The census indicates full-time salaries for open source workers peak at around A$76,000 to A$100,000 (US$68,758 to US$90,471) and for women salaries peaked from between A$46,000 to A$60,000.

Still, it was significant to see that more than 5 percent of the available IT population was surveyed with 57 percent suggesting that they don’t get paid to write open source at all, while 10 percent of Australia’s IT population are paid to write open-source software full-time and another 33 percent get paid to write open source at least occasionally.

I’d pay more money for someone like that. Wouldn’t you?

Sydney-based consulting firm Waugh Partners in conjunction with Fujitsu, IBM and NICTA ran a census that showed what many of us have suspected for some time: open source pays more. The census was conducted in open-source savvy Australia, so the results may be skewed somewhat.

The good news is salaries are three times the national median, so “full-time open source pays more”, according to Pia Waugh.

This isn’t surprising. Open-source IT workers are more than just automatons who administer others’ systems. They are actually co-creators of whatever systems they deploy. Open-source IT professionals are more creative, innovative, and involved in their work.

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No, I am not talking about something that’s for or from an airplane. It’s simply a network attached storage device from VOX. The full name–don’t hold your breath, you’ve already read the creative part–is BlackBox Dual Bay Gigabit RAID Shared Network Storage. As if the naming it BlackBox were not sensational enough, VOX decided to paint the device silver.

The BlackBox boasts an interesting design. It’s made entirely of aluminum and is very rugged and heavier than it looks, though it is still compact. On the front, its drive bays are locked and you can’t open them with the provided keys. However, looking at the keys, you will soon realize that they are not necessary. You can open the case with a paper clip. You just need a pointed object to poke the little hole on the front of the drive bay and the latch will swing open.

The Vox BlackBox can accommodate two 3.5-inch SATA hard drives of any capacity.

Other than the confusing, yet very telling name, the device is actually straightforward. It’s a dual bay NAS device that supports RAID 0 and RAID 1. It’s always nice to have the option of using either a high-performance or a data redundancy RAID setup. The BlackBox can also work without RAID and show the hard drives as separate volumes. The BlackBox ships with two 500GB hard drives, making it the best deal in the NAS community with the price tag of only $310. That’s about $0.31 per gigabyte. For now, you probably can’t find another NAS device that offers better value.

(Credit:
Dong Ngo/CNET Networks)

The BlackBox also is the first dual bay, compact NAS device I’ve seen that doesn’t have a power adapter but comes with just a regular power cable (found in most desktop computers). This means one less thing to clutter your work space. However, you might not want to leave the BlackBox on your desk since it’s very noisy. The BlackBox requires a decent amount of ventilation since the power supply is in the box. It has two fans on the back and–when the device is turned on–these fans are noisy enough to be heard from across the room.

We’d welcome you at Alfresco, where most of our solutions engineers are ex-Vignette. But you’d be equally valuable to Acquia, Magnolia, and other open-source content management projects and companies. There is life after proprietary software, a life rich in customers and rich for customers.

To all my Vignette friends: The grass is greener in open source.

CMSWatch describes the sad demise of a great company, Vignette. The company used to be one of the heavyweights in the web content management world, but has since dwindled in importance. My own company has welcomed its exodus of employees and customers.

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It seems that the only way for proprietary companies to continue to thrive is to consolidate into mega corporations that are somewhat impervious to the pressures of SaaS and open source. For the more niche proprietary players like Vignette, there is no safety in remaining proprietary.

Disclosure: I work for Alfresco, an open-source competitor to Vignette.

In any event, we think Vignette’s troubles are probably larger than any temporary tumult in the banking industry (or even in the U.S. economy). Vignette’s product release cycles are long. Its sales force seems unfocused. The company is under pricing pressure (something CFO Pat Kelly admitted in the earnings call). And as CEO Mike Aviles himself suggested, Vignette is not the bastion of innovation it once was.

Here’s a good description of the problem:

(Credit:
Paul DiComo)

I keep hearing about how the LP is having a comeback, and that’s great, but Jerry’s Records has been keeping the faith for more than thirty-three years selling used vinyl in Pittsburgh, PA. I spoke with Jerry (Weber) himself last week to learn more about his shop.

It’s a big place, with 13,000 square feet filled with LPs and there’s a 16,000 square foot off-site warehouse with even more stuff. Jerry says 70 to 80 percent of his inventory is priced around $3. So clearly, he’s not dealing in the rarities or the collector market, no, Jerry just likes selling vinyl. In fact, he never sold new vinyl. BTW, the store doesn’t buy, sell or play CDs, Jerry’s is all-analog, all the time.

But it's BIG on the inside

(Credit:
Paul DiComo)

Jerry buys 2,000 to 5,000 LPs a week, cleans each one, and puts them in new plastic inner sleeves. Scratched and beat up records are weeded out, packed in boxes of 100 and given away for free. Sounds like good fodder for vinyl art or sculpture.

There’s tonnage of $3-a-pop rock, jazz, blues, country, bluegrass, gospel, E-Z listening, Latin, soul, funk, R&B, folk, comedy, soundtracks, etc. Jerry said, “It looks like I’m going to be the last man standing (selling affordable used LPs), a lot of guys don’t want to sell the $3 records anymore. I want people to come here and look at records, that’s what it’s all about.”

Need a turntable, cassette deck or speakers?

(Credit:
Paul DiComo)

Jerry says if you really love music and don’t have a turntable you’re missing out. I agree. So if you’re in the neighborhood, drop by Jerry’s Records at 2136 Murray Ave, Pittsburgh, PA, or phone: 412-421-4533. Jerry also auctions LPs from his website, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on “View Auctions.”

Thanks go out to my friend Paul for shooting the photos.

The Cheshire Cat

Linus Torvalds used to talk about “world domination” as his goal for Linux. These days, though, while we seem to be making progress toward this end, we also appear to be increasingly complacent. We downplay the ideology that underlies open source in favor of “safe” rhetoric about lower sales and marketing costs and such.

I wonder, however, if in so doing we emasculate open source’s power to truly change our industry. Does it make it that much harder for us to find a new way to serve customers?

It reminds me of Alice’s interaction with the Cheshire Cat in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

“Cheshire Puss,” [Alice] began,…”Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where–” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

“–so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.

“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

For me, the end game should be “world liberation,” not domination. We’ve already suffered through decades of Microsoft’s take on the “world domination” theme. I didn’t like it much.

By “liberation” I mean freeing emerging markets to grow on their own terms, not as vassal states to US and European software vendors. By “liberation” I mean freeing customers to innovate with their vendors on customers’ own terms, not vendors’.

By “liberation” I also mean that software vendors free themselves to innovate with their customers, competitors, and community.

Open source makes software something more than “just software.” It makes software meaningful outside the few big vendors determined to dominate it. Open source, in short, gives software back to the community.

Total world liberation. That’s the goal. With that goal in mind, the answer to the “How do we get there?” question becomes much clearer. We don’t take shortcuts. We choose our license models based on what will maximize customer value. We aggressively compete with tired proprietary vendors.

And then we win.

ORLANDO, Fla.–Search giant Google launched Google Health and announced major industry partners on Thursday, aiming to be the Intuit for personal health care, where people can access all their health information in one spot.

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt answers reporters' questions after announcing Google Health.

(Credit:
Elinor Mills/CNET News.com)

“Why would Google be here?” Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said during a keynote speech at the Health Information Management Systems Society trade show, which he said was not one the company has normally attended. “What’s the most important search I could do?”

The answer: health. Nearly one out of two Americans has a chronic health condition, he said. Meanwhile, people are already using the Web to get information, including one man, who told Google a search for heart attack symptoms on Google led him to call an ambulance and saved his life, Schmidt said.

“We’re going to partner with leaders in health care to cross-connect…and apply the principles of the Internet” to improve the industry, he said. “The first principle is, it’s the user’s data. The data follows the consumer wherever they go” when they change doctors or insurers.

Currently, there are more than 200 personal health record systems that are closed or tethered to a particular health system, he said.

Google Health aims to untether the 2 billion X-rays taken in the U.S. each year, 62 million CAT scans, and other health data, and put them all online for the patients to access.

Future partners include major hospitals, pharmacies, and insurers, including Walgreen, Aetna, Wal-Mart Stores, the University of California at San Francisco, the American Heart Association, Quest Diagnostics, Long’s Drugs, the American Medical Association, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford University.

Google turned to experts in the field in creating Google Health and formed a health advisory council that included Dean Ornish of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute, Molly Coye of HealthTech, Paul Tan of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, and
Sharon Terry of the Genetic Alliance.

A Google employee who is also an emergency room doctor demonstrated Google Health, which was previewed at Google’s booth at the HIMSS show.

The system stores all the health records of a patient and enables users to import records from different health provider systems, as well as search for doctors and get information on conditions from Google Scholar, discussion groups, and other sources.

Google Health lets consumers get information about medical conditions, including illustrations to help identify symptoms, as this screenshot from CEO Eric Schmidt’s keynote shows.

(Credit:
Elinor Mills/CNET News.com)

Third-party developers have created gadgets that can be embedded in iGoogle home pages for things like alerts to remind patients to take their medicine, and other developers have created interfaces for displaying a weekly view of all the medicines a patient takes.

During a question-and-answer session, a physician told Schmidt that he has “a pang about ‘Big Brother Google’ knowing so much about me.” Schmidt assured him that the system would be safe and secure, and that no information could be shared with anyone without permission from the user.

During a news conference after the keynote speech, Schmidt said that if the government tries to subpoena Google for the consumer records, the company would have to comply, but he hinted in answering a follow-up question that patients could circumvent that by deleting their records.

“We are subject to U.S. law. In the case where we are forced by court to turn over information, we would do it,” he said. “If the information were not there, it would be (hard) to subpoena it,” he added.

Asked if insurance companies would have access to the data, Schmidt said that barring a law, the only way Google would share with insurers is “if someone were to force us with a gun to do it.”

“We have taken a pretty aggressive position with regard to protecting (consumer) privacy in the U.S., but we are subject to U.S. law,” he said.

Earlier, an attendee asked whether Google has a “monetization path” for Google Health.

“Not in the short term,” Schmidt said, adding that the hope is that people using the site will also use other Google sites and ultimately click on ads there. Google News similarly drives people to search on Google.

After the conference, a little alone time with Spinscape did not change my opinion. This is an application that lends itself to a great demo. It looks great and it’s got a lot of capability, but I found if you’re using it to capture ideas, or maybe map out the ideas that pop up during a meeting, the interface slows you down, at least at first. On the other hand, if you want to annotate a map with notes, links, and pictures, and you have the time and gumption to create the map in the first place, Spinscape will handle it. It also does some useful automatic lookup in Wikipedia and other sources to fill out nodes if you’re gathering data and ideas on a topic.

I did not find that Spinscape helped me think more clearly.

If in your mind’s eye your ideas and plans look like molecular models, Spinscape might work for you. But if they look like outlines or Gantt charts, steer clear.

Spinscape intrigued me, since I’ve never used a Web-based tool like it. A quick bit of research on the Web and Twitter, and a timely news release, yielded four interesting competitors to this application. Despite the fact that they share a design point–creating graphical representations of networks of ideas–they have very different capabilities.

MeadMap is a mind mapper designed for students, and probably the best of these applications for people who think in outlines. It creates networks left-to-right, not from the center out (in Rafe terminology, the sun-and-planets view). It’s fast and easy to use. It also allows real-time collaboration and supports live chat with collaborators, which is very useful. Its downside is a limited feature set: You can’t import pictures, for example.

MeadMap, from the makers of the Trapper Keeper, is a good mapper for students.

Mindomo is the mind mapper for
Microsoft Office junkies. Its interface mirrors Office 2007’s look and feel, and it has a crazy number of little options you’ll never use (just like Office). It also lets you change the overall layout of your map; it doesn’t force you to use the sun-and-planet view.

Microsoft Office junkies will feel at home in Mindomo.

MindMeister is a clear mind mapper if you’re fond of the traditional view. It supports attachments and notes on each node so you can annotate your thought bubbles as you go. It has a useful wiki-like revision view, and it will color-code your collaborators’ changes in the main map. I found it both intuitive to use and capable. It’s the most well-rounded Web-based mind mapper in this roundup.

Webware's pick of the mind mappers, Mindmesiter has both a clean interface and strong capabilities.

And then there’s Bubbl.us, the cute little pony of mind mappers. With and extremely limited feature set, it’s very easy to learn and use. But anyone serious about mapping their thoughts will run out of gas with it rather quickly, I believe.

There are plenty of installable mind mapping tools, like MindJet, MindMap, and The Brain. There’s also an open-source application, Freemind. The commercial software applications have advantages in flexibility and speed, but the Web-based applications are less expensive (all are either free or available for a low monthly fee), and most offer much stronger collaboration features. In this category, as in many others, the Web is best the place to get started, and for many users, a Web application will offer all they need. Especially Mindmeister. It’s really worth trying.

The “Simply Everything” plan will give customers unlimited data and messaging on the Internet-centric handset. Night and weekend minutes will be unlimited as well, but anytime calls will be capped at 450 minutes.

In comparison, the cheapest plan for the iPhone runs $60 per month. Though it also offers unlimited data and 450 anytime minutes, customers are limited to 200 text messages and 5,000 night and weekend minutes. It’s uncertain how the
iPhone plans will change when Apple announces the 3G iPhone, but it is clear that with the Instinct, Samsung and Sprint are trying to give Apple and AT&T some competition.

(Credit:
Proximic)

Content-delivery network Proximic, which has a unique contextual matching system, now has ads to sell that can help bloggers and others monetize their sites.

The company was set to announce on Wednesday that it has signed deals to syndicate the product catalogs of the Yahoo Shopping Network and eBay’s Shopping.com. This dumps nearly 50 million ad units into Proximic’s advertising network.

Proximic, which launched in October, differs from Google AdSense and other keyword-based systems in that it automatically reads and matches relevant content according to “interconnected patterns” in documents that seem to be based more on concepts than words. This can help niche sites attract more relevant ads, says Proximic Chief Executive Philipp Pieper.

Next up is a self-service ad site for bloggers and partnerships with large publishers, he says. The site already offers a way for publishers to distribute their content, like news articles.

Canonical is best known as being the commercial sponsor of the Ubuntu operating system, a computer operating system based on Debian GNU/Linux. With 8 million to 10 million users, Ubuntu has enjoyed success in no small part because of its ease of use.

Next month the company will offer the first details on plans to roll out cloud-computing services to its customers. At this point, details remain scarce but management isn’t planning to reinvent the wheel. Instead, the company is going to adopt the same approach it used to promote Ubuntu as an open-source operating system.

The basic idea will be to supply the technology on an open source basis and then let users alter it to fit their individual company needs. At the same time, Canonical hopes to benefit from a developer feedback loop, which presumably would contribute any bug fixes or suggestions on how to advance the offerings. Any profits would roll in through the later sale of ancillary support and add-on services to customers.

This is just the latest announcement in what’s fast becoming a crowded and super-hyped field. The umbrella terms refers to the concept of allowing access to computing power and storage space by connecting over the Internet. Most recently, Sun Microsystems last week offered details on a plan to enable developers, start-ups, and even students access a cloud-computing infrastructure.