1. John Battelle's blog post over music search.

    I would like to join, though a bit late, this conversation ... a conversation about copyright; music copyright in particular.
    I follow the approach endeavoured by Richard Stallman (you know, the guy who coined the expressions "GNU's not Unix", and "free as in Freedom, not free beer"). I believe that a single GPL license should be given to the whole of the internet - and I really mean the WHOLE of the internet -; in particular to whatever media file (music or video) you find there.
    Why? Well, because I think it's the most natural way to go.
    You must remember that systems adjust to technology. Imagine musicians of the 18th century. They could not record their music. Technology was limited back then, so they would just play in bars, circuses, fairs, eventually to nobles and other sponsors. And when they would play, everyone within the range of hearing would be able to listen for free. Ok, so maybe some people would pay to get the best chair, but everybody within audible range could stop and listen. Back on those days, music artists would probably be living on tips and patron's night-stand wages.
    On the internet, it's the same: every mp3 file is one single link apart from the human's ear. The internet has become a medium for transporting media, just like air. You cannot tell sound waves to propagate anisotropically (i.e. with loss of symmetry) and to travel to that person's ear and not to the other person's that sits next to it. That just wouldn't be natural.

    I believe media companies should focus on selling the packaging and the sound quality , not the content. The analogy with the 18th century musicians would be like selling places in comfortable chairs nearby musicians; I mean they couldn't sell the music itself ... they couldn't control the sound that propagates through air. If the music were outdoors, there's no way they could stop standing people to listen. Then of course, they could build a closed infrastructure, keep the musicians inside, give it a name like "a concert hall", eventually add a fancy qualifier like "royal concert hall", and charge extra at the entrance. In fact, that's exactly what they did!

    But my point is: in the internet context, this "royal dome" is not easy to implement; the internet is free; content is only one link apart; like air - and it should remain likeso. You could try to sell content; but then, it would be as absurd as selling bottles of fresh air :)
    Otherwise, if we project the idea of selling content in the 18th century, it'd mean they'd have to install a earing device that blocks melodious sound to every earing person in the county, and charge people for unlocking their devices so they could listen to the music they payed for. This is to show how ridiculous it is, selling music with DRM in the internet! This is to show how crippled I feel whenever I get to see music files on the internet but am not allowed to play them.

    But still, with a GPL license, content would be legally free. Free to listen AND free to sell as well (remember, "free as in Freedom, not free beer"). Even if it'd be like selling bottles of fresh air in Switzerland.
    Nonetheless, if you add in some aroma or subtle fragrance; if you put some design in the bottle; if you call your bottled air, "parfum"; then, you might get a selling product.
    So don't sell only music, sell music with the exclusive band's t-shirt!
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  2. SeeqPod Music beta - Playable Search - Find. Discover. Watch. Listen. Share.



    So it was! The first WebCamp in Lisbon. Got little attendance however. But still we had FUN! Basically we now know better how to share RSS feeds, use twitter and twitter-bots, discovered the Yahoo Open Shortcuts, and last, but not least, elected the best music searching engine unanimously: it's called Seeqpod. It basically does exactly what I expect a music search engine should do: it finds exactly the music I wanted; it allows me to store it (or its reference at least) in a playlist. I can instantly create as many playlists as I want. If I don't find some music I have or know where it is, I can submit its url. I can share my playlists with my friends (by email). I can easily embed my playlists in webpages. I can develop more on top of Seeqpod with its API. Finally, it's free as in Freedom (and as in free beer as well, which is nice). Five stars to these nice folks :)
    It's been years that I've been searching EXACTLY for this service. Kasian Franks, if you're reading this, you're da man bro!

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  3. Update: Leiam e editem o wiki para compor o programa (login:wikiguest; pass:wikiguest).

    É com muito gosto que anuncio o #1 Web-Camp de Lisboa, Portugal!

    Irá decorrer este fim de semana de 21 a 22 de Julho, no 2º andar-direito do prédio 77 da rua Lopes em Lisboa (no Alto de São João, ao pé do largo do cemitério). Devido às limitações das instalações, a entrada é limitada por convite recursivo. Este email e até dois forwards sucessivos do mesmo serão tidos como convites válidos :P

    Ao contrário da boa tradição dos FooCamp, dos BarCamp e outros BaseCamp, este WebCamp pretende abordar um tema bem específico:
    "RSS - a tecnologia revolucionária da Web2.0 - Ideias e formas criativas de ensinar, aprender e usar RSS."

    Requisitos recomendados:
    -Laptop,
    -Pizzas,
    -Cervejas,
    -Máquinas digitais fotográficas, de filmar, webcams,
    -Liero, worms, defence turrets, e sei la que mais é que a juve joga hoje em dia ...

    Sigam o blog Webtopmania.blogspot.com onde iremos pondo posts com actualizações do programa e onde pretendemos dar updates semi-live do desenrolar dos acontecimentos.
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  4. An Antic Disposition: Math markup marked down

    The following is an open-letter addressed to the portuguese comittee responsible to evaluate Microsoft's proposal of turning OOXML as an ISO. They are going to debate tomorrow the issue and take a decision. Problem is that one of the members of the comittee works for Microsoft-Portugal. This will probably have a negative impact on the fairness of the decision but I'm only speculating. So I wrote this letter addressing the committee and politely asking them to revogue OOXML to become an ISO. I hope OOXML looses. I really favor ODF. OOXML is proprietary and mocks everything that was already designed by the open-source community such as MathML and the ODF format (which is the OpenOffice format).


    Caros senhores da comissão,

    Devo apresentar-me, se me permitem. Sou Guillaume Riflet, licenciado em engenharia física tecnológica e, presentemente, aluno de doutoramento em engenharia do Ambiente no Técnico. A minha tese consiste em implementar um modelo de previsão de correntes marítimas para a costa Portuguesa de modo operacional. Como podem imaginar, passo grande parte do meu tempo ocupado a lidar com computadores. Por outro lado sou igualmente um entusiasta do Web2.0 e da sua cultura e já fiz apresentações do tema para a Aksen e a Generator, empresas de soluções web e de e-marketing respectivamente (http://www.slideshare.net/griflet/web-20-47985).

    No âmbito do meu trabalho tenho que submeter frequentemente artigos para revistas e conferências da especialidade. Como processador de texto científico uso preferencialmente o Latex, mas ocasionalmente também uso o ms-office ou o openoffice. Pode-se dizer que os meus interesses sobre uma norma ISO de documentos são representativos dos interesses da comunidade científica nacional e internacional.

    E em nome do interesse da comunidade científica devo apresentar algumas críticas à norma OOXML:

    1 - Do ano 2000 para cá, a comunidade científica internacional tem vindo a desenvolver o MathML, um esquema XML para formulação simbólica de equações matemáticas. O MathML é o esquema XML mais repandido e usado na internet para linguagem matemática simbólica. O OOXML simplesmente não considera o MathML. Isso é uma falha grave. O OOXML deve pelo menos reconhecer a existência do MathML e justificar se o seu esquema de XML para texto matemático é vantajoso sobre o MathML. Por causa desta falha, revistas de grande relevo internacional como a Science e a Nature recusam documentos no formato .docx (http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/04/math-markup-marked-down.html). Infelizmente, muitos colegas científicos recorrem ao ms-word para submeter artigos a revistas e a conferências por ser-lhes mais conveniente. Vêem-se assim obrigados a recorrer a processadores de texto caducos para submeterem artigos de conteúdo científico de ponta o que representa para eles na prática uma perda na produtividade ciêntifica, e representa para Portugal trabalhos submetidos com menor qualidade gráfica.

    2 - O ODF é um esquema de XML de documentos de tipo Office que é livre. É hoje um standard, reconhecido por entidades de relevo na área como a OASIS. O ODF é o esquema utilizado pelo OpenOffice, a suite open-source homóloga ao ms-office. O OOXML deve reconhecer a existência do ODF e justificar quais as suas vantagens em relação ao mesmo para ser seriamente considerado como Standard alternativo na matéria.

    3 - O OOXML é uma norma que é propriedade da Microsoft. Em nome da defesa dos "consumidores" das ISOs deve-se privilegiar, quando disponível, normas livres. Neste caso existe a norma ODF que é livre e que já tem uma larga aceitação e utilização pela comunidade ciêntífica internacional.

    Para qualquer revisor ciêntífico, um artigo que não apresente um state-of-the-art e que não demonstre um trabalho original E inovador será sistematicamente revogado. Por todas estas razões, a proposta da norma OOXML não apresenta um estudo sério do estado da arte (MathML, ODF) e não se revela nem original, nem inovadora (ODF), e portanto não serve os interesses da comunidade científica quer nacional, quer internacional. Proponho assim que se revogue a proposta da norma OOXML, propriedade da Microsoft, para ISO de documentos de tipo Office.

    Com os meus melhores cumprimentos,
    Guillaume Riflet

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  5. Revolution OS

    This documentary film about the birth of Open-Source dates back to 2001. But it still is the most interesting document I've seen about open-source. All the major actors from the pre-Google era are presented.

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  6. Google Mobile

    Here it is folks, Google's reply to Twitter: Google SMS.
    If you're a US, Spanish, Canadian, German resident then you can dial "GOOGLE" and send an SMS with a query. Seconds later you should get a reply with your answers. As I'm a Portuguese resident, I can only play with the web-based emulated version of the service and can only dream about Portugal being finally accessed with such a service ...
    You can query for flights (provided by flightstats.com), prices, weather, stocks, movies, sports, translations, dictionary etc, etc ... I tried it in the emulated web-based version and I can tell you it rocks!




    As you may have seen in my latest posts, I got all buzzed up about creating weather-bots in Twitter. And I must say that they work out fairly easy and they're pure fun to implement. What my weather bots (try to) do is to tweet away each morning the weather forecast for a given city. Paris, London, Lisbon, Porto, Funchal and Angra do Heroísmo are the only ones yet implemented (more to come, I hope). The source is the BBC RSS feeds for the weather forecast. However, in order to make them more interactive with the user, it's another talk ... And that's where Google SMS comes in ...

    I can't even imagine all the possibilities that will arise from such service. I have however one idea/sugestion to Google. In the scope of the web2.0 moto "Empower the user", I would suggest them to allow users create their own SMS services for example with the google mashup editor (haven't heard about that one? Well, I don't have time to blog about every cool thing that hits the web-world you know, I have another work, see? But since I got membership access to the restricted and exclusive club of beta testers, I'll post in a screenshot of this famed editor (I'm talking from the future here) just for a quick taste ...). This would be something like YubNub.org but with google engines. I still can't understand how google doesn't understands the power of shortcuts, and why don't they empower us users to freely customize our shortcuts with their engines!! (Ok, if you don't understand what I'm talking about, just go to to http://yubnub.org and see what it does. And be struck by awe or whatever ...).

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  7. Griflet's Code Snippets

    This one is an interesting bookmarklet. It translates the current web-page into another language. It's activated from the address bar. Simply add this link
    to your bookmarks. Then edit its properties and fill the keyword field with 'tr'. That's it!

    Here's the generic syntax to use from the address bar:
    tr [from]|[to]

    Here are some examples:

    tr en|fr
    tr en|de
    tr en|pt
    tr de|en
    tr pt|en
    tr fr|en





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