I’ve run this site on WordPress since 2003.  I’ve also written a couple of plugins for WordPress. So that’s why I’m interested in WordCamp.  It’s a chance for me to put some faces to names and hopefully to help others along the path to publishing using zero cost, free (as in liberty), open source software that adheres to, and promotes global open standards.

If you’re a user of WordPress, or if you’ve gone further and started to develop your own plugins, or if you’d like to start a website but don’t know where to start, or if you’re generally interested in the development of open standards or open source content management systems (and the satellite web services that support them) – WordCamp may be of interest to you.

• Date: Saturday and Sunday 19-20 July 2008
• Venue: Aston University, Birmingham
• Venue: The Studio, Birmingham

Find out more at the WordCamp UK website.

As before Worst Offenders works cooperatively with other anti-spam plugins: its primary purpose is identifying and deleting the comments that are 100% definitely spam (sent by the very worst offenders) so that any “false positives” (sent by real genuine humans) can be rescued from the spam bin!

Download it from
WordPress.org

I’ve got it working on this site already, where it’s proved faster than the previous versions – it also has a nicer user interface. There are a few minor operational features that need to be finalised, but it’s basically capable of doing what it’s supposed to.

This version has a pluggable interface, so different “litmus tests” can be applied to spam at the same time, and third parties can easily write tests without having to write a whole interface.

I’m keen to hear from people who:

• Know their way around WordPress/PHP already.
• Can take a look at the litmus test API and comment on ways to improve it.
• Suffer from very high spam loads (hundreds or thousands per day) who’ll be able to give the existing litmus tests a bit of a workout to check if their SQL is as efficient as I hope.

Development SVN is being kindly hosted by Automattic and releases will be available here.

The typical geek has carefully selected and purchased their gadgets of choice, has a computer that’s tuned to perfection and needs no software purchased (because their entire suite is open-source) – so aside from comedy tee shirts with clever slogans that can only be understood by other geeks, buying for geeks is difficult, especially if you’re not a geek, because you can’t even understand if the tee is funny or not.

Novelty Gifts

Giving up and buying a novelty-gift is not a good solution, it has negative connotations. Novelty gifts are often made of plastics and are immediately discarded because they tend to look twee and lame next to the 30inch LCD monitor, so if you didn’t have environmental guilt about naff presents before, you will have in future.

Novelties get made, bought, wrapped, presented and then discarded by January 1st. A whole lot of carbons belched into the atmosphere and gallons of oil used for no reason, and they’re often not recyclable because they’re made in a sweatshop backwater that uses chemicals that are banned by most governments. There, guilt, it must be Christmas.

So don’t do it, don’t go naff.

The geek in your life has bigger fish to fry and your gift can help.

Good Gifts

Donating to a geek charity will show that you care, and that, even though you can’t comprehend the strange words they use, you do at least appreciate that what they do is changing the world.

Several worthwhile charitable causes with a technological skew immediately spring to mind…

1. The Wikimedia Foundation – the people who run Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikinews, Wikiquote, Wikibooks (etc!) as a global services (free to use and free of advertising). The Wikimedia foundation have rejected lucrative corporate partnerships in order to preserve their independence and need the financial help of the community to continue to grow.
2. The Electronic Frontier Foundation – who protect the the individual when large firms threaten to trample their rights with with legal bravado, and protect everyone by challenging companies and governments that enforce new laws that restrict rights previously granted to the individual.
3. The Free Software Foundation have a worldwide mission to preserve, protect and promote the freedom to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer software, and to defend the rights of all free software users. If you’ve not heard of the FSF, you might have heard of GNU/Linux, which is part of the free software stable.

I’m sure the geek in your life would appreciate a personalized donation far more than a novelty mouse warmer. If you can think of worthy causes to add to the list (or if you represent a worthy cause that’s not mentioned and happen to have dropped by), respond below.

When Xara Studio was released it caused real consternation among the businesses that were producing vector art packages because it was years ahead of the competition in both features and (most importantly) speed. The main competition (Corel) was so worried, that it licensed the product and released it alongside it’s flagship “Corel DRAW!” product.

It beats me how they’re going to keep paying the bills though…

I had used Xara Studio’s predecessor (Artworks) on a friend’s computer so I knew Xara Studio would be good, and it’s reviews confirmed it. Artworks was released 15 years ago; way ahead of it’s time.

I also owned a copy of Impression Publisher, a DTP product of the same company and used it throughout my undergrad years for submitting assignments. So over the years Xara has done me proud, and they’ve taken some cash from my pockets for their efforts. I bought CorelXARA, and I upgraded as new releases became available: Xara X, then Xara X1.

Each upgrade costs costs money, and although each upgrade offers new capabilities or performance improvements, not all of the new capabilities are useful to all users. What is most surprising is that despite 15 years of development, the basic toolset of X1 is remarkably similar that of Artworks in 1991. By no means is this a story of “money for old rope”; it’s more an example of brilliant user interface design from the outset.

Open Source Xara

Last year Xara released the source code to Xara Xtreme under the GNU Public License, which means anyone can download the source, build the software, and use it, or change it -all free of charge. I’ve experienced this from the inside, having once worked for a company that open-sourced it’s flagship product, cutting its revenue by 50% overnight. Xara are in a slightly different position because they are still selling the Windows product, but giving it away on Linux. There must be a sustainable business model behind Xara’s open-source decision, but it’s not immediately obvious.

An Upgrade Quandary

I now find myself in the curious position of wondering whether to upgrade to the latest release, Xara Xtreme, or perhaps I should jump ship entirely and become a 100% Linux user. Xara is (or was) the last thing that’s keeping me on Windows. I now find myself wanting and needing to edit SVG images, but the windows version can’t do it, and crucially the linux version appears to have this capability.

To pay, or not to pay

So there’s now an imbalance:

1. I can pay for Xara Xtreme on Windows, or
2. I can switch to Linux and get it free, or
3. I can download the source code and build it for Windows (!), or
4. I can wait for someone else to build the GPL version for Windows and then download that.

There’s nothing in the GPL to prohibit the re-engineering or release of a free windows version, and Xara must know this. I suppose Xara might be making more money from their bells+whistles one-click-website software, so the decision to open-source Xara Xtreme may have been a strategic self-destruct move to exit a market that was becoming infiltrated by open-source competitors such as Inkscape. It was probably a sensible decision to quit whilst ahead, and maybe make a few final windows upgrade sales as the market dies.

This is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about when I mentioned that I harbour concerns about the open source business model, there are times when it hurts companies (Xara has lost a revenue stream on a fantastic product) and there are times when it hurts consumers (because Linux users get the product freely, whilst Windows users pay $80 for it).

Goodbye Windows?

So, aside from:

1. code stability whilst the open-source version matures, and
2. a little performance loss (because generic code can never be as fast as platform specific code), and
3. a general good natured financial appreciation for Xara
4. and the aquaduct…

…I can’t find an obvious reason to pay for the Xara upgrade any more, and with Windows Vista around the corner, I think I’ve found my exit point from the world of Microsoft OS’s.