Library of Congress + flickr = The Commons

The Library of Congress is collaborating with website flickr in a partnership dubbed The Commons and the project will see 1,500 photos made available to the photo sharing giant, flickr.

The reason for doing this is to take advantage of the huge user base flickr has who enjoy tagging pictures, increasing the exposure of content currently held by civic institutions and to facilliate the collection of general knowledge about these images. Obviously it also means that the images will be easier to search.

The Commons is a great of example of how more and more people are realising the 'processing/ computational' power that social media can yield. This initiative also illustrates the benifits that can be had from projects being open and collaborative.

MySQL for a Billion Dollars

Probably one of the biggest stories of the week is that Sun will be purchasing open source database vendor MySQL for a whopping $1 Billion.

The price tag might have set tongues wagging, but even more tantalising is the question which immediately arose in the minds of IT managers world wide: Now that Sun owns MySQL, what on earth are they planning to do with it?

In his blog announcement on Wednesday, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz remained characteristically effusive. "Until now, no platform vendor has assembled all the core elements of a completely open source operating system for the internet," he wrote. "No company has been able to deliver a comprehensive alternative to the leading proprietary OS."

Sun's new role as parent of MySQL is sure to ruffle feathers in the software industry, especially at Oracle, which, with its recent acquisitions, increasingly competes with Sun in the enterprise application platform arena. In 2005, Oracle bought Innobase, makers of a plug-in component that adds advanced features to MySQL, in what was widely perceived as a competitive swipe at the open source upstart.

Is Apple untouchable?

I am by no means vastly experienced in the history of Apple versus Microsoft, but I grew up with a fair few geeks and I kept a keen ear for news. I remember the same argument I had over and over with a close friend of mine about the Mac and the PC. In my young naivety, I would profusely demand that you can't change people when they are set in their ways (a.k.a Windows), and to expect huge companies to change the way they produce their software in order to make it cross-compatible was ridiculous. Businesses don't fuel the minority to make their profit.

Naturally I came from a home of Windows PCs and laptops and she would laugh at the constant battle against viruses and the blue screen of death. Her claim that Linux based systems were the way to go because 'no one bothers making viruses for it'. She of course was right. Way back then.

For many years Apple have gloated about their surgically clean system. But as they hit the headlines, people's interest increases and so does their attempt to test vulnerability.

The following was taken from the Secunia website.

Windows XP, Vista, and Mac OS X vulnerability stats for 2007
	XP	Vista	XP + Vista	Mac OS X
Total extremely critical	3	1	4	0
Total highly critical	19	12	23	234
Total moderately critical	2	1	3	2
Total less critical	3	1	4	7
Total flaws	34	20	44	243
Average flaws per month	2.83	1.67	3.67	20.25

In my age and maturity I have snapped out of my blind beliefs, and although I am yet to fully convert to a Mac lifestyle, I am reaching out to Linux and trying to stay open minded. As a result I'm sure that the above data really doesn't mean much. Sure they've hit a cross-over period, and they need to crack down on employing people to fix their tiny imperfections, but after that they will carry on being unstoppable. Microsoft better have a string of secrets and surprises up their sleeve otherwise they will start falling behind even with the older generation who have so loyally stuck with them.

Mac Rumours: Apple Macbook Nano

Rumours at a recent Mac Expo have suggested that Apple may be unveiling a new Macbook Nano. Rumours indicate that the Macbook Nano is likely to look like the Mac version of the UMPC and palmtop computer. In recent years Apple have shown to be ahead of the game when it comes to touch sensitivity and refining their version of Mac OSX for different products.

So who isn’t looking forward to seeing the coolest, best designed and sexiest palmtop computer ever?

It’s expected to be in the UK by the summer selling for around £500.

Bogdan says: Here we go again. It seemed not long ago that Apple had just brought out their iphone. Next we have the Macbook Nano. What could possibly be next? The Imac touch? The Let’s face it, Steve Jobs is a marketing genius!

If you've ever wondered what a mash up is...

.. then here is a fine example from the BBC. The Wikipedia definition of a mash up is "a web application that combines data and/or functionality from more than one source". A developer at the BBC, Simon Cross, has taken online information already available which tells him what is currently being played on the Radio. He then uses this information to fetch related pictures from flickr.com and information from last.fm as to which are the most popular tracks and what the upcoming related events are.

If you visit the site and it tells you 'Nothing playing right now' then hang in there, it's worth checking out.

Yahoo Life

With a number of stories floating around at the moment it is hard to ignore that something new and vibrant is happening within the Yahoo camp in California  This new direction appears to affect all aspects of the business, which could only be a positive for the user. They hope to re-gain ground lost to its rivals (Google, msn, newscorp) but also challenge the social networks.

Yahoo is looking to adopt a similar social networking strategy as Google which is to base everything around yahoo mail.  However, this is only part of the strategy; the key for success will be to bring mail, search, instant messaging, mobile web, etc into one. Yahoo also recognises that users have a particular preference of social networks and have accounted for third-party applications to be integrated into their products. 

Yahoo has taken the next step in social networking by making an intelligent social architecture. From a users perspective this excellent and proof that social networks aren't fads that come and go. 

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