software
Software Firms Will Also Move to the Center in 2008 - When the U.S. presidential primaries wrap up, the winning candidates — after spending months kowtowing to the extremists in their parties — will make a mad dash to the center. A similar rush to the center is now taking place in software, and in 2008, we expect that trend to continue. But in the case of software, the center doesn’t lie between the extremes of conservatism and liberalism but rather between those of proprietary and open.
In the past, some software companies, like Microsoft, have taken a mainly proprietary approach while other outfits, such as the Free Software Foundation, have taken an entirely open approach. But the software primaries are over. The best approach now is somewhere in the middle: a combination of open and closed, or what, in The 7 Cs of the Future of Software, I called “clopen” — though I’m very open to other suggestions.
One manifestation of the momentum towards the middle is hybrid source, in which companies offer open-source and premium, proprietary versions of software. Under pressure from open-source alternatives, software companies need to find a new strategy, one that combines the concepts of free and open with revenue generation.
RedMonk analyst Steve O’Grady notes that hybrid source “is generally applied to projects or products that combine open and closed source software to produce an asset containing both.” O’Grady was prompted to tackle the question of hybrid source after MySQL, which had in the past provided all of their source code without charge, announced a commercial edition of their database design tool, Workbench.
But hybrid source is not the only result of moving to the center between the extremes of proprietary and open. Google exemplifies another strategy: offering free services based on proprietary algorithms based on open-source operating systems. And they’ve made this multi-layered concoction of open and closed work like magic.
Microsoft, like a political candidate who’s won a primary, is not immune to the need to move to the center. As David Strom reports in Baseline Magazine, recently the company “has become slightly more open with respect to its networking protocols. Late last year, they announced a way for third parties to license their core file-sharing protocols through an independent organization called the Protocol Freedom Information Foundation.”
Adobe is perhaps the most obvious example of the need for companies built on closed, proprietary software business models to move to the middle. Their open sourcing of the ECMAScript engine and the Flex SDK shows their considered steps towards a clopen future.
Finding the right balance between the two extremes will be the secret to the success for software companies in 2008 — just like the winning U.S. presidential candidate will be the one who finds the right balance point between the right and the left.
[gigaOM]
What is Yeigo?
Yeigo is an innovative application for your mobile phone which uses your phone’s internet connection, (don’t worry, your phone has one) to offer you cut-price calls and SMS messages.
Got something to say? Talk whenever you want, for as long as you want: calls to other people using Yeigo are free , and you’ll save up to 80% on calls to those who don’t have Yeigo.
Not in the mood to talk? Send SMS messages to anyone - for up to 90% less.
Make calls and send SMSs the same way you always have to anyone, anywhere in the world – quickly and easily – whether you’re on the go, in the office, or relaxing at home.
Yeigo is simple, Yeigo is smart. If your phone is supported by Yeigo, register an account, receive an SMS from Yeigo, download the application and start saving.
What does it cost?
Calls to other Yeigo users: FREE
Calls to those without Yeigo are charged at applicable rates. You can achieve major cost savings of up to 80% when calling people not on Yeigo, anywhere in the world.
SMS messages to all persons are charged at applicable rates. Here you can achieve savings of up to 90% when sending a message to anyone, anywhere in the world.
All credit for calls and SMS messages is prepaid.
The costs mentioned exclude the cost of establishing an internet connection. Whichever medium you use to connect to the internet, through Wi-Fi, EDGE or 3G, you will be charged accordingly by your service provider. It is advisable to purchase a data bundle to lower your internet connection costs. Visit your service provider to see what data plans are available to reduce your internet cost.
What do I need to use Yeigo?
To get started with Yeigo, you need:
- A SIM card from your local service provider (to be able to establish a data connection). Some Wi-Fi compatible handsets do not require a SIM card when using Wi-Fi.
- Sufficient credit balance or data bundle with your local service provider to access an internet data network - Wi-Fi, GPRS/EDGE or 3G network.
- A Yeigo compatible mobile handset.
- The Yeigo application to be installed on your mobile handset.
As long as there is an active connection to the internet, Yeigo can support voice calls and SMS messaging.
Yeigo uses your handset?s connection to the internet to make calls over the internet using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technologies, instead of the traditional networks used for cellular calls. Your phone can connect to the internet over Wi-Fi, GPRS/EDGE, 3G and other emerging mediums.
Through its network of servers, Yeigo is able to support VoIP calls made through the Yeigo application and terminate them to the required destination world-wide. With its quality infrastructure, Yeigo is able to offer secure conversations and fine sound quality.
Yeigo is optimised to support VoIP calls over the available data connections by dynamically and seamlessly adjusting to the network conditions and capabilities of the mobile handset, even when in motion, giving you the very best in VoIP communication.
One Laptop Per Child & The Cry babies - Everyone from Nicholas Negroponte to Microsoft to Intel wants to help the poor kids in emerging economies by giving them a laptop, a phone or some frankendevice. No one seems to ask the question if the kids actually need it, especially when food and water should be higher on the priority list.
As we wrote earlier, “What is a kid who goes to a school with rampant teacher absenteeism, no infrastructure to speak of –like desks, fans or electricity to run those fans –going to do with a laptop?” [gigaOM]
CyberCapital.Org » Did you know these basic Firefox Tips?
You can easily double the joy of using Firefox by knowing these essencial Firefox tips.
- To quickly find any word in a web page type /word it will highlight the word and press Ctrl+G to “Find Again� that word again
- If you wish to remove an item from your Address Bar Drop down menu, highlight it without clicking and use Shift+Delete.
- Clear your Download history to make the download manager more responsive: Tools | Options | Privacy
- Type about:cache?device=disk in your address bar to view/save items that you have in your firefox disk cache
- Type about:cache?device=memory in your address bar to view/save items that you have in your Firefox memory cache
- Drag any link to the Download Manager Window to add & download the link.
- If you accidentally delete a bookmark and want to recover it, open the “Bookmarks Manager� and use Ctrl+Z, or Edit | Undo.
- Double Clicking empty space on the Tab Bar will open a ‘New Tab’
- Holding down the Ctrl key when you right click to “View Image� or “View Background Image� will open the image in a New Tab or New Window.
- A bookmarks Folder’s position can also be Dragged & Dropped but you must hold down the SHIFT key while Dragging.
- You can work offline in Firefox just go to File > Work Offline. This means that you can browse your previously visited pages even when you’re offline this is a really cool feature but not many people who use it.
- You can bookmark the current page by dragging the icon from the location bar to your Bookmarks folder. You can also drag it to the desktop to make an icon for that page.
- To stop animated gifs from moving, press the ESC key.
Last week billions of dollars changed hands in online related acquisitions. Anything that is worth buying is being bought.
The rumors that Yahoo is in talks to acquire Bebo for $1billion may have seen wild 2 years ago, but in today’s online market compare favorably price wise. Consider that Microsoft didn’t even blink when it acquired aQuantive for $6billion and Yahoo was previously said to have bid up to $1.6billion for Facebook.
Apple preps first builds of Mac OS X 10.4.10 for testing - With the release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard pushed back to October, Apple has bought itself more time to tie loose ends in the current Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger operating system and will put forth those fixes via its first "dot ten" software update in quite some time, AppleInsider has learned. [digg]
A Mac gets whacked, a second survives - A Mac gets whacked, a second survives [security news]
Debian releases Etch - With little fanfare the Debian project yesterday released GNU/Linux 4.0, codenamed Etch, after 21 months of development. The project also named its new leader and released updates for Sarge. [tectonic]
i've been wanting for a while now to find an open source ticketing system that i actually like and that is 100% free.
i tried cerberus which is free for three agents and one email address, and i loved it, but i need it for more than three agents.
i had also tried otrs some time ago and not liked it, though i'm unsure why. when i saw that otrs2 was available for ubuntu i decided to try it in case for some reason i suddenly liked it... and for some reason i suddenly do!
it is clean and easy to both install and use. it does what i need it to do and doesn't do tons of extra stuff that i don't need it to do. it's 100% free, not any slower than you'd expect it to be and has an interface that your clients can log into to create their own new tickets and get status updates on their existing tickets. honestly i don't remember it being any different to this the first time i tried it, so i'm not sure why i didn't like it before. it's great!
Johannesburg - eBucks, the rewards programme offered by First National Bank (FNB), is the latest South African business to turn its back on traditional software platforms such as Microsoft in favour of an open-source platform.
This comes after government announced in late February that all government departments would switch from Microsoft to the open-source Linux operating system in a bid to lower administration costs and enhance local IT skills.
