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Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Reading Free: The Future of a Radical Price reminded me, in many ways, of  The Grand Design.

To understand the universe on the quantum level, you have to embrace understandings and facts that seem ludicrous at human scales. That is, that we have free will; that things cannot be in the same place at the same time; that time progresses at one speed and forward only, are all convenient and explicit truths for our day-to-day existence. But at the subatomic level, that’s not how things work; not at all.

Anderson’s arguments about Free — that is, gratis and libre — are presented in the same sense, if not quite as well or explicitly.

Free does a fine job of explaining the mechanics of how things can be free on the Web: namely, per-unit / per-user costs are so low, they might as well be considered nothing.

He also does a good job of explaining the obvious money-making models applied successfully so far: advertising, freemium (basic service is free; premium service costs money) and non-monetary / indirect recompense, such as an increase in reputation / marketing of ancillary products, such as concerts and merchandise for musicians or speaking engagements and consultations for professionals.

Continue reading: Review: Free: The Future of a Radical Price »

The first New England GiveCamp was this weekend at Microsoft’s Northeast Research and Development building in Cambridge, MA, and it was, by far, one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had in the 15 years I have been professionally coding.

About 100 technical and non-technical volunteers spent the weekend of June 11-13 writing code for charities. Most projects were Web site upgrades — either installing a content management system, or extending that system to do something it didn’t do before, such as collecting very specific data, integrating with a customer relationship management tool, etc.

Other projects were more complex. For example, my project was data normalization and version control.

I was assigned to the Goshen Land Trust, a charity that protects open and green space in Goshen, CT. My team members were Kriss Aho and Pat Tormey, both from the Boston area; and Chris Craig, the president of GLT.

Prior to last weekend, GLT tracked all its customer relationships in Excel spreadsheets. They do their accounting in Quickbooks.

If someone was a volunteer, his name went into the volunteer spreadsheet. If he owned land, his name was in the landowner spreadsheet. If he was a land or money donor, his name went into another spreadsheet. And so on, and so on; this story has been told a thousand times before, we all know it by heart.

And, of course, there were several versions of each of these spreadsheets out there: They were exchanged back and forth via e-mail, meaning no two copies of the same spreadsheet were alike. Again, stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

Finally, donor payments are managed entirely separate from the spreadsheets, via entries into Quickbooks. So there’s a completely different store of around 800 mostly duplicate names in Quickbooks, too, which isn’t easily compared to a spreadsheet of about 2,000 names.

So we had to figure out a way to impose some version control on these sheets; we had to create a master data store, so we could have an authoritative source of customer relationship information; and we had to sync customer information in Quickbooks to match the master data store.

Sounds like fun, I know. It actually was, after it stopped being awful.

Continue reading: New England GiveCamp 2010: What A Great Experience »

I’m a late-blooming gleek. But I’ve caught “Glee” fever something awful — thanks, in little to no part, to the Fox network.

For those not initiated, “Glee” is a musical comedy series that, in the words of the New York Daily News, “dresses like ‘High School Musical’ and has the heart of ‘Porky’s.’” I’d add that in addition to being “cynical, sweet and inestimably funny,” “Glee” may be the most perfectly cast television show ever, and about as well-written, directed, produced and inspired as is possible for broadcast television.

It’s not perfect, but of 20 episodes aired so far, I’d call one or two “OK,” one or two “pretty good,” one or two “masterpieces” and the rest “outstanding.”

I came to “Glee” late thanks in large part to the fact it ran opposite “NOVA” on PBS. That’s why I missed the pilot and second episode, anyway; I have a Series 1 Tivo and one TV, so I can only watch one thing at once, which is fine since I don’t watch much TV;.

I caught part of Episode 3, “Acafellas,” about a third of the way through its original broadcast and wasn’t particularly impressed (it’s one of the “OK” episodes). So I simply ignored “Glee” after that.

It’s how I came to appreciate the series, in the middle of Season 1.5, that spurs me to post: I had to come to it accidentally, thanks to Fox’s half-witted online strategy, and struggle against Fox mightily in order to become an addict.

The Happy Accident

Among my eclectic YouTube tastes are marching bands. I love them; they play into my prejudices so nicely. I like systems and orderly flow. I like precision. I like music, especially that performed on analog instruments. I like creativity. I like passion and performance. A marching band brings all those things together in one place.

Take, as example, one of my favorite marching band performances, from Nishihara High School in Japan:

Simply amazing.

Continue reading: My Glee-ful Piracy And The New Media Mistakes Of The Old Media »

Sent to me via e-mail from Billy, a frequent commenter on this blog (that is, for as infrequently as the blog gets comments, Billy is often one of those commenting):

I was wondering if I could get a small interview, just one question, for a term paper. I have 15 bibliography cards to do and I need sources and I was going through websites, found three good ones about career prospects in the programming/web development and design fields and that was it. I was thinking about people I could ask questions to and thought about you. I basically needed to know what you think the career opportunities in the programming and web development fields are and what you think they’ll be years on down the road. If you’re too busy I understand. Thank you for your time.

Billy:

I’m no industry analyst; my prognostications are usually limited to American football, and more often than not turn out wrong. (Quoth I, just before kickoff of Super Bowl 44: “The Saints are a great story, but this is gonna be a rout. Indy’s gonna annihilate them.”)

But I do have opinions about what programming and the Web will be like in 20 years, formed as a result of listening to others’ opinions, the history of the neolithic, agricultural and industrial revolutions, and my own experience of seeing how the Web has changed over the roughly 15 years I’ve been working in programming it.

The Web and computer programs we have today are, in a lot of ways, very much like the horse plow, rail fence and punch-card looms of antiquity. Today’s Web technologies and desktop programs are not primitive, but they’re largely second and third drafts of technologies that are changing fast.

The first Arab to tend a garden didn’t envision ConAgra; Adam Smith would probably have laughed at the notion of a Chinese economic juggernaut as he wrote The Wealth of Nations. The same will hold true of Al Gore and Tim Berners-Lee: What they thought they were making, at the time they were making it, is markedly different from what we have today, and will result in something far different, further down the road.

Continue reading: The Future Of Web Programming: From Artisan To Assembly Line »

I’ve decided that it’s time to pay more attention to the open-source projects I have created and will create. I’m also considering joining some other software projects.

As a result, I need to revisit my licensing.

Previously, my software was licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution / Share-Alike 3.0 license. That license is really intended for authors, musicians and teachers, but I found its strong requirements for attribution and sharing of derivative works met my needs.

However, most open-source projects use a GNU license, most notably the GNU General Public License. As such, I believe it’s best to change my software licensing over to the GNU GPL.

I do this reluctantly. I am an ardent supporter of open-source software. I believe it’s my duty to give back to the developer community. But I believe I am due credit as a work’s author, and that my right to ultimately retain the benefits of copyright should be clear.

The GNU GPL technically defends my authorship and allows me to retain ultimate copyright, but it does so in a far weaker way than the Creative Commons Attribution / Share-Alike license.

I am in the process of changing all posts to reflect my new licensing.

For additional information about my licensing terms, visit the Copyright / Attribution page.