I run CircusNews.com. CircusNews.com runs on PHP-Nuke, aka blogging software.
Is my website a blog or a news service?
I like to think so. CircusNews.com is currently the most widely read news publication in the circus industry. Big Apple, Ringlings, Cirque and everyone else in the industry gladly issues us press passes when ever we ask. State and (in at least one major case) federal agencies have relied on our research and news reports over the years, not to mention the 50,000 readers we see a month. We are looking at licening AP content, and perhaps joining the AP.
So if we are not a news service, can ANYONE explain to me why not?
Oooo! Oooo! I got one! Google has been crawling both of my circus web sites (www.circusnews.com and www.simplycircus.com) every day. They MUST be up to something.
Thats it! Google is launching their own traveling circus! It's a CIRCUS I tell you, a CIRCUS!
The best thing for them to do is install a K12LTSP system. Only needs one high end PC (and a bunch of PI's), and it just works out of the box. Also has a teriffic support community.
LTSP Server plugs in to the Wireless AP in house. Wireless AP in house connects wirelessly to wireless AP in shed. Wireless AP in shed connects to the el-cheepo diskless, fanless workstation in workshop.
Assuming you have the good linux box already, your total cost is about $300. (2 AP, $50 each. Second hand PI and monitor $150. PXE NIC $10). Without any moving parts, it should run a long, long time. Plus, if you ever need more computing power, you just upgrade the LTSP server in the house.
Your comments about Outlook and how it's used in businesses are completely naive in my opinion
How so? Because YOU think it's outdated, every buisness in the world should switch over right now? Because you think it's increasingly being reduced to a mail client/server? I hate to burst your bubble, but thats not even close to the trends I see, except in buisnesses with more than 250 users, and even then its not cut and dry. My observations over the last year (and I do take the time to ask any time I see OL/EX going in someplace new) don't agree with what your putting forth at all. Every new OL/EX system I see uses the extended functionality in one way or another.
As for web apps being the future, the ball is very much still up in the air. If coding it remains the prospect of developers only, then no, it is not in the future for the vast majority of small and medium sized buisnesses I know that use Outlook/Exchange.
Until you take the time to understand why people really use Outlook, you will never understand just how wrong you are.
You know the sad part? I really want to see a FOSS Outlook killer, but conversations like this one tell me it won't happen, because FOSS developers miss the boat on why people use it.
Come on down out of the clouds. No, really, come on down out of the clouds and take another look around you at who uses Outlook. It's not (by and large) tech companies, it's not fortune 500's, its small and medium sized buisnesses. They are who live on Outlook. Large companies are the ones that get the attention of the press, but they are not the ones who drive Outlook any longer.
The means that have by which they can force everybody to use a single software product is simple: they don't give them a choice. They install Outlook on each of the computers in the office, and everyone else uses what they are given.
Extend it in PHP? Is that a joke? You and I could do that (as could most of thise reading this I would bet), but not your run of the mill small buisness owner. But he can use VB/Access wizards to stumble through building something that will get the job done.
I think the only reason Outlook as any significant following at all is because organizations force users to use it and users just have never seen any real groupware.
Then you have missed why people use it completely. One program for all communications. Thats what it comes down to. One app that anyone with a copy of Visual Basic can extend to do things they way their buisness works.
We talk about OSS being extendable by anyone. What you miss is that a large portion of those that use Outlook view it the same way. One application with a mature basic feature set that they can modify to do (or by plugins for) just about any part of their buisness. Scheduling, billing, hell, I know a small video rental store that uses Outlook/Exchange to not only track what customers rent, but to replace their cash registers.
It is this extendability that ties people so closely to Outlook. And it doesn't take a programmer to do basic extensions.
You want to kill Outlook? OK, here is how you do it.
1. Keep going with Lightening. Make it very standards complient
2. Create a supported back end (Novell? IBM?) that tightly intergrates the server side services for these, along with SQL.
3. Write a boat load of GPL add-ons to do most of the tasks people use extensions for
4. Find a way to allow 3rd party, closed code add-ons. Like it or not, Abacus, TimeSlips and a boat load of other apps are what keep people on Outlook, and those will not go GPL any time soon.
Having worked with Outlook in both large and small offices, I can tell you that it will take more than shared mail/contacts/calendars to bring down Outlook.
Here is my list of features that would be needed for a true Outlook killer:
1. Shared mail store 2. Shared calendaring 3. Shared contacts 4. Shared Tasks / To Do lists 5. Journal / History 6. Scripting / Database intergration 7. Third Parts Add-ons
1 - 4 have been widely discussed and I will leave them alone.
5 - This feature is widely used by small offices. The ability to track what documents you worked on, and what clients they go with is importiant for many Outlook users
6 - Outlook is used for far more than what the default comes with. Buisnesses tie it in as a front end with every every database app you can think of. To really become an Outlook killer, we would need to have all the right hooks in place to allow for this, as well as a mess load of examples/documentation for people to use.
7 - Third party support. Do you have any idea how many third party add-ons are in use, and how much these are relied on by buisnesses? It is not trivial. My dentist uses one such plug in for his billing, and another plug in that has an automated voice that calls people with a custom reminder (for each person it calls) about their apointment the next day. I know a lawyer that uses one plug in for billing, another plug in for conflict checking, and another plug in that generates common pleadings. Another lawyer I know uses an Outlook plugins to manage just about every part of his real estate law practice - including filing electronic records with the court. These are just a few examples.
but you can go after those that advertise with them. Same for SPAM. If we were to pass laws allowing individuals to go after the companies making money from the practices, we would see them largely dissapear. Enough of this BS, go after the root of the problem.
Then this MIGHT actually be a good thing. If they win, it could be used as a president on why products that install adware and only tell the users by the fine print of the EULA are exceeding their authority.
Blogs aren't journalism. They aren't about reporting the news, they're about commenting on it.
It really depends on the format the blog takes, and the ethics of the person running the blog. I run circusnews.com, the leading news service for the circus and related performing arts community. We do publish pure editorials and op-ed letters, as well as 'traditional news' and 'news blog' stories.
Our editorials and op-ed letters are opinion peices, exactly as you have in any news paper.
Our traditional news stories are written by reporters to the same high standards as exist in the printed media.
The news blog stories are what you won't find in any paper. The format of our newsblog stories are a paragraph (or so) detailing why this article is importiant (in italics), then a paragraph or so commenting on the story (ala slashdot)
Yes, I know of many others that do not maintain the same journalistic ethics with their blog that we do, but I also know of many print/TV news products that don't either.
See, the issue is not if blogs are journalism or not, the issue is one of the consumer judging quality. Next time you go to the supermarket, take a look at the rags the have. Are those newspapers? How much would you rely on what they printed?
See, we have good newspapers, and bad newspapers. We have good TV journalism and bad. We have good blogs and bad ones (and everything in between). We (i.e. the general public) just haven't figured out an easy way to discriminate between them yet.
Ok, so by the time you spend all of the time and effort to do all of this, you could deploy a fully self contained thin client in what, 10 minutes?
The only way I see this as a good idea for any low budget organization is if they get donated lots and lots of monitors, keyboards, mice and computers with graphics cards for this project.
I think I will point this article out to the good folks over at K12LTSP.org. I have a feeling that some of them may very much like the idea.
I am, (and have been for almost a year now) leading a small project that is creating a whole series of open textbooks. The topic of our textbooks is circus arts, but it seems that the same principals that are making my project sucessful would apply to most other topics as well.
First, I took the time to develop a format and methodology that would both work for any of the skills involved, and that could be implimented by ANYONE with a little learning.
Second, I wrote the first textbook using this method. After all, how could I expect others to use the system if I could not?
Third, I outlined and otherwise documented my system in a way others could use. This includes writing a new liceance, AND requiering that derivitives be signed back over to the project.
Forth, I taught the system to a few others. We are now meeting weekly, with each author working on writing for their individual strengths, and the classes they teach. We will be in this step at least over the summer, perhaps for a full year.
The next steps we forsee in our very long process are (in no particular order):
- teaching the methods to more textbook developers
- Training editors to help keep a consistiant feel throughout the various skills, and books
- Teaching textbook developers to reuse other skills where appropreate (aka reuse code from another textbook)
- Teaching developers to expand there own art by incorperating simmilar skills from other arts.
- Finish developing the new database system that will move the entire thing online.
- Turn the resulting textbooks into industry standards
(if you want more information on this project, please feel free to contact me off list.)
It's a lot of work to make such a project a sucess. Much more than I think most people understand. I wish them luck, but I also hope they find a better methodology than they are using.
While I like what I see of Synchronet Message Base, the system is not as mature as Gcomm in many, many ways.
Note that this is NOT bashing Rob and crew in any way. I have used SBBS in the past, and would likely use it again in the future (actualy have a project I am looking at Synchronet for), just pointing out what parts of Synchronet still need to be developed to be brought up to par with MBBS/Gcomm.
Message base: This is handeled quite well. The SMB is well thought out. Improvements still need to be made to dynamicly integrate HTML with file/message bases, AND to better handle file attachments.
File Base: The work started on moving to a file spec based on the SMB spec is well thought out, and should work quite well, but this still needs to be done
Add-ons: This is what made Gcomm great. All sorts of add-ons were/are avalible (see http://www.adventurecomm.com/advlist.txt for a list of examples). While SBBS supports door games, it does not offer much support for these kind of add-ons.
Hopefuly these things will get fixed in the future. Hopefuly.
If you have $$ to spend on this, Worldgroup (aka The Major BBS) is still sold and supported by Galacticomm, Inc. (now owned by netVillage.com). Its more or less a one stop shop, including things like:
Local & Internet E-mail
Chat Rooms with shared White Boards
Shared File Libraries
Threaded Discussion Forums
Customizable Surveys
IRC Client
FTP, Telnet, Finger, POP3, SMTP, NNTP
WorldLink
Built-in Web Server
Huge library of add on software
If you don't have money to spend, try Synchronet. Features are simmilar, though not nearly as mature:
Local & Internet E-mail
Chat Rooms with shared White Boards
Shared File Libraries
Threaded Discussion Forums
Built in support for Fido, RIME and QWK!
IRC Client
FTP, Telnet, Finger, POP3, SMTP, NNTP
Built-in Web Server in development
Supports door games
Open Source!!!
I send out on average about 15 emails/day. None of my email traffic goes through comcast's SMTP servers.
Assuming that this is about average, it would only take 46666.67 customers using non-comcast servers to reach this number.
The following is only antidotal, but...
I have set up the cable modems of at least 18 friends and family members. In general I have found that parents tend to use work email addresses most, AOL accouts second most, Hotmail/other free providers, and comcast addresses least. Kids tend to use either AOL or a free email provider more often than using a comcast address.
Thats comes to about 8 comcast addresses that are actualy used out of the 50 or so email accounts used by these friends and family.
Slashdot Mirror
He also seems to think you need a license to be a journalist. I would love for some one to show me a US law that requiers this.
I run CircusNews.com. CircusNews.com runs on PHP-Nuke, aka blogging software.
Is my website a blog or a news service?
I like to think so. CircusNews.com is currently the most widely read news publication in the circus industry. Big Apple, Ringlings, Cirque and everyone else in the industry gladly issues us press passes when ever we ask. State and (in at least one major case) federal agencies have relied on our research and news reports over the years, not to mention the 50,000 readers we see a month. We are looking at licening AP content, and perhaps joining the AP.
So if we are not a news service, can ANYONE explain to me why not?
Oooo! Oooo! I got one! Google has been crawling both of my circus web sites (www.circusnews.com and www.simplycircus.com) every day. They MUST be up to something.
Thats it! Google is launching their own traveling circus! It's a CIRCUS I tell you, a CIRCUS!
Google has been crawling my
You could just batch convert all of your old documents to something that OOo can import.
The best thing for them to do is install a K12LTSP system. Only needs one high end PC (and a bunch of PI's), and it just works out of the box. Also has a teriffic support community.
So, what does this mean in terms of CCS?
Personally, I like that you can simply gate most of the forum software to NNTP. I just wish it came standard.
LTSP Server plugs in to the Wireless AP in house. Wireless AP in house connects wirelessly to wireless AP in shed. Wireless AP in shed connects to the el-cheepo diskless, fanless workstation in workshop.
Assuming you have the good linux box already, your total cost is about $300. (2 AP, $50 each. Second hand PI and monitor $150. PXE NIC $10). Without any moving parts, it should run a long, long time. Plus, if you ever need more computing power, you just upgrade the LTSP server in the house.
With as connected a population as we have, I am suprised the numbers are not higher.
How so? Because YOU think it's outdated, every buisness in the world should switch over right now? Because you think it's increasingly being reduced to a mail client/server? I hate to burst your bubble, but thats not even close to the trends I see, except in buisnesses with more than 250 users, and even then its not cut and dry. My observations over the last year (and I do take the time to ask any time I see OL/EX going in someplace new) don't agree with what your putting forth at all. Every new OL/EX system I see uses the extended functionality in one way or another.
As for web apps being the future, the ball is very much still up in the air. If coding it remains the prospect of developers only, then no, it is not in the future for the vast majority of small and medium sized buisnesses I know that use Outlook/Exchange.
Until you take the time to understand why people really use Outlook, you will never understand just how wrong you are.
You know the sad part? I really want to see a FOSS Outlook killer, but conversations like this one tell me it won't happen, because FOSS developers miss the boat on why people use it.
Come on down out of the clouds. No, really, come on down out of the clouds and take another look around you at who uses Outlook. It's not (by and large) tech companies, it's not fortune 500's, its small and medium sized buisnesses. They are who live on Outlook. Large companies are the ones that get the attention of the press, but they are not the ones who drive Outlook any longer.
The means that have by which they can force everybody to use a single software product is simple: they don't give them a choice. They install Outlook on each of the computers in the office, and everyone else uses what they are given.
Extend it in PHP? Is that a joke? You and I could do that (as could most of thise reading this I would bet), but not your run of the mill small buisness owner. But he can use VB/Access wizards to stumble through building something that will get the job done.
I think the only reason Outlook as any significant following at all is because organizations force users to use it and users just have never seen any real groupware.
Then you have missed why people use it completely. One program for all communications. Thats what it comes down to. One app that anyone with a copy of Visual Basic can extend to do things they way their buisness works.
We talk about OSS being extendable by anyone. What you miss is that a large portion of those that use Outlook view it the same way. One application with a mature basic feature set that they can modify to do (or by plugins for) just about any part of their buisness. Scheduling, billing, hell, I know a small video rental store that uses Outlook/Exchange to not only track what customers rent, but to replace their cash registers.
It is this extendability that ties people so closely to Outlook. And it doesn't take a programmer to do basic extensions.
You want to kill Outlook? OK, here is how you do it.
1. Keep going with Lightening. Make it very standards complient
2. Create a supported back end (Novell? IBM?) that tightly intergrates the server side services for these, along with SQL.
3. Write a boat load of GPL add-ons to do most of the tasks people use extensions for
4. Find a way to allow 3rd party, closed code add-ons. Like it or not, Abacus, TimeSlips and a boat load of other apps are what keep people on Outlook, and those will not go GPL any time soon.
Having worked with Outlook in both large and small offices, I can tell you that it will take more than shared mail/contacts/calendars to bring down Outlook.
/documentation for people to use.
Here is my list of features that would be needed for a true Outlook killer:
1. Shared mail store
2. Shared calendaring
3. Shared contacts
4. Shared Tasks / To Do lists
5. Journal / History
6. Scripting / Database intergration
7. Third Parts Add-ons
1 - 4 have been widely discussed and I will leave them alone.
5 - This feature is widely used by small offices. The ability to track what documents you worked on, and what clients they go with is importiant for many Outlook users
6 - Outlook is used for far more than what the default comes with. Buisnesses tie it in as a front end with every every database app you can think of. To really become an Outlook killer, we would need to have all the right hooks in place to allow for this, as well as a mess load of examples
7 - Third party support. Do you have any idea how many third party add-ons are in use, and how much these are relied on by buisnesses? It is not trivial. My dentist uses one such plug in for his billing, and another plug in that has an automated voice that calls people with a custom reminder (for each person it calls) about their apointment the next day. I know a lawyer that uses one plug in for billing, another plug in for conflict checking, and another plug in that generates common pleadings. Another lawyer I know uses an Outlook plugins to manage just about every part of his real estate law practice - including filing electronic records with the court. These are just a few examples.
So how long before some one comes up with a mobo that will run off of this?
In large deployments, this could be very useful.
Soon as we do, they will move off shore. No, attack the source of the money. Make it unprofitable, and it will go away.
but you can go after those that advertise with them. Same for SPAM. If we were to pass laws allowing individuals to go after the companies making money from the practices, we would see them largely dissapear. Enough of this BS, go after the root of the problem.
Then this MIGHT actually be a good thing. If they win, it could be used as a president on why products that install adware and only tell the users by the fine print of the EULA are exceeding their authority.
It really depends on the format the blog takes, and the ethics of the person running the blog. I run circusnews.com, the leading news service for the circus and related performing arts community. We do publish pure editorials and op-ed letters, as well as 'traditional news' and 'news blog' stories.
Our editorials and op-ed letters are opinion peices, exactly as you have in any news paper.
Our traditional news stories are written by reporters to the same high standards as exist in the printed media.
The news blog stories are what you won't find in any paper. The format of our newsblog stories are a paragraph (or so) detailing why this article is importiant (in italics), then a paragraph or so commenting on the story (ala slashdot)
We have been out in front of a number of major issues. For example, we played a part in the largest settlement in EEOC history.
Yes, I know of many others that do not maintain the same journalistic ethics with their blog that we do, but I also know of many print/TV news products that don't either.
See, the issue is not if blogs are journalism or not, the issue is one of the consumer judging quality. Next time you go to the supermarket, take a look at the rags the have. Are those newspapers? How much would you rely on what they printed?
See, we have good newspapers, and bad newspapers. We have good TV journalism and bad. We have good blogs and bad ones (and everything in between). We (i.e. the general public) just haven't figured out an easy way to discriminate between them yet.
The only way I see this as a good idea for any low budget organization is if they get donated lots and lots of monitors, keyboards, mice and computers with graphics cards for this project.
I think I will point this article out to the good folks over at K12LTSP.org. I have a feeling that some of them may very much like the idea.
I know you mean well, but I was NOT talking about the typesetting format.
I am, (and have been for almost a year now) leading a small project that is creating a whole series of open textbooks. The topic of our textbooks is circus arts, but it seems that the same principals that are making my project sucessful would apply to most other topics as well.
First, I took the time to develop a format and methodology that would both work for any of the skills involved, and that could be implimented by ANYONE with a little learning.
Second, I wrote the first textbook using this method. After all, how could I expect others to use the system if I could not?
Third, I outlined and otherwise documented my system in a way others could use. This includes writing a new liceance, AND requiering that derivitives be signed back over to the project.
Forth, I taught the system to a few others. We are now meeting weekly, with each author working on writing for their individual strengths, and the classes they teach. We will be in this step at least over the summer, perhaps for a full year.
The next steps we forsee in our very long process are (in no particular order):
- teaching the methods to more textbook developers
- Training editors to help keep a consistiant feel throughout the various skills, and books
- Teaching textbook developers to reuse other skills where appropreate (aka reuse code from another textbook)
- Teaching developers to expand there own art by incorperating simmilar skills from other arts.
- Finish developing the new database system that will move the entire thing online.
- Turn the resulting textbooks into industry standards
(if you want more information on this project, please feel free to contact me off list.)
It's a lot of work to make such a project a sucess. Much more than I think most people understand. I wish them luck, but I also hope they find a better methodology than they are using.
While I like what I see of Synchronet Message Base, the system is not as mature as Gcomm in many, many ways.
Note that this is NOT bashing Rob and crew in any way. I have used SBBS in the past, and would likely use it again in the future (actualy have a project I am looking at Synchronet for), just pointing out what parts of Synchronet still need to be developed to be brought up to par with MBBS/Gcomm.
Message base:
This is handeled quite well. The SMB is well thought out. Improvements still need to be made to dynamicly integrate HTML with file/message bases, AND to better handle file attachments.
File Base:
The work started on moving to a file spec based on the SMB spec is well thought out, and should work quite well, but this still needs to be done
Add-ons:
This is what made Gcomm great. All sorts of add-ons were/are avalible (see http://www.adventurecomm.com/advlist.txt for a list of examples). While SBBS supports door games, it does not offer much support for these kind of add-ons.
Hopefuly these things will get fixed in the future. Hopefuly.
If you have $$ to spend on this, Worldgroup (aka The Major BBS) is still sold and supported by Galacticomm, Inc. (now owned by netVillage.com). Its more or less a one stop shop, including things like:
Local & Internet E-mail
Chat Rooms with shared White Boards
Shared File Libraries
Threaded Discussion Forums
Customizable Surveys
IRC Client
FTP, Telnet, Finger, POP3, SMTP, NNTP
WorldLink
Built-in Web Server
Huge library of add on software
If you don't have money to spend, try Synchronet. Features are simmilar, though not nearly as mature:
Local & Internet E-mail
Chat Rooms with shared White Boards
Shared File Libraries
Threaded Discussion Forums
Built in support for Fido, RIME and QWK!
IRC Client
FTP, Telnet, Finger, POP3, SMTP, NNTP
Built-in Web Server in development
Supports door games
Open Source!!!
Good luck!
I send out on average about 15 emails/day. None of my email traffic goes through comcast's SMTP servers.
Assuming that this is about average, it would only take 46666.67 customers using non-comcast servers to reach this number.
The following is only antidotal, but...
I have set up the cable modems of at least 18 friends and family members. In general I have found that parents tend to use work email addresses most, AOL accouts second most, Hotmail/other free providers, and comcast addresses least. Kids tend to use either AOL or a free email provider more often than using a comcast address.
Thats comes to about 8 comcast addresses that are actualy used out of the 50 or so email accounts used by these friends and family.
I am suprised the number is not much higher.