ReadWriteWeb has a great write up on the new WordPress plugin from the good folks at SalesForce, which allows full integration between SalesForce and WordPress.
The setup is fairly simple—the WordPress plugin involves no complicated setup and the SalesForce side of the equation involves setting up a “receiver,” which is common practice for SalesForce veterans and one that is very well documented for noobs who may be stumbling through it for the first time.
While I’m glad to see SalesForce acknowledging the importance and lead generation potential of corporate blogging, I’m forced to wonder “What took you guys so long?”
Do you want to allow users to your website to email you without using an annoying contact form? Are you afraid of simply posting your email address on a page for fear of getting spammed into oblivion? Then Enkoder is the solution for you!
As Dan Benjamin, the genius behind Hivelogic.com and creator of Enkoder explains:
The Enkoder helps protect email addresses by converting them into encrypted JavaScript code so only real people using real browsers will see them.
Enkoder is also available as a Mac OS X download.
Finally no more “Email us at info AT readymadeweb DOT com.” Instead, just
If you watched the Superbowl back in February, then you likely caught Google “Parisian Love” ad. The ad tells the story of a young man who moves to Paris, meets a girl, falls in love, and eventually starts a family.
This otherwise cliche story was made into a very creative ad by telling the entire story through search queries. Using only video from a computer screen it shows searches like “how to impress a French girl” and “what are truffles” to guide the television audience through the story. The ad powerfully demonstrates how Google is a fixture in modern life, providing us with the information we need to do everything from the trivial to the deeply meaningful.
Now Google has released Search Story Creator, a tool that will allow you to tell your own “search story,” just like “Parisian Love.” Continue Reading →
Recently I asked readers of the Tech Liberation Front, the free-market tech policy blog, to give me examples of successful companies that contribute to open-source projects. I asked readers for this sort of feedback because I wanted to point out that open-source software is a serious business, not just the domain of techno-hippies or amateur coders (who I love). Despite the incredible success of open source software—like the 55% of web servers that run Linux, including this one—skeptics remain, largely because people of a certain stripe seem to distrust products that don’t have the backing of big dollars.
That’s why I wanted to point out that other than die-hard enthusiasts pursuing their life’s passion, the open-source community is also composed of large, profitable companies whose bottom-line relies on that software being continually updated and improved upon.
In the comments of that post at TechLiberation.com, a reader who goes by “Timon” provided this list:
1) Hadoop — Cloudera
2) Sqlite — Richard Hipp and crew (nice hack, he manages to charge for copyright hand-holding services to a public domain project for companies that absolutely insist on a cushion of legalese!) You’ve probably used this db 20 times already today.
3) Xen — XenSource/Citrix
4) DotNetNuke — Community and commercial add-ins for a popular open source .net product
5) MongoDB — Used by Disqus, among others
6) Asterisk — Amazing PBX that supports big surrounding ecosystem including hardware
7) PostGIS: supported by great smallish outfit that does well in a very interesting and usually way-too-expensive niche
But this list of seven companies wasn’t the best part of Timon’s comment, he also made this incredibly powerful point:
Of the biggest 20 software/tech services companies founded in the last 15 years, are any of them NOT depending on and contributing to open source projects? That is a much harder question than the one in the title! Linux has IBM, Google, Red Hat, AMD, Intel, HP, NetApp, Novell, Nokia, Dell, everyone on this long list. They are not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.
Timon is spot-on with this observation. So much of the software world is dependent on open-source projects that it’s hard to think of a major player in the computing world that’s not using and contributing to open source. That even includes Microsoft, the champion of closed, proprietary software.
The WordPress ecosystem demonstrates the unique money-making structures that can evolve out of open-source software. While WordPress’s code is open, its WordPress.com and WordPress VIP Hosting properties demonstrate the giving away code helps companies to build ever-improving services for which the masses will pay a premium.
Other, less centralized projects like Drupal are also money-makers, but in a different way. A quick look through the members of the Drupal Association’s board of directors or their general assembly shows a group of developers who aren’t exactly impoverished—many run lucrative design firms based around implementing Drupal.
All of that said, there are a lot of other reasons to contribute to the creation of open-source software other than the profit motive. Jim Harper of the Cato Institute pointed this out in another comment to the same post, noting that:
Contributors to open source projects may make money by selling consulting services, or by touting their individual or collective skills to new clients, but the benefits for most are far more diffuse. They enjoy it, learn from it, and get the benefit when the economic or communications pie grows and there’s more of everything for everyone.
Jim’s right and I don’t believe the power of the open-source passion project should be underestimated—in fact it’s how most giant open source phenomena are started. A lot of people create wonderful things out of the sheer love of it. Open-source software is a special sort of hobby in that the fruits of your labor of love could be used by billions of people—model train enthusiasts just don’t have that sort of impact.
For more on the topics of open-source software, its skeptics, and the politics of software, check out this post by Tim Lee of Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy where he and I both touch on why we believe some folks are still reluctant about open source.
Reihan Salam wrote a great piece at National Review Online today that outlined how the International Intellectual Property Alliance, a group made up of the MPAA and RIAA among others, is pushing for the US Trade Representative to consider countries that use open-source software to be added to a list of countries that don’t respect intellectual property rights.
This is, of course, absurd. If someone chooses to give away their intellectual property and you elect to use that property, you’re making a perfectly legal and moral decision that in every way respects IP.
So what’s the motivation for this? Salam sums it up in a single sentence:
Basically, a handful of large corporations are trying to use the power of the US government to limit the ability of other firms, large and small, that are built around OSS business models.
So once again the policy of the United States government is being co-opted by large corporations to support their self-interest.
At the conclusion of this post, Salam gives out a nice shout out to me and Tim Lee of the Bottom Up blog:
To understand how and why OSS resonates with core libertarian principles, I recommend reading Tim Lee and Cord Blomquist.
I appreciate the recognition and being thought of as a defender of “core libertarian principles.”
For more on the USTR’s Special 301 watchlist, check out this post by Mike Masnick at TechDirt.
