our house last night, and we had a glug while doing some floor puzzles with Amita June. My impression? Earthy, melon, medium-bodied; needs sharp cheese. Woo-hoo! Now I'm a real wine blogger. tags: wine wbw wbw42 vinismo

Nothing to see here.

I'm really pleased to announce here that one of the projects Maj and I have been working on for a long time has finally come to fruition. Today Wikitravel Press launched its first two Open Content printed guidebooks -- Wikitravel Chicago and Wikitravel Singapore. When we started Wikitravel back in 2003 (!), our sincere hope was that at some point in the future, people would be able to carry Wikitravel guidebooks with them on a trip. I think that mobile technology is excellent, and it's amazing how much you can read on a cell phone or PDA these days. But there's still something so convenient about a printed guidebook: it never runs out of batteries; you don't need an uplink to read it; you don't have to worry about it getting stolen because you flashed it out in the wrong caf or restaurant. To be honest, I thought that one of the "traditional" guidebook publishers would step in and use Wikitravel content in their guides. But that didn't happen, and along with our partner Jani Patokallio, Maj and I decided to start a publishing company ourselves. Thus Wikitravel Press, and our first two books. We have a number of other books in the pipeline, and our hope is to have a few dozen available by the end of the year, and a few hundred by the end of the following year. I'm working on the Wikitravel guide to Montreal, and Maj and I are collaborating on Buenos Aires. We're taking a 6-week trip to Argentina in February/March, so this should be a great time for research. I heartily encourage any writers or editors who are interested in working on travel books to contact Wikitravel Press about your ideas of bringing Wikitravel content to print. I think this is a great opportunity for people who want to encourage Open Content, or who want to get into the travel writing field, or who just love the idea of wikis-to-books. tags: wikitravel wikitravelpress travel guidebook singapore chicago