michaelweiss.ca

The new BUGbase interface will be designed in collaboration between Bug Labs and IDEO. What excites me most about this collaboration is that the design will be carried out as an open source projects. CAD files for the initial design concepts have been posted to the project blog already. More information will be available from the project blog shortly. Stay tuned on this one.

Here is an example of one of the risks of tethered applications Zittrain discusses in The Future of the Internet. As posted on the ProgrammableWeb, Google just announced that it will shut down three APIs. The services affected are Jaiku, Dodgeball, and Mashup Editor. The code for Jaiku will be released as open source once the service is discontinued, Dodgeball will terminate without replacement, and Google will promote its AppEngine as replacement for Mashup Editor. While, of course, shutting down APIs is part and parcel of Perpetual Beta, this is a stark reminder that as we are building applications on top of the services of others, the very existence of those applications depends on the continued availability of those services.

Bug Labs announced five new module for their BUG platform at CES. Two excite me in particular. The BUGprojector is a mini-DLP projector and allows you to project the output of the BUG to a wall. And, finally, a WIFI module is available, which was perhaps the biggest omission from the platform when it was first introduced. Now I am looking forward to getting my hands on one.

Welcome to the new instantiation of my blog. This blog will track technology and management issues around open source, ecosystems, Web 2.0, and mashups.