IO launches an OpenStack cloud running on open source servers

~~~Awesome. •••Felicia

Gigaom

Modular data center expert IO is getting into the cloud provider business, launching a new service called IO.Cloud that’s built using Open Compute server designs and runs the OpenStack cloud computing operating system.

That’s a lot of open source, but the company seems to think it’s necessary. According to the IO.Cloud website: “IO.Cloud is built on Open Compute because it provides our engineers with the flexibility to configure and optimize the hardware specifically for scale cloud deployments … IO.Cloud uses OpenStack Cloud components that are interoperable and designed to support standardized hardware implementations.”

IO is pitching IO.Cloud as an enterprise cloud offering, and if it plans to legitimately compete against larger cloud providers for those workloads, the company and its cloud can use any advantages they can get. IO.Cloud is available in hosted and on-premises versions, and the Open Compute hardware almost certainly will let IO operate its public cloud infrastructure more efficiently, as well…

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C3PO and Digital Curation

I recently took some time to learn more about content profiling. It is very important to me to keep my digital skill set sharp and so I enrolled in a WebEx virtual training out of the United Kingdom. The training was on May 31 at 13:00 BST/14:00 CET (UK time), which meant I needed to be logged in by 5:30am (US/NM time). The training started at 6:00am in my time zone and ended at 7:00am. It was a Friday, so after several cups of coffee and a brain loaded with information, I made my way into work. I didn’t want to miss taking taking a closer look at C3PO, a contemporary tool being used for digital curation (collection, management and preservation).

~~My true loves… My computers.~~
~~~Call this cross-platform and ready for training!~~~

This digital tool is supported by the Information and Software Engineering Group (IFS), Institute of Software Technology and Interactive Systems (ISIS), and the Vienna University of Technology in Austria. C3PO was developed by Petar Petrov of Creative Pragmatics. Petrov also delivered the virtual training titled C3PO: An Introduction to Content Profiling. Petrov studied Business Informatics and Software Engineering. The system he has developed addresses content profiling in three steps: the gathering of metadata; data processing and aggregation; and metadata analysis.

~~One of Petar Petrov’s presentation slides.~~

• C3PO is for content and planning- content means- personal content (documents etc.), cultural heritage (libraries, museums, archives, etc.) scientific data and government documents.
• He says that the “future growth” of what happens in an “internet minute” is “staggering.” The question is “what do we preserve because we can’t preserve all of it. We need to evaluate what we can preserve.”
• Preservation planning- identifying risks to digital objects and developing a preservation plan. This should describe content and describe how you will go about preserving that using a certain digital repository or software.
• Plato~ supports the Preservation Planning Workflow. It was developed by the University of Technology in Vienna. This program will help through the process and enable the development of a real preservation plan.
• Discussed how objects, technology, usage criteria, policies, and actions affect preservation environments.
• Scout~ monitors interesting aspects of the world, notifies you when a certain important event happens, helps you know when you should reevaluate your preservation plan (format migration, current tools, trend watch on preservation and migration tools, notifications come through for a redeploy of software).
• Content profiling~ Property (format), FileA (PDF 1.2), FileB (PDF 1.2), FileC (PDF 1.4). Example about which are similar. Not A and B, but a closer look at the metadata is required. After looking at page count, encryption, file size, and if the files are valid and well-formed it can then be determined which files are most similar. In preservation planning, this is a necessary evaluation. It is difficult to do this both on a large scale and in detail. We need to take more data out of the digital repository and secure a data characterization process to aggregate the data.
• “Heterogeneity: one size does not fit all”
• He discussed how to perform a sample selection based on the metadata to experiment on.
• QA and limitations~ “how do you know if your content profile is good or no good?” You need to understand the tools which provide the metadata so that your characterization data is clean and your content profiles are good.
• C3PO~ how does it work? What does it do? This software merges several command line tools into one tool. This is one tool that does many things that several tools can do. Call it the “Swiss Army Knife of tools.”
• v0.3.0~ it’s a Command Line Application and a Web Application. It is an open source Mongo Database and it stores documents differently than a traditional database. It uses Java technology and processes FITS (and Tika) files, stores them in the document store, XML Profiling and CSV Export. It can process close to 1 million (945699) objects in about 2 hours (1hr48m) and can define profiles in 12m. The web application provides an overview of metadata, to browse, filter, sample and export metadata.
• Hands on C3PO demonstration~ very useful for data sampling. He started a terminal window to use the command line version of C3PO. He was demonstrating on about 2,000 objects. He ingested data using commands into the metadata database. He was then able to export the metadata to Excel for further sorting options and to detect problems with files and metadata. The web based app provides statistics using bar graphs of mime types, format versions, object validity, if the objects are well-formed, sizes.
  
• Object can be filtered by format and other things to see detailed and regenerated tools to analyze particular sets of objects. For example you can see all “invalid PDFs.” You can then export any generated profiles to Plato to help you develop a preservation plan. He said “content profiling will never be completely solved, we can only improve the process.”
  

Open Source Blogging Platform WordPress Turns Ten, And Its Community Gets To Blow The Candles Out

I ❤ Open Source!!!

~~~~Felicia

The Knowledge Martyr~ Aaron Swartz

~RIP Aaron Swartz~
May you reach binary heaven.

 

“Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world’s entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations.”

~~~Aaron Swartz
Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto (2008)

Frank Kingdom once said that “questions are the creative acts of intelligence.” His words are so powerful. Tonight I was going to post about something else, but when I signed on to the internet, I learned about a tragedy. I am saddened to learn that one of the greatest pioneers of the open movement has paid the ultimate price in his quest for knowledge.

Aaron Swartz the founder of Demand Progress, paid with his life on Friday. The 26 year old was just a baby in the world of technology. He was facing federal charges, close to 40 years in prison, and at least a million dollars in fines for his part in a political movement demanding the freedom of information. In the words of Herodotus,”this is the bitterest pain among men, to have much knowledge but no power.”

The young genius is said to have killed himself, but I can’t help but wonder if that’s true. If information and knowledge is power, how much can you demand before the powers that be make sure you disappear? I used the digital library JSTOR (Journal Storage) just yesterday to write my last post Seduce the Moon. Swartz has hacked that library and some close to him say he was depressed about the decisions he made.

As a hero, Swartz authored the Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto. He didn’t sign the manifesto because he did not believe in the ownership of information. Swartz called it “outrageous” and “unacceptable” that scientific articles are provided “to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to children in the Global South.” If you have never read or do not know of this manifesto, I would encourage you to read it.

The dark haired champion said “we need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that’s out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access.”

He has been called a political martyr, a hacktivist, a web genius, a felon, a committed liberator of information, a hero, a distinguished hacker, a pioneer, and an open access guerrilla. Swartz was all of those things~ though I think he was indeed a felon with good intentions. He was more brave than I. May he rest in peace among the 1z and 0z. May his soul reach binary heaven where knowledge is freely available.

Drafting “Midnight”

Mar~ I love, love, love you gurl! Today you gave me just what I was looking for. After we talked about memorable movie quotes and I looked at the list you sent me, my ideas started flowing like lava. I ended up going with the Dracula sound clips. Nice!! I am saving the best one (about the ocean) for a slow mix set. Why didn’t I think of that movie?! You lil vamp you! Tonight I drafted “Midnight” using Audacity. So far the mix features two Dracula clips, a Patsy Cline song, a Pitbull song, a Miguel Jontel song, and sounds of a heartbeat. I can always count on you Mar. You are awesome. Thanks!! 🙂 I can’t wait to finish.

~Drafting “Midnight” by F in Audacity~
(an open-source~cross-platform software)

 

Dream Job: Implementing Open Source Preservation Solutions for Digital Collections

This totally rocks! Today the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign published a news release courtsey of Dell titled “New Preservation Archive.” The release says “working with Dell, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has created a new digital archive for its university system that simplifies how it manages digital assets, including rare books and faculty intellectual property output such as research documents, papers and lectures — content typically produced in multiple digital formats. The new archive reduces storage costs and streamlines the management, retention and protection of scholarly works through a solution based on the Dell DX Object Storage Platform and DuraSpace Open Source Fedora Commons Repository Software. Critical for the university was the ability to meet today’s needs and to scale efficiently over time as digital content evolves and grows.” This is awesome! Universities are taking advantage of open solutions, but they have people who know how to build and manage the systems. DuraSpace also rocks! I worked with DSpace when I built small scale, virtual digital repositories from the ground up in my UofA program. I really need to work toward that Doctoral Program. The full news release is below.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dell and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Create Preservation Archive with Open Source Fedora Repository Software

Date : 9/27/2012~~ Round Rock, Texas

~~~One of the largest public university libraries in the country uses open source software on Dell DX Object Storage Platform to manage and protect digital assets.

~~~University lowers storage total cost of ownership with scalability to support archive growth.

Working with Dell, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has created a new digital archive for its university system that simplifies how it manages digital assets, including rare books and faculty intellectual property output such as research documents, papers and lectures — content typically produced in multiple digital formats. The new archive reduces storage costs and streamlines the management, retention and protection of scholarly works through a solution based on the Dell DX Object Storage Platform and DuraSpace Open Source Fedora Commons Repository Software. Critical for the university was the ability to meet today’s needs and to scale efficiently over time as digital content evolves and grows.

Explosive data growth and large data sets make it more difficult for libraries, museums and government organizations to efficiently preserve and protect documents, multimedia content and digital assets for future generations. As one of the largest public university libraries in the world, the Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign manages the intellectual property and digital content created by faculty, administrators and students — from one-of-a-kind, fragile books that can create 600 to 800 image objects once digitized, to retiring professors’ collections of work over a 20- to 25-year tenure.

After considering its digital archive and retention goals, the University of Illinois customized a version of Fedora Repository Software and combined it with the Dell DX Object Storage Platform. The platform automatically replicates an archive master and a working master of each file to simplify data backup, storing one copy on the University’s main library cluster and a second copy in its engineering library. In the future, a third copy will be archived in the cloud to further simplify data access and sharing across the University system. The Dell DX Platform also produces metadata to manage the archive, identifying files that need to be transitioned from older to newer digital formats for future generations. And the DX Object Storage Platform’s plug and play framework lets archivists add additional retention capacity to the digital archive as it is needed, simply and efficiently.

Quotes

John Mullen, Vice President, Education and State & Local Government, Dell
“With the transition from stacks and the Dewey Decimal system to bytes, clusters and metadata, academic libraries need a digital archiving strategy that addresses their immediate and future needs. The University of Illinois’ innovative and open approach to this challenge is a practical model for any university.”

Thomas Habing, Research Programmer, Research and Development, University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign Library
“This opportunity provides us with extra resources to further the development of the Library’s digital preservation archive. It also allows us to continue to utilize Open Source Fedora Commons Repository Software while at the same time employing a commercially-supported object storage platform with many digital preservation features, such as replication and validation, which we will not need to implement ourselves. Plus, we can share all of our development efforts back to the open source community which helps everyone, including Dell.”

Michele Kimpton, CEO of DuraSpace
“The Open Source Fedora repository platform is used by more than 400 institutions around the globe. We believe commercial implementations, such as Dell, provide our users with the best of both worlds — hardware and services from a large-scale commercial vendor integrated with open source software, Fedora Repository. The total package provides users with greater transparency and durability in the long run.”

About University of Illinois
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has long been ranked among the nation’s most distinguished teaching and research institutions. Its diverse, world-class programs reflect the mission of a land-grant university. The largest public university in Illinois, the Urbana campus was chartered by the state in 1867 as the Illinois Industrial University and opened its doors to students in 1868. Its library is ranked highly nationally and globally, and its collections and services are used heavily by students, faculty, and scholars. For more information, please visit http://www.library.illinois.edu.

About DuraSpace
DuraSpace is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. DuraSpace software and services are used worldwide as solutions for open access, institutional repositories, digital libraries, digital archives, data curation, virtual research environments and more. The organization’s open-source technology portfolio includes DSpace open access repository application and the Fedora open repository platform. DuraSpace is the home of DuraCloud, a cloud-based software service that leverages existing cloud infrastructure to enable durability and access to digital content. For more information, visit http://www.duraspace.org.

About Dell
Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) listens to customers and delivers innovative technology and services that give them the power to do more. For more information, visit http://www.dell.com.

Press On With Imagination

Cali DVD Screen Shot_8.12.2012

………………………………………………………………………………………………….

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is
limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
~~~Albert Einstein

………………………………………………………………………………………………….

“Man is still the most extraordinary computer of all.”
~~~John F. Kennedy

………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Well after two days— it is done. Late last night, I finished my Cali DVD project. I have completed a haphazard masterpiece which could have been better! Like a virtual Jacobus de Varagine, I compiled my Golden Legend, a personal collection of California memories. To complete this project, I used: two computers (cross platform); five software programs (2 of them open source); an iPod Touch; and a microphone (digital audio input). These tools were used to sort through, organize, and edit over 200 photographs and several GB of video footage. One of the programs was used to complete the voice overs (audio) that I put into the movie. I selected those things I felt were the best of the best. Hey- it was like the digital Olympics up in this house- haha- only the best made the final cut! The DVD was screened today to a few different family members- and it was fun. I have to say that Daryn and I had a blast recording the voice overs. We laughed and laughed. By all means, the project isn’t perfect, but I wanted to have it ready to show today. My next step will be to track down a video host which will allow me to upload the entire movie (close to 20 minutes) into the cloud. If I am not happy with anything I find, I will break down the movie into four segments and upload it to YouTube. This way- I can share my trip with everyone. I really want my friend Elaine to see it. She lives in Corona (CA) and I saw her on my last day of the trip. Hopefully- I can get that done within the week. I am such a lover of technology. What can I say? I am in awe by the things we can do as humans with our minds. I really think that the two quotes above sum that up. Computers are nothing without the people who create them- the engineer, the coder, the script writer, the mad brainiac. These are the real computers behind the computers right? Each and every one of these masterminds has one thing in common- they understand that they are only limited by the power of their imaginations.

Virtually Pop Your Top

A virtual collection of electronic records which can be sorted using your fingers and a touch screen the size of a movie screen. The data can also be manipulated in various ways to improve collection control. This image was taken at the 2012 E-Records Forum in Austin, Texas. An Open House at the Texas Advanced Computing Center’s Visualization Lab was apparently a “highlight” of the forum.

As promised, it is time to mention the most interesting person I had the chance to talk with at the NAGARA/CoSA Conference in Santa Fe last week. I guess when you ask the right questions “they” will come! By they I mean the smart people… 🙂 After one of the sessions, Mark Conrad an Archives Specialist working with the Applied Research Division (Office of Information Services) of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) approached me. He said “aren’t you the one asking about open source solutions?” But of course I was the one! I was so excited to here that NARA is going there!!! I also had the chance to attend a session titled ISO 16363 Audit and Certification of Trustworthy Digital Repositories. The session was delivered by Mark and Technology Specialists from Kentucky. This “Archives Specialist” slash technical guru immediately started rattling off a list of tools and projects that I should take a closer look at. Using his tricked out iPad he started prompting his screen to pop my top. Mark works in the Center for Advanced Systems and Technologies (NCAST). In his position with NARA, he works with computer scientists and engineers from all over the world “to leverage new theories, knowledge, methods, and techniques to advance the lifecycle of electronic records.” Part of the mission of his division includes looking into “emerging technologies.” I must say I about did a back flip when Mark pulled up images of a Visualization Lab in the works. Simply mind blowing! There it was— a virtual filing cabinet. As an archivist, I would be able to process or arrange and describe electronic records by using my fingers and a touch screen. Yes- a touch screen- a virtual system used to arrange collections and sort data- with color codes and all. The volume of records in a particular series is proportional to the amount of data within a particular sector of the collection. In January of 2011, the web administrator of NARAtions: The Blog of the United States National Archives interviewed Mark Conrad. She asked him what he was working on and he said “with the assistance of 17 student interns, I am collaborating on a number of projects. For example, many of the students are currently loading large numbers of files into a testbed that is being used by the computer scientists working on the CI-BER project. The purpose of the project is to provide insights into the management of very large data collections. As the number of files and bytes in a collection goes up some of the systems used to manage the collection break down. This project will help us to identify some of the bottlenecks and look for better ways to build systems that don’t break down as the volume picks up.” He also said he was working with the “Department of Energy, NIST, Naval Sea Systems Command, Army Research Lab, and other Federal Agencies on ways to share information about current and emerging practices for managing and preserving engineering data for as long as it is needed.” Sometimes I am glad that I ask a grippa questions— if I didn’t care about open source solutions, I would have never met one of the most interesting archivists with a technical background ever.

Knowledge Eater

**************************************************************

The NAGARA/CoSA Conference is over. It was a great conference. I met some wonderful people, visited with some old friends, and brushed up on digital initiatives/standards. As always, I am saving the best for last. Sometime this week I will post about the most interesting person I met. I spent some time talking with him about digital initiatives at the National Archives which will blow your mind! For tonight, here is an “in a nutshell” look at where my hours and thoughts were over the last few days.

• The President’s Directive on Managing Government Records with Meg Phillips, Electronic Records Manager, National Archives and Records Administration
• Hiring Electronic Records Archivists- What Expertise is Required with Professors and Archivists from Kansas and North Carolina
• Electronic Records Roundtable
• ISO 16363 Audit and Certification of Trustworthy Digital Repositories with Mark Conrad, Archives Specialist, National Archives and Records Administration and Archivists and Technology Specialists from Kentucky
• Use of Public Records Laws to Bypass Discovery Rules with Records Managers from Ohio and Nevada and two Attorneys from New Mexico
• Electronic Records Archives (ERA): Accomplishments and Lessons Learned with Meg Phillips, Electronic Records Manager, National Archives and Records Administration
• 1940 Census: The Next Generation with Training Officers and Archivists from National Archives and Records Administration
• Who Controls Where the Governors’ Papers Go with Archivists from Texas, Nevada and South Dakota
• Redaction, Expungement and Sealing of Electronic Records with Attorneys, Administrators, and Records Managers from New Mexico, Tennessee, and Arizona

• ……………..NARA holds Congressional Records as a courtesy, but they do not have legal custody. I didn’t know that!
  
• ……………..At this time, ERA holds about 18TB of electronic Congressional Records that are not accessible to the public through NARA.
• ……………..At this time, ERA holds 246+TB of 2010 Census data, 34TB of Federal Records, and 80TB of Presidential Records.
• ……………..There were 550 Hard Drives from the George W. Bush Administration.
• ……………..George W. Bush changed the law to have his records sent to College Station instead of the State Archives.
• ……………..Georgia Tech developed sophisticated software to mull through data on hard drives allowing a 10% drop down to what actually needs to be addressed as a record.
• ……………..NARA is using open source solutions to manage digital information. Nice… Wooohooo!
  
• ……………..The Open Archives Information System (OAIS) Reference Model (Magenta Book– June 2012) is available at http://public.ccsds.org/publications/archive/650x0m2.pdf.
• ……………..Trustworthy Repositories Audit and Certification Checklist (TRAC) is available at http://www.crl.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/pages/trac_0.pdf.
• ……………..ISO 16363 self assessment template is available at www.iso16363.org.
• ……………..ISO 16363 is still the standard and defines a recommended practice for assessing the trustworthiness of digital repositories.
• ……………..Web ARChive file format (WARC) is still being used for web harvesting and digital preservation (ISO Standard).
• ……………..DuraCloud (with a combination of DSpace and Fedora) an open source platform and managed service that provides on-demand storage and services for digital content in the cloud.
• ……………..ACE (Auditing Control Environment) is being used for digital preservation.
• ……………..Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe System (LOCKSS) is still being used. The system is open source and allows development and support for the preservation of and access to web based collections.
• ……………..Archivematica (open source) is a digital preservation system designed to maintain standards-based, long-term access to digital content.
• ……………..Commercial products being used included Tessella SDB, Preservica, and OCLC Digital Archive.
• ……………..Some states are restricting access to blue prints and building plans for security reasons.

Rock on with the Audacity 2.0 Release

Two screen shots of my new version of Audacity 2.0. I downloaded the new version last night. There are some additional features and effects in this 2.0 release. Digital composite created by Felicia (I have such a headphone fetish).

I was so excited to get an email this week about a release of the newest version of one of my very favorite programs (of course aside from Adobe Photoshop). Maybe I should say my favorite open source software, which is cross-platform. The Audacity team released version 2.0 (unicode), which I installed and fully loaded last night. Audacity is a free digital audio editing program written by a team of tech/music junkies from around the world. I guess you could say the volunteer developers are the best of the best. The project is hosted by SourceForge.net and Google Code, and the program is available for Windows, Mac, and GNU/Linux (and other Unix-like systems). For those of you who care to know, Audacity has been designed based on code from the following projects: expat; FLAC; iAVC; LAME; libmad; libsndfile; Nyquist; Ogg Vorbis; PortAudio; portsmf; Resample; sbsms; SoundTouch; TwoLAME; Vamp; and wxWidgets.

I have given the new version a couple spins, and it seems good to go!! I fully loaded up this time, and included extras that I was missing on the last version because I didn’t install them correctly… 😦 This time, I made sure to install the additional plug-ins I wanted- including: LADSPA, with close to 100 plug-ins; additional effects and filters; and the LAME MP3 encoder, to export MP3 files. Before upgrading to 2.0, I had to use other programs to get the audio files into the formats I needed. The new version also features an FFmpeg import/export library, which allows the import and export of additional audio formats (AC3, AMR(NB), M4A and WMA). With this option, you can also import audio directly from video files. I can’t wait to mess with that to see how it all works! Looks like a headphones weekend! Now- I’m set…

Headphone Fetish…

***********Headphone Fetish************** (rendered with a colored pencil effect in Adobe Photoshop)

If you like spending hours on minutes of sound bytes like I do, then you need Audacity. I can spend endless amounts of time lost in music because I’m crazy like that! I am a big fan of the open source movement, and so I think it’s time to share information on one of my favorite programs. Audacity is a free, open source, cross-platform software for recording and editing sounds. Cross-platform means that it can be used on more than one operating system. I have Audacity on both my laptop (Microsoft Windows Vista) and on my Mac (OSX). If you feel so inclined, you can also use the software to record audio, all you need is a mic. I have a Logitech that plugs into the USB hub, and that has worked well.

Some of the tools you can use in Audacity include: stereo channel mixing; spectrograms; several tools to mix and render sounds/audio; special transitions and effects; and several import and export options. I usually import in mp3, aiff, wav, or in a raw format, and then export to aiff (which is lossless- meaning no data is lost in an export), and then once I get it into iTunes for the sake of my podz- I convert the tracks to mp3 (which is a compressed format) to save space. Even if they are imported as mp3 files, Audacity projects are stored in aup file format which can not be played other than through the software. That makes the export to playable formats necessary.
Tonight I chalked up a grip of time to messing with data. I realized that since I got the iPod Touch, I hadn’t transferred some goodz to the new device. I did take the time to do that. Among the goodz stood the Twilight mp4z I ripped a long time ago. I am happy to report that this was a successful transfer Marlene! 😉 Woohooo… I also finished a draft track I have been mixing. I will put on my headphones once I get in bed to give the new mash-up a listen. Maybe it will be called Cake!

For more information on Audacity, you can visit:   http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Super Simple Audacity Screen Shot

The New Raspberry: A Computer “Crashing” the Competition

There is high demand for the low cost Raspberry Pi as educators in the UK join the open source revolution!

*****Now that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout!!!!!***** I wish I could be a kid in the UK… It’s nice to see the educators there are ready to nerd up. That’s where it’s at! It would be nice to see USA educators do the same, and join the open source revolution!
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$35 Computer Goes on Sale
Published by Orion Jones on March 1, 2012 via BigThink at http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/35-computer-goes-on-sale

What’s the Latest Development?

The $35 Raspberry Pi computer, which is now on sale to the public, has been met with extremely high demand. The computer is sold without a keyboard or monitor and is mainly a product of the English academy and the UK tech industry. With ports for a mouse, keyboard and a high-speed internet cable, the device can be connected to any computer monitor. “Massive demand for the computer has caused the website of one supplier, Leeds-based Premier Farnell, to crash under the weight of heavy traffic.” 

What’s the Big Idea?

The Raspberry Pi Foundation envisions that the device, which runs on the open source platform Linux, will be used to teach new generations of school children how to program computers. Its release comes at a time when the UK is considering shifting the direction of its national education agenda to emphasize computer programming skills, which many consider essential in today’s world. Although the Foundation wanted the device to be made in the UK, the computer will be assembled in China. A $25 version will go on sale later in the year. 

Photo credit: wikimedia commons

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