Photo credit: Matt Callow.
I have been mulling about whether or not I should renew my subscription to the Wall Street Journal. Don’t get me wrong, I think the WSJ is the best newspaper produced today. So, my dilemma has nothing to do with the quality of their product, my dilemma has to do with the cost. Get this: for me to renew daily delivery and online access, the cost is $441 per year. Granted the demographic for WSJ subscribers is affluence, but come-on, I’m not an AIG executive.
Information should be priced using open contracts.
This got me thinking about a creative music label that I’ve recently discovered: Magnatune. (Stick with me; I’ll circle back to the WSJ in a moment). Magnatune’s tagline and business philosophy is, “We are not evil”. All of their music catalog can be played in their entirety (no lame 30 second samples) at 128 Kbps, contains no DRM, 50% of the cost of their music goes directly to the artist, and most importantly they use an open contract or variable pricing model for the music. Users are allowed to pay what they feel is a fair price for the album as long as the payment is within a given price range.
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I love the WordPress Open Source content management blog publishing system. I’ve been using and configuring WordPress systems for several years and the number of plug-ins and add-ons to the extensible platform is truly amazing.
The iPhone is really a powerful computer that fits into your pocket.
About seven months ago I gave up my ancient Motorola Razor for a new iPhone 3GS. As I’ve told others, I believe the iPhone is a “game changer”. What makes it so is that the iPhone is really a powerful computer that fits into your pocket. Oh, and it’s also a phone. But that is almost besides the point.
If you use WordPress and own an iPhone or an iPod Touch, there are three applications that you should consider using to make running your blog easier.
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The White House recently announced that it has moved to Drupal, an open source content management system (CMS) to power the WhiteHouse.gov website. This is great news as it legitimizes the use of open source within the federal space. Federal CIOs should realize that most of the web is powered by open source software including premier web properties such as Google and Facebook.
WhiteHouse.gov is now powered by Drupal.
The new White House system runs on what is called a LAMP technology stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP). The LAMP stack is all open source. It is widely considered secure, offers high performance and is stable. The White House chose Red Hat Linux as their supported distribution, and for enterprise search they are using Apache Solr. After the story was announced via the AP, Tim O’Reilly blogged the details of the technology choices and the reasons for making the switch.
More than just security, though, the White House saw the opportunity to increase their flexibility. Drupal has a huge library of user-contributed modules that will provide functionality the White House can use to expand its social media capabilities, with everything from super-scalable live chats to multi-lingual support. In many ways, this is the complement to the Government as Platform mantra I’ve been chanting in Washington. When you build a vibrant, extensible platform, others add value to the foundation you establish; when you join such a platform, you get the benefit of all those features you didn’t have to develop yourself.
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Neil Bonner works in the information technology field as a manager for applications development at the Transportation Security Administration. His focus is on innovation and collaboration for internal and external audiences. 
neil [at] michelangelo.com
