savings

The open-source industry is worth $60 billion

John Powell, CEO of Alfresco, has declared that the open-source industry is worth $60 billion, not necessarily because of its vendors' collective revenue, but rather because of the value of the cost savings for customers.

That's the right way to think about software: From the customer's perspective.

Open source is now the world's largest software industry....You measure it in the savings people are making in licence fees....Licence fees don't add any value to the product and are purely a transfer of wealth from consumers to software vendors.

Subscription-based business models are ideal for customers because they focus the vendor on delivering constant, consistent value. License-based businesses? Not so much.

As a case in point, Alfresco (Disclosure: I work for Alfresco) just closed a deal with a large US federal agency. The project is worth over $50 million, with Alfresco at the core. But if all of that $50 million were going into my pocket it would be a success for Alfresco and a failure for the customer. Why?… Read more

Iterasi goes live with personal Web-archiving tool

Web bookmarking tool Iterasi just launched the first version of its Firefox extension to people who have signed up for the beta. The service, which I wrote about in January, lets you capture a Web site in its entirety, complete with links, formatting, and a time stamp to help sort it out later.

The company was set to release the plug-in back in late February but has been busy for the past few months resolving some security issues, as well as tweaking usability with a small group of beta testers. One of the reasons for the delay was to ramp … Read more

SmartyPig: Piggybank 2.0?

Here's a clever site that can help you sock away money for purchases you're hoping to make some day: SmartyPig. You tell it what you're saving for, how much it costs, and when you want to buy it, and it will tell you how much you need to save each month (hard math, that). Then, if you let it, it will automatically deduct that amount from your checking account each month until you make your goal.

It pays interest, too (currently 4.3% APR). Plus it lets other people contribute to your fund--if you like gifts of … Read more

Find the files you're looking for by using virtual folders

The more files you store on your PC, the harder they are to find and manage. A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Copernic Desktop Search, my favorite local-search freebie, and compared it to Google Desktop Search and Windows Desktop Search. All three retrieve the files you're looking for much faster and more simply than Windows' built-in search tool, but I prefer Copernic for its customizability and clean interface.

Still, most people spend the majority of their file-management time in Windows Explorer, which by default isn't particularly informative about the files and folders it displays. You can … Read more

Daylight saving: Waste of time?

Perhaps it's because we're often doing a rapid scan of a bajillion or so headlines before the sun comes up, but we missed a story in last Wednesday's Wall Street Journal about what happened when some laggard counties in Indiana finally got around to adopting daylight-saving time. As it turned out, flipping the switch to DST actually added to the state's collective electric bill by about $8.6 million, contrary to conventional wisdom and the exhortations of politicians. (Tip o' the nightcap to Slashdot for bringing the story to our belated attention.)

Enlighten yourself at WSJ.… Read more

Mark Shuttleworth on the United States' financial crisis

I nearly cried (really) when I read Mark Shuttleworth's eloquent and searing analysis of the United States financial crisis. He doesn't necessarily call it such, but he points to my country's failure in economic leadership...and the adverse consequences for the planet.

Underlying it all is a too-easy addiction to credit:

To make matters worse, a series of financial innovations created a whole industry designed to help people go back into debt on their houses. I remember trying to watch TV in the US and being amazed at the number of advertisements for "home equity withdrawals". They made it sound like turning your major personal financial asset - your paid-off house - into an ATM machine was a good thing. In fact, it was a means to spend all of your primary store of wealth. And with inflated house prices, it was a way to spend money that you did not really have. A convenient way to get into a deep, dark hole of family debt.… Read more

Daylight saving glitch leaves hangover for some

When daylight saving time came two weeks early this year, there was concern that there might be a host of problems. There were some, but like the Y2K bug, there was not widespread mayhem and chaos as the movie-of-the-week industry might have hoped.

But Congress didn't just spring forward a little early this year. It's also is making us wait a week longer to fall back. Instead of changing this past weekend, we don't go back until next weekend. I thought most of the gadgets would know, but it appears not all of them got the message. … Read more

Microsoft disabling Word 2003's 'fast save' feature

Microsoft is killing off a feature in Office 2003 that the company said helped save time, but also ran the risk of exposing confidential information.

As part of Service Pack 3 of Office 2003, which will be available Tuesday as a free download from Microsoft's Web site, Microsoft is disabling Word 2003's "fast save" feature, which works by saving the changes made since the last save, rather than rewriting the whole document to disk.

"While the Fast Save feature speeds up the document-saving process by saving only the changes made to a document, the saved … Read more

Optimus Prime's car insurance bill

In our steadfast effort to cover all things technologically urgent and culturally important, e.g. the Transformers movie, here is the latest development.

On Monday, McSweeney's, the Web publishing arm of San Francisco author and famous eccentric Dave Eggers, published "A Letter to Optimus Prime from his Geico Auto Insurance Agent," penned by John Frank Weaver. It details the particulars of 27 claims made during the month of June and the parameters of coverage and "reasonable use" for a truck and trailer.

You have to read the original for the riotously strained legalese and in-depth … Read more