In this episode we chat about game consoles and which one is best for a "light" game player.
Darlene gives us some insight into accessibility in Gnome and Mark discusses his experience with Gnome Shell and whether Javascript will be the language that allows ordinary users to develop applications. Interesting javascript links
Sorry for the poor audio quality - the SAT3 cable connecting South Africa to the rest of the world has had some "issues".
In this episode of Open Tech Exchange, Darlene and I discuss
In this, somewhat rambling episode, we discuss:
In this episode of OTE we chat about video cards and drivers in Linux, as well as video editing applications. We also briefly chat about the open source voip platform Mobicents.
Sites of interest for the video editing applications:
The home page for the mobicents project can be found at http://www.mobicents.org/
In this episode, the first for 2010, I chat about my experience with embedded Linux, installing on the Intel NAS server and Darlene shares her thoughts and experiences on tech in education.
Debian Installer - The debian installer home page. The image I used to install Linux on the NAS
Debian Installer Documentation - special entry on the SS4000e
This week, our guest, Marc Lepage, who is the Country Manager in Uganda for IICD joins us for a frank discussion on the use of appropriate technology to build capacity in country. Having experience working on sustainable projects in the area of ICT for development. Marc shares his insights with Darlene & Mark, and discusses when FLOSS is a suitable option. In particular, we were introduced to the open source support centres listed below
www.eacoss.org/ The East African Center for Open Source Software (EACOSS)
http://www.ma3bar.org The Arab Support Center for Free and Open Software
www.osrc.org.pk/ Open Source Resource Center - Pakistan
After a bit of downtime, Mark and I got back together to catch up on life in the open source world. Both of us have been immersed in some cool projects and now are finally catching our breath.
Mark has been configuring and hacking away on some IP tables and routing, all based on the flexiblity of Linux. We talked briefly about the key points that Mark found interesting and are planning to dedicate a future podcast to the topic.
I have been away in Ecuador, working to raise the profile of open source in education. Having mandated the use of Open Source software in education and public ministries, Ecuador is looking to take the next step forward. It was encouraging to be able to focus on migration strategies instead of comparing merits vs proprietary solutions,
We look forward to having future interviews with various members of the open source community and sharing some technical insights as well.
As we speak with people around the globe who are involved in Open Source, it is incouraging to see programmes that work to enhance core capacity in the ICT sector of Ghana. At the Kofi-Annan center, they have a project i2CAP (I too can programme) that builds programming skills among students in Senior Secondary Schools. Fred discusses this in our interview along with his experience of transitioning from proprietary software to open source solutions.
www.aiti-kace.com.gh/ - Kofi-Annan Center Ghana
In the 5th episode of OTE Darlene and I talk to Teddy Nyambe, a open source advocate working to see FLOSS adopted in Zambia.
http://www.opensource.org.zm - Open Source Zambia Initiative's Home Page
http://www.iicd.org/projects/zambia-oszi - International Institute for Communication and Development, sponsors of the Open Source Zambia Initiative
In this episode we give our views on the latest happenings in the browser market and we discuss the pros and cons of mobile applicaiton development. Some links that are relevant:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers - Browser market share
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10245339-37.html - Apple Iphone market share
Our 3rd episode discussion points were varied indeed! We shared our opinion on whether the take down notice that Mark recieved was indeed valid, and why was this Orwellian approach was taken, instead of going to the source of the website in Russia.
We also spent some time discussing the source code that Microsoft had recently contributed to the open source community and the implications of this. Should the community devise a strategy for future interaction with Microsoft? As well, given that they were pursuing patent issues with Buffaloe, it seems that they give with one hand and take with the other.
We concluded with a brief discussion on CMS's such as Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress vs traditional web design tools such as Dreamweaver and other Adobe products.
Darlene also touched on a podcast she had listened to about OpenEMR, the open source medical records database program. It was good to hear from an end user (in this case a pediatrician from New Mexico) www.hackerpublicradio.org/eps/hpr0405.mp3
In our second episode, we discuss the potential benefits and functionality of the Google's Chrome OS. We focus on the synergies we see between FOSS and the Chrome OS, including better driver support for main stream peripherals and the increased awareness of Linux in general through market recognition of Google.
As well, cloud computing came up in the discussion and we spoke on the impact of web based applications and the changing demands of users/workers to have more mobility.
As with all concepts, there are pros and cons to having your information out on the cloud, hosted and pursued by a third party. We hope you enjoy the show, and we welcome your comments and feedback (July 2009)
In this, our first episode of Open Tech Exchange, we discuss Richard Stallman's post on Mono and why Java is the way to go for Linux Desktop development and great open source software to use in education.