It’s always interesting to see “business” people getting things right about the Free/Open Source world. For example, the last month Boulder Open Coffee Club was dedicated to “open source issues that developers face”. The NVA blog contains a summary of the recommendations. Basically, it is: " know the licenses you are using and what you can(’t) do with them". And AskTheVC gives links to Lawrence Rosen’s book: " Open Source Licensing" (not read yet, maybe for a future post). They also link to a Boulder’s company ( Openlogic) that helps you to maximize returns, minimize risks and accelerate innovation with Open Source (all keywords you should have in a business plan! ;-)). They also have some resources about Open Source for businesses. ...

Brad Burnham recently wrote a post on the editorial process on the web, where the work happens after the publish button is pushed, not before it. It’s a report on a forum session and you can read some stakeholders opinions in the post. There are a serie of good points in the post and comments but, imho, there are also some questions left unanswered. Basically, blog posts are edited after their publication: if I wrote something wrong, people will tend to post comments correcting what is wrong. That’s why Robert Scoble doesn’t agree with Andrew Keen when the latter argued that “the recent rise of user generated content is lowering the overall quality of programming on the web”. I think there is a “population effect”: the more visitors you have, the more edition and discussions you can have. ...

I am wondering if VoIP is reliable … Since a few weeks, the university is deploying VoIP phones in the whole campus. The good thing is that everything was apparently planned since a long time: cables were already there, just next to the regular IP cables. But since then, some problems are occurring … No connection to the “old” phone network, a whole morning without phone due to “a problem in the software controlling one of the infrastructure device”, … A few days ago, I even received an e-mail from the lab computer specialist telling all the scientists how to reset the lab firewall in case it blocks all the IP+Voice communications (for an unknown reason). I am not criticizing the deployment model of this particular case but I’m wondering how reliable is VoIP … ...

I’m back from an excellent trip to Baltimore and Washington. Now, I’m trying to cope with the jet lag and the huge amount of work left here. :-)

Image seen on a post on the Hyper Dog Blog: Fortunately, the content was still longer than the right pile and bottom line of buttons. Can’t someone create a “social network of social networks” (and call it “Web 3.0” of course) to help those poor recognition-hungry-bloggers? ;-)

“Que du bonheur” (French) can be translated into “Pure Happiness”. I found this ad for a hotel/casino on the way back from Luxembourg where I won the best poster award at the Benelux Sleep Congress 2007. So, I’m really happy! :-D The winning poster is the one on the left, on the photo above. The poster on the right was about Gemvid and was ranked second :-)

Nandini published her second scientific paper in Journal of Proteome Research and it was just published “ahead of print” (i.e. in electronic version before the “official”, paper version). It’s: Ruelle V., Falisse-Poirrier N., Elmoualij B., Zorzi D., Pierard O., Heinen E., Pauw ED. and Zorzi W.: " An Immuno-PF2D-MS/MS Proteomic Approach for Bacterial Antigenic Characterization: To Bacillus and Beyond" J Proteome Res., e-pub ahead of print. PubMed ID: 17488104 DOI: 10.1021/pr060661g Congratulations! :-) ...

A small post from the Benelux Sleep Congress 2007 (where they left two unprotected wifi networks near and in the congress hall :-) ). It’s mainly a medical congress but I had very interesting discussions with, a.o., Prof. Peter Meerlo and Dr. Michel Cramer Bornemann, mainly about Gemvid and the proteomic aspect of my Ph.D. Let’s see what can I do with all these contacts … Otherwise, the Domaine Thermal of Mondorf-les-Bains is a beautiful place (ok, it’s not as natural as landscapes aroung the highway and national roads going to Luxembourg). Unfortunately, I left my camera at home (and it’s really a stupid decision taken in this morning rush).

This morning, I read Tim Anderson’s " Why Microsoft abandoned Visual Basic 6.0 in favour of Visual Basic .NET". While reading his article, I only had one idea in mind: this is another example of the importance of free and open source software. If you are not a programmer, you don’t need to read the remainder of this post; software users have many other reasons to prefer free software over closed-source software (but it’s not the subject of this post). ...

In " Patenting the obvious?" ( pdf), you’ll read about people fighting against a patent on methods for making embryonic stem cells from primates. I won’t go into the details about the patent in itself (although I think that there shouldn’t be any patent based on or containing living “things” or part of it). I just want to share my surprise when I read this (emphasis is mine): In its 2 April statement, the patent office said that it accepted these arguments, and intended to revoke the patents. WARF has until June to respond to the decision, and if it is unhappy with the outcome, it can then initiate an appeal. The patents will be treated as valid until the re-examination process is complete — that is, until WARF’s response and the possible appeal have concluded. That could take years. ...