Open source goes open source

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I guess 2008 is turning out to be year of the open source:

Ohloh, the prominent community site for open source developers, is making itself open source, including its full suite of tools and even the Web site itself.

The Ohloh site collates information from public open source version control systems, to create a database of the productivity of open source projects, and the developers working on them. A new “labs” section of the Ohloh site makes source code available, under the GPL version 2. This includes tools such as Ohcount, which counts lines of source code and can be used by companies to audit their software-development teams.

Read it all:
Open source community site goes open source – or go see Ohloh.

Is it just me paying more attention to open source initiatives – or is an new open source trend emerging? Google is doing it’s very best to giving open source initiatives momentum – lately by offering $10 million in awards in the Android Developer Challenge:

Cool apps that surprise and delight mobile users, built by developers like you, will be a huge part of the Android vision. To support you in your efforts, Google has launched the Android Developer Challenge, which will provide $10 million in awards — no strings attached — for great mobile apps built on the Android platform.

Read more:
Android Developer Challenge

So, what source will open up next?

Just Out: 2008 Bad Usability Calendar

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Bad Usability Calendar 2008
The bad usability calendar is one of my favorite forms of communicating usability principles. The calendar is made by Norwegian based Netlife Research, but has this year moved on to it’s own flashy web 2.0-looking website: www.badusability.com. Here you can also find back issues of the bad usability calendar. Go have fun.

Apart from being incredibly funny (gotta love the June reference to Jacob Nielsen), this is also a fantastic piece of link bait and viral marketing. The ‘I’ll pass this on’-rate is going to be close to 100% between information architects and usability professionals. Also, the website has a call to action to translate the calendar – translations are probably credited on the page, and will boost the penetration speed of the bad usability calendar to equal Facebook for a while…

Oh, and while we’re at funny visualization of online concepts – Information Architects Japan have announced the 3rd edition of their Web Trend Map – looking forward to that too.

[ via justaddwater ]

Agressive Affiliating Strategy with the SEO Book

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Here’s a rather interesting example of an extremely aggressive affiliating strategy from a SEO Book affiliate. I was about to purchase the SEO Book, and did a quick search just per habit. Being Danish and thus accustomed to somewhat prudent marketing strategies. We have several organs and government offices controlling and regulating marketing behaviour. On top of that – knowing that Google’s restrictions on the use of ‘trademark’ keywords I was surprised to see an ad in the results calling SEO Book a scam. The SEO Book is one of the most respected resources in this line of trade, and a couple of years gave me a lot of important information on SEO.

Of course I clicked through and found a salesletter that at the same time praises and scolds the contents in SEO Book, but also sports obvious SEO Book affiliate links along with efforts to sell of own SEO products…

So what does a clever man do? Well, being a lemming 2.0, I of course immediately signed up as an affiliate for use in this post… I’ll buy the SEO Book is the near future and as it is being incrementally updated, I actually hope to get my SEO knowledge refreshed.

SEO book affiliate

New Theme: Amazing Grace

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I’ve been in want for a new theme for a while, so when Amazing Grace was reviewed over on Theme Playground magic happened.

There’ll probably be some changes to the theme in the near future and I’m also considering restructuring my rather lame URLs – I’m just hoping that the fantastic plugin redirection will make the change a bit less of a 404-nigthmare for search engine traffic :-)

And yes, I know there’s an issue with my description – I’ve been trying to move it to the left but time of night and lacking skills are determining factors in this matter. CSS buffs: input welcome ;-)

Update:

I left a comment at the theme author and – voila – the issue was fixed within 5 minutes.

…I’m really starting to like this whole internet/blogging thing.

BlogDesk – the one and only blogging client?

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I’ve just downloaded and tested BlogDesk after a recommendation from the good Rasmus Sørensen. It may just be the offline blogging client I’ve been looking for, as this client lets me populate the excerpt field in WordPress. So far I’ve tried out 5-6 clients, including ScribeFire for Firefox. So I decided to write this review/test of BlogDesk.

Installation is straight forward and adding account is hassle free and the interface is nice and clean.

The only thing I miss is an option for adding tags and a button for blockquotes.

BlogDesk supports all major blogging tools:

BlogDesk is totaly free of charge and optimized for the blog systems WordPress, MovableType, Drupal, Serendipity and ExpressionEngine as well as the bloghosters Blogg.de and Twoday.net.

SimCity goes Open Source

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…and will henceforth be known under the name Micropolis and is apparently going to be included in the OLPC project. Cool.

Read more here: SimCity Source Code Released.
Also, visit Don Hopkins, one of the main forces in this project.

Strangely enough, it only a few days since I encountered the open source / old school project FreeCol - that is based on Sid Meiers classical Colonization. This spurred me to search for more open source games and came upon this list: Free and Open Source Games on the Internet.

Are we going to see a rise in open source computer games based on abandoned gems from the 90ties?
Here’s a vote for Ghosts’n'Goblins and Elite!
Update – there is actually an open source project dedicated to deep space trading, privateering and bounty hunting: Vega Strike. I haven’t tried it (yet), but I’m downloading as I write this. Update follows :-)

What old games do you miss?

Lemming 2.0

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Jane Copland from SEOmoz has a nice post/rant on the massive Lemming 2.0 effect that occurs when new innovative and valuable services emerge. Photo sharing, social networks and social news sites all have market leaders surrounded by a host of more or less blatant copies of the first service. It’s Clondyke for dollar wanting lemmings.
Jane puts this in words quite eloquently:

The only conclusion I can draw is that these companies can’t create anything worthwhile, but know enough web development (but only just) to create a platform so that other people can create content for them. While all sites that include user participation stand to profit off the contribution of others, I’ve been simply astounded at how many of these sites provide virtually nothing other than a way for the public to build up the companies’ link profiles and PageRanks.

…and now, after my blood pressure settles down again I have a confession:

I am a Lemming.