Posts tagged OpenSource
Google to Close Picnik & Social Graph API, Open-Source Sky Map
Jan 20th
Google keeps on slimming down its product line to focus on what CEO Larry Page calls its “big bets.” Today it offered updates on five products that will be going dark this year. The photo editor Picnik, which Google acquired in 2010, will be closed down, and the team will work on Google’s other photo products. Google is also shutting down its Social Graph API as its Google+ API slowly trickles out.
Google will also open-source its Sky Map this year in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon university. The Google Message Continuity service, which backs up email for enterprise customers, will be retired in favor of Google Apps. The Needlebase data management platform will be integrated into other services. Finally, Urchin, whose product ultimately became Google Analytics, still had a standalone client-hosted version, which will be closed in March.
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As Larry Page said in yesterday’s earnings call, Google’s current focus is on speeding up its execution. To make way for its main teams, Google has been closing down and open-sourcing its less-used projects over the past year.
Many interesting projects have moved on to bigger and better things as open-source initiatives. The Android App Inventor found a home at MIT. Knol, once Google’s effort at a Wikipedia-like knowledge database, has become Annotum, a WordPress-based system. Google Body became Zygote Body, and now it, and even the 3D viewer software behind it, is open-source. Today, Google Sky Map goes open-source, and it will live on as a student-run project.
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Google’s 3D Human Body Browser Is Now Open-Source
Jan 10th
Google announced yesterday that its layered 3D browser of the human body has become an open-source project. Google Body was built by Google engineers in their “20% time” – the 1/5th of Googlers’ time and energy they can devote to creative projects – of which all other human beings are jealous.
Zygote Media Group, which provided the imagery for Google’s modeling, has built Zygote Body with the code. It offers the same navigation and features. To support this launch, the Google Body team has built a new, open-source 3D viewer at open-3d-viewer.googlecode.com. Thanks to the work of Google engineers, any developer can now use the same kind of 3D model browser for her or his own project.
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Google has tried out lots of neat-o knowledge projects in the name of “organizing the world’s information,” only to find that they aren’t tenable parts of Google’s for-profit plans. As Sergey Brin told us at Web 2.0 last year, Google has long embraced the “letting 1,000 flowers bloom” strategy. While it’s now gathering a select few of those flowers into “a nice bouquet” called Google+, some great Google projects have gone open-source.
In November, Google did the same thing to Knol, its Wikipedia-like collaborative knowledge database. It relaunched as a service called Annotum, powered by WordPress.
What kinds of projects can you imagine building with Google Body or the 3D viewer?
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Twitter Will Open-Source Storm, BackType’s “Hadoop of Real-Time Processing”
Aug 5th
Last month Twitter acquired social media analytics company BackType. Much of BackType’s technology (such as ElephantDB and Cascalog) are already open source, and this week Twitter announced that BackType’s Storm will be open-sourced at the Strange Loop conference in September.
Storm is a Hadoop-like system, but instead of running MapReduce “jobs” that eventually end, Storm runs never ending “topologies.” It can be used for continuous computing, processing streams of data, etc.
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Here’s the rundown of the use-cases from the Twitter Engineering blog:
- Stream processing: Storm can be used to process a stream of new data and update databases in realtime. Unlike the standard approach of doing stream processing with a network of queues and workers, Storm is fault-tolerant and scalable.
- Continuous computation: Storm can do a continuous query and stream the results to clients in realtime. An example is streaming trending topics on Twitter into browsers. The browsers will have a realtime view on what the trending topics are as they happen.
- Distributed RPC: Storm can be used to parallelize an intense query on the fly. The idea is that your Storm topology is a distributed function that waits for invocation messages. When it receives an invocation, it computes the query and sends back the results. Examples of Distributed RPC are parallelizing search queries or doing set operations on large numbers of large sets.
Much more detail can be found in the blog post.
We first covered Storm in our profile of BackType earlier this year. Before the acquisition BackType started really talking-up Storm, which was received with much skepticism.
We’re still not sure how Twitter will be using BackType’s technology, but it’s good to see that at least this part of it will be released. I’m always happy to see tech startups open-sourcing tools. I’ve made the case before that as companies come and go open source leaves a legacy.
Twitter has explained its use of Hadoop in the past, and it does seem that Storm is well-suited for certain elements of Twitter’s operation. The Storm announcement specifically mentioned streaming trending topics to the browser.
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NSA Reveals Cloud Plans, May Open-Source Some of Its Software
Apr 22nd
The nation’s cryptologic intelligence agency is moving towards a cloud-centric approach to computing. In an interview with Information Week, National Security Agency CIO Lonny Anderson talks about the cloud, cross-agency information systems and open source.
It turns out the NSA has many of the same problems that private sector enterprises do. They have issues with legacy applications. They face challenges with sharing information across silos and outside the firewall. Plus, there is the difficulty with managing mobile access.
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Cross-Agency Sharing
One initiative Anderson talked about is called The Quad, a framework for providing shared development environment across the NSA, National Reconnaissance Office, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Another is called Integrated Intelligence Pilot, a system that will allow developers to share applications and query databases across agencies. “Instead of taking data from CIA-specific or NSA-specific repositories, or FBI or DIA, you’ll be able to query via the cloud into those organizations and ask, ‘Do you have information that meets this question?’, and they’ll be able to say, ‘Yes or No’,” Anderson told Information Week.
Open Source
Anderson says the NSA may even open-source some of its software, taking a cue from NASA and its involvement in OpenStack. He said a “security” wrapper could be used to protect sensitive code.
Cloud Migrations, Hadoop
Anderson says the NSA is replacing crypologic centers in Texas, Georgia, and Hawaii, which run legacy technology dating back to the 1980s. He says the new centers will take advantage of “thin clients, wireless networking, and private clouds.”
The agency already runs three private clouds, where it runs a “security-cloaked” version of Apache Hadoop for data analysis.
An Enterprise App Store, Consumerization
The agency has launched an internal app marketplace called “Ozone” to help users find and download apps. The system is being tested by the Army and the Navy. Anderson says outside developers will be able to write and publish apps to it.
Anderson also says the NSA will accommodate users that want to bring in devices from outside, presumably Android and iOS devices.
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Microsoft Needs to Open-Source Something Big. But What?
Mar 31st
Microsoft is trying hard to become an open source friend company, and it’s made some strides since the days in which Steve Ballmer was calling Linux a cancer. But today, everyone pays lip service to open source. It’s harder to walk the walk than to talk the talk, as we explored in our article on how to spot open-washing.
Microsoft has open-sourced various projects, is working with developers to run open source programming languages on its operating systems and recently hired a senior director of open source communities.
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“I used to be completely anti-Microsoft,” says Michael Szul, partner and developer at Barbella Digital. “I didn’t even have a Windows desktop.” Now, Szul is considering purchasing a Windows Phone 7 handset to replace his Android-based phone. Szul says that even though Microsoft abandoned IronPython and IronRuby, it still supports the community and has even kept developer open to assist the Mono team. Szul’s gripes as a developer are less about Microsoft’s openness, and more about the how fractured its marketplace ecosystem is between XBOX Live, Zune Marketplace, MSN Marketplace, etc.
But even as it has improved its standing in the developer community, it’s lagging behind other companies. Apple, Facebook and Google make major open source contributions with projects likeWebKit, Apache Cassandra and Android. What has Microsoft built? A bunch of open source ASP.NET code.
If Microsoft wants to go from just having a better reputation to being a real player in the open source community, Microsoft needs to open-source something big, and soon.
But what could it open-source that would have a big enough impact?
Windows
This would obviously be huge, but it will almost certainly never happen. It’s too large a source of revenue for the company to risk cannibalize its sales by allowing other companies to package competing distributions. There’s also the matter of all the proprietary components licensed from other companies.
Perhaps the company could take some sort of an open core approach, though. Perhaps some of those licensed components could even serve as the differentiators between the open source and proprietary versions of Windows. But even this scenario seems unlikely.
Windows Phone
This is also unlikely. Considering the amount of money Microsoft spent getting Nokia to run Windows on its phones, Microsoft probably isn’t about to give it away for free, let alone open-source it. It’s made even less likely by the fact that the Windows desktop, tablet and phone operating systems are likely to converge in Windows 8.
Internet Explorer
This makes sense, apart from dealing with separating operating system components from the browser, and dealing with licensed technology. The other big browsers – Safari, Chrome and Firefox – are either open source or based on open source software, and Microsoft gives IE away anyway. But would it make any difference at this point whether IE was open source?
ServiceOS
We first told you about the Microsoft Research project ServiceOS back in 2009 when it was called Gazelle. It’s still vaporware as of now, but it there’s a strong case for open-sourcing it. Google ChromeOS is starting to trickle into the marketplace, as are other lightweight browser-oriented operating systems. Open-sourcing Internet Explorer and this tiny operating system would give Microsoft something it could give away to netbook manufacturers as an alternative to Chrome. Meanwhile, it would be tuned specifically towards services like Bing and Office 365.
Would an open source ServiceOS make any difference at this point? We’re not sure. Microsoft may never see the need to open-source it either, considering that it was already able to get vendors to install Windows instead of Linux on netbooks once. Not to mention the perception that tablets are the future, and Microsoft already has a tablet strategy in Windows 8.
Office
I can’t see this happening. Ever.
What Else?
What else does that leave? Perhaps some elements of Azure could be open sourced? The Kinect SDK?
The other major alternative that I can see is that Microsoft could create something entirely new and open-source it.
What do you think? Does Microsoft need a big open source initiative? If so, what could it realistically do?
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Roll Your Own Foursquare: Ushahidi Launches Open-Source Location Service
Mar 10th
Until now, Ushahidi has been most known as a service for reporting location during times of crisis. From its use during the earthquake in Haiti to, most recently, the revolution in Egypt and Libya, the service has been used to help humanitarian workers quickly report location using SMS technology. Today, the company has taken a bit of a turn with the release of its open-source check-in service.
Now, anyone with a bit of PHP knowledge and a server can create a Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook Places or check-in service of their own and keep their location data out of the hands of the public and corporate alike.
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Earlier this year, the company announced that it would be releasing a mobile check-in app for their open-source Crowdmap service. Today, the app has gone live for the iPhone and makes it simple for anyone to create their own location-based check-in service of any variety. The app does one simple thing – allows users to send a picture and bit of text, attached to GPS coordinates, to any Crowdmap-based service. On the server side of things (which is also completely open source), everything can be set to either be public, private, or username and password protected. The data never hits Ushahidi’s servers (though they do collect anonymized statistics through the app), meaning that there is no need to worry about your location data being collected and sold or misused in any way.
Brian Herbert, director of Crowdmap, called the app a “roll your own Foursquare,” saying that, with its release, Ushahidi became the only open source check-in platform available across mobile platforms.
Why, you might ask, would you want to “roll your own Foursquare?” The answer is simple – complete control over your own data. At a recent discussion of privacy and location-based services, Reputation.com’s COO Owen Tripp the various ways that location data could be used to negatively impact the end-user, from insurance companies using it to deny coverage requests to employers spying on their workers. Just as Status.net and Diaspora work to provide open-source alternatives to Twitter and Facebook, respectively, Ushahidi could provide a number of alternatives to any of the mainstream check-in services. It could also lead to an entirely new realm of specialized check-in services wherein the users control how their data is stored and used.
Beyond the ability to create your own location based service, the Ushahidi checkin app also increases the usability of Ushahidi for smartphone-bearing crisis workers.
"In some cases, it doesn’t make sense to fill out full-on reports on Ushahidi, because it can be complicated,” said Herbert. “Sometimes you want to be able to just drop a check in on a map, with maybe a photo.”
In certain crisis situation, said Herbert, the smartphone app would simply be a “more simple reporting mechanism for something that’s happening right now.”
The iPhone application is available in the app store now. You can get it from the App Store and the Android app can be downloaded from the Android Marketplace.
If you download the app, make sure to check out SXSW.crowdmap.com where Ushahidi check-ins will be aggregated over the coming week.
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Open-Source Social Publishing Opens Doors for Marketers – MarketingProfs.com (subscription)
Sep 7th
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Open-Source Social Publishing Opens Doors for Marketers
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Boston Globe Adopts Open-Source Neighborhood News Mapping Platform OpenBlock
Jun 17th
The Boston globe is among the early adopters of OpenBlock, an open-source platform that offers news organizations the possibility to display local news data on clickable neighborhood maps. The newspaper’s move is part of a wider initiative worth a total $450K launched by the Knight Foundation, announced at the MIT earlier today.
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Yahoo Plans to Open-Source All Its Internal Cloud Serving Platforms
May 12th
Yahoo is planning to make some changes to its cloud serving programs by putting all of them into open-source by early next year. Yahoo has this service which it simply calls “Cloud” which can be described as a cross-breed of Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud and Google App Engine.
Yahoo Cloud is an computing infrastructure that service all of Yahoo’s online applications and provides Yahoo’s internal developers with on-demand access to Yahoo’s computing resources. Unlike Amazon’s EC2, Yahoo Cloud frees up developers of load-balancing task by spinning up “containers” of server power which are pre-configured for load-balancing and security.
Additionally, Yahoo is also planning to open-source all of its back-end platforms by early 2011. This will put Yahoo on a different note with Google which keeps its custom-built back-end platform to itself and Amazon’s EC2 . Yahoo has previously put its Hadoop distributed number crunching which it used for search webmaps and other tasks as well as its Traffic server for handling edge caching, processing and load balancing.
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Yahoo Plans to Open-Source All Its Internal Cloud Serving Platforms
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