Kflickr - Flickr uploader for Kubuntu

Tired of having to use the web form based flickr upload process, and uploading six photos at a time?

or, tired of rebooting into windows just to upload photos?

I just discovered kflickr - it’s in the Ubuntu repository for Edgy. (Looks like it is in Dapper and Feisty as well)

(At a terminal, sudo apt-get install kflickr, or use aptitude and look for it by name)

Very nice. Take a look later today or tomorrow for some Zurich photos from today and yesterday.

Optaros Executive Events - “Unleashing the power of Web 2.0 and Open Source”

(via Sebastian Wohlrapp)

While I’m in Switzerland this week I’m going to be speaking at two Optaros Executive Events on the subject of “Unleashing the power of Web 2.0 and Open Source for your customers“: (more…)

Open Phishing

(via Rod Begbie)

Marco Slot has written up a “Beginner’s Guide to OpenID Phishing” to demonstrate how vulnerable the popular distributed identity system can be to impersonation / person-in-the-middle attacks.

The real problem, of course, is the reliance on username/password based authentication schemes, and the ease with which a login form (for the OpenID provider itself) can be spoofed - even dynamically spoofed so that the phishing site can be reacting in real time to whatever provider you’ve used.

OpenID is a great system we’d all like to see succeed, but in it’s current form it must be used rather cautiously and with an eye out for attacks like those Marco describes.

Zimbra Desktop?

I ‘ve blogged thought I had blogged before here about Zimbra and their demos of “desktop” or “disconnected” functionality.

Today, TechCrunch announced “Zimbra Desktop to Launch: Full Offline Functionality” - saying the launch will be announced “later this week.”

The alpha appears to be available already: Zimbra on your Desktop.

According to TechCrunch:

Zimbra Desktop will be available cross platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) and cross browser (Firefox, IE, Safari). The Zimbra web application and all user data is stored on the client computer (the database is Apache Derby). Data is synced real time when in online mode.

Zimbra Desktop does not include drag and drop functionality into the browser (for, say, dragging an attachment into an email), although the company says it will be included in a future release.

All Zimbra source code, including Zimbra Desktop, is open source - I expect other web developers to be taking a close look at how they are architecting things.

They’re using Apache Derby to store data client side and then synchronize/replicate with the server.

This may be just the nudge I need to finally leave Thunderbird behind altogether - right now I use Zimbra when connected and then Thunderbird to pull down mail so I can have it when offline.

How the OLPC was Built

By relying on open source, of course.

This April 26th, Jim Getty’s will be speaking (at MIT) on “How We Built the OLPC (the $100 laptop for 3rd world children)”

It’s a joint meeting of the Computer Society and the GBC/ACM.

He says:

The ability to design hardware knowing that the software can be modified as needed is liberating.