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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-07-26

by Justin on Jul.26, 2010, under Twitter Updates

#AlternateHistory Battle of Actium was really part of a Holy War and the Pantheon was built to ease the war with "Neutral Religious Debate" #
Fight Software Patents in Australia – Get Informed – We don't want to end up like the USA – http://apps.softwarefreedom.com.au/patents/ #

How to not be Greedy?

by Justin on Jul.15, 2010, under ARG Manager, Flux Singularity, Media, Personal, Social Networking

As Flux Singularity is approaching a point where I will be able to start beta testing, my mind has turned to the inevitable, “How do I make my money back?”

I would love to be able to simply release it as an open source project, providing it for free to anyone who wants to use it, but let’s be honest here. I’ve put an uncountable number of hours into the design and development of this system over the last few years. I’ve sacrificed time with my family. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy working on the system and I really believe in the concept, but without trying being selfish, I want my dues.

Now I’m not a greedy person. I’m not the sort of person that thinks “Alrighty, hard work done, now to sit back and watch the dollars roll in!”.

I want to find a new way of doing business. A business model that is fairer. For Everyone. Where the people involved get paid what they deserve and the end consumer DOES NOT pay for someone’s luxury car. I’d like to be able to “share the wealth” (and the love) with those that deserve it.

One idea I’ve had was born from the concepts of Crowdfunding and an idea I had for Crowdfunding the production costs for an Independent film, so that by the time the movie is ready for release, everyone who should have been paid, has been, allowing the movie to be released for free. As in creative commons free.

Could the same concept be applied to software, albeit in a slightly modified format?

Let’s say I’m at a point where it’s time for me to start marketing my system:

The old way of doing things:

I would first look at my system, the time it has taken and build a business plan around a standard sales model. This would allow me to calculate how many copies of the software I would need to sell to break even. I would then use this information to draw up a business plan taking into account such things as overheads and all of the REALLY interesting stuff. I would then need to present this plan to an investor (or a bank) to be able to get the money to allow me to market it. Of course this investor would then want a cut of the profits (assuming I made some). This way of doing things would force me into the Greedy way of doing business. I’d be made to charge more for the software than I would feel comfortable with. I’d quickly begin to lose control over the decision making for the project, as the investors put pressure on me so that THEY can benefit.

Alternatively, I could go down “Software as a Service” route. Not release the system at all, instead setup a dedicated server, and rent the use of the system.

A new way?

All I want from this is to make back what I’ve put in. After that point, I don’t see the need to keep charging for it. Like I said. I’m not greedy.

Is there such a thing as “reverse” Crowdfunding? Raising the finds for a project after it has been completed? After the “crowd” can see a working version of what they are supporting?

Would people support a Crowdfunding campaign, whose goal is to free up a developer from the greed of Commercialism?

I REALLY don’t want to go down the standard business paths for Flux Singularity, but I DO want to be paid for what I have done.

If I didn’t need money for outrageous things like rent, utilities and food, I’d just release it for nothing straight up, but unfortunately, the world simply does not work that way…

Thoughts?? Please Comment…

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Flux Singularity Progress Report

by Justin on Jul.14, 2010, under ARG Manager, Development, Flux Singularity, Media, Technology

So I’ve been mad at it the last few weeks. Outside of work, I have been spending any free time I have working on Flux Singularity and it’s really starting to come together. I should probably give some in depth analysis of everything I’ve completed so far, and what is left, but I’m just going to summarise the updates and get back to getting the system done.

DockUI

The Messaging and request subsystem is finished. It can handle both single instance requests, as well as poll based requests. Single instance requests are things like retrieving the details of an object to display on an edit form, while a poll based request is more designed for things like lists of objects, where the information can change over time and needs to be updated.

Flux Singularity

On par with the development of the DockUI widgets, I’ve created the core framework for the Flux Singularity Server API. This includes methods for sessions and user registration, authentication and data security, as well as object schema and content manipulation functionality.

The Twitter information retrieval has been integrated into the core communications engine, and updated to reflect the new methods for creating and validating objects. I’ll be beginning testing with this hopefully this week, so keep an eye out for a couple of Twitter accounts that, well…quite frankly…appear totally normal, but that’s the point isn’t it?

Next Steps

In my original coding for the Twitter interaction, I had the sending of Tweets being performed by the event loop. I want to move this into the Twitter process loop to bring the methods into line with the modularity of the system. This would then limit the tasks of event loop to those of data modification only. For example, the event loop would calculate if a Tweet is ready to be sent, and if so update the “NeedsToBeSent” flag in the database. This tweet would then be picked up and sent upon the next iteratoin of the communications loop.

Updating the way that works would complete the Twitter module of the Communications system. With that out of the way, I will be moving onto updating the Web Site Renderer to include support for Hierarchical navigation, web forms and web site statistics gathering. (At the moment, it only supports basic, flat structured static web sites.)

Once that is complete, it’s onto the Event Processor, although the work to get that finished would primarily be updating code to bring it in line with the recent modifications to the methods for creating and validating objects, and to expand the capabilities of the script engine.

While this may seem like quite a fair amount of work, I’m still on track for having the system ready for some major testing by the start of August.

The only real outstanding question mark over the timing is the arrival of our New Bubba, because nature has it’s it’s own timeline, and The Better Half is gonna need a well deserved break after 10 months!!

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-07-12

by Justin on Jul.12, 2010, under Twitter Updates

Buy Part Of Australian Horror Film "The Tunnel" Now – http://bit.ly/cZA9Oy #crowdfunding #
Hyperakt: Meaningful Design for the Common Good – Making money without losing your morals: http://bigthink.com/ideas/20843 #

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-07-05

by Justin on Jul.05, 2010, under Twitter Updates

Help an Indie Web Series get Started – "Resume Life" needs a new logo by the end of July: http://bit.ly/90OwRY #

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-06-28

by Justin on Jun.28, 2010, under Twitter Updates

RT @jpmens: Over 600 downloads of my CouchDB reference card today, and we still have some left Want one? http://mens.de/:/4s #

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Raising Children for the future

by Justin on Jun.28, 2010, under Media, Personal, Social Networking, Technology, The New Baby

With the imminent birth of my 3rd child, my mind has been turning to the future and how to ensure I give my children the best possible chance to succeed in the future. I’m sure most parents do the same thing.

I was at the supermarket the other day with my 2 year old daughter. We only had to get a couple of things, so I took her through the self-serve checkouts. While I was holding her, letting her swipe the items through the machine, a few questions sprung to mind:

How many manned checkouts will there be in 20 years when my daughter is shopping for herself? Will they all be self-serve? Will there even BE supermarkets?

It’s a bit of a scary thought. How can you ensure your child is prepared for a future that in reality, is unseeable?

Shopping for groceries online, at least in my experience in Australia, is still a bit touch and go. You end up buying “packages” that contain items you never use. The only payoff is the convenience, especially these days with how much time everyone has to spend working just to make ends meet. But apart from that, and the few self serve sections that some supermarkets are installing, the face of shopping really hasn’t changed much for as long as I can remember.

The other major changes I have seen have been in the media landscape. You’d have to completely disconnected to not be able to see it. Not even 20 years ago, the sort of movie that an independent film maker could produce would not even be able to come close to the quality and distribution of the major film studios. Yet here we are today with original, high quality high definition independent films being released all the time, and being viewed by millions of people worldwide.

Services have started springing up to help make the process easier, joining script writer with producers and directors, building communities of fans around a film before it has even been made and services to help gather finds from those fans to make the idea a reality.

I’m not even a film maker, but I have 2 production on WreckAMovie, which provides services for a collaborative approach to film making. One is an idea for an open source feature length film, and one is for “One Man’s Life Work”. It has just become so easy to start turning some of our dreams into reality.

Can you imagine what things are going to be like for my daughter in 20 years?

Dear Diary,

So another day another dollar. Some of the tasks today were actually quite fun, amidst the normal drudgery. I had two blocks of script writing, one was for an old school 2d horror movie style, quite retro, dad is always going on about the “good ol’ days of 2d”. I just couldn’t imagine it. Why would you?

I also had a couple of blocks of order packing. I HATE those with a passion, they take so damn long and pay bugger all. The others were just the normal drudgery, administrative tasks, and some programming.

Dad was telling me again today that only 20 years ago, people did the same thing, all day, every day. Each person had a single job description. And they and they had to go to offices, and factories. It still amazes me.

Next week should be good, because I’m rostered on for field duties. Hopefully I’ll get some more horse work blocks, they were great, not to mention the pay is really damn good.

My “bike maintenance” block was fulfilled today, 2 days early, so pretty stoked about that. I also helped Connor study for his office admin certification, and he’s coming along well. Will be good for him to get some extra cash while he’s putting together his block for that new tv show.

Anyways, bed time.

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The Shed Collaboration – An Open Source Movie

by Justin on Jun.27, 2010, under Crowd sourcing, Media, Script Writing

I have decided to open the script for “The Shed” up to anyone who wants to help see this become a reality. It will be a long term project, simply due to the ambitiousness of the idea. Here it is in a nutshell:

Take a script for a short film. Expand the story behind the script to include enough material for 3 separate scripts, each from the point of view of one of the 3 main characters.

Create the scripts, including instructions for filming(i.e. multiple Camera angles of the same scene etc)

Crowdfund the resources needed to pay everyone involved in the actual filming. This includes actors, camera crew, director, etc.

This way everyone who should have been paid for their time have been, with the exception of the “script writers”, which will be the broader community in general.

The raw footage can then be released under a Creative Commons license, allowing anyone to remix and mashup the footage to create their own vision of how the story should play out in film form.

The production is being hosted on WreckAMovie.com (http://www.wreckamovie.com/theshedcollaboration)

Currently only the basic avenues for discussion have been set up, as well as the original script, my notes for what I intended the vision to be, and the raw assets used so far for things like the movie poster.

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-06-21

by Justin on Jun.21, 2010, under Twitter Updates

Completed the DockUI messaging subsystem and the Flux Singularity API framework today. Can now log in & out. On to the object editing forms! #
Sad times to live in #
AU wants a great firewall, AU Feds want to keep a record of EVERYTHING and now the Internet kill switch. Not gonna be much left for our kids #
Interesting: Andriod Meets Arduino – http://www.amarino-toolkit.net/index.php #
*sigh* loving the traffic this morning…an hour in…and half an hour still to go…of a 40 minute trip #