Tech | Steve Woods

British Library releases over 1 million images to public domain

17/12/2013 Steve WoodsMedia, Open Data, Open Standards, Tech

The British Library has released over one million scanned images into the public domain. A post on the British Library’s Digital Scholarship blog reveals that the public domain – i.e. freely usable – images which have been made available via the British Library’s Flickr page, originate from 17th, 18th and 19th century books. They were digitised by Microsoft from 65,000 books.

“The Coming of Father Christmas” by Eliza F. Manning

Microsoft and the British Library started collaborating eight years ago. The contents of 100,000 books should be searchable in the near future via Microsoft’s book search project.

All the images are provided with details of their origin and year of publication. The British Library is planning a crowdsourcing project as the next stage for automatically classifying the content of the images. The images’ data has been made available on github by the British Library. The code is being made available under an open licence.
A salutary lesson in social media for business

16/12/2013 Steve WoodsOddities, Social Media, Tech

A message to all businesses: if you sack a member of staff, you should consider changing your Twitter password, particularly if that person had access to the account.

The Plough, a pub in Great Haseley, Oxfordshire, didn’t… and at the time of posting it has nearly 1,700 followers.

You can enjoy the results in the screenshot below.

Update 12 noon, 16/12/13: According to Buzzfeed, Jim Knight, the chef in question, created the Twitter account with the permission of his now former employers. Furthermore, he has also now been offered a new job, in which I wish him well. 🙂

Hat tip: Eugene Byrne
French Post Office using its data to offer additional services

15/12/2013 Steve WoodsOpen Data, Tech

Last week Le Monde Informatique reported that La Poste, the French Post Office, has just initiated its DataPoste programme. New services based on La Poste’s open data should see the light of day between now and the end of the first quarter of 2014.

La Poste has announced the launch of DataPoste, its open data and open innovation programme. The objective for La Post is to open up a certain number of datasets in a very short time to enable the emergence of new services designed and implemented by third parties. The target is to have the first services based on these open data available within three months.

The first stage took place on 4th December. Named DataHorizon, a private meeting of representatives from various departments of La Poste sought to define what value could be derived from such data. This entailed plotting the broad strategic outlines for opening up and adding value to the group’s data.

A second meeting will be held on 8th January. This time the group’s employees will getting together with technology start-ups, commercial partners, designers and developers. Using customer needs as a starting point, La Poste will participate in defining use scenarios, timetables for releasing data and the stages of the plan of action. Finally, the prototypes of services to meet the requirements identified in the previous stage will be developed within the scope of a “collaborative sprint” in February 2014.
Norway’s National Library digitising its collection

15/12/2013 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Open Data, Open Standards, Tech

The National Library of Norway has announced it is digitising its entire collection. The Norwegian Legal Deposit Act requires that all published content in all media – i.e. paper, microforms, photographs, combined documents, electronic documents and the radio and television recordings from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation – be deposited with the National Library of Norway.

The Library’s collection is also being expanded through purchases and gifts. The digital collection contains material dating from the Middle Ages up to the current day.

Digital deposit

In parallel with digitising analogue material, the National Library of Norway is working to expand the scope of publications covered by legal digital deposit legislation. The Library wishes to receive the digital source of the publication and thus the collection’s digital content.

The digitising programme started in 2006 and it is estimated that it will take 20–30 years for the Library’s entire collection to be digitised.

A Dickens engraving being digitised. Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Furthermore, The Atlantic reports that people accessing the Library’s digital collection from a Norwegian IP address will be able to access all 20th-century works – even those still under copyright. Non-copyrighted works of any age will be available for download.

Hat tip: Mike Ellis
Canonical forks Gnome Control Centre*

13/12/2013 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

Robert Ancell of Canonical, the company behind the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, has announced on the Ubuntu desktop mailing list that Canonical is forking the Gnome Control Centre.

Robert’s email is reproduced in full below.

Hi all,

Ubuntu makes use of a heavily patched gnome-control-center (61 patches) and we will in future move to the new Ubuntu System Settings [1] once we achieve convergence. We are already running an old version of gnome-control-center (3.6) and the value for Ubuntu in upgrading this is low since it would take a lot of work to update our changes. Running an old version until convergence blocks those who do use GNOME (i.e. Ubuntu GNOME).

For these reasons it has been discussed that we should fork gnome-control-center 3.6 for Unity into unity-control-center [2].

To be very clear, this is a fork with a limited lifespan. We don’t expect to make significant changes to it outside of stability and security fixes.

This change affects a number of packages, and I have attempted to find and fix all the side-effects (See bug 1257505 [3]). The proposed changes are in a PPA [4].

Please test this PPA and post any problems in the bug report. I’d like to land this change into the archive if there are no reasons to block it.

I also have a fork of gnome-settings-daemon for the same reasons which I am running successfully, I will do a similar call for testing when we have landed the control center changes.

Thanks,
–Robert

[1] https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-system-settings
[2] https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-control-center
[3] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-control-center/+bug/1257505
[4] https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-desktop/+archive/unity-control-center

* = Spelling in title and author’s text localised to EN-GB! 🙂
How Linux is built

13/12/2013 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

This Linux Foundation video is over a year old and some of the figures may be out of date and relate solely to the USA. Nevertheless, it still gives a valuable insight into the collaborative working that goes into putting the Linux operating system together.
Bristol Open Data meet-up next month

13/12/2013 Steve WoodsBristol, Open Data, Politics, Tech

There’s an open data meet-up taking place in central Bristol next month.

It will be held on 30th January 2014 at the Watershed, 1 Canon’s Road, Bristol, BS1 5TX (map) from 7 pm to 10 pm.

The few details that are available at present can be seen here.

Topics to be discussed will include licensing, linked open data, open data and open government.

Speakers are due to be announced in due course and I’ll keep readers updated of developments as the event gets nearer.

Hat tip: Jukesie

Originally posted on Bristol Wireless.
An open source framework for the “internet of things”

11/12/2013 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Open Standards, Tech

Today’s Le Monde Informatique reports that the AllSeen Alliance, an umbrella group for major consumer electronics manufacturers, is working on an open source framework with which it will be possible to connect almost anything to the internet.

Household electrical goods, cars and computers could soon communicate with each other thanks to an open source framework developed by the AllSeen Alliance with the support of the Linux Foundation. This group of major consumer electronics manufacturers includes Cisco, D-Link, Haier, LG Electronics, Qualcomm, Panasonic and Sharp. According to the Linux Foundation, “the framework, originally developed by Qualcomm under the name of the AllJoyn Project, will enable different systems to see each other, to connect and to interact transparently, irrespective of their manufacturer or the operating system they use”. Members of the alliance will contribute to the framework by providing engineering resources and software resources to enable developers, manufacturers and suppliers to provide interoperable services and devices. “Qualcomm has contributed to the AllJoyn code under the aegis of the AllSeen Alliance. This will hold the copyright, offering the project a broader reach,” said Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation. “The open source community can also contribute to this code,” he added.

The framework runs on Linux, Android, iOS, Windows and other OS variants involved. “Developers can download the code already and find details of APIs using the reference source allseenalliance.org and start working,” the Foundation announced. “Once APIs comprising an interoperability layer are supplied to the open source community, it will be possible to graft all sorts of services onto them,” Zemlin stated in an email. For example, the framework could enable users to play music easily because there are various wireless loudspeakers nearby. “Today this would be difficult because the majority of consumers have audio systems from different manufacturers, they store their music on various media and use different cloud storage services,” Zemlin explained. “This framework will therefore enable easy playing of music on compatible loudspeakers near these sources,” he added. “Engineers are already at work writing this code and implementing it in existing products. We are expecting several announcements of this type at the next CES (7th -10th January 2014), ” he stated.

A truly universal framework

The framework could also be used to enable a domestic electrical system to turn of a home’s heating system when the house is empty and thus contribute to reducing household energy bills. “Such a system could be adapted to different scenarios; for example, to put household equipment on standby when its occupants are out and turn them on gradually before their return,” Zemlin declared. “The same system could enable the family car to be detected when it’s a mile away, switch on the lights and start up the heating or even open the garage door automatically when the car is approaching,” he added. “All these communications could work with existing transmission technologies – wifi, Bluetooth – and future ones, such as those based on radio waves,” Zemlin also stated.

The AllSeen Alliance is the Linux Foundation’s 11th collaborative project. “As companies create more products integrating this code, the developer community devoting time to extending and improving this code will grow, just like what happened with other projects based on Linux or OpenStack,” Zemlin stated.
USL Umbria 1 migrates 300 workstations to LibreOffice

06/12/2013 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech

Italian regional health organisation USL Umbria 1 has completed the first phase of its migration to Libre Office, Libre Umbria reports.

USL Umbria 1’s territory includes the districts of Perugia, Assisi, Trasimeno, the middle and upper Tiber valley and the upper Chiasco valley (the Chiasco is a tributary of the Tiber. Ed.).

LibreOffice start centre

After some two months from the start of the migration, USL Umbria 1 has already converted 300 stations from running proprietary office suites to LibreOffice and is scheduled to migrate the rest of its PC pool within the next few months.

In parallel with the LibreOffice installation, users are being offered training in the new software; those who’ve already been switched to the open source office suite should complete their training by the end of the year.

In the opinion of the LibreUmbria project, USL Umbria 1 is a good example of how it is possible for public sector organisations to adopt free and open source software.
Phishing email deceives WordPress administrators

06/12/2013 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Tech

Germany’s Heise Online reports that security firm Sucuri is warning of a wave of phishing emails intended to trick WordPress administrators into installing a plug-in which serves up malware to site visitors. The email ostensibly offers site administrators the Pro version of the popular All in One SEO Pack plug-in free of charge.

However, anyone clicking on the email’s download link isn’t taken to the official WordPress plug-in page, but to a spammer-infested domain in Australia (.com.au) or Brazil (.com.br). At least administrators should be taken aback by now! According to Sucuri, some of their customers have nevertheless actually installed the malicious plug-in. This results in the malicious code opening a backdoor on the server giving the attackers full access and replacing the infected blog’s index.php file.

Once installed, the criminals behind the fake plug-in can insert any code they like into their victim’s website and attempt to attack visitors’ computers. Several versions of the malicious plug-in relay visitors to pornography site or other servers which also attempt to install malware on victims’ computers.

Due to its widespread use, WordPress is a favourite target for hackers who attempt to misuse others’ websites for spam distribution or for DDoS attacks. There was such a DDoS attack recently on a forum in which thousands of legitimate WordPress sites were misused as part of the attack wave without the knowledge of their owners.

Digital deposit

A truly universal framework

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