SSL Certificate for Project Hosting on Google Code
Friday, June 6, 2008
If you have Open Source projects hosted on Google Code, you may have noticed that the SSL certificate changed for the googlecode.com domain. (The old certificate expired, and a new one was generated.)
The Google Code Blog has more details.
The University of Chicago Meets Google
Thursday, June 5, 2008
A few weeks ago, I was sitting around a table with the other three officers of the University of Chicago's ACM student chapter, pondering what our "big event" for the quarter could be. "Maybe bring in an invited speaker?" "No, not enough time to find someone." "Perhaps a panel discussion?" "Wait, didn't we already do that in the Fall?". With just a few weeks before the end of the quarter, it seemed unlikely that we could organize a fun and interesting event on time.
Oh man, were we wrong...
At one point in the meeting someone bounced a simple idea: "Hey, why not do something at Google's Chicago offices? They do cool Open Source stuff and are full of Googley wonderfulness!" Since any sentence including the words "Google's Chicago offices" tends to be followed by "Google has offices in Chicago??", allow me to pause and clarify: Yes, Google has an office right in the middle of downtown Chicago. It's filled with developers and, as it turns out, a couple of UChicago alums. So we asked around and one of our CS professors put us in touch with one of said alums, Jon Trowbridge. We contacted Jon and crossed our fingers, half-expecting that we'd be told that setting up an event on such relatively short notice was just not doable. Jon turned out to be an organizer extraordinaire, and outright enthusiastic about having a group of UChicago undergrads and grad students drop by the office.
When organizing the visit, our goal was very simple: let's talk about cool tech and share knowledge in both directions. While we were initially content to just take a tour of the premises and bask in all the Google glory, Jon suggested an ideal format for knowledge-sharing: a 90-minute session of lightning talks. Since five UChicago undergrads were accepted to Google Summer of Code™ 2008, we asked our GSoC students to give lightning talks about their upcoming summer work, and Jon recruited a couple of developers from Google to talk about their work, or simply about cool stuff they were interested in.
So, on the evening of May 22nd, an eclectic mix of about 30 UChicago CS undergrads, not-technically-in-CS-but-I-have-mad-coding-skills-anyway undergrads, and grad students made their way downtown to the Google offices, where we were greeted by oodles of food and drinks. The lightning talks were both instructional and lots of fun; we got to hear about all sorts of stuff, ranging from Zork virtual machines to "Do You Believe in the Users?", and the Google folks got to hear about cool summer projects. In sum, a great time was had by all.
Finally, here are a couple photos showing the highlights of the evening:
Mingling
Oodles of food. Behold the awesomeness of the Chinese food tower.
Google Summer of Code Students
Lightning Talks
General Good Times and Silliness All Around
Google and Open Source Down Under: Open CeBIT 2008 in Sydney
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
I was invited to talk at Open CeBIT in Sydney, Australia in May, and with the help of Chris DiBona and Leslie Hawthorn from Google's Open Source Team, I delivered a presentation on "Google and Open Source," complete with some of Chris' jokes and stories (though with an Australian accent). About 100 people, including politicians, government representatives, business leaders and members of the public were present, and had lots of interesting questions about Google Summer of Code™, Google Code, and how businesses in all forms of enterprise can learn from how Google has built on Open Source for its success. There were also lots of people interested in how to get started giving back to the Open Source community, with many people showing interest in the sheer number of Open Source projects to which Googlers contribute. Open CeBIT was a lot of fun and brought back fond memories of my past life having organized Open Source conferences.
Google Gadgets for Linux
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Since releasing Google Desktop for Linux, we've added almost all of our most requested features, like 64-bit support and the ability to search applications and documents. All except one major exception: Desktop Gadgets. Gadget support is not just a single feature, but rather an entire platform for miniature applications. It's a complex undertaking, but we're now putting the finishing touches on the product.
Come see the results yourself at our project site, where you can check out the source code to the entire product. For Gadgets for Linux, we don't just want to simply release the final offering, but we also want to give everyone a chance to tinker with the code powering the gadgets. For this project, fostering a transparent and lively developer community is just as important as serving our users.
So give Google Gadgets for Linux a try. We're happy to welcome new community members, and could certainly use some help in ironing out the last couple of issues before our next release.
Open Source Developers @ Google Speaker Series: Tim Ansell
Monday, June 2, 2008
Following a brief hiatus, we're excited to announce the return of the Open Source Developers @ Google Speaker Series. Please join us this Thursday, June 5th for Tim Ansell's presentation "Gaming for Freedom." Tim, Founder of the Thousand Parsec project, will explore the universe of Free and Open Source computer games, drawing on his personal experience as a case study for successfully building and contributing to an Open Source game project. He will also explore how the project's participation in the Google Summer of Code™ program over the past two years has shaped the Thousand Parsec code base and community.
As with all sessions of the Open Source Developers @ Google Speaker Series, Tim's presentation will be open to the public. Doors open at 6:30 PM at our Mountain View, California, USA Headquarters; guests should plan to sign it at Building 43 reception upon arrival. Refreshments will be served and all are welcome and encouraged to attend. For those of you who cannot join us in person, the presentation will be taped and published along with all public Google Tech Talks.
We're working on lining up a host of Googler Open Sourcerers for you to learn from over the next few months. Anyone in particular you'd like to hear from? Let us know in the comments section.