I gave a presentation on the Zope Component Architecture (ZCA) at Europython 2010 last Tuesday. In my presentation, I wanted to explain the core concepts of the ZCA in a way I would have appreciated when I was trying to learn the platform a few months ago.
A few years ago, in the early 2000s, Zope 2 was a large, monolithic framework which had blazed a trail in the Python world. Being there so early, however, meant that they had to invent many wheels along the way. This lead to Zope being viewed as a world unto itself, which was a perhaps extreme but accurate description in many ways.
Really excellent article about the web as more than the technologies, but about how it brings people together—and the issues we face in bringing this potential to fruition—from a someone who describes themselves as “not that technical”.
There’s a lot of talk about digital inclusion, about taxes to fund broadband and about universal access to the web. But it all misses the point. It was never just about having access to other people’s information. It was always about everybody, everywhere having the ability to add their thoughts, the things they know, to the web. Treating digital inclusion as a question of connecting pipes to homes is an easy mistake to make because it follows established patterns of water and gas and electricity and television aerials. But the web was never designed to be a broadcast / distribution mechanism. Digital inclusion doesn’t just mean everyone needs to have a receiver on their roof; it means they need access to a transmitter too. Without the ability to transmit, to publish, people just become passive consumers of other people’s information. And digital inclusion has to include the ability to produce as well as consume.
The governments of France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain and the United Kingdom have jointly sent a letter to Google bemoaning the amount of data it collects and uses about its customers. Check out this excerpt below:
However, we are increasingly concerned that, too often, the privacy rights of the world’s citizens are being forgotten as Google rolls out new technological applications. We were disturbed by your recent rollout of the Google Buzz social networking application, which betrayed a disappointing disregard for fundamental privacy norms and laws. Moreover, this was not the first time you have failed to take adequate account of privacy considerations when launching new services.
Players of Farmville: It’s up to you whether you play, but at least knowingly understand how your social capital is being taken advantage of. Social ties, like health scares and baby care, are easy heart-strings for businesses to pull at and abuse. Beware.
Zynga has recently used Farmville to raise almost one million dollars to support earthquake relief efforts in Haiti. Social capital can allow organizations to do great and noble things, and to do so quickly and efficiently. Zynga actually began its charitable efforts with Haiti last fall, around the time my family began playing Farmville. Also at this time, Zynga was engaged in numerous “lead gen scams,” or advertisements that trick customers into making purchases or subscribing to services. As of November, one third of Zynga’s revenue (roughly eighty million dollars) came from third-party commercial offers, such as Netflix subscriptions that came with Farmville bonuses, or surveys that involved hidden contractual obligations. One user reportedly was charged almost two hundred dollars one month, as a result of cell-phone services for which she had unknowingly signed up, while following Farmville ads in search of bonuses. So many users were scammed, in fact, that Zynga and Facebook are now involved in a related, multi-million-dollar class action lawsuit.
The question I think Apple asked themselves during the development of the iPad is this, “how can we make a larger, more general purpose computing device as easy to use as the iPhone?”. From this, there’s a grain of truth for those dismissing the iPad as just a big iPhone. I think a lot of people would like “a big iPhone”. No fuss and none of your typical computer maintenance, just apps to get things done.