Dave’s Guide to the Best of the Web

    My real job is as a network engineer for Collages.Net Inc. As anyone who works in the industry will know the field of knowledge is vast and the challenges continuous. How does one deal with the continuous expansion of knowledge and challenges? One way is by subscribing to Informit’s Safari Tech Books Online.

Safari is an online bookshelf with hundreds of titles from many of the most renowned publishers (O’Reilly, Addison-Wesley, Sams, Que, Cisco, Microsoft) and authors (Gary McGraw, Michael Miller, Jesse Liberty) in the industry. Topics covered include applied sciences, artificial intelligence, technical certifications (e.g. A+, CCNA, MCSE), computer science, databases, desktop publishing, desktop applications, e-business/e-commerce, enterprise computing, internet, programming, multimedia, networking, and security amongst others.

Here is a quick sampling of the sort of volumes you can expect from Safari:

• Programming Collective Intelligence, Toby Segaran (Artificial Intelligence).
• Cisco ASA, PIX, and FWSM Firewall Handbook by David Hucaby  (Networking/Security).
• Beautiful Code by Andy Oram and Greg Wilson (Computer Science).
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Unleashed by Ray Rankins, & co. (Databases).
• Java in a Nutshell by David Flanagan (Programming).

Okay, those are some pretty technical volumes, but for those just getting started there are some excellent volumes as well. Whether you need to learn basic web design, how to edit multimedia files, it management skills, or any of dozens of areas of expertise - Safari InformIT can help.

It does cost money - but the cost is reasonable. Technical volumes don’t sell many copies (how many people want to read about low-level kernel details?) so authors and publishers have to make up for this lack in readership by increasing the price of volumes. A good technical volume can oftentimes run $50 or more at a traditional bookstore. With Safari InformIT you can read several books at a time for $9.95 per month, or get even more at a higher price. You really can’t argue with the price.

Apple’s iPhone is a pretty sweet device from all reports, but by no means perfect. While many consumers enjoy the device for its own qualities, many open source advocates and other strange geeks (I’m talking about myself, so I feel qualified to make fun of myself) look upon the iPhone not so much as a gigantic step forward as an actual device, but rather as what it represents - a push for more innovation and a challenge to the incumbent cell phone carriers to offer more.

But what if everything Apple is offering and will offer will in the long-term be considered only a footnote in history? I think that there is a grand possibility that this will happen. Why? Because of a small company called OpenMoko which is building upon the revolutionary concepts of open source.

Open Source rebels against the traditional concepts of capitalism in some senses. I have talked to many who embrace that traditional concept and when explaining to them the options they have from open source I often find them responding with befuddled expressions indicating their confusion as to how anything that is really free can also be really profitable. If you aren’t a geek (yeah, with big glasses and never having met a girl in your life) you might not be aware of open source - but its real and revolutionary. You would probably recognize some of its successes such as Linux (an operating system and the grand-daddy of successful open source software), Mozilla Firefox (the web browser), or OpenOffice.Org (the office suite).

Open source is spreading itself throughout society. While initially operating mainly within the confines of computer software it has spread to the furthest reaches of the imagination - including cell phones. OpenMoko has recently released to the public (though asking that only developers purchase them) the Neo1973. This phone is expected to become widely available according to The Economist in November 2007. OpenMoko is an open source phone. It provides most of the features hardware wise you could hope for in a phone and then leaves the phone open for innovation by developers and users. Developers can write applications for it, users can connect to it on any of a variety of carriers. No longer is one locked into a mandatory (and unnecessary) set of applications or to a certain carrier - rather the phone is designed to allow anyone to design applications for it and to be utilized by any carrier that will allow it.

So, take a look at the OpenMoko sites. They are attractive, the phone is attractive, and the concept is attractive. While OpenMoko’s Neo1973 isn’t the phone to buy just yet, I expect it to begin chopping up market share like crazy in the near future. OpenMoko has two sites - the first is for the public consumption of the phone, the second is for developers (or those interested in weird things) to view and assist in the creation/editing/maintenance of the code base/featureset for OpenMoko’s cell phones.

Bookmark OpenMoko. They aren’t anybody just yet - but they will be.

Note: I am aware that Ubuntu is not “Linux” in its most technical and basic conception, but it is one of the best distributions of Linux available and I chose it as a representative of the whole.

LiveScience is an online news site that offers a wide variety of articles on topics related to science as it relates to space, animals, health, the environment, technology, history, and the strange. It is a place where one could spend ten minutes - or several hours.

Want to know Corey Binns thinks toilets need to be radically redesigned for environmental reasons? Or how a glimpse of time before the big bang is possible according to Charles Q. Choi? Interesting in what’s technology will bring us soon? How about Top 10 Emerging Environmental Technologies. Or read Ker Than’s report on The Surprising Realities of Mythical Creatures which looks at an exhibit currently on-display at the American Museum of Natural History.

Of course, there is always so much to read and so little time - but if you are in for a snack of science - take a look at LiveScience. The articles are interesting, the photos and interactive materials are plentiful and a few minutes couldn’t hurt - could it?

The image of the Daphnia Pulex is with many thanks to V. Gewin’s Functional Genomics Thickens the Biological Plot. PLoS Biology Vol. 3/6/2005, e219.