Thursday October 06, 2005
Thursday October 06, 2005 
Our very own Jonathan Schwartz sat on a panel today with Mitchell Baker and Tim O'Reilly at John Battelle's Web2.0 Conference in San Francisco. All three were articulate, smart and provocative.
Of note: Tim pointed out that Jonathan is probably the most senior executive blogger out there, and pointed out that blogging takes time, and asked why Jonathan thinks the time is worth it. Jonathan's tongue-in-cheek reply was that blogging takes a lot less time than 1:1 interviews. His deeper answer - that there is an incredible power in community, that most people he knows in the software world make choices not based solely on economics but on philosophies and beliefs, that developers join things - they don't buy things. And that communication is a critical element in creating communities. So - he is communicating in his blog to help build a community around the Sun technology platform. And he readily stated that he's using the transparency of his blog as a competitive weapon. (And he named a few of his competitors that spend over 1/2 billion in advertising, instead.)
Of note: When asked about open source, Jonathan said that "Everything Sun does will be open source. Everything." And he advised other software companies to "Get to open source quickly. There is no downside that I can see. Get to free quickly. There is no downside that I can see." Bold statements.
Of note: Someone from the audience asked Jonathan about Solaris, all the great features in the latest version of Solaris (DTrace was named in the question), and how open source fits into that? The questioner wanted to know if the engineers are more inspired because they get to open the source? Jonathan answered by mentioning that DTrace is now being implemented in FreeBSD and that we're supporting that effort. Then he moved on to point out that there are 1000 Sun employees in the newly launched OpenSolaris community, and over 7900 community members from outside Sun. He thinks that's great. "Are Solaris developers feeling like they're responsible for everything? No." He mentioned the creation of an OpenSolaris governance process - and that Sun employees involved in Solaris are "having to learn that they're not going to be in control of everything. That's a good thing." He went on to use one of my favorite phrases - "Innovation happens elsewhere."
My thoughts: The question about Solaris would not have been on the radar screen 2 years ago. The combination of Solaris 10 innovations + disruptive free pricing of Solaris + open source via the OpenSolaris project have changed the landscape. Solaris and OpenSolaris are firmly on the radar screen for customers and developers and technologists. Especially when you consider the context - the Sun/AMD partnership, the 2004 acquisition of Andy Bechtolsheim's Kealia company, the new x64 Galaxy boxes from Bechtolsheim's team, Sun's commitment to management of your data and SarBox compliance, the throughput computing advances in the upcoming Niagara hardware, the Java ES platform, the promising announcement of a Sun/Google partnership...
As a result, the ecosystem for the Solaris platform and the OpenSolaris technology is growing, and fast. I loved the question. And I loved the level of detail and understanding in Jonathan's answer. The President of a 36,000 employee company knows about the port of the OpenSolaris DTrace software to FreeBSD - how cool is that!
Technorati Tag: Web 2.0
Technorati Tag: web2con
Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris
(2005-10-06 14:37:55.0) Permalink Comments [2]
Wednesday September 21, 2005 Props from Mike Eisler to OpenSolaris
Wow. Mike Eisler, a talented senior software engineer who works on all things NFS for Network Appliance, has some very positive things to say about the OpenSolaris community and website in a blog titled, opensolaris.org: the Future of Open Source Communities?
Kudos to members of the OpenSolaris community - all of you - for helping to create a place where people can share and collaborate and make things happen. There is some great community building in action happening over on OpenSolaris.org - and it's great to see this kind of pat on the back. Keep up the good work, folks.
Here are some excerpts from Mike's blog entry. (Still, I encourage all of you to read his entire blog. He's a good writer. And he's smart. Check it out.)
"One, like conventional open source, the world outside of Sun now has direct, and early (i.e. before first customer ship) visibility into what is going on. "
"Two, unlike many large open source projects, the information for getting that visibility is well organized. "
"This is revolutionary: as an employee of another NFS server vendor I could influence the design and implementation of an important NFS client without having to wait for our mutual customers to file a trouble ticket."
"But I think the bigger point is that because Sun has made opensolaris.org so easy to navigate, so easy participate in, and so open to "outsiders", (not to mention flame free), those "outsiders" are going to find that they get much more leverage with OpenSolaris than with other open operating systems."
"Whether this higher leverage translates into increased market share for OpenSolaris versus other open source kernels remains to be seen. But the design and execution of opensolaris.org may represent the future of open source communities."
Thanks, Mike. I really appreciate your good words.
Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris
(2005-09-21 20:37:27.0) Permalink Comments [1]
Flickr group for OpenSolaris Enthusiasts
I'm a Flickr fan. Flickr is a wonderful photo sharing service and its founders have done an excellent job building a flickriscious sense of community. And I'm a bit of an OpenSolaris Enthusiast, too. Well, tonight I married the two interests and created an OpenSolarisEnthusiast Flickr group. Check it out!
The description of the new group that I posted on Flickr:
Post any photo that shares your enthusiasm for OpenSolaris and shows
how you're spreading the word about the community.
Such as ... a photo of you in your favorite OpenSolaris t-shirt,
or a photo of your laptop covered with OpenSolaris stickers,
or your office wall plastered with OpenSolaris posters.
Many of us are Flickr fans - and OpenSolaris enthusiasts - so
here is a marriage made in heaven.
We welcome photos taken in distant lands, on mountain peaks,
on tropical isles - and those taken at home, at work and on the
soccer field. Wherever your passion takes you.
Tell a friend. Spread the word. Be an enthusiast!
Some of you have already posted some marvelous photos on your blogs wearing your OpenSolaris garb. Hal did it in the Dead Sea, Tim Foster did it via Spreadshirt, and Mark Dixon posted on his OpenSolaris Beauty. And I know there are more OpenSolaris photos out there.
Let's do some sharing. Join the Flickr group. Become an OpenSolaris Enthusiast. And tell a friend!
Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris
(2005-09-21 01:46:54.0) Permalink Comments [1]
Friday September 16, 2005 Thanks to the help of Dave Johnson, of Roller fame, I now have an About Me link on the right hand column of my blog. So if you're a new reader, or an old reader, and you're trying to figure out who the heck I am and what I do, the answers are there for the asking. I warn you, though, don't go looking for standard bio fare. My blog is true to cluetrain. Bottom line - thanks, Dave. So glad you're at Sun.
(2005-09-16 12:21:58.0) Permalink
Little Known Facts about Marketeers
The ides of September have come and gone so I decided to send an "organizational update" around Sun describing the marketeers involved in the OpenSolaris project. I thought I'd share some of the "little known facts" from my message. Because little known facts can be interesting and fun. In alphabetical order by first name:
About Laura Ramsey:
Turned down a job as Sports Promotional Intern with the SF 49ers for a job at an SRI spin off (Artificial Intelligence)
Had a longer run in corporate marketing than CATS had on broadway...1984
Was the PR contact for the Solaris 2.0 announcement in 1991
Was a speechwriter for Ray Noorda, at Novell back in the day when they thought the network was the printer
Lives in the Massachussetts countryside, with Blue the Nakota mustang, Butterscotch the bunny, Penny the Boxer, Pippen and Coke the cats, her two daughters, and her own personal rock star husband
Has lived in California twice, Colorado twice and Massachussetts twice
Drives a bright yellow VW bug
Favorite gum is Juicy Fruit; believes in chocolate chip cookies for dinner
About Patrick Finch:
Recently married
Sometimes, when doing too many things at once, can relate to the guy in the film "Memento"
Lived in a tent for 8 months in 1996
Went to the same high-school as one of the Beatles, a British heavyweight boxing champion, 2 footballers who played for England (with distinction) and a national gameshow host
Likes Westerns
First job at Sun was cold-calling people who didn't call Sun anymore and might be dead (some of them were)
Collects old-school Adidas trainers
Is English, has a wife from Sweden, and a brother in America. Naturally, lives in the Netherlands
First Sun desktop was an IPX, bless it
In 1990, saved a sheep from a fate worse than death
About Sara Dornsife:
Has been in marketing for 18 years
Has a background in color management and graphic design software
Has done the Silicon Valley circuit: Apple, Symantec, and Sun
Came to Sun through the acquisition of Cobalt Networks where she worked on the
Cobalt Developer Network
Sent out the Solaris x86 Blvd street signs
Fled California because of the cost, the traffic, and the schools
Misses San Francisco and the ocean
Moved to Austin, TX - just because it is cool
Husband is a stay-at-home dad for their 2 children (one girl and one boy)
Works from home (because Sun is a very cool place to work)
Does hotroom Vinyasa Yoga as often as possible - Namaste
Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris
(2005-09-16 01:45:26.0) Permalink
Wednesday September 14, 2005 
Props to Bryan Cantrill
for a well-deserved award. Last week, the MIT Technology
Review awarded Bryan Cantrill a TR35 award, naming Bryan one of the 35
Young Innovators under the age of 35. Bryan was nominated for his work on Solaris 10 with DTrace (which is open source software and is part of the OpenSolaris project. An active OpenSolaris community is found here.) For fun, I dug up some old Slashdot quotes about Solaris DTrace (I'll post the links later):
"DTrace rocks my socks."
- Slashdot user 1359
"Freaking [expletive deleted] on a stick. DTrace might be among the two or three most powerful tools I've ever used."
- Slashdot user 2898
"[Expletive deleted] almighty! It's like they *saw inside my head* and gave me The One True Tool!"
- Slashdot user 159009
I've blogged about Bryan before - no need to wax philosophical now. I will say this, though:
1. Do check out this great podcast interview with Bryan, courtesy of I/O Podcast by Richard Giles, and see why innovation stems from anger.
2. If you've not read Bryan's Observation Deck blog, check out this story titled: Man, myth, legend, and get hooked. Bryan's a gifted storyteller, and he ropes you in and infects with his passion and his voice.
3. Love Stephen O'Grady's comment in his del.icio.us bookmarks about Bryan's aforementioned story:
"anybody remember the scene from Cryptonomicon where Comstock gets hopped up on stimulants to keep up w/ Waterhouse? this is the real life equivalent"
4. Check out the great Bryan quote from Ozan Yigit... it's a classic.
[And, added item#5 on 10/7/05]
5. Here's a Contrarian Minds article about Bryan and DTrace titled No Bad Dogs: How to Make a Dog-Slow System Sit Up and Speak.
Congratulations, Bryan. It's an honor to work with you.
Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris
(2005-09-14 01:11:49.0) Permalink Comments [3]
Saturday August 27, 2005 Vocations, Avocations and Posters with Funk
I was walking down the hall, on my way to the bathroom, and lo and behold, what did I see, but a larger than life poster of Ambreesh - smiling at me!
I enjoy working with Ambreesh Khanna - he's smart and charismatic and has a talent for evangelizing our technology and solving problems. He was an early supporter of the OpenSolaris project - he started exploring the possibilities with customers months before Jonathan publicly announced our plans in Shanghai back in 2004. Ambreesh works for Sun with Wall Street customers, which alas means that I don't get as much face time with him as those lucky New Yorkers. So I guess I'll need to go to the bathroom more often, huh? Great poster, Ambreesh!
Props to the people at Sun who created these inspired posters (posters with funk, I dare add) that highlight some of the individuals doing great work across Sun. This is definitely a step above "employee of the month" recognition programs (not that we ever did those). It's fun to see your friends' faces up in flashing lights (almost as fun as seeing this when I was on vacation, unplugged from my email and 3 thousand miles away from home.)
And as for the employee descriptions on the posters - no boring standard bio-fare used here, rather, the descriptions are a creative mix of their vocations and their avocations and even show how the two are intertwined. Mixing vocations and avocations is often a recipe for success but, far more importantly, always a recipe for fulfillment in my book. More thinking on that point from Paul Graham and Tim Bray.
Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris
(2005-08-27 11:08:44.0) Permalink Comments [1]
Wednesday August 24, 2005 Humour Challenge - OpenSolaris and the New Yorker
Someone, somewhere
must be funnier than me. I try to be funny but sometimes, well,
it just doesn't work.The New Yorker has an fun cartoon caption contest. And I'd love love love (did I say love?) to see OpenSolaris mentioned in a cartoon in my beloved New Yorker. I know there are a few non-techies left in the world who haven't heard of OpenSolaris, and here's a way to make them wonder what it is... Well, if only someone were funny enough to come up with a caption that either ends up as a Top-3 finalist or ends up as a winner.
So c'mon - be curious - be creative and have some fun - and peek on over to the latest cartoon caption contest and see if genius sparks.
And, the current contest has a "devil" character in it - doesn't that bring to mind some kind of BSD and OpenSolaris humour?
If you subscribe to the New Yorker, you can also find the contest on the back page of the print magazine.
Please comment on my blog if you've submitted something and if you're game please share your idea, too! (Sigh, looking at the New Yorker, it looks like you need to be a U.S. Resident to participate over the age of 18.)
Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris
(2005-08-24 01:10:21.0) Permalink
Saturday August 06, 2005 
Vacation beckons. As much fun as I've had at OSCON 2005 and with all the OpenSolaris community building activities this summer, it's time for me to unplug for two weeks and do some of my favourite things: eat lobster at a much-loved restaurant in Ogunquit (checkout the webcam), hang out for a week in NH, go camping in the mountains, swim in an ice-cold Sierra lake, read-read-read and hopefully, for a few moments at least, do nothing.
What to say about OSCON? I visited and socialized and met with many great people. I did not get to attend nearly enough sessions (and am particularly disappointed to have missed Paul Graham's talk, and Jeremy Zawodny, and Nick Gall, and r0ml, and also Jonathan.) Be sure to read about the cool PHP and DTrace work that Wez and Bryan did - in the midst of a fun OpenSolaris party no less! Big thanks to Laura and Sara for organizing a great party - and to Teresa for getting me hooked up with the OpenSolaris CAB. Al, Casper, Rich, Roy and Simon worked their butts off on OpenSolaris governance during the conference - thanks, guys. They also met with a team of engineers who have been working to define and refine the OpenSolaris development process - which meant that David and JBeck and Mac and Jek3 were in Portland and were able to join my team and the CAB and some of the OpenSolaris engineers for a seafood dinner a la Jake on Wednesday night. Dinner for 18 is guaranteed to be lively - and it was.
I had a great lunch with the ever insightful Stephen O'Grady (who had more influence than he realizes; I don't think my reaction was mixed) and also had the distinct pleasure to spend some time with Nick Gall and Jim McHugh and folks on his team including Lisa and Chris (photo coming later) to talk real-world analogies for software. I ran into Jason Matusow and Stephe Walli - and although I missed his talk, I caught up with r0ml so that he could refresh my memory of the story of his name. Oh, and I got to spend a few minutes with Russ Nelson - no square hats involved! I demo'ed del.icio.us to Steve Lawrence (are you hooked yet, Steve?) and ended up on the same flight back with Liane Praza (an amazingly talented kernel engineer) which meant that the flight felt like it took all of 5 minutes - our conversation was so engaging. Oh - and Keith did not throw any furniture out of any windows. He did do a bang-up job presenting on OpenSolaris, though.
And if your ears were ringing during OSCON, Alan, it's because I picked up a round TUIT for you from chromatic at the perl booth. :-)
I would link to Simon's and Patrick's blogs on OSCON, but they haven't blogged it yet. Perhaps next week?
I'm still figuring out my thoughts about the Women in Open Source panel. Stereotyping can be uncomfortable for me. But boy oh boy was it well attended - by men and women alike. And if the numbers Bernard shared prove accurate - that the number of women in open source is far, far lower than the number of women in software - well, it's worth the conversation to figure out why. Big thanks to Danese for organizing and provoking thought on the topic. And it was a pleasure to spend time with Allison, Mitchell, Alolita, Zaheda and Bernard.
Now - it's vacation-time. Ciao!
Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris Technorati Tag: OSCON
(2005-08-06 04:10:59.0) Permalink Comments [2]
Wednesday July 27, 2005 OpenSolaris Goings-On at OSCON next week
and 
My midsummer night dream is about OSCON. In which OSCON = the O'Reilly Open Source Convention. In Portland, Oregon. Next week. August 1-5, 2005. O'Reilly conferences do not disappoint. And since things OpenSolaris and Open Source are near and dear to my heart, well, I'm awaiting the gathering with bated breath.
For those of you who will be in Portland, please join us for food and drink and lively discussion at the Birds-of-a-Feather session about OpenSolaris on Wednesday night Aug 3rd. Last year's BOF was super memorable - standing room only starting at 9pm and running until almost midnight! It was great fun, and I look forward to an even richer discussion this year - because it's no longer just about our intentions but about the reality that is the OpenSolaris project. Liane Praza is hosting the BOF and she'll by joined by other members of the OpenSolaris community as well. Who knows what colour Liane's hair will be - but I guarantee it will be colourful.
OpenSolaris Technologies BOF Wed Aug 3rd at 8:30pm PT
For those attending the conference - there will be 2 sessions to choose from on OpenSolaris DTrace - although I fully expect some developers to attend both. DTrace slices and dices and whirls and twirls. Well, almost. At JavaOne last month, 900 people came to hear Adam talk about it and demo it- particularly since it's useful for analyzing applications and Java code and not just operating system software. The first is a 3-and-a-half hour session on Tuesday with both Bryan Cantrill and Keith Wesolowski (called a tutorial, but you do not have to register for it or pay anything extra for it - a conference pass is all that is needed, it seems) and the other is a 45 minute Opening the Kimono session with Bryan on Thursday.
Tutorial: "OpenSolaris Development with Dynamic Tracing (DTRACE)
Bryan Cantrill and Keith Wesolowski
Tue Aug 2nd 1:30-5:00, Room D140
Open Session: "DTrace: Opening the Kimono"
Bryan Cantrill
Thu Aug 4th 4:30-5:15 Portland Room 255
And - for those of you are wondering what in the blue moon this OpenSolaris gig is about - well, Keith will be answering that very question in a What-is-OpenSolaris session. Come and join us.
Open Session: "What is OpenSolaris"
Keith Wesolowski
Wed Aug 3rd 2:35-3:20 Portland Room 255
And if you like to listen to agile minds converse, the one and only Jonathan Schwartz will be live and on stage to talk to the O'Reilly conference chair Nat Torkington (a great guy) about - well, whatever the two of them end up talking about. If you've been to an O'Reilly conference before, you know these things are generally not scripted. They'll be talking. About something interesting.
Jonathan Schwartz Fireside Chat
Wed Aug 3rd 9:45-10:15 , Portland Ball Room
And I'll be on a panel discussed titled Women in Open Source on Fri morning Aug 5th, too.
And there will be BOFs about other Sun open source projects as well - a JXTA BOF (Wed at 7:30pm), a Java.net BOF (Wed at 7:30pm) and a GlassFish BOF (Wed at 8:30pm). If you've not heard of GlassFish yet - they're one of the newest Sun open source projects to join the party - and yes, they do have a thing or to do with the application server. Find out more about Project GlassFish here.
Oh - and if you're interested in tools and NetBeans, Tim Boudreau is giving a 3.5 hour NetBeans Tutorial titled NetBeans IDE 4.1 Development on Tuesday morning Aug 2nd at 8:30am.
See you there, I hope! And please check out our somewhat unusual booth as well!
Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris Technorati Tag: OSCON
(2005-07-27 01:58:06.0) Permalink
Monday July 25, 2005 Tim's got it right, Feed the Feeds by Shelley Powers is a tour de force. A must read for bloggers with a healthy sense of humour. Here's another cat that Stephen and I made friends with in Tokyo in June, on many a subway. So finally, Stephen, I'm sharing the photo. On flickr, of course. Beware, though - this cat won't link!
(2005-07-25 02:20:29.0) Permalink Comments [1]
Monday July 18, 2005 Stats for OpenSolaris - First 4 Weeks
I get several questions a week about what the stats are for OpenSolaris. Since the Opening Day was just about one month ago, people are naturally curious. Heck, I've been curious, too - ever since I read Moneyball - which I've talked about before - I've looked at metrics and statistics differently. Beyond the obvious reasons for caring - metrics can show adoption and activity (or lack thereof) - I'm also interested in how metrics can influence perception, since perception can trigger word-of-mouth and word-of-mouth conversation can help to create interest and drive adoption. And of course - metrics can directly influence behavior. I use the "Top Blogs" list and daily hit counts on blogs.sun.com as one example that's rather close to home for Sun bloggers - obviously Top Scorers is another example from video games - there are legions of exampes in the sports world.
I'm also intrigued by the increasing transparency into the site stats for various websites and communities, too - such as the "Viewed 1342 times" and the "5 people call this photo a favorite" on this Harry Potter photo from the Flickr blog. I'd like to see more and more of this on OpenSolaris.org.
So, here are some initial OpenSolaris stats. What do they mean? Given the conversation happening on OpenSolaris.org, not just on the mailing lists but also on the IRC channels, I think it means that a community has rallied around this technology and that folks are conversing and chatting and coding and collaborating to figure out what this community can become, and - to use one of my favorite phrases - how to make sure that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
We've got tons of work to do to grow this ecosystem. As I was reading David's loud thinking about growing an open source ecosystem tonight (about the Ruby on Rails project - great project, great post), I wondered where OpenSolaris will be in one year's time. Given the nature of the people I hold in high-regard on Team Solaris - who have just become part of a bigger, more diverse team - I know it will be an exciting ride.
I mailed the opensolaris-discuss mailing list on OpenSolaris.org some stats for the Opening Week titled "OpenSolaris Launch Highlights" several weeks back. Here are more stats covering the first 4 weeks (which I will cross-post in an email to the opensolaris-discuss mailing list as well.). Expect to see more stats in the future coming from Patrick Finch (who just started on my team a few weeks ago but immediately turned around and asked for vacation - something about getting married. I guess that's a reasonable excuse...) Thanks to Patrick for gathering these numbers for us.
Some OpenSolaris stats - the first 4 weeks (measured since the Jun 14 2005 Opening Day):
OpenSolaris.org page views
Week 1 1,048,077
Week 2 227,411
Week 3 147,137
Week 4 140,316
4 week total: over 1.5 million page views
New non-Sun registered community members on OpenSolaris.org
Week 1 5,423
Week 2 469
Week 3 184
Week 4 150
4 week total: 6,305 non-Sun registrants, PLUS 843 Sun employee registrants
Note - you don't need to register on opensolaris.org to browse or download - it's quite possible that even more people have been exploring and lurking. I certainly hope so!
New postings to discussion groups
Week 1 1,145
Week 2 674
Week 3 520
Week 4 494
4 week total: 2,815 postings on 543 different topics
OpenSolaris Blogs
Week 1 324 OpenSolaris postings from 150 different bloggers
Week 2 140 OpenSolaris postings from 40 different bloggers
Week 3 99 OpenSolaris postings from 37 different bloggers
Week 4 86 OpenSolaris postings from 29 different bloggers
Question: Are that many OpenSolaris bloggers really on vacation? Hmm...
Blogs.sun.com site
Traffic to blogs.sun.com is also up 21% in 4 weeks since Opening Day (vs the 4 preceeding weeks)
Top Referrers to OpenSolaris.org Weeks 1-4
google (all domains) 17.8%
slashdot.org 13.3%
osnews.com 4.5%
yahoo.com 4.0%
com.com (cnet) 3.4%
Corrections
There were 2 inaccuracies with the figures published for week 1. Sorry. Mea culpa. Oops.
- I had said that new non-Sun registrations was 5700 for Week 1. Really it was 5423.
- I had said that postings on discussion groups for Week1 was 990. Really it was 1145.
Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris
(2005-07-18 02:00:01.0) Permalink
Thursday July 14, 2005 I just love what folks are doing with greasemonkey mash-ups.
Perhaps we can use this to make it easier for folks to find all the new OpenSolaris User Groups that are cropping up. We already know that people are busy and it helps to populate the the blog announcements and/or User Group webpages with super-easy maps and directions. Most of us don't want to have to go get a pdf or download a file or look up the map ourselves. E-z is good.
Look at the attached screenshot of what's called a greasemap (courtesy of Steve O'Grady, who picked it up from a recent Slashdot discussion). Don't you love the way the google map info is injected into the page?
Steve's a big fan of mash-ups and blogged about the google maps + craigslist mash-up when he was househunting in Colorado.
Also, gotta love that OpenSolaris favicon that jumps out at you when you zoom the screenshot in Flickr - here.
Technorati Tag: opensolaris
Technorati Tag: greasemonkey Technorati Tag: greasemap
(2005-07-14 19:30:34.0) Permalink
Wednesday July 13, 2005 true
open
from mozilla
thumbs-up (says osi)
e-z-er
protections
court-configurable
goalposts-fixed
4 commonz
mid-in-dle
of b(sd) and g(pl)
choice::good
cuddle
fud can be annoying. so I wrote a poem about you-know-what. alas if only i were better at poetry. oh well, it was fun even if corny.
for the record, i'm damn proud of the work on this license. and i send a big thanks to the many who contributed.
technorati tag: opensolaris
(2005-07-13 01:12:40.0) Permalink
Tuesday July 12, 2005 After talking about the coolness of the Art of the Start cover design contest last week, I poked around on istockphoto a bit more. And here are some interesting things I discovered about the istockphoto stock photography community - a few of which might prove useful for those of us in OpenSolaris-land.
The photo on the front page changes with most reloads. Needless to say, I reloaded the page, um, well, more than a few times. What can I say - it was fun discovering which photos the editors had decided to promote. My favorites - Blue Moon, Gorilla and buzzard roost. Oh, and I have to give an honorable mention to Female Gremlin.
Next - I like the articles section. I read through several of the articles (White Balance, Underwater Photography, and yes, even Efenzi) and each was conversational. If you'd read my earlier blogs, you know I'm a big fan of authentic voice. More than that, I like that there's a clear process for submitting articles, and given the number of authors it certainly seems like articles are written by community members. As we move forward with OpenSolaris, I want to see more community contributed content. Jim mentioned this earlier today as well.
I also like the use of statistics - number of uploads, downloads, most popular art for each designer, the public view into each designer's "creative network" of designer friends which makes it easy for me to go exploring and follow links to friends-of-friends, top designs, most popular files, highest rated designs. Bottom line - multiple different views are presented so that I can effectively "browse" when I'm not sure what I'm looking for. It isn't too hard to find the interesting parallels for OpenSolaris here - while we've got a wicked source browser on the OpenSolaris website, we can still make it easier to browse other aspects of the project. And - the member profiles on istockphoto are way more useful than they are on opensolaris.org - we've got some work to do to make it e-z for people to provide more useful (and personal) views into who they are.
Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris Technorati Tag: istockphoto
(2005-07-12 01:04:52.0) Permalink
