Posts tagged Open
“Green Button” Open Data Just Created an App Market for 27M US Homes
Mar 22nd
Earlier this year, influential venture capitalist Fred Wilson encouraged entrepreneurs and VCs to get behind open data. Writing on his widely read blog, Wilson urged developers to adopt the Green Button, the project that former United States Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra launched in 2011 to unleash energy data.
Today, the Obama Administration announced that nine major utilities and electricity suppliers have committed to using and extending the Green Button to enable some 15 million households to access data about their energy usage. As with the Blue Button for healthcare data, the White House asserts that providing energy consumers with secure access to information about energy usage will increase innovation in the sector and empower citizens with more information.
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“This is the kind of innovation that gets me excited,” Wilson wrote.
The Green Button is like OAuth for energy data. It is a simple standard that the utilities can implement on one side and web/mobile developers can implement on the other side. And the result is a ton of information sharing about energy consumption and in all likelihood energy savings that result from more informed consumers.
The thinking here, as with Blue Button, which enables veterans (and soon all federal workers) to download their personal health data, is that broad adoption by utilities and engagement with industry will lead to new opportunities for software developers and civic entrepreneurs to serve a new market of millions of consumers who want better tools to analyze and manage their energy data.
Chopra challenged the energy community last September to model the Green Button after the Blue Button. According to the White House, a common standard for the data in Green Button will be further developed in collaboration with a public-private partnership supported by the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology.
“Companies are already developing Web and smartphone applications and services for businesses and homeowners that can use Green Button data,” Dr. John P. Holdren, assistant to the president and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote in a White House blog post. “These tools can help consumers choose the most economical rate plan for their energy use patterns; deliver customized energy-efficiency tips; provide easy-to-use tools to size and finance rooftop solar panels; and conduct virtual energy audits that can cut costs for building owners and speed the initiation of retrofits.”
“If you’ve got a smartphone or tablet, you know how clever and convenient some of the apps are, and how they can transform the way you manage your time, your finances, and the way you work,” said Tony Earley, PG&E Corporation’s Chairman, CEO and President in a prepared statement. “The more apps that are available on the energy side, the more chance our customers will have to find an easy way to similarly manage their energy use.”
Dr. John P. Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy The electricity suppliers and utilities that are making this new commitment serve, in aggregate, 15 million households. They include American Electric Power, Austin Energy, Baltimore Gas and Electric, CenterPoint Energy, Commonwealth Edison, NSTAR, PECO, Reliant, Virginia Dominion Power.
In service of that goal, the administration announced that Itron, Oracle, and Silver Spring Networks will join Aclara and Tendril in developing Green Button software and a new Apps for Energy contest to try to catalyze the development of new Web and mobile tools.
Open Data and Smart Disclosure
The Green Button is a good example of data for the public good and “smart disclosure,” whereby a private company or government institution provides a person with access to his or her own data in open formats.
Smart disclosure is defined by Cass Sunstein, administrator of the White House Office for Information and Regulatory Affairs, as a process that “refers to the timely release of complex information and data in standardized, machine-readable formats in ways that enable consumers to make informed decisions.”
For instance, the quarterly financial statements of the top public companies in the world are now available online through the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Why does it matter? The interactions of citizens with companies or government entities generate a huge amount of economically valuable data. If consumers and regulators had access to that data, they could tap it to make better choices about everything from finance to healthcare to real estate, much in the same way that Web applications like Hipmunk and Zillow let consumers make more informed decisions.
“I’m a big fan of simplicity and open standards to unleash a lot of innovation,” wrote Wilson.
APIs and open data aren’t always simple concepts for end users. Green Buttons and Blue Buttons are pretty simple concepts that most consumers will understand. I’m hoping we soon see Yellow Buttons, Red Buttons, Purple Buttons, and Orange Buttons too.
Let’s get behind these open data initiatives. Let’s build them into our apps. And let’s pressure our hospitals, utilities, and other institutions to support them. I’m going to reach out to ConEd, the utility in NYC, and find out when they are going to add Green Button support to their consumers data. I hope it is soon.
ConEd doesn’t look to be on board with the Green Button quite yet – but they may soon have more incentives to join.
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SEOmoz Industry Survey Now Open
Mar 22nd
SEOmoz has announced the SEOmoz Industry Survey is now open and ready for you to take. You can take the survey online over here. The last time SEOmoz ran this survey was two years ago, you can see the results of that survey over here. The survey has 54 questions and should take you about [...]
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Gravity Announces Labs and Open Source Projects
Mar 13th
Gravity, a company that provides “interest graphs” based on content visited by users has announced Gravity Labs.
Gravity Labs is, as CTO Jim Benedetto puts it, “an initial peek into our underlying interest graph infrastructure as well as a showcase of some of our Open Source projects.”
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Some of the Labs projects are open source, others are merely peeks into the stats behind Gravity’s service. For example, check out the metrics page. It’s good if you want to see the live metrics of Gravity Network data, number of signals processed on a given day, or number of requests that Gravity is processing per second.
Gravity Labs Video 1 from Gravity Labs on Vimeo.
Gravity is also showing a graph by audience interest, which shows “targetable interests” for the past seven days. Right now, nearly 40% of the audience is interested in science topics. Nearly 30% of the audience are interested in politics and government. Health (the bottom-ranked category displayed on the site) comes in with just 0.78%. Sadly, bacon does not have its own category, or it would no doubt dominate.
Open Source Efforts
What’s most interesting about Labs, though, is the code that they’re putting out for other folks to use.
So far, they’ve released HPaste, Highroller, and Goose. All of the software released so far is under the Apache 2.0 License.
HPaste provides a Scala interface to HBase for writing MapReduce jobs in Hadoop against HBase tables.
Highroller is a PHP wrapper for the Highcharts JavaScript library. Note that while Highroller is open source, Highcharts is not. It’s available under the CC BY-NC 3.0 license, which means it can be used without cost for non-commercial projects but a paid license is required for commercial projects.
Finally, there’s Goose, which is used to “take any news article or article type web page and not only extract what is the main body of the article but also all meta data and most probable image candidate.” You can see a demo on the Labs site.
Gravity’s open source projects have actually been on GitHub well before the announcement of Labs earlier this week. Goose has been forked more than 70 times and has 650 watchers as of this writing.
What prompted the open source efforts? Benedetto says that Gravity wants to open source as much software as possible, with the exception of software that’s “core” to the business. Outside of that, Benedetto says that the company “leverages a significant amount of open source” and wants to give back where it can.
The Labs effort from Gravity is interesting, even if you’re not directly working with the company. It’d be nice to see more companies opening their doors a bit, particularly when it comes to releasing software that could be re-used by other organizations.
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SMX Advanced Registration Open – Best Rate Available Until March 24
Mar 5th
Ready to exchange ideas, influence the industry and build your network? Join the most accomplished search marketers in the world for Search Marketing Expo – SMX Advanced, June 5-6 in Seattle, WA. Register now to reserve your spot at SMX Advanced, which has sold out five consecutive years. The…
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WordPress For Musicians: CASH Music Wants to Open Source the Industry
Feb 29th
We hear a lot about how dramatically the music industry is changing. And indeed, there are plenty of positive trends amidst the disruption. Music creation is easier than ever. So is music discovery. Streaming services offer a new model for the consumption of music on any device, in any location. Whether from within a startup or at Music Hack Day, developers are building new things everyday that will help shape the future of music.
It’s an exciting time, but not always a reassuring one for the people that create the music themselves. In a lot of ways, the new music ecosystem can be even more confusing for artists, even if unprecedented opportunities technically exist for them.
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It’s with this reality in mind that Jesse von Doom and Maggie Vail are seeking to build the CASH Music Platform, an open source toolkit for bands and musicians to use to promote their work and advance their career while beginning to cut out the army of middlemen that has historically been a part of the process.
“We really believe that one of the major missing pieces in the music industry is an open framework — the bit that gives artists more control, is easy, and still lets them use any service they want,” von Doom said.
Building an Open Source, Turnkey Online Platform For Musicians
Right now, CASH Music offers a number of self-installed promotional tools for artists, such as an email address collection form, contest entry form, a widget that displays upcoming tour dates and a module for pulling in and mashing up social feeds. A few more features are in the works, including basic e-commerce, fan club module and third party integrations for multimedia content. These features are all open source, install-it-yourself tools for bands to use on their websites.
If the above sounds analogous to WordPress.org, what von Doom and the rest of the team are hoping to ultimately ship is more of a WordPress.com-style product. That is, they’re building a fully hosted, turnkey solution for artists to use to manage their online presence. To get there, they’re using Kickstarter to raise money for the development that’s needed. Their initial goal was met within the first 72 hours of the page being live, but the more resources they can throw at this project, the better, von Doom told us.
CASH Music was founded in 2007 by Kristin Hersh and Donita Sparks, both of whom are veterans of the alternative rock scene that emerged in the 1980s. Today, their board is made up of notable digital media entrepreneurs and indie music vets.
The original site offered a Radiohead-style pay-what-you-want pricing model for digital downloads from select artists. The more fans paid, the more got in return, including posters, access to shows and ProTools files for remixing their favorite songs.
The CASH Music Platform, once it’s complete, will offer quite a few features, but it is by no means intended to do everything artists need. Instead, it will be developed to be compatible with a wide range of third party services and APIs. Whether artists use MailChimp for email newsletters, BandCamp or SoundCloud for hosting music or PayPal for e-commerce, the idea is to launch a product that integrates seamlessly with as many relevant Web services as possible.
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Open Knowledge Releases Open Data Handbook 1.0
Feb 22nd
The Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) announced the 1.0 release of the Open Data Handbook today. The 1.0 release is the culmination of a project that started in October 2010 at a book sprint in Berlin as the Open Data Manual.
The Open Data Handbook provides the introduction to what open data is, why organizations (particularly government) would be interested in providing open data, and how to go about it.
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Open data proponents will find the Open Data Handbook pretty basic stuff, but it’s an excellent resource to pass on to others. It’s also the starting point for a lot more work.
Specifically, the OKF is looking for feedback on the text, contributions for the next version of the handbook, and help translating the handbook into different languages. Currently the handbook is only available in English.
The OKF is also working on additional guides and handbooks, like the data journalism handbook and data patterns handbook. If you’re interested in contributing, check out the mailing list.
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What’s an “Open Cloud,” Anyway? Red Hat Says It’s Not VMware
Feb 15th
When open source started gaining in popularity, a lot of vendors started trying to co-opt the open source label without actually being open source. You don’t see quite as much of that today, but now we’re seeing vendors trying to affix the “open” label to cloud solutions that really aren’t. Scott Crenshaw, vice president of Red Hat’s cloud business unit, says the idea is “to lure customers in with open and then lock them in.” Bad move, says Crenshaw, because the decisions companies make today about cloud will last into the next decade.
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What is an open cloud? During a webcast today, Crenshaw put forward what looks to me like a pretty good definition. He says an open cloud has seven properties:
- Open source
- Viable, independent community
- Based on open standards
- Unencumbered by patents and other IP restrictions
- Lets you deploy to your choice of infrastructure
- Pluggable, extensible and open API
- Enables portability across clouds
It’s a pretty clear definition, but one that very few vendors live up to. Many cloud providers give an open API or let you deploy the software to your choice of infrastructure. Very few are without patent restrictions or other IP gotchas, and only a handful are open source. And portability across clouds is rarer than chicken teeth.
Naturally, Red Hat’s offerings do fit the definition pretty closely. (Not very surprising, since they’re setting the definition.) But the “open cloud computing strategic alliance” that was announced today by VMware and EMC? When asked towards the end of the call whether VMware fit the bill, Crenshaw tried to be diplomatic but said the “baby steps” VMware is taking don’t make it open. “VMware will be open the day they open source” their cloud products, says Crenshaw.
Why It Matters
Does it matter that vSphere isn’t open source? Lots of companies have no intention of actually hacking the source code. But the fact that other vendors can and would offer competing solutions gives companies leverage they don’t have if they adopt proprietary solutions.
Crenshaw pointed out the pricing update for vSphere last year that had quite a few customers up in arms. Because the market is still competitive and customers are still deciding which clouds to deploy, VMware had little choice to back off its unpopular pricing. That might not be the case in five years when there’s a much larger installed base that is stuck with vSphere (or any other proprietary offering).
The most important decision that IT execs will make in the next decade is the choice of cloud architecture, says Crenshaw. “No other single decision will have such a large impact” on the IT department’s ability to compete or innovate. Choosing an open cloud “puts you in control of your future,” says Crenshaw.
VMware’s Open Cloud Computing Strategic Alliance might or might not be a good deal for customers. But the choice to try to call the offering “open” when it’s based around proprietary technology seems particularly cynical. VMware and partners might want to go back to the drawing board for the name, or consider actually offering open solutions.
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Jessica Korda leaps into father Petr’s footsteps with Australian Open win – The Australian
Feb 14th
 Toronto Star |
Jessica Korda leaps into father Petr's footsteps with Australian Open win
The Australian South Koreans Hee-kyung Seo and So-yeon Ryu stood on the 18th tee outright leaders on four under par. They had played steady golf all day and were even with the card over the previous 17 holes. Seo had matched two birdies with two bogeys, … Jessica Korda wins Women's Australian Open with birdie in 6-player playoff Jumping for joy: Korda celebrates Open win Jessica Korda, 18, Earns First Golf Title |
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Teenager Korda wins playoff at Australian Open – CBSSports.com
Feb 12th
 The Guardian |
Teenager Korda wins playoff at Australian Open
CBSSports.com Ryu and Seo, playing ahead of Korda and Nikki Campbell in the second-to-last group, topped the leaderboard at 4 under going into the final hole of regulation, but made bogeys to set up the big playoff. Lewis finished with a 70, Lincicome and Granada … Jessica Korda wins Women's Australian Open with birdie in 6-player playoff CROWN FOR KORDABradenton native wins Australian Open title Korda wins playoff at Women's Australian Open |
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Jessica Korda wins Women’s Australian Open – USA TODAY
Feb 12th
 USA TODAY |
Jessica Korda wins Women's Australian Open
USA TODAY Ryu and Seo, playing ahead of Korda and Nikki Campbell in the second-to-last group, topped the leaderboard at 4 under going into the final hole of regulation, but made bogeys to set up the big playoff. Lewis finished with a 70, Lincicome and Granada … Jessica Korda wins Women's Australian Open with birdie in 6-player playoff Korda wins playoff at Women's Australian Open Korda wins Australian Open golf in six-way play-off |
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