Google has now improved open ended question searches. I like a lot of things about Google!

According to the google blog, Google now offers it’s news in two feed formats, RSS and Atom as of today.

The BBC has an interesting interview with Sir Tim Berners-Lee today. He speaks of his idea that the web be a writeable medium where all users could create as well as read content. I especially like some of his ideas on the good versus bad uses of the web and his explaination of why that does not concern him on a philosophical level. It is worth a read, and if you cannot watch the actual broadcast, it will be available tomorrow on the web.

Today I saw an item on Ebay that was listed for “buy it now” at a price about one-fifth of the true value. The key things I noted, besides the fact that the deal was too good to be true, was that the listing provided a yahoo.com email address and asked that all correspondence be directed there. In addition, it asked that no correspondence be directed through the ebay contact system and said the item would be delivered to the first person arranging payment of the $6550 purchase price. I bet more than one person allowed their greed to get the best of them and transfer the money for the item that I am convinced does not actually exist. In checking the user feedback for the seller, it is 100 percent positive. I am convinced that someone ripped off the users name and password to allow them post under that persons username. I immediately reported the likely scam to local law enforcement as well as the fraud site listed on ebay.

In discussing this with local police officers in the fraud team, they advised me that something called atm card skimming was of growing concern in the United States. I didn’t know of it prior to today, but it is very ingenious and nearly impossible to observe for even a well trained eye. See this site for more on this issue. Meanwhile, be careful and never act on something too good to be true!

There has been many reports of the Mozilla foundations efforts to make some money from their efforts. Many have thought to accuse Mozilla of “selling out” Open Source by making money and I thought it worthwhile to put that idea to rest.

The first thing to keep in mind is that there is no part of Open Source that states that your organization must never make any money, after all, people must eat right? Secondly, the Firefox, Thunderbird and Mozilla code bases are still Open Source and free, meaning anyone that wants to can still get their favourite email client or web browser free and clear, just as they always have. Some Open Source companies make their money by providing services and support for their Open Source products. Redhat Linux is one such example, but all OSS companies and organizations need some sort of business plan in order to pay for costs, staff and so on. As long as the software is Open Source, who really cares that the company or organization doesn’t want to depend entirely on the kindness of strangers?

So in essence, Mozilla used to rely entirely on donations from people and companies, they will still do so in the future to some extent or another but now they have the chance to help themselves make better Open Source products and there are not many out there who could really call them to task for it. If you don’t like it, download the source code of one or all the programs and create your own OSS browser/email client based on them. The fact that you can do that is the real reason OSS is becoming an unstoppable force in the software world.

I have known ultra-marathoner Jim Dreyer for many years (main entry using flash). He has made direct crossings of most of the great lakes, except Superior. Unfortunately, that lake has bested him about six times. Well he is at it again using modern tracking technology which forestalls the need for a support crew. Wish him well, and make a donation to your local Big Brothers Big Sisters program in his honor!