Blogging Roller

Sun has given every possible indication that Open Solaris will be run as a true open source project. The latest indication is the make-up of the board of directors: Casper Dik, Roy Fielding, Al Hopper, Simon Phipps, and Rich Teer. (via Simon Phipps - congrats Simon!)

IBM Adopts Open Development Internally: "Following on the success of its Eclipse open-source development platform, IBM has quietly been using a form of open-source development internally to create technology the company will sell commercially.

IBM calls its model Community Source, which it defines as a collaborative, internal, open-source-style environment for developing and testing new technology.

Danny Sabbah, vice president of strategy and technology for the IBM Software Group, in Armonk, N.Y., said IBM is using its Community Source model across 100 projects and 2,000 developers in the company. These projects span the IBM Software Group, Systems Group, Research and Global Services, he said."

Very interesting. I'd like to learn more about that. What parts of the so called open source development process have they built into the Community Source model? I've found that most developers have different definitions of the open source development process (via Ross Gardler).

In case you missed it, Google has added satellite images to maps.google.com. They've got coverage for the entire US and low resolution images for the Caribbean and South America.

Over the weekend I finished writing Chapter 16: Distribute Files Podcast style. The code for the chapter is a simple JSP-based web application called FileCaster, which you can use to manage a Podcast newsfeed. You can add a new Podcast by uploading a file or by referencing a file somewhere on the web. The app was easy to write, thanks to Commmons File Upload and good old JSP. I need to review it once more tonight and submit it to Manning tomorrow.

I've got to admit, I've never really paid all that much attention to Podcasting. I've reviewed a couple of Podcast book proposals, I've implemented Podcast newsfeeds and I've got the required software, but I've just never gotten into it. To make up for this horrible deficiency in my geek credentials, I spent most of the weekend listening to Podcasts playing in the background as I worked. I couldn't make it through many of the Podcasts I downloaded because they were either too mumbly and under-produced or too slick and over-produced (like a drive-time radio show). I did find some things to like. Here are the subscriptions that I didn't delete from my iPodderX Lite subscription list:

• IT Conversions [blog|feed]: Some of these interviews and conference sessions are simply amazing, fascinating stuff.
• Evil Genius Chronicles [blog|feed]: Interesting pop-tech talk and some good tunes.
  
• Caribbean Free Radio [blog|feed]: Good music and an interesting Caribbean perspective (recommended by Evil Genius).
  
• The Chris Pirillo Show [blog|feed]: Interesting talk about selling content, organizing conferences, pop-tech, etc.
• Geek News Central [blog|feed]: Nice review of tech news and nice overall experience, but I didn't really learn anything new here.

Claire Giordano has written an excellent article on the business benefits of blogging, pulling together a bunch of nice quotes, links, and useful advice.

are the most believable ones (and I mean that in the nicest way possible).