Nick Freear

Obama-China inundation on Google+ is an opportunity not a threat

nick — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 01:27:57 +0000

I've come across a BBC article about Chinese internet users inundating Barack Obama's Google Plus page. Here is Obama's Google+ page. This bit of news gives me a warm feeling. Apparently "many simply voiced delight at their freedom to speak: they talked about occupying the furniture and bringing snacks and soft drinks."

Unfortunately, the BBC piece ends "it has prompted one poster to suggest that if China ever abandoned its internet restrictions, the United States would have to protect its social media with a Great Firewall of its own."

This attitude is a great pity in my view (of course it may be in jest ;) ). The Web offers a great opportunity to observe and learn about other people and cultures. But there is also the danger of a Web segregated along language and cultural lines.

One World - One Web, by psd/Paul Downey, CC-by

Back in 2005 Escondido, CA (PRWEB) reported that native English speakers were a minority on the Web. And the world has moved on from there, with the development of mobile internet in Africa and other regions.

The need for nations and indivduals to develop their foreign language learning is as great as ever. And we should continue to improve the automated translation tools, and find ways to "vote-up" and share valuable comment and contributions, particularly those in languages other than our own.

'Learn About' Fair 2012 - Learn about, discuss and discover

nick — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 16:50:33 +0000

Start: 2012-02-29 11:00

Timezone: Europe/London

Start: 2012-02-29 11:00

Timezone: Europe/London

Location

Jennie Lee BuildingMK7 6AA

United Kingdom

52° 1' 29.6904" N, 0° 42' 35.0892" W

See map: Google Maps

On Cloudworks

"The fifth 'Learn About' fair is taking place on 29th February 2012 in the Jennie Lee Building from 11:30 am - 2:30 pm with some of the fair also available online for remote participation."

Start: 2012-02-29 11:00

Timezone: Europe/London

Nomensa's open source Accessible Media Player - first look

nick — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:02:57 +0000

I was tipped off about Nomensa's player, newly open sourced (thanks Chetz), and ever curious, I thought I'd take a look.

I came across version 1 of the player last year, and I must say at the time I was a bit bemused. It seemed to be a thin wrapper around either YouTube, or the JW Player (I can't remember which), and Nomensa weren't upfront about saying so.

Note, I'm not going to go into the accessibility aspects here, but instead concentrate on how the open-source project itself is presented.

Briefly, the player itself is reasonably elegant. The control bar is fairly deep, which I like, but some may not appreciate. It could be a bit overwhelming if a number of players are presented on the same page. The icons for Play, Rewind and so on are a bit small given the size of the control bar, though the active area of the button is bigger.

And, you get the Nomensa logo... I haven't looked yet to see if there is a nomensa_branding: false option yet, or better yet, a my_logo_url: .. option!

You can play YouTube, Vimeo apparently, and self-hosted video, via jwPlayer. From memory, the jwPlayer claims to be open-source, but then its very hard (or impossible) to find out what license it is released under (yes, still the case!)

Anyway, I digress. Back to Nomensa's project (and apologies to them if any of these points are on their todo list).

Yes, they host the source code on Github - first tick (Github truly is the flavour of the moment).

My first impression was, its missing a README file - preferably one in Markdown format (README.md). A few lines about the project, who created it, copyright, the name of the open source license, credits ("We use jQuery, jQueryUI, jwPlayer... copyright.. license."), where to look for installation and configuration options etc. would be very useful. And Github presents the README marked up below the source code.

Second thought, where's the license statement..? Ah, there is a license.txt file... This doesn't look like a standard free/open source license... Wait a minute, yes its GPL version 3 ("“This License” refers to version 3 of the GNU General Public License."), without the GPL 'Preamble' and with odd formatting. A clearer copyright and license statement (including in the README) would help people find their feet.

I cloned the repository (Github's Clone in Mac option really speeds things along).

There is one examples.html file. This mixes documentation with a number of example embeds, which is confusing. I looked at the source, and cut it down from 200 lines of HTML (yes 200), to 30 in this Gist. Convert to the HTML5 doctype, remove the extraneous stuff, and it easier to see what is happening. And to start playing with the configuration (there is a version of the file with copious comments).

I suggest that examples.html is broken into multiple example files, with a separate quick start file documenting configuration options.

I came across an early problem, when the YouTube example failed to play on my local machine. A change from the file: protocol to local http: fixed this. This probably warrants a warning (first rule of software release - someone will always try a configuration you didn't think of!)

Nomensa include an example video with captions, which is obvious (given that they are an accessibility consultancy, and the play is sold as accessible), but welcome.

And there is a 22 page PDF, which seems a little excessive. Given that, some explanation around how the player is accessible wouldn't go a miss (use of HTML buttons, natural tab order, text...).

And any details of their testing regime would be a bonus. I've thought for a while that if we all took time to publish our usability/accessibility methodologies and reports it would help with education. Note, some people have - thank you!

Anyway, I hope Nomensa's project flourishes. Good luck to the Bristolians.

Now, off to fix my own open source projects...

Quick links:

* WebAIM thread
* Nomensa's news item, fixed link
* Github: nomensa / Accessible-Media-Player
* My Gist on Github

oEmbed at Dev8D 2012

nick — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:03:18 +0000

Start: 2012-02-14 09:30

End: 2012-02-16 17:00

Timezone: Europe/London

Start: 2012-02-14 09:30

End: 2012-02-16 17:00

Timezone: Europe/London

Location

University of London Students UnionWC1E 7HY

United Kingdom

51° 31' 21.6696" N, 0° 7' 52.1328" W

See map: Google Maps

I'm happy to say that I'll be going to Dev8D again this year. Dev8D is organized in part by the JISC DevCSI initiative, and is aimed at all developers and IT people in UK higher education. It is free, and an excellent training opportunity.

Unfortunately, I'll only be there on Tuesday - the opening day. I'm looking forward to the HTML5 core skills workshop, and sad to be missing my colleague, Juliette, who is co-organizing the Javascript/ jQuery workshop on Wednesday.

On Tuesday afternoon, there will be an emerging technology workshop on oEmbed - Future-proofed embedding made easy, which I am organizing.

More soon!

Test

Start: 2012-02-14 09:30

End: 2012-02-16 17:00

Timezone: Europe/London

OU web developer's coffee morning - OU player

nick — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 08:30:36 +0000

Start: 2011-12-15 10:00

Timezone: Europe/London

Start: 2011-12-15 10:00

Timezone: Europe/London

Location

The Open University Library / DigilabMK7 6AA

United Kingdom

52° 1' 29.6904" N, 0° 42' 35.0892" W

See map: Google Maps

These events are fairly informal, but some topics we may like to cover:

* What is OU player?
* What is OU embed?
* What is oEmbed?
* What are the benefits, for developers, end users etc.?
* How can you embed using these systems - in Drupal/ in Wordpress/ using Javascript/ in Moodle?
* What is the status of the project? Future plans?

Start: 2011-12-15 10:00

Timezone: Europe/London

16th Annual SEDA Conference 2011

nick — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 08:12:06 +0000

Start: 2011-11-17

End: 2011-11-18

Timezone: Europe/London

Start: 2011-11-17

End: 2011-11-18

Timezone: Europe/London

Location

United Kingdom

52° 28' 58.6596" N, 1° 53' 36.9312" W

See map: Google Maps

The Staff and Educational Development Association (SEDA).

Using Technology to Enhance Learning
17 November 2011 - 18 November 2011

Participants
"The conference will be of particular interest to all those involved in promoting effective change in HE learning, teaching and educational development. This includes:
Academic and staff developers
Lecturers and teachers in further and higher education
National and institutional teaching fellows
Heads of academic schools and academic development
Learning technologists ..."

Find out more | programme

Rebecca Galley and Nick are presenting (item '38'), "CloudEngine: creating networks for professional development and research".

Start: 2011-11-17

End: 2011-11-18

Timezone: Europe/London

The Merry Wives of Windsor

nick — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 07:49:03 +0000

Start: 2011-11-16 19:30

End: 2011-11-19 19:30

Timezone: Europe/London

Start: 2011-11-16 19:30

End: 2011-11-19 19:30

Timezone: Europe/London

Location

Chrysalis Theatre

Japonica Lane

MK15 9JY

United Kingdom

52° 3' 23.8716" N, 0° 43' 45.138" W

See map: Google Maps

The Longueville Little Theatre presents

The Merry Wives of Windsor

by William Shakespeare

Wednesday 16th – Saturday 19th November at 7.30pm

The Chrysalis, Milton Keynes

Longueville Little Theatre Company (LLTC ) have been selected as a Royal Shakespeare Company open stages co-production. The Merry Wives of Windsor is one of Shakespeare’s most popular comedies written with iconic caricatures set like a series of modern comedy sketches . So why not come along to this jaunty romp full of ripe humour.

Find out more, at www.lltc.co.uk

Start: 2011-11-16 19:30

End: 2011-11-19 19:30

Timezone: Europe/London

Moodle 2 for Teaching 4-9 Year Olds Beginner's Guide book

nick — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 17:40:42 +0000

Moodle is a virtual learning environment that is being used in more and more schools worldwide. It is ideal for teaching a younger age group as interactive lessons enable children to learn quicker and with greater ease.

Moodle 2 for Teaching 4-9 Year Olds Beginner's Guide will help you to adapt your existing lesson plans to online Moodle courses and will give you ideas to create new activities, quizzes, and puzzles to make the learning process fun and interactive for young children. More from Packt.

Language : English
Paperback : 291 pages [ 235mm x 191mm ]
Release Date : October 2011
ISBN : 1849513287
ISBN 13 : 978-1-84951-328-9
Author : Nicholas Freear
Topics and Technologies : All Books, Beginner's Guides, e-Learning, Moodle, Open Source

Moodle Calculated Objects question type

nick — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 22:31:15 +0000

Over the past 12 months I've created a number of contributed plugins for Moodle. Moodle is an open-source e-learning or virtual learning environment (VLE), that teachers, lectures and trainers can use to enhance face-to-face and blended teaching. It is also used by a number of large institutions like The Open University for distance education.

The first one I'll talk about is Calculated Objects, a Moodle question type plugin. It extends the quiz activity module and allows teachers to create questions like

  How much is {apples} + {oranges}?

.
The {wildcards}, which are taken from a fixed list are replaced with M and N images of apples and oranges respectively. It is aimed at pre/primary-school (elementary school) children (approximately aged 3-9).

The code is available via the new plugins database and Github - under the GNU General Public License. It now supports Moodle 1.9 and 2.0, and there is a French language pack (corrections welcome!) Moodle 2.1 is on my todo list.

There has been some great discussion and feedback on the Moodle forums - thanks all!

Find out more on the Wiki page and in the Readme.

This plugin features in my book, Moodle 2 for Teaching 4-9 Year Olds Beginner's Guide - published in October 2011.

OU player Why CodeIgniter?

nick — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 13:42:25 +0000

I have been asked to present the reasoning behind our choice of CodeIgniter over Drupal for the OU player/ OU embed projects.

I will argue that the OU player project provides an ideal case study for why The Open University, including the central IT providing departments should not adopt a one-size-fits-all approach to the choice of information technologies. At present, I think they are in danger of doing this. You may also be interested in Juliette Culver's post, Why we moved from Drupal to CodeIgniter, and Will Wood's post, Agile Ballooning.

First, some background. CodeIgniter is a minimal model-view-controller PHP framework. It is open source, makes full use of the object-oriented programming paradigm, offers database abstraction, an ORM (object-relational-model) layer, and various extension mechanisms including libraries, hooks and helper functions. By default, templating/ views are implemented in PHP, though an alternative templating system such as Smarty could be plugged in. There are many third-party plugins available, and it is a simple matter to plugin other libraries, for example parts of the Zend framework. As a low level framework, its benefits are a shallow learning curve, the promotion of maintainable, well-structured code, small footprint, performance and flexibility (http://codeigniter.com).

Drupal is a fully fledged content management system. It is also open-source, and implements the functions you would expect from a CMS - user registration, authentication, roles and management; content authoring and management; themes (styles/ templates); modules (plugins); an administration interface; reports and so on. There are a wide variety of third-party modules (http://drupal.org).

Arguments

Web service/ API versus content-oriented site

At its heart OU player/ OU embed is a web service/ API, with some simple demonstration and test pages.

So, fundamentally, we don’t care about managing content, which is what a content management system (CMS) like Drupal is for. As an aside, the OU podcast content is managed through a an administration interface that accompanies the public podcast web site (http://podcast.open.ac.uk).
Which parts of core Drupal would OU player use? Answer: not many.

In my estimation the following parts of Drupal would NOT be used or might need disabling:
- User registration, authentication, roles, management;
- Content authoring, management;
- Blocks;
- Themes;
- Menus would only be used for page routing;
- jQuery;
- Most of the administration interface - not used;
- Reports.
The following parts would be used to some extent:
- Modules;
- * hook_menu function - for page routing (http://api.drupal.org/api/function/hook_menu/6)
- Internationalization.
Which third-party modules would OU player use? Answer: none, or at most one or two

One of the frequently cited benefits of Drupal is the wealth of third-party modules. However, the OU player as a bespoke web-service may well not use any third-party modules in production. Alternatively, there may be a useful API helper module, and the Developer modules would probably be used in development.

The current OU player implemented in CodeIgniter uses a number of third-party libraries - including Flowplayer Flash/ Javascript, jquery-oembed and Fire PHP (http://embed.open.ac.uk/README). However, these are sourced as needed from across the web, and are not restricted to a single ecosystem - like Drupal.
Security - maintenance

Like any large, complex piece of software, Drupal is occasionally found to contain security vulnerabilities (note, not a criticism of Drupal at all). Several years after its initial release, there still appear to be 2-3 security updates for the core of Drupal 6 per year. Although much of the Drupal functionality would not be used (see above point), there would still be pressure to update to the latest version of Drupal each time.

By contrast, the core of CodeIgniter, as a small and low-level framework without features like user-authentication and content management, suffers much less from security bugs. It is anticipated that the CodeIgniter core would need to be upgraded once or twice during the life of the OU player.
Performance

Performance is very important for the OU player - it will be embedded in pages served by our Moodle-based VLE, OpenLearn and a lot of Drupal-powered sites. And it must not degrade the user-experience where its embedded.

A key differentiator for CodeIgniter and Drupal is, by default Drupal stores all its configuration, including page routing in a database, while CodeIgniter stores its configuration in PHP scripts. For a typical content-based site, Drupal can offer great flexibility. However for a web service, which as we have discussed would only use a few parts of Drupal this is a definite cost.

Checking which modules are enabled, and performing page routing using Drupal menus would presumably necessitate at least two database queries, maybe more. And this is before you have factored in queries that are specific to the OU player application.

By contrast, in CodeIgniter you have fine-grained control over each database query. And if your application is simply a front-end to other web services/ data feeds - which the OU player may become - why, you can disable the database layer entirely.
Installation and configuration

Drupal includes an installer to create the necessary database tables. Following installation there is often a period of manual configuration using Drupal’s extensive administration interface. This involves enabling and disabling core and third-party modules, enabling a theme and so on. Alternatively, a bare database, containing the configuration but no content could be packaged as part of the installation.

CodeIgniter stores its configuration in PHP scripts, and is more closely tied to the specific application. So the amount of configuration can be minimized. This simplifies configuration, making it easier to document and easier for a third party to install.
Database abstraction

At least as far back as CodeIgniter 1.7 (and the OU player use CI 2.0), CodeIgniter’s database abstraction layer has contained drivers for MySQL, PostgreSQL, MSSQL, Oracle, ODBC and sqllite (drivers in the CodeIgniter-reactor repository on Bitbucket).
In contrast, the database abstraction layer in Drupal 6 only appears to work with MySQL and PostgreSQL, with caveats documented for Postgres (http://drupal.org/requirements#database). Drupal 7 adds support for MSSQL, SQL light and Oracle, primarily via third-party modules (http://drupal.org/project/sqlsrv).

As far as I know, at present our central IT service mostly supports Drupal 6-based sites (presumably there is a migration plan for Drupal 7, dependent on support for the OU’s supported list of third-party modules). And yet central IT is trying to discourage the use of MySQL - favouring MSSQL and Oracle.
We already use it

The Institute of Educational Technology at the OU uses CodeIgniter for Cloudworks/ CloudEngine, PePLE, and MALT Wiki - the prototype for OU player/ OU embed.

We also use Drupal, for iSpot, OLnet (now maintained in KMi), DISCO, our internal bug/issue tracker, IET-public (hosted by central IT), the IET intranet, and we have plans to use Drupal for a number of new/ re-worked web sites.

Conclusion

In this article we have seen how the OU player benefits from using a low-level framework such as CodeIgniter. If implemented in Drupal, the player would not take advantage of many of the benefits of Drupal, and would be subject to a number of the dis-advantages.

It is in all our interests to not have a proliferation of technologies that need ongoing maintenance and support. At the same time though, there will be cases like the OU player where fine-grained and low-level control is needed.

The approach we are adopting in IET is to use Drupal where possible for straightforward content-driven sites. For projects where we want more fine-grained control, particularly over social functionality (eg. Cloudworks), or Drupal is not a good fit (OU player) we use a low-level framework.

(Draft blog post, 14 August.)

OU player - seeking testers

nick — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 23:33:48 +0000

Between the Wednesday 8th and 13th of June we are conducting usability and accessibility testing for the OU media player project, at The Open University's campus in Milton Keynes.

We are seeking test subjects for 1 to 1.5 hours testing. Travel expenses and a fee will be paid. Anyone can come forward, including those who are deaf or hard of hearing, those who have dyslexia and those who use a screen reader.

Email me N.D.Freear AT open.ac.uk if you are interested.

Thanks, Nick

e-access 11 conference

nick — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 23:26:54 +0000

Start: 2011-06-28 09:00

Timezone: Europe/London

Start: 2011-06-28 09:00

Timezone: Europe/London

Location

1 Victoria Street

SW1H 0ET

United Kingdom

51° 29' 51.4968" N, 0° 8' 5.478" W

See map: Google Maps

Dan Jellinek, founder of Headstar and Nigel Lewis, Chief Executive of AbilityNet, are co-chairing this year's conference. They have some great speakers lined up to discuss the state of digital inclusion and accessibility. Ed Vaizey, Minister for Communication, Culture and the Creative Industries is giving the keynote. Find out more at,

www.headstar.com / eaccess11

I will be attending and bending everyone's ear about CloudEngine and the OU's media player.

And I hope to live blog, on Cloudworks

See you there!

Start: 2011-06-28 09:00

Timezone: Europe/London

Captioned video search

nick — Sat, 21 May 2011 14:12:03 +0000

This is an experiment to embed a Google Custom search in a page. Results are returned for dotSUB.com and Universalsubtitles.org.

Enjoy! (May 2011)

Browser search plugins

nick — Fri, 06 May 2011 21:25:28 +0000

In spare moments in the past few weeks I've been revisiting browser search plugins. I've created plugins for CloudEngine/ Cloudworks, iSpot, the Journal of Interactive Media in Education, and The Open University. I thought I'd jot down what they are, why they're useful and how I'm integrating them into my projects.

When you use browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer you may notice the search box next to the browser's address bar (in Chrome it's combined with the address bar, as the omni-bar). This allows you to search directly in, for example, Google without visiting the Google site first. That, in short, is a browser search plugin. Firefox typically comes installed with a number including ones for Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia and Bing.

And, it's fairly easy to write a plugin for your own site, based on the OpenSearch description format, a specification for an XML file. This will make it easier to search your site and encourage people to come back.

Pre-requisites for a search plugin include interesting content to search, and a search function for your site. If you don't have your own search, you can always use Google Custom Search to create a search-engine.

At the heart of the plugin XML is a template for the search URL, as shown in the code snippet below. The {searchTerm} placeholder will be replaced with your query-text when you run a search. Follow the tips from Mozilla to create the plugin. Remember to use your site's favicon and so on.

<?xml ...?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns=... >
    <ShortName> Cloudworks </ShortName>

    <Url type="text/html" template="http://cloudworks.ac.uk/search/result?q={searchTerms}" />
    ...
</OpenSearchDescription>

The next stage is to test it out. Create a HTML file that refers to your plugin XML like so:

<link
    rel="search"
    type="application/opensearchdescription+xml"
    title="MY SEARCH"
    href="local/opensearch_desc.xml" />

As shown in the screen shot at the top, when you view a HTML page containing the search auto-discovery <link> in Firefox you will have the opportunity to install the plugin.

So, you've tested the plugin. What next? To allow others to use the plugin submit it to the Mycroft search plugin database. For example, here are plugins for searching the Moodle forums, docs, code etc.

Mycroft is great, but you'll also want to integrate the plugin in your own site. Use the auto-discovery <link> above for compatibility with Firefox. For Internet Explorer and to make the plugin more visible consider some Javascript like the snippet below. This is a jQuery script to detect if the browser supports OpenSearch-based plugins. It adds a <button on the page corresponding to each search <link>.

There is an OpenSearch plugin for Drupal, and the snippet above can be used directly in a custom Drupal block - see the buttons at the bottom of this page. The plugins support Firefox, Internet Explorer and the Chrome browser.

We'll be rolling out a search plugin for Cloudworks in the next week. And there are more on Mycroft.

I end by pointing to the tools I used while writing the plugins - Dropbox, Bitbucket and Github Gists. You can get started just using a browser, text editor, Google Custom Search and Mycroft.

Happy searching!

OU embed proposal

nick — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 11:06:36 +0000

I've proposed a mini-project here, for IET to host an experimental embedding service on behalf of The Open University. This will serve a similar purpose to Embed.ly (api.embed.ly) and Oohembed (oohembed.com), and act as a proxy on behalf of other embed or service providers, for example, YouTube, LAMS, Prezi and Google Docs forms.

The embedding service will provide an oEmbed interface (oembed.com), compatible with Wordpress 2.9+, jQuery, Drupal and other software. It will provide embeds:

That are accessible to those with disabilities,
That are usable on mobiles and tablet devices, eg. iPad,
On behalf of niche services, eg. LAMS,
That incorporate analytics/ tracking, eg. Google Analytics, Piwik.

The four points above are what will differentiate the service from Embed.ly and Oohembed.

Proposed version 1 services: YouTube, LAMS, Prezi, Google Docs forms (priorities for OULDI).
Likely version 2 services: Mathtran.org (OU), Cohere.open.ac.uk (OU), MIT Scratch.
Relates to: this project will build on my prototype at Maltwiki.org, and work through OLnet. It relates to OULDI/Cloudworks, and the OU media player project.
Use: I envisage that the service will be used by OU and third-party blogs and web sites. I will be proposing a Moodle filter plugin for oEmbed.

A note on terms and conditions

There will be terms and conditions that state that the OU makes no claims on the intellectual property of service providers like YouTube and Prezi or their contributors. We simply provide a conduit, and act on behalf of the service providers. They should also state that we do NOT store content or software (eg. Flash) from the service providers, except where the content is released under a permissive license (eg. LAMS sequences are Creative Commons licensed, so we may cache copies of LAMS SVG files).

More soon! Feedback welcome.

Creative Commons Licenses for software - just say "NO"

nick — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 21:52:36 +0000

Two point before I start:

I'm not a lawyer, so this blog post does not constitute legal advice. If you need help, contact a lawyer who specializes in software and content licensing. I accept no liability...
I'm absolutely not against Creative Commons Licenses, for content. Indeed on recent projects I've made extensive use of CC licensed text, images and so on, and this blog is CC licensed. Just not for software...

So, you've written some software and decided to share it with others - congratulations! You may be contemplating licensing it with one of the range of Creative Commons Licenses... Hold on! In this blog post, I'll explain why this is a really bad idea, both for you and the community. And I'll hopefully dispel some myths and point you to other sources of information.

The short answer is, if you use a Creative Commons License your software probably won't be free software/ open source software, and therefore won't be re-usable by others including developers (which is what you want right?) The Creative Commons foundation themselves say say you shouldn't use CC for software. Why?

Creative Commons ??-NonCommercial-?? - probably not what you meant

I'm going to take as my example the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License, which is a common combination, and one that I've seen used for software. You may be considering a "NonCommercial" license, because you don't want others to make a fortune by exploiting your software. Fair enough.

However, there are two problems with this premise. Firstly, what do you and I mean by commercial exactly? For instance, I work in a university in the United Kingdom, which has been mostly publicly funded (for example by government funding of student places, and research funding). But we like all other universities receive other funding from not-for profit foundations, private companies, and so on. Increasingly, we are funded by student fees... Then there are private schools and other examples. Working out whether certain organizations and contexts are absolutely non-commercial is a mine-field. And I assume you wouldn't mind bodies like universities using your software...

The other issue is compatibility with other free/open source software licenses. Commonly used licenses like the GNU General Public License (GPL) (the most common, used for about 60% of free software, including the GNU/Linux operating system, etc.), 2-clause BSD, Apache and MIT/XFree are not anti-commercial. Indeed, they expressly allow you to use and modify the software in any context. So, a license which includes a non-commercial clause is not compatible...

A digression - free software/ open source business models

You may be surprised that the GPL is not anti-commercial. How can you make money if you can't charge for software? The GPL actually allows you to charge for distribution of the software, but not for the software itself. So in principle, you can bundle some software like Linux on a CD or DVD and sell it - and people do. Obviously with a free market, and the ubiquity of the Internet, the cost of free software distributions is driven down...

More intriguing is the business model of software communities like Moodle (one that I know quite well). Moodle is a virtual learning environment, or e-learning software that is used by schools, colleges and universities around the world. It is free/open source and distributed under the GPL. However, the name Moodle is trademarked, and while Moodle's trademark license allows us to use the name Moodle in non-commercial contexts (including to provide courses and write blogs!), you must seek permission if you wish to use the name for commercial purpose, such as providing Moodle hosting, support or development services.

And many businesses who provide these services pay the Moodle Trust for the privilege. This helps keep servers running, supports other running costs and helps pay for a small subset of the core developers. Also, large organizations, like Microsoft and The Open University, fund the development of new features in core Moodle. This and similar models for a lot of software including Drupal, Linux (eg. Redhat) and Firefox makes these software developments and communities sustainable.

I've digressed enough...

Access to source code is paramount

Free software definition: "The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this."

The rationale from Open source definition, point 2 of 10 says "Rationale: We require access to un-obfuscated source code because you can't evolve programs without modifying them. Since our purpose is to make evolution easy, we require that modification be made easy."

Also, there are the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) - point 2 of 10.

So for example, Flash should be distributed in source and compiled form, as Duncan Keith does through Subtangent -- dual licensed under the GPL (great!), and the Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial - ShareAlike 1.0 licence (not so good).

Creative Commons ??-ShareAlike, creates more incompatibilities

Another common clause in Creative Commons Licenses is the ShareAlike one. This says, that you can re-distribute, but only under precisely the same terms/ license. This makes for example the CC-BY-NC-SA a so-called "viral" license.

More...

GPL-compatibility, license proliferation

To come...

Learn About Fair 2011

nick — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 17:13:22 +0000

Start: 2011-03-30 11:30

End: 2011-03-30 14:30

Timezone: Europe/London

Start: 2011-03-30 11:30

End: 2011-03-30 14:30

Timezone: Europe/London

Location

Jennie Lee Building Walton Hall

MK7 6AA

United Kingdom

52° 1' 29.0028" N, 0° 42' 24.9228" W

See map: Google Maps

Learn About Fair, on Cloudworks

Start: 2011-03-30 11:30

End: 2011-03-30 14:30

Timezone: Europe/London

OU Choir concert: Ein deutsches Requiem

nick — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 17:05:59 +0000

Start: 2011-04-07 12:45

Timezone: Europe/London

Start: 2011-04-07 12:45

Timezone: Europe/London

Location

Hub Theatre

Walton Hall

MK7 6AA

United Kingdom

52° 1' 26.4" N, 0° 42' 32.4" W

See map: Google Maps

Johannes Brahms

Ein
deutsches
Requiem

Angela Caesar · soprano

David Kirby-Ashmore · baritone

John Byron and Anna Le Har · piano duet

Bill Strang · conductor

Thursday 7 April 2011 · 12:45pm - 2pm
Please note the earlier starting time

Admission free
All welcome

The Open University Choir · A German Requiem, Brahms, on Wikipedia

Start: 2011-04-07 12:45

Timezone: Europe/London

Open source at the OU

nick — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 11:33:38 +0000

A colleague of mine asked me the other day at Dev8D if there was a list of all of The Open University's free/ open source contributions. I had to say that as far I knew there wasn't.

So, I've started this list on Delicious, using the tags ou opensource project. Note, I have also added tags for license where I can find one (eg. gpl for GNU General Public License), OU department (lts), technologies (svn, java) and wider projects (moodle).

Note that the tag ou does not necessarily imply that The Open University is the founding, sole, or main contributor to a project!

Feel free to add anything that I've missed. It's interesting to see what licenses we're using, what projects we're contributing a lot to (Moodle fairly obviously!) and so on. Enjoy...!

Direct messaging & CloudEngine 1.1.0 beta

nick — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 18:02:53 +0000

I’m happy to say that last Wednesday (2nd February) my colleague Richard Lovelock put the new direct messaging function live on Cloudworks. It is something that Cloudworks users have requested and we have wanted for a while. Despite a quiet launch, it has already been taken up by the Cloudworks community. And, we’re excited about its potential for fostering private discussions that can lead on to public Clouds and Cloudscapes.

Read the blog post on the CloudEngine blog, and get CloudEngine.

OU media player project

nick — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 14:09:42 +0000

Tony Hirst has just blogged about the Office for Disability Issues new accessible media player AKA the "Most Accessible Media Player on the Web". Both he and Will Woods have alluded to work that The Open University is undertaking. I thought I'd fill in the gaps.

The OU is at the start of a 6 month development to create a multimedia player that (we hope):

Will be an "attractive" player that the average designer/ blogger would be happy to use on their site.
Can be used in a variety of contexts - our Moodle-based virtual learning environment, OpenLearn, OU-Drupal sites, blogs, Cloudworks...
Will deliver content mostly from the OU podcast site in the contexts mentioned above.
Will be accessible to users with disabilities - both in terms of control, and display of alternatives like transcripts and captions.
Usable on a variety of devices, including mobiles and tablets.
Will be delivered in a maintainable way.

Taking points 1 and 2 together, my personal mantra is "If its accessible, but not attractive then we haven't succeeded". So we are talking unobtrusive accessibility.

Taking the final point regarding delivery. The main method for embedding the player, will be using a REST-ful web service, based on the oEmbed specification. This service is available for many providers, including YouTube, Flickr, Slideshare, Vimeo... See the oohEmbed and Embedly sites. This will be transparent to the end-user and the author of content. An author on a Wordpress blog will merely type something like:

 [embed] http://podcast.open.ac.uk/pod/mst209-fun-of-the-fair#079b8e506c [/embed]

The blog software will handle the rest. oEmbed is used or consumed by various software/sites, including Wordpress 2.9 onwards, the new Twitter, Ars Technica, StatusNet, and our own Cloudworks/ CloudEngine. Many multimedia providers can be plugged in with little effort, a great benefit, so authors will be able to embed from YouTube, Flickr and OU-podcast in the same way. The promotion of a service-based approach does not preclude bloggers from using conventional embed codes/snippets.

The player itself will probably be Flash-based on desktops, and will fallback to HTML5 for tablets and mobiles. This is dictated by the encoding infrastructure on the podcast site, and the current state of the various video and audio codecs.

The controls/ buttons for the player will be HTML and Javascript-based, not Flash-based. This follows examples like Chris Heilmann's Easy YouTube player, and builds on my own MALT Wiki prototype (MALT Wiki is used by Cloudworks, and is oEmbed-based).

We will be using third-party Flash and Javascript components where possible, and implementing the player and web service.

As to the evaluations that we have done. Back in March 2009, I evaluated players including YouTube, Easy YouTube, jwPlayer, NCAM's ccPlayer and Flowplayer. See slide 18 of this presentation and this spreadsheet. I tested with screen readers (JAWS, and NVDA), and also compared APIs for the players (how "scriptable" they were), licenses and so on.

As part of the current player project I wrote a design brief with screen shots of various existing players outside and inside the OU. This included YouTube, EasyYouTube and the ODI media player - a late addition. It was not an evaluation per se. It instead presented what was out there - we may want to use some features, we may not.

In the current project plan, we have built in accessibility testing, using expert evaluation. And we hope to do testing with real users too, using the Jennie Lee laboratories.

I'll conclude by saying that we hope the player will be accessible and will meet the needs of authors/ bloggers and end users. I don't think we will claim to be "the most accessible player on the Web". After all that sets you up for a world of criticism!

Feedback and ideas are as ever welcome.

The King's Speech portrays stammering well

nick — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 23:02:02 +0000

I've just taken the afternoon off with my wife to see The King's Speech. It's a movie that I highly recommend. As a stammerer myself, I found that I very much lived the film.

Be warned, spoilers follow!

The film opens with Prince Albert (Colin Firth), second in line to the throne, preparing to give a speech to close the 1924 Empire Exhibition. He must speak in front of the large crowd at Wembley, and his address is transmitted live around the world on the new wireless radio. He struggles to start the speech, and continues to stammer (with a lot of long and silent "blocks"). Colin Firth conveys this upsetting, traumatic and frustrating experience well, so that I think many in the cinema audience would have shared the discomfort of the crowds watching in the film.

We continue with the Prince, accompanied by Princess Elizabeth his wife (Helena Bonham Carter), trying yet another form of speech therapy, which consists of smoking and trying to talk with a mouthful of marbles. The speech therapist states that this method worked for Demosthenes, to which the princess asks (para-phrasing), "has there been no progress since Ancient Greece?" A pertinent question, which characterizes the long journey we have taken and are still on to understand the complex and varied condition that we call a stammer (or stutter).

Prince Albert gives up the marbles in disgust, and vows not to try speech therapy again. However, his wife is recommended to an unconventional Antipodean speech therapist, Lionel Loge (Geoffrey Rush). She persuades the prince to give it a go. Lionel tries to investigate the private live of the Prince and the Royal Family, but is asked to simply treat the "mechanics" of the stammer. Initially he complies. So starts a long and tough regime of breathing, speech and relaxation exercises. They initially meet with some success, though when events conspire to put pressure on the Prince, the hard work seems to be undone.

The Prince is bullied by his father, King George V into practicing a Christmas radio address. I shared Prince Albert's repressed anger and hurt at his rough treatment at the hands of his father (I told you I lived it!) There are further scenes where Prince Edward mocks and teases his younger brother for stammering.

Upon the death of the old King, and the abdication of his older brother, Prince Albert must become King against his will. He has fallen out with Lionel, but at this moment of crisis, he again turns to his speech therapist, to help him through the Coronation. We see the King in despair at the burden put on his shoulders and his perceived lack of skills for the job. At this point I shed tears too.

The climax of the film is the outbreak of the Second World War, and the long radio address that the new King, George VI must give live and at short notice. By using the relaxation techniques, and with the guidance of Lionel, the King gives a very moving and effective speech. The blocks (stammers) are turned into pauses, and the King speaks slowly by necessity, which suits the serious subject. He finally starts to prove to himself that he is equipped for his new role.

The film is interesting on many fronts. Lionel is eventually able to probe the King's childhood and youth, full of repression, teasing, loneliness and the death of his younger brother. I came away with a lot of sympathy for the constraints and responsibilities faced by royalty, for all their privileges. And we experience the inner workings of a Royal Family that is making a shaky transition from the old to the new. We see the unconventional relationship between the straight-talking and unconventional Logue, and the Establishment. There is the initially uncomfortable relationship between the therapist Logue and his client, which eventually leads to a close and trusting friendship. There is also the significant backdrop of the build up to World War. At one point, we are invited to compare the King's lack of oratory skills with his contemporaries Hitler and Churchill (though by the end of the film, the balance changes somewhat).

It is important to note that the King is not "cured" of his stammer. Norbert Liekfeldt, Chief Executive of the British Stammering Association puts it well, "you can see the King coming to an arrangement with his stammering". Colin Firth gives a very authentic portrayal of what it means to stammer. And, though we can't be certain about all the detail, Lionel Logue's treatment, which combines psychology with physiology seems to have been revolutionary for its time.

This blog post needs a bit more work. It's not as "personal" as I'd like. Anyway, I'm following my typical policy of just putting it out here regardless. I should note that while my family has been much more supportive of me, and I have been and am fortunate in my friends, I do share some common experiences with the King. In particular, I went through some "alternative" treatments for my stammer, namely hypnosis, and drama-based relaxation techniques. These weren't as outlandish as the marbles, but in a similar fashion they dealt with the surface symptoms of a stammer, not the causes. I have also had the similar experience of repressed emotions, and a long journey to come to terms with my stammer. The most significant help I received was group therapy, while at University, at the Queen Elizabeth hospital Birmingham (c. 1999).

I came away from the film emotionally drained but uplifted. Though the subjects of the film are serious, the performances throughout are very entertaining, with effective use of comedy to lighten the mood and to make many significant points. Colin Firth's portrayal of George VI is a stand-out performance. The result for me was completely immersive and I would totally recommend this film.

The King's Speech

nick — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 17:21:03 +0000

The movie, The King's Speech is out this Friday 7 January in the UK.

Video trailer on YouTube

It tells the story of Prince Albert's attempts to come to terms with his stammer and the intervention of Lionel Logue as Albert's speech therapist. Albert becomes King George VI on the abdication of his brother Edward. With the outbreak of the Second World War the King must give many important speeches on the radio.

From all that I've heard, I would encourage you to go and see the film. It portrays stammering (stuttering) in a positive light and is entertaining and I hope thought-provoking.

Also, tell your friends about it, and share some love with the British Stammering Association on Facebook.

Happy New Year!

CloudEngine v1.0.1

nick — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 16:56:37 +0000

It’s a new year, and we have an updated version of CloudEngine for you, version 1.0.1. Actually, it’s not that new, as it was released at the end of November, but things crop up.

Why we chose Mercurial and Bitbucket

nick — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 12:14:29 +0000

Since the start of October we have been using Bitbucket to host the CloudEngine project. Almost as soon as we made the decision to use Bitbucket, people have asked why? So, I thought I’d reproduce an email I wrote to colleagues then. At the end I’ve noted how I feel about the decision two months on…

Read the full post, why we chose Mercurial and Bitbucket.

Nick Freear

Obama-China inundation on Google+ is an opportunity not a threat

'Learn About' Fair 2012 - Learn about, discuss and discover

Location

Nomensa's open source Accessible Media Player - first look

oEmbed at Dev8D 2012

Location

OU web developer's coffee morning - OU player

Location

16th Annual SEDA Conference 2011

Location

The Merry Wives of Windsor

Location

The Longueville Little Theatre presents

The Merry Wives of Windsor

Moodle 2 for Teaching 4-9 Year Olds Beginner's Guide book

Moodle Calculated Objects question type

OU player Why CodeIgniter?

Arguments

Web service/ API versus content-oriented site

Which parts of core Drupal would OU player use? Answer: not many.

Which third-party modules would OU player use? Answer: none, or at most one or two

Security - maintenance

Performance

Installation and configuration

Database abstraction

We already use it

Conclusion

OU player - seeking testers

e-access 11 conference

Location

Captioned video search

Browser search plugins

OU embed proposal

Creative Commons Licenses for software - just say "NO"

Creative Commons ??-NonCommercial-?? - probably not what you meant

A digression - free software/ open source business models

Access to source code is paramount

Creative Commons ??-ShareAlike, creates more incompatibilities

GPL-compatibility, license proliferation

Learn About Fair 2011

Location

OU Choir concert: Ein deutsches Requiem

Location

Ein deutsches Requiem

Open source at the OU

Direct messaging & CloudEngine 1.1.0 beta

OU media player project

The King's Speech portrays stammering well

Links

The King's Speech

CloudEngine v1.0.1

Why we chose Mercurial and Bitbucket

Ein
deutsches
Requiem