Glass Casey Blog

Representatives from open-source companies discussed new territories for open source and the limitations for using it at the AlwaysOn Innovation Summit at Stanford on Wednesday.

Panelists agreed that the cutting edge of open-source innovation is now happening in services and shared applications like Flickr, Wikipedia and YouTube.

Now is the time when open-source innovation really gets going, said Mark Spencer, founder and president of Digium, an open-source company focused on the telcom market . Spencer sees movement from where open source has simply replaced outdated technologies, to cost-reducing those systems that were already at hand, to now innovating completely new applications. While open-source earlier was used for building traditional call centers, a new open-source program lets people pay for parking by the phone.

Matt Ettus, founder of Ettus Research, which manufactures open-source radio systems , sees open source moving into hardware. In England, for example, an open-source radio system has been used to optimize the design of shopping centers. It determines where stores should be placed by tracking how shoppers move around in the mall and how long they stop in front of each window display--an indication of which displays attract the most interest.

But is open source good for everything? Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL , thinks so. "There is no technical argument for keeping the code closed. It can never deteriorate from opening, only get better," he said. Even if Mickos thinks the open-source model has proven to be technically superior, he sees the need for a more sustainable business model. He thinks that in five to 10 years, the model will be in place; all code will be open and money will be made from it.

Spencer said Digium's approach is that financial sustainability will be reached through developing whole, packaged products--like phone systems--that don't take a lot of Linux know-how to be created.

What follows is our original item, from 2:31 p.m. PDT Sunday:

Thanks to a great tip from our good friends over at Hustler of Culture , we are able to bring word of strange happenings in the video game industry.

According to GameSpot , E3, the video game industry's famously gargantuan annual trade show is likely to be deeply scaled back in 2007. Other published reports suggest the Los Angeles blowout may even be cancelled.

"On July 28, the Web site of UK trade magazine MCV reported discussions had taken place between the ESA and E3 exhibitors which addressed the future of the annual trade show," GameSpot's Curt Feldman reported Sunday . "GameSpot spoke with informed game industry sources late Friday and Saturday and learned that the show would radically shrink in size and move from its usual Los Angeles Convention Center venue to a smaller location."

The article stated that sources hinted the revamped E3 would invite just hundreds to attend, instead of the usual tens of thousands, and just as shockingly, that game companies would have meeting rooms to show off their wares rather than the usual small-city-size "booths" blasting concert-volume sounds for which E3 is best-known.

"One reason behind the downsizing of the show can be attributed to the dollar cost of the event to exhibitors," GameSpot wrote, "including the demands on companies to assign large numbers of staff to focus on the show, expenses associated with travel to the show, and the added expense to polish game builds and demos to be shown to attendees."

That makes sense in some ways, especially since there will be no more next-generation consoles to announce for 2007, as there have been the last two years with Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PlayStation 2 and Nintendo's Wii, nee "Revolution.

Meanwhile, Next Generation reporter Colin Campbell wrote Sunday that E3, in its present form, will be "cancelled for next year and the foreseeable future."

No word yet on how the thousands of E3-goers who seem to show up each year to ogle the dozens upon dozens of so-called "booth babes"--scantily-clad women hired by exhibitors to lure in men--will respond to the news.

FreeWebs has officially launched the WYSIWYG Site Builder tool we blogged about last month . In short, it lets anyone build a site without any knowledge of HTML, or having to refresh the page to see changes. The service soft-launched the tool early last week, and I took it for a spin this morning.

Site Builder emulates a desktop app, with a small floating tool bar, and context-sensitive menus that will serve up different actions depending on what tool you're using. For example, if you've inserted an image, the menu will give you options to align it with text, or link it to a full version off-site. With a moderate level of difficulty, I managed to put together an entire Web site in about half an hour.

The joy of tools like these is that you start out with a relatively blank canvas that's yours to create. That being said, I found Site Builder to be a little sluggish, and crop up with a few error messages when trying to add widgets. The real showstopper though is the processing message, which pops up every time you swap back and forth between page elements on your site. It's the Web equivalent of the hourglass on Windows, or the spinning beach ball of death on Mac.

Despite the slowdowns, Site Builder is ages ahead of its predecessor. The previous version would split up the page viewing and editing into two separate tools, with the latter called WebsEdit, which is now simply integrated into the new builder. The widget directory tool is also really well done and lets you browse, search, and configure widgets to include in your site without taking you away from what you're doing. If you're a regular Webware reader, you'll recognize many of the widgets that are in there, like a Flickr slideshow viewer, Meebo chat rooms , and a YouTube player.

As far as blogging platforms go, I can't wholly recommend FreeWebs over other free services like WordPress.com and Blogger . You're missing out on some handy features like post management, comment control, guest authoring, and more support documentation. However, for free, Web-based page building utilities, it's a different story. Google's Page Creator , Jimdo , Ning , SiteKreator , along with a few paid options like Homestead and Squarespace fill up a crowded market of online tools for making sites.

So what sets FreeWebs apart? For one thing, there's built-in community. There's also a social networking aspect, where you can slurp in your profile from other social networks like Bebo, MySpace, and Facebook. To me, the social seems like the real draw, and your page--like your profile, is your place to experiment with social tools. I can't help feeling that FreeWebs is aimed at the younger crowd , as older users will likely be more at home on one of the services mentioned above.

Volkswagen has four new car architectures planned as part of its revamp, according to reports.

In mid-November Volkswagen announced it would be investing 28.9 billion euros in its automotive division over the next three years. The company said the changes would focus on completely new vehicles as well "successor models and derivatives" for all of its product classes. The investment will include new powertrain technologies and updates to manufacturing plants.

Today it's been reported this will entail the introduction of four completely new base architectures from which Volkswagen will build its new models and updates, according to AutoBlog and Automotive News .

To save on manufacturing costs, several similar-sized cars are often built on the same original platform, though things like exterior sheet metal, engines, and interiors are different.

In the case of Volkswagen, the company plans to use its MQB architecture for "upper-medium" cars like the Passat. The MQB system will be the base for over 6 million cars per year by 2018 and save up to 40 percent per car in development and manufacturing costs.

The MLB will be used for the Audi A4 and A5. The MHB will be used for small rear-engine vehicles like the Space Up concept car Volkswagen has been unveiling at car shows. A fourth unnamed architecture is also under development for Volkswagen's mid-engine sports cars sold by Audi and Lamborghini, according to AutoBlog.

While Volkswagen released a statement on the revamp, it was not immediately available for comment on the particulars of what those changes would entail.

News of change for Volkswagen is not surprising given an October court ruling that gave Porsche, which holds over 30 percent voting interest in Volkswagen, the ability to exert more control . Porsche has repeatedly said it would like to revamp Volkswagen to make it competitive with Toyota in terms of global sales. Toyota is known as a pioneer for its efficient plants with modular car manufacturing .

Opera has switched out Yahoo and made Google the default search engine for its Opera Mobile and Opera Mini Web browsers designed for mobile devices.

In January 2007, Yahoo and Opera announced that Yahoo would be the default search engine on Opera Mobile and Mini. Now, though, the mobile versions are getting what the desktop version of Opera has had for seven years--a built-in Google default.

Opera and Google "are extending this collaboration to give our users immediate access to the quality and convenience of Google's search results," Opera Chief Executive Jon von Tetzchner said in a statement Wednesday.

Yahoo said the change was on its own initiative, though it didn't offer details on what exactly it didn't find desirable about having its OneSearch mobile search service be selected by default.

"Yahoo has elected not to continue its mobile search partnership with Opera at this time," the company said in a statement. Yahoo has 29 carrier partnerships, and its "ability to partner with leading mobile operators and handset manufacturers enables us to lead and further the global mobile ecosystem."

Google search will be presented on the Opera browsers' start pages--except in Russia and other former Soviet republics, Opera said.

Opera Mini can be downloaded for free on mobile phones, and Opera Mini users collectively browse 1.7 billion Web pages per month, the Oslo, Norway-based company said.

Update 6:30 p.m. PT: I added Yahoo's comment that it chose not to continue the partnership and edited wording accordingly.