Twitter

Chris Lehmann is the principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I love reading his education-related tweets because of his many interesting ideas, insights and observations. There's another side to Chris, though. Chris is a rabid sports fan, and he'll unleash a torrent of tweets during certain sporting events. I can appreciate his sports fervor, but to me those sports tweets are more noise rather than signal. I'd love to be able to tell Twitter, “give me all of Chris Lehmann's education-related tweets and none of his sports tweets.” (I also want Chris to continue tweeting his sports tweets, because those are an essential part of who he is.) » Read more

As an educator, trained Linux systems administrator, and technology director for a K-12 school district, I have been actively involved with NYSCATE (The New York State Association for Computers and Technologies in Education), a non-profit organization that works to lead the transformation of teaching and learning through technology. It’s been 20 years since I attended my first NYSCATE conference, and the conference’s open source presence has taken many different forms.  » Read more

If you look at the evolution of the IT landscape over the past 30 years, you see two distinct trends: the continued growth of the IT dinosaurs (mainframe computing and mainframe wannabes like Sun) and the emergence of highly modular, adaptable systems, which, by their very process of evolution, not only best suit the current needs, but plant the seeds for the next computer revolution. In the 1980s, modular UNIX systems sowed the seeds for Linux, which in the 1990s sowed the seeds for the rapid spread and adoption of the World Wide Web, which in the 2000s, sowed the seeds for companies like Amazon.com, Google, Facebook, and Twitter to aggregate and disseminate content as never before. » Read more

In my previous posts, I discussed the new features of the MPL and the new compatibility between MPL and other licenses. In this final post, I'll summarize a few other small details about the new MPL that may be of interest to opensource.com readers. » Read more

Twitter offers customer service access on problems that you couldn't have reached before: the little things. (I've heard they count.) There's a huge opportunity for companies to interact with their customers in a way they haven't before, but a lot of them are still ignoring it. Or worse, they think they're using it, but they're completely missing the point.

BT (Before Twitter) » Read more

I participated in the first-ever Twitter @townhall meeting hosted by the White House on July 7. Of course, I wanted to see if my questions would make it to the big screen, but I was more interested in the participation and transparency of the event. » Read more

After the recent economic crash, many governments had to overhaul both financial structure and fiscal regulation. The majority, including the US government, formed a plan of attack using the same bureaucratic and economic venues in use for centuries. Politicians come to the table with plans and ideas based on their own thinking and research. Some use these opportunities to filter in their own agenda, hidden in layers of jargon and political colloquial, to be reviewed and passed (or passed on) by a body of politicians behind closed doors. » Read more

On April 15, NASA concluded the first year of its Open Government Initiative by releasing a status report on 150 milestones of 19 open government projects and three flagship initiatives.

"NASA continues to innovate on its approach to open government," said Nick Skytland of NASA's Open Government Initiative. "Our commitment to experimenting with and embracing new participatory ways of collaboration begins with our efforts to infuse open government into the U.S. space program."

The three flagship initiatives are around policy, technology, and culture: » Read more

What does Google stand to gain from having so many open source projects? What about Twitter or Facebook? Why would companies freely give away software that cost them time, money and may help their competitors? Why is Github growing at an absurd rate, with over 2 million repositories? Why are developers world-wide giving their time and work away for free? » Read more

Last Friday, while the first true revolution of the Web 2.0 era was reaching its climax in Tahrir Square, I was watching events unfold from within the U.S. State Department in downtown Washington D.C. I had the privilege to attend the two-day Tech@State: Open Source conference, an event organized by the Office of eDiplomacy, a relatively new wing of the State Department led by one of most cutting-edge and dynamic teams in the federal government. » Read more