In Praise of that Damn' Richard Poynder

October 06, 2008

Posted by: Glyn Moody

I hate Richard Poynder. Well, not exactly "hate". I'm just continually miffed that he not only keeps interviewing the very people in the open access world that I vaguely had in mind to talk to, he has the temerity to do it better than I would have done.

Unfortunately, it seems that there are some benighted individuals that are *really* less than well inclined towards Richard. The situation is so serious that the grown-ups of OA have been forced to step in to sort things out:

Trying to suppress Richard Poynder's investigations through threats of legal action is contemptible. We hope that the friends of open access in the legal community will attest to the lawfulness of his inquiries and that all friends of open access will attest to the value and legitimacy of his investigative journalism.

Oh, OK: I attest, I attest.

Posted by Glyn Moody at 4:06 PM

Sussing Out Second Life

Although Second Life has certain lost its cult status - and thank goodness for that - it's still an important laboratory for virtual worlds and their inhabitants. So getting a handle on what people use it for is certainly worthwhile. Here's what looks like quite a thorough job:

The Social Research Foundation (SRF) has created a panel of about 11,000 Second Life residents, and has just released their first public survey on why the panel members are in Second Life, what they are doing there, and how their activities are changing.

None of the results looks startling, but it's good to have them.

Posted by Glyn Moody at

The BBC Wants to Open Up

Apparently:

The future for the BBC lies in the technology that can open it up to the world, just as technology gave it life last century. In the corporate world, Facebook, Apple and Google have launched platform services that allow external developers and companies to build services using their code - but the BBC is uniquely placed to use those same principles to create a cultural and commercial resource for the nation.

The director general Mark Thompson has directed the corporation to think beyond proprietary rights management to a new era of interoperability that offers consumers wider choice, control and benefits from "network effects" - the virality and interconnectedness of the web.

That's all well and fine, but there's "open" and there's "open". For example, I for one have not forgotten this:

We want to make iPlayer work on all operating systems including open source ones like Fedora and I am confident we'll make good progress on this before the end of the year.

Looking forward to that missing download option, Erik....

Posted by Glyn Moody at 11:10 AM

OpenOffice.org Breaks Records Everywhere

All around the world, it seems, people just can't get enough of this amazing free office suite, which is now turning in serious market shares in some countries. For, example, according to this report, there are now 12 million users in Brazil, representing fully 25% of the entire office market there. Meanwhile, plucky little Italy has notched up 4 million downloads in the last 12 months (that's downloads, not users, but still impressive)....

On Open Enterprise blog .

Posted by Glyn Moody at 10:58 AM

Originally posted at Open... This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales Licence. Please link back to the original post.

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