Weblog: Archive

Last night Finnish energy company St1 launched ReFuel, their new biofuel product. ReFuel is interesting in the sense that it is produced from biowaste, and so no farmland is used in its production.

To support the product launch we helped to create ReFuel Tehdas, an application for converting internet trash (bad pictures, advertisement banners) into money. To use it, you install a Firefox 3 extension with which you can then flag images as garbage:

The image will then be sent to our garbage processor, which churns it into money for your account. You can claim some of the money by ordering a St1 Visa card. Other users of the extension can see what has been already processed, as all garbage images are automatically blanked out from their respective websites:

This makes browsing even the noisiest websites a serene experience, as dutiful ReFuel users have probably already removed most of the obnoxious blinking banner ads.

Watching images pop into the garbage processor is also quite addictive, and gives an interesting insight into the dark subconscious of the Internet.

To try it out, register to the site or watch the screencast.

Technically the site is also quite interesting:

It uses the new Midgard2 platform, combining the PHP-based Midgard MVC framework with some Midgard-Python processing tools. It also utilizes Facebook Connect for easy registration, and is probably one of the first campaign websites out there to be based on Firefox extensions.

Much of the platform is same as what the Qaiku microblogging service uses.

Technorati Tags: biofuel, campaign, ecology, firefox, midgard, biofuel, refuel

Midgard2, the content repository for multiple programming languages that we've all waited for so long is now in beta stage, and some services like Qaiku and St1 ReFuel already run on top of it. To get you started, here are some of the best Midgard2 blog posts out there:

• Midgard 2: More than just PHP, more than just CMS - The architecture of Midgard2
  
• Midgard2 at FSCONS: Your data, everywhere - Using Midgard2 as the content repository for synchronized mobile, desktop and web apps
  
• Midgard and JCR: A look at two content repositories - How Midgard and Java Content Repository compare
  
• MidCOM3 at a glance - Basics about the PHP MVC framework built for Midgard2
  
• Midgard workshop at FSCONS - Make Midgard Python and PHP processes talk to each other via D-Bus
  
• Midgard ObjectiveC bindings - Use Midgard2 as replicated data store for your Cocoa and GNUstep apps
  
• Midgard with Lighttpd - Running Midgard2 with Lighttpd and FastCGI
  
• Bread, electricity and Midgard2 - Setting up Midgard2 on Maemo devices
  

This post has been made for Day 2 of the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog campaign.

Technorati Tags: midgard

Today was a home day, perfect for doing some reading. And one of the things I read was the 2004 refresh of Neal Stephenson's In the Beginning was the Command Line. The commentary included following passage, which immediately rang a bell:

New users of Linux are almost always exposed to it through a member of the userbase, insuring that they have at least one person on-hand who can answer their inevitable questions and undo their horrible mistakes. The above is a romanticized description of the Linux experience, because it implies that the ubiquitous Linux veteran is not a factor. Unfortunately, Linux was not designed for end-to-end ease of use -- in that respect, it was not "designed" at all.

This is indeed the way I, and many people I know got into both Linux and Free Software. Of course there are some who have just downloaded Ubuntu or Midgard and started using and eventually contributing to it "out of the blue". But most get into these communities through sort of oral tradition, by having friends who introduce the technologies to them.

If we accept that the grapevine is our best marketing tool, what sort of actions should we take to make it more successful? We obviously need to address some real-world problem with our technology. But we also need a compelling story that people will want to pass on, made even easier if it is a comparison with some unpopular player in the tune of "like Windows but doesn't crash".

And if we want to get the bandwagon rolling, we need to support our "software missionaries" somehow. That can mean free CDs or T-shirts, but could it also mean some sort of web services? Something new on top of the traditional project infrastructure of IRC channels and mailing lists?

Technorati Tags: freesoftware, marketing

CloudAve reviews the CrunchPad browsing device, and concludes that these days, a single computer is just not enough for all our needs:

A tablet for lazy surfing, a netbook for travel, an iPhone for when we don’t even want to carry that much, a full laptop for everyday work, and even a full desktop as the multimedia workhorse: at these price levels we may very well have 5-6 or purpose-designed computers, situational devices. Pick up one, continue on the other as you move around – the switch should be seamless, our computing experience is becoming to device-independent.

While the idea of a universal communicator is appealing, the multi-device situation is more practical. However, pick up one, continue on the other is still more wishful thinking than reality. Even if you keep all your data and applications in the cloud, you still face the issue of having to find and open the various browser tabs when you switch devices.

Mozilla Weave is a browser synchronization tool for the upcoming Firefox 3.5 that will hopefully help here, at least on all computers where you can install a browser:

Weave Sync, a prototype that encrypts and securely synchronizes the Firefox experience across multiple browsers, so that your desktop, laptop, and mobile phone can all work together. It currently supports continuous synchronization of your bookmarks, browsing history, saved passwords and tabs.

Having solved this, we still face the problem is that cloud locks your data behind proprietary software run in data centers of multinational corporations. While data portability and standardization slowly help giving users control of their own content, the better free software response would be relying on data synchronization and peer-to-peer connections.

Via Internet Tablet Talk.

Technorati Tags: crunchpad, dataportability, midgard, weave, synchronization

So, Oracle bought Sun, and MySQL with it. Since MySQL runs much of the current web, I'd imagine many developers are now concerned with the future of that database and looking at alternatives like PostgreSQL.

But instead of locking yourself to another specific database, how about going with a content repository?

Content repositories are services that wrap different storage back-ends and provide an abstracted object-oriented API to them. As long as you write your application using the repository's interfaces, you can switch databases behind it at will.

For web development, there are two good alternatives:

• Java Content Repository: the content repository standard for Java applications that has many implementations, including Apache Jackrabbit
• Midgard2: generic content repository for PHP, C, Python, C# and Objective-C based on libgda

In addition to database abstraction repositories often provide other services like versioning, multilingual content handling and signals between multiple applications using the same repo.

Technorati Tags: jcr, midgard, mysql

FON is a shared WiFi service. Couple of years ago they gave their routers for free in Finland, and since then I've been sharing my home connection with other FON users. And occasionally I've even roamed using FON connectivity provided by other users, using Devicescape to log my Internet Tablet automatically to the network.

Now FON has released Fonera 2.0, which can support OLPC's mesh networking technology. This means that the FON routers can share each other's connection so not each of them has to have a direct connection to some ISP. Also it means that peer-to-peer connections within the mesh network can happen directly, bypassing the wider internet completely.

If mesh networking became popular, it could provide an important part of a free software -compatible cloud:

• Mesh network for internet connection sharing and direct connectivity between users
• XMPP and Telepathy for enabling peer-to-peer collaboration in applications
• Content repositories for replicating data between application instances and users

Meraki is another WiFi access point provider that supports mesh networking.

Via Boing Boing.

Technorati Tags: mesh, p2p, fon

About one year after Operation Suvilahti, Nemein has now grown out of the space there and so we're moving again, this time to a 50s industrial building in the Hietalahti district of Helsinki.

Here's the initial floor plan that still lacks couple of desks:

Our development servers and other network infrastructure will move to AfHeurlinia where there is a diesel generator and pretty good connections, so the new office space will indeed be just office. AfHeurlinia is a very secure location for our servers, as the place is guarded by both ninjas and ferocious dogs.

Couple of workstations in the lobby area will be reserved for visiting contractors and may become available under some kind of coworking arrangement.

The new office will be a lot closer to many of our important clients, and has a very nice view to the historical Hietalahti area:

After Tuesday Apr 28th the new address will be Hietalahdenkatu 8 A 22.

Technorati Tags: nemein

This Friday Rohea launched a visual and feature refresh of Qaiku, the conversation-oriented microblogging service. As part of the refresh some early APIs also landed, together with Ubiquity command for posting Qaikus.

If you have Mozilla Ubiquity installed, this is what you will see on the site:

When you install it, Alt-Space will be a fast shortcut for Qaikuing:

More APIs will be coming soon, planned to be fully compatible with Twitter API for easy client support.

Technorati Tags: ubiquity, qaiku

After the long wait, Midgard2 was today released to the world. This marks a big change in the scope of what Midgard is. Instead of building a CMS, we've built a generic content repository that can be utilized in web, mobile and desktop applications.

As MDK wrote when announcing the Objective-C bindings for Midgard:

...it provides an objectified view to the data and services surrounding it. At the basic level it abstracts the database access (SQLite, MySql, PostgreSQL) but this is only where it all starts. Serialization & replication, managing own storage objects, multi-process access to data are all covered. The fully object-oriented (GObject-oriented) API allows you to focus on the data, not the database syntax.

For many desktop software developers, database technologies belong to where they belong — the web alone. This is not necessarily true. As the software & services en masse move to the web, the need to integrate the cloud with the desktop becomes indispensable.

This is indeed a big step for our project, as suddenly Midgard moves from the realm of PHP-only web development to the area where Midgard applications can be written for mobile devices, replicating their data with a social web app.

As Piotras is fond of saying: You could write Drupal on top of Midgard, but you couldn't write Midgard on top of Drupal.

Learn more about Midgard2 via the Eight best Midgard2 posts.

The first stable release of Midgard2 coincides with the 10th anniversary of the project, to be held in Helsinki, Finland next week. Come and join the celebration!

Technorati Tags: midgard