I was at the
Linux Expo today, it was still small compared to the Mac Expo next door, but some interesting stuff for us digital media-heads.
The BBC did an interesting talk on their experience deploying OS in their systems, and on the various OS licences - but even more interesting were comments about the
Kamaelia code being put up within the next few weeks. One can whinge about the Beeb putting up free new media services (like Podcasting for eg) that hinder startup commercial services, but if they can give back this sort of technology that can only be good news.
The
MythTV proposition is also interesting...essentially an open source client to make your PC behave like a PVR - this plays to our views on
MyPCTV ie the use of the ordinary PC as the device of choice for TV over IP consumption.
Apart from that I was struck by the
Trexy beta...its an added value search engine that remembers where you've been for next time so you go straight there, and as users grow will also match new requests to where other people have gone. But that was not the interesting thing, nor was it the free (toy) goat I got - it was that the person I spoke to said they were already funding a team on the ad revenues they generated from their website. Even if its not break even yet (I don't know if it is or not) in early beta, New Search companies gettting in front of older search engines with their advertising are clearly going to be a feature of the Search battle going forward.
And besides, if I'm not allowed to say I
Google anymore, Trexing something sounds OK to me
And finally, seeing the
Drupal team there was great - we wrote our
website ourselves in Drupal, its a big system so its good to meet some faces we can call on - this stuff matters for Open Source to really succeed I think.
