Plugh writes "In a victory for transparency and openness in government, and saving tax dollars, New Hampshire has passed HB418. State agencies are now required by law to consider open source software when acquiring software, and to promote the use of open data formats."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "Saad Allami likely never expected that a simple text message of encouragement would have turned his life upside down. But as seen in a similar case of absurd overreaction by authorities, a simple text message is all it takes to have yourself branded as a terrorist. From the article: 'The Quebec man says he was arrested by provincial police while picking up his seven-year-old son at school. A team of police officers stormed into his home, telling his wife she was married to a terrorist. And his work colleagues were detained for hours at the U.S. border because of their connection to him.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SpuriousLogic sends this excerpt from a BBC article detailing the suspension of a sales ban on certain Apple products in Germany: "Motorola Mobility had forced Apple to remove several iPad and iPhone models from its online store [yesterday] after enforcing a patent infringement court ruling delivered in December. An appeals court lifted the ban after Apple made a new license payment offer. However, Germany-based users may still face the loss of their push email iCloud service after a separate ruling. 'A suspension like this is available only against a bond, but Apple is almost drowning in cash and obviously won't have had a problem with obtaining and posting a bond.' ... A statement from Apple said: 'All iPad and iPhone models will be back on sale through Apple's online store in Germany shortly.'" Reader DJRumpy points out that Motorola is seeking royalties of 2.25% for Apple's wireless devices in exchange for a license to use Motorola's patents.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New submitter someWebGeek writes "LibreOffice, the community-driven fork of OpenOffice, appears to have a very healthy and growing group of code contributors. The Document Foundation has published new stats that portray the climbing rates of developer involvement both in terms of numbers of people and numbers of code commits. One of the most encouraging aspects, as noted by Ryan Paul in an article at Ars, is that non-corporate code contributions by independent volunteers constitute the largest slice of the latest commit-pie."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New submitter cqwww writes "A small magazine in Victoria, BC just uncovered a massive public traffic surveillance system deployed in Canada. Here's a quote from the article: 'Normally, area police manually key in plate numbers to check suspicious cars in the databases of the Canadian Police Information Center and ICBC. With [Automatic License Plate Recognition], for $27,000, a police cruiser is mounted with two cameras and software that can read license plates on both passing and stationary cars. According to the vendors, thousands of plates can be read hourly with 95-98 percent accuracy. ... In August 2011, VicPD Information and Privacy Manager Debra Taylor called me to explain that, even though VicPD had the ALPR system in one of their cruisers, the [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] ran the system, and I should contact them for any information. "We actually don’t have a program," Taylor said. "We don’t have any documents per se." ... A month later, Taylor handed over 600 pages. ... [The claim they kept no documents] was apparently only in reference to digital information. VicPD had kept 500 pages of written, hard-copy logs of every ALPR hit they’d ever seen.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A lot of different people has started experimenting with Phonegap and Drupal. You have Jeff Linwood and his Drupal plugin for Phonegap for iOS, and I just discovered Drupalgap as I was planning this post the last weeks, which does more or less (actually it does more, but not all) some of the same things I will try to do in this post.

If you want to get up and running real quick, Drupalgap seems great. If you want to learn the code behind it, and extend it yourself (this was my motivation), keep reading.

Tags: planet drupalappsjavascriptphonegapservicesdrupal 7

New submitter beta2 writes "Several articles are noting that the German IT security agency BSI is endorsing Google Chrome browser: 'BSI ticked off Chrome's anti-exploit sandbox technology, which isolates the browser from the operating system and the rest of the computer; its silent update mechanism and Chrome's habit of bundling Adobe Flash, as its reasons for the recommendation. ... BSI also recommended Adobe Reader X — the version of the popular PDF reader that, like Chrome, relies on a sandbox to protect users from exploits — and urged citizens to use Windows' Auto Update feature to keep their PCs abreast of all OS security fixes. To update applications, BSI gave a nod to Secunia's Personal Software Inspector, a free utility that scan a computer for outdated software and point users to appropriate downloads.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Saturday, 4th February 2012Drupal Association Opens its doors to the community At Large - and I'm running for election!

The Drupal Association is, for the first time in history, opening up two spaces on the Board for "At Large" members. Voting is open now only for a few days until Feb 7. I decided to nominate myself after hearing further about the elections during the Drupal CxO event in Amsterdam last weekend, so instead of writing up all the interesting stuff that's been going on recently at the CxO event and Drupal ScienceCamp the week before where I gave my first session and videod many others, I find myself caught up in election fever and spending the weekend answering questions which were posed during two conference calls we had on Thursday - one at 1am and one at 5pm. It was great being part of these discussions with a group of passionate people from around the world, an inspiring moment in my life I shall remember for a long time!

I'm reposting my answers here as the wiki page is a bit messy, plus I want to reach out to my own community at large as they may not even know elections are on, it seems shouting about this sort of stuff in the Drupal community is not the norm, a shame as we have so much wonderful stuff to shout about!

The Drupal Association, for those who don't know, is "an educational non-profit organization that tasks itself with fostering and supporting the Drupal software project, the community and its growth". It has no control over the software itself, and states its 2012 goals as:

• Improve the collaboration tools on drupal.org and make it rock for developers
• Organize "Drupal in a day" global trainings to solve talent issue
• Drupal as a career choice through University Programs
• Directory of all trainings to solve talent issue
• Regional events targeted at developers organized by DA staff
• Make d.o awesome for site builders (vs. developers) - module reviews, docs, etc.

I am already involved in a number of these efforts and through the events I've been to I see there are many people who want to help out and contribute but simply do not have a mechanism or the knowledge to do so. Rather than go into a big speech now, here's the answers I gave - if you like my ideas please vote before Feb 7! My core process is "fostering connections" - a skill I believe is perfect for the DA.

Candidate intros

Steve Purkiss (stevepurkiss), United Kingdom

Hi, I'm Steve Purkiss and I'm here representing the "normal guy". I've been running the Drupal group in the UK's digital media hub of Brighton for the three years that I've lived here but it was only in 2010 when I went to my first DrupalCon in Copenhagen that I *got* Drupal - it's all about the community and not just software. Since then I've been helping people understand what Drupal is, including organising a 'Drupal Discovery Day' during Brighton's Digital Festival last year where we trained over 30 people in the morning and had over 40 attendees at our conference in the afternoon. I've now been to three DrupalCons, two Drupal CxO days, devdays, and did my first session at a DrupalCamp a couple of weeks back in Cambridge entitled 'From Flip Charts to Features and beyond' building on the work I've been doing with organisations including Brighton & Hove City Council in order to help them quickly and easily understand how to build projects in an agile way using Drupal and its plethora of modules. I also video many of the sessions and upload them to archive.org - I believe we should do much more videoing of events!

My first experience of the Drupal Association was in DrupalCon Copenhagen when I asked if they'd ever heard of a 'Virtual Enterprise Network' and explained it was a structure for enabling organisations including businesses, universities, and government instititions, to work together in order to deliver larger projects - similar to how the film industry works when coming together to produce a film. I asked if there was anyone in the Association who I could talk to about it because I believe strongly we have built a wonderful modular piece of software however we are yet to build a modular business model on top. The answer I received was a point-blank "No, they're all incredibly busy working for very large corporations." This is why I decided to nominated myself and hence why I feel I stand for the "normal guy" wanting to bring back some balance to the board.

Questions and answers

Harley (hyperglide) Regarding emerging markets in asia. Do any of the candidates have an idea on how to handle outreach to those markets to solve the talent shortage?

A: Steve Purkiss (stevepurkiss) The Association is in an ideal position to help pool and funnel resources to those on the ground in order to help them grow their communities wherever they are in the world. Being a focal point for the community, the Association can help the community to speak from one voice and spread knowledge sharing, education and community values wherever it is needed, and not only to those who can afford it.

(tsvenson) Q to each candidate: What do you see as the biggest obstacles for new Drupal users, especially non coders with small or no budgets, often leading to them quickly going elsewhere? And what will you do to change that?

A: Steve Purkiss (stevepurkiss) In Brighton I was going to run a week of Drupal training at £149 per day but was told I couldn't call it "affordable" training as it made other offerings sound expensive. If we only focus on the commercial side of things we have a big problem - and vice versa. I would rather see a focus on creating more sustainable forms of business than focusing on just one sector. To not view Wordpress as a threat here is IMHO a mistake.

I entered professional programming through a government-funded course and I am keen to ensure those opportunities are ongoing for people so I am talking to local colleges, universities and business networks about training students, graduates, unemployed, and career changers in Drupal. I am finding it hard by myself and my local network, if in the Association I would reach out to those around the world who can help on a more focused, local basis and assist in the construction of more support networks IRL.

(webchick) For those who want to promote international diversity, explain how a position on the DA helps you do that more effectively.

A: Steve Purkiss (stevepurkiss) Finding out what resources are needed and how they need to be tailored for particular cultures. At the recent Drupal CxO days in Amsterdam the hosts Microsoft explained a little into the process of how they do this and have offered us some time to help us - I would ensure we follow up on this very generous offer. As was mentioned, we are great technicians but not so great marketers - so why not take some tips from the best and help spread the Drupal community wider?

(Crell) Currently Drupal's face in the world is a mix of face-less Drupal.org and Acquia. Acquia is the face of Drupal, rightly or wrongly, in many eyes, moreso with the new Office of the CTO. Drupal of course is far far more than Acquia. What if anything do you feel the DA can or should do to counter-balance that, or is that even an appropriate role for the DA?

A: Steve Purkiss (stevepurkiss) The two At Large positions are a step in the right direction as we don't necessarily know who's out there in our community now as opposed to years ago when it was relatively small and why most members are from the more established companies. By bringing in outside perspectives with complementary knowledge and networks we enrich the community and move towards a more balanced, sustainable solution for democratised governance.

(tsvenson) Q to all: We just had a live usability test that showed we have still very much to do. How do you propose we can put more efforts into making Drupal, including contib projects, more user friendly and intuitive?

A: Steve Purkiss (stevepurkiss) There are some things as a community we do not do well at the moment, one of those is eat our own dogfood. I hear of many other tools people use running their Drupal business but we should work together to invest time, and funds, in fostering existing efforts such as the open app initiative. We should also develop new methods of people being able to contribute easier to the community - one such concept I've had is http://dropfund.org (hey, I bought the domain name so it's all built and ready, right?!) where people could post their project ideas much like a kickstarter for Drupal. Everything from marketing material through to module development sponsorship could be posted and funded easier than trawling through drupal.org and gdo just stumbling across stuff and trying to figure out what's going on and how to help.

(Slurpee) How many candidates have been to Drupal events outside of their own continent? And can you speak more than 1 language fluently?

A: Steve Purkiss (stevepurkiss) Since DrupalCon Copenhagen I have been to DrupalCon Chicago and London, Developer Days Brussels, CxO Days Brussels and last weekend's CxO event in Amsterdam, and the weekend before that I gave my first session at Drupal ScienceCamp Cambridge. I'm better with software languages than spoken, having spent from age 9 to now 39 learning how to talk in various software languages, from BASIC, through Pascal, ADA, Java, PHP, and now Drupal.

(Crell) Several of you listed things yo want to do or accomplish. The DA, however, has shifted from a staff board to a policy board, so board members are not directly doing anything, but managing, strategizing, coordinating, etc. Those of you who want to "do", isn't the board the wrong place for what you're describing?

A: Steve Purkiss (stevepurkiss) I want to work towards a more level playing field for everyone in the community - at the moment it seems as if the more well-funded operations build their own tools, workflow, and methods of dealing with inefficiencies in tools we have such as drupal.org whereas I believe it's the role of the DA to encourage contribution of these tools back to the community, and pool as many of these resources as possible so they are of benefit to all and not just competitive advantage for a few. Managing, strategizing, and coordinating are the ways in which I will achieve this!

(rfay) In 30 seconds or less, what are the roles of the DA and what are not the roles?

A: Steve Purkiss (stevepurkiss) The DA plays an important role supporting the development and growth of the Drupal community and should take a more active role in enabling those who want to contribute to be able to do so. It is not the DA's role to be involved in the decision-making process when it comes to the software itself, however it should be there to support ongoing efforts by being able to connect funders and those wanting funding, whether for hardware or software development. In terms of funding development then I believe the community and not the DA should be the decision-makers as to what gets funded - the DA should just help with the organisation of these initiatives.

(Crell) Q: Several candidates said they want to better represent or be a voice for "small shops" and independents. In what way does the DA currently not adequately serve small shops, and what would a better service for small players mean in practice? Be as specific as possible.

A: Steve Purkiss (stevepurkiss) It is more that relationships are currently built and maintained around a relatively few number of shops - ones who are either ingrained in the community, or who have the funds to "buy" their way into the community. Mostly I believe this is due to the fact we are not utilising our own software to the best effect to help connect, also because we are still thinking in terms of old-IT top-down big consultancy approach in some ways - perhaps because the biggest businesses involved currently still work that way.

We have built wonderful modular software and we are currently seeming to try and mash that into an old, out-of-date business model. Many large IT failures will still happen if the business models don't change - it's just they'll fail with Open Source Software resulting in harming its reputation. There are other ways, one of which is Virtual Enterprise Networks ('VEN')* where one body represents its members in a commercial environment, enabling sharing of costs such as marketing, and enabling larger projects to be delivered than could be done by any one member organisation alone.

Many smaller shops and independents are technically very capable but not so good at marketing - will a skills shortage and the fact that specific expertise is not geographically specific we should embrace new ways of working together on larger projects than just giving them to to the larger companies. As I discovered at the recent Drupal CxO event in Amsterdam *every* Drupal company there had issues with being too small - whether they were 2, 20, or 50 people. With a VEN a structure would be there for easier collaboration between these companies and individuals.

I believe the DA is in an ideal position to help to work towards the creation of a Drupal VEN, and spearhead not only a modular piece of software but a complementary business model to boot. I see some worrying similarities between what is happening in the Drupal world and what happened in the dotcom days when the company I was working at received $7m investment and immediately went out and hired lots of ex-IBM people. We have a small window of opportunity here to do something different and innovative - we should take full advantage of before balance is lost and we end up repeating old business mistakes simply because we are only listening to those who have too much interest in a particular model, or who simple do not know any other way is possible. A VEN is just one potential structure which should be investigated further in order to see which would be most complementary to the Drupal community in order to utilise the network more efficiently.

* http://www.bioteams.com/2005/07/11/virtual_enterprise_networks.html

(tsvenson) When do you think the first Asian DrupalCon should be held? Also, should that mean 3 cons/year or should they alternate with 2/year?

A: Steve Purkiss (stevepurkiss) I would need to investigate the current situation and any research done so far before suggesting any answer to this. At the moment, I feel if the community is big enough to support it then sure, if not then we should see how we can build or connect the community more so that it is in a position to put on a Con.

(jredding) In 30 seconds or less, what would you say is the most important skillset, expertise, or experience that a board member should bring to the Association.

A: Steve Purkiss (stevepurkiss) Experience, passion, ideas, ears, mouth when needed, sympathy, empathy, commitment, independence, and a willingness to question and challenge the status quo.

(carsonblack) What are some (or one) way that DA can help the small user groups throughout the world better serve their local markets?

A: Steve Purkiss (stevepurkiss) At the recent Drupal CxO event in Amsterdam I spoke to a number of companies who want to join forces in order to help create more marketing materials for Drupal. We should help these companies to contribute as the result will be more material available for everyone to use, including local user groups. We should also make it easier to start and maintain local groups by providing more up-to-date resources of information gathered from existing groups, and continue to provide funding where possible. I won one of the first Community Cultivation Grants with which I created a short video "What is Drupal?" (http://bad-ass.org.uk/what-is-drupal) which helped a little but we need more ongoing support too so we can develop the great work people are doing out there "in the field". Guilds are great, however we should ensure these do not go the way of the guilds of old, which ended up being cartels. There was a similar issue in the Open Source Consortium of which I was a founding member but left soon after as I felt it would go this way. It was set up by Mark Taylor from Sirius IT who has spoken at Drupal CxO events, he confirmed to me it did end up being a cartel so he too left. Not saying Drupal Guilds will, we just have to be aware they potentially could.

(Crell) The DA is officially banned from "directing the development of Drupal". What does that mean to you? Are there ways the DA could "support" development without "directing" development? What would you want to do in that regard? Again, be specific as possible.

A: Steve Purkiss (stevepurkiss) To me this means the DA should be supporting the development of Drupal whatever that development is. For example, if the community decided to rewrite the entire of Drupal using .NET technologies, although it would be a completely ridiculous concept, the DA should support the community's decision. The DA is ideally positioned to be a connector of resources to support the development of Drupal, by working with the community to ascertain what resources are needed the DA can help ensure access to those resources are provided, whether in terms of hardware, funding, or whatever is necessary for the community to continue to grow and flourish.

(tsvenson) Should the DA take a more proactive role about the d.o infrastructure and its improvement needs. Especially in regards to for example content management tools for doumentation and giving better cred/visibility to all those that puts in amazing work that is not project/code related? If so how and what is needed?

A: Steve Purkiss (stevepurkiss) Yes, I believe it is the responsiblity of the DA to support the infrastructure used by the community. I think there is a lot that can be done here in terms of working more closely with companies using Drupal to help them contribute more back to the community in order to help sustain and grow. At the moment it seems as if there's a high barrier in terms of both expertise and time to be able to change much, with a little more communication and connection of existing efforts I believe we can provide much better tools for the community to use, which will in turn show off more of what Drupal can do to the wider world and hopefully make it a little easier to understand for all.

Candidate summary statements

My first job was selling computers to small businesses, and whilst I have also worked with many large corporations, it is the small business person I have most affinity with. As we move into an age of more interdependance as many are laid off from work I believe we need to bring back some balance on the board and provide more assistance to those who have the passion and expertise but not necessarily the cash and connect them with those who have the cash but not necessarily the expertise (or indeed passion!). We need to foster the growth of more tools using our own software to help collaboration and start to build a world based on the ways we work together now, not 10, 20 or 30 years ago. By coming onto the board from this side, I bring fresh new ideas and energy, and a network which provides further reach than the board currently possesses in order to help the Association achieve and exceed the initiatives set out for 2012. I am already involved in many of the areas such as talking to universities and organising free training events, I could do this more effectively and to a greater degree if I were to be on the DA board, thus having easier access to more resources and connections.

ENDS

Feel free to ask me any questions you may have here, on my nomination profile, or on twitter, I'd be happy to answer!

One last thing - don't forget to vote by Feb7! Voting is open to all who have a Drupal account longer than about three weeks old and who have logged at least once in the previous year -  that's around 270,000 people of which at time of writing only 280 have voted.

Make sure your voice is heard and vote today!

tags: drupalDrupal PlanetDrupal AssociationDrupal Association At Large

eldavojohn writes "Using radio telescope data, scientists from around the world have plotted the Milky Way Galaxy's magnetic field in the form of Faraday Depth. From the article, 'For 150 years, scientists have measured cosmic magnetic field by observing the Faraday effect. They know that when polarized light passes though a magnetized medium, the plane of polarization turns. This concept is called Faraday rotation. The strength and direction of the magnetic field governs the amount of rotation that occurs. So scientists observe the rotation to investigate the magnetic fields' properties. Radio astronomers study the polarized light from distant radio source, passing through the Milky Way on the way to Earth, in order to measure our Galaxy's magnetic field. By measuring the polarization of the light sources at different frequencies, researchers can determine the amount of Faraday rotation.' In the future, radio telescope technologies like LOFAR, eVLA, ASKAP, MeerKAT and the SKA hope to provide enhanced Faraday rotation data so scientists can better understand turbulence in galactic gas and these galactic magnetic field structures."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One of the most important and complex aspects of a DrupalCon is the schedule. An enormous amount of work goes into getting it right – from the huge number of session submissions, which have to be reviewed and selected by the track chairs and their teams, to the people whose job it is to carefully consider and decide time slots for all of them.

Once all of this work has taken place, the schedule then needs to be presented, in print, on meter boards, posters and in the delegate guide, as well as on the website and mobile app.

With around 70-80 sessions over three days and eight tracks, with three possible skill levels and multiple presenters, all split up into different time slots, and sometimes sub-time slots, presenting this lot is not a simple task. I had some great people working with me on the London schedule and I think we did a pretty good job.

For Denver, the plan was to take the schedule a bit further, making it responsive so that the layout adjusts to the size of the screen you are viewing it on. This is particularly useful for mobile phones and tablets, on which the user experience would be very poor if the design wasn't responsive. Initially the Denver team were looking at a table format for the schedule, similar to the Chicago approach: http://chicago2011.drupal.org/schedule. This layout is really good, but tables don't do well with responsive design. Tables have no way of rearranging themselves – if the width of the table shrinks, the cells just squash horizontally until they are stopped by the longest word in each. This looks pretty horrible and usually breaks a website's layout on smaller screens.

DrupalCamp Austin did use a semi-table layout, and importantly, it doesn't actually use table markup, meaning it can collapse. This worked well because the number of sessions in a given time slot was limited. Denver's maximum is seven sessions in a single time slot, which even in a 960 set up, would be really squashing them in on a single row and force them to collapse almost immediately on the slightest resize.

So a different method was needed. Initially taking the approach of a mobile web app, I put together an example schedule using Denver's branding to help demonstrate how it could collapse on smaller screens. The main difference in this layout is that instead of side by side, the sessions are stacked, divided by the time slots. The track icons were produced for Drupalcon Chicago and it felt really right to pick them up again for Denver.

The Denver team then adapted the prototype to fit the website and extended the icon set to cover the new tracks. While implementing, they made some subtle improvements to my prototype, like the track title on hover: http://denver2012.drupal.org/program/schedule

There are definitely more improvements to be made. The hit area isn't very large on the sessions (only the title), so it's not always easy to press with your finger; wrapping everything in an a tag would resolve this. The rooms aren't displayed yet, which would be pretty useful to help you find your way around and some of the sessions don't fall into specific time slots, so we are working on adding these soon. Also the filters are yet to be implemented on the Denver site, but it is worth looking at the prototype on a mobile device to see how I envisaged them working.

This is of course, just one example of a schedule for one event format, but if you are reading this from inside or outside the 'Drupalsphere', I hope you found some of the ideas useful.

@graemeblackwood

jrepin writes "This new book Open Advice is the answer to: 'What would you have liked to know when you started contributing?' 42 prominent free and open source software contributors give insights into the many different talents it takes to make a successful software project; coding, of course, but also design, translation, marketing and other skills. They are here to give you a head start if you are new. And if you have been contributing for a while already, they are here to give you some insight into other areas and projects."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

mikejuk writes "Quantum computing is currently a major area of research — but is this all a waste of effort? Now Scott Aaronson, a well-known MIT computer scientist, has offered a prize of $100,000 for any proof that quantum computers are impossible: 'I'm now offering a US$100,000 award for a demonstration, convincing to me, that scalable quantum computing is impossible in the physical world.' Notice the two important conditions — 'physical world' and 'scalable.' The proof doesn't have to rule out tiny 'toy' quantum computers, only those that could do any useful work."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes "The White House is following up on an offer made by President Barack Obama this week to help find a job for an unemployed semiconductor engineer in Texas. The offer was made during a live online town hall after the ex-TI engineer's wife questioned the government's policy concerning H-1B visa workers. Obama asked for EE Darin Wedel's resume and said he would 'forward it to some of these companies that are telling me they can't find enough engineers in this field.' While grateful, patent-holder Wedel said the president's view on the job prospects for engineers in his field 'is definitely not what's happening in the real world.' Duke adjunct professor Vivek Wadhwa offered his frank take on 40-year-old Wedel's predicament: 'The No. 1 issue in the tech world is as people get older, they generally become more expensive. So if you're an employer who can hire a worker fresh out of college who is making $60,000 versus an older worker who is making $150,000, and the younger worker has skills that are fresher, who would you hire?' Coincidentally, Texas Instruments sought President Obama's help in reducing restrictions on the hiring of younger foreign workers in 2009, the same year it laid off Wedel."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

scottbomb writes "This is perhaps the best op-ed I've read about the whole SOPA/PIPA controversy. The author challenges Hollywood to re-think their entire business model. It will undoubtedly fall on deaf ears, for now. But sooner or later, they will have no choice but to adapt. From the article: 'Now that the SOPA and PIPA fights have died down, and Hollywood prepares their next salvo against internet freedom with ACTA and PCIP, it's worth pausing to consider how the war on piracy could actually be won. It can't, is the short answer, and one these companies do not want to hear as they put their fingers in their ears and start yelling.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hugh Pickens writes "PC Magazine reports that Ting, a new reseller of Sprint's voice, 3G and WiMax services, has a new approach to mobile pricing that lets customers buy minutes, messages, and data separately, and allows households to pool them to an unlimited number of phones and data devices on one account. 'Household data plans are the next step for consumers, mainly because people are adding more connected screens and devices to their lifestyle,' writes Kevin Tofel. 'And different household members have different data needs; some use a little while others consume gobs of gigabytes. Why not average out the usage across multiple devices?' Both AT&T and Verizon have hinted at offering shared data plans in the future, but the devil's in the details, says Tofel. 'My hope is that family data plans come soon, to all carriers, just like we have for family voice and messaging plans.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

People like their Planet Drupal in different style. According to a rather non-scientific survey, two thirds prefer to get the Planet feed with full posts and two thirds reads the feed in some kind of reader.

I belong to the third that prefer the stream of posts to be trimmed to a maximum length -- it makes easier for me to scan for new posts when their lengths doesn't vary between one paragraph and five screen lengths. There has been some discussion about introducing customizable teaser length on Planet Drupal, but has proved difficult to actually get it going. While waiting for this, I whipped up a Yahoo! pipe that takes the RSS feed and trims the posts to a length that you can set yourself. If you're interested, feel free to use http://pipes.yahoo.com/itangalo/drupalplanettrimmed?_render=rss in the reader of your choice. Add "&length=500" to trim the post length to the number of characters you like -- default is 1000. (The trimming is "dumb", so no respect is taken to tags. Sorry.)

I hope this can be useful for someone more than me.

(Note: I know the webmasters on drupal.org is working hard and doing a great job. This forked feed is in no way an attempt to say that the webmasters aren't doing a good job, nor a way to try to draw people away from drupal.org. It is just a way to share something that I find useful with others.)

Interested in more smart Drupal feeds? Check out the "full modules" Twitter account or RSS feed and the "sandbox modules" Twitter account/RSS.

The most basic function of a content management system is the ability to create a page. However, this fundamental activity of website building is often an unexpected hassle for new Drupal users. Yeah, I'm talking about the lack of a built-in rich text editor.

I know there are some strong feelings in the Drupal community about this, but let me try to persuade you that whatever the philosophical or technical reasons for not including a default editor, they're hurting adoption of Drupal and needlessly creating a usability issue for those who are evaluating the platform. 

What Happened To Me

Most of the reasons I have heard for not including a default editor involve respecting user choice. This is a fine sentiment, but let me illustrate the problems it can create when someone is evaluating Drupal.

First, a little context. I've been building websites since 2000. Although I'm a competent coder and have slogged my way through a custom module or two, I've never really enjoyed that aspect of building a site and come more from a design and marketing perspective. I have an MBA, not a degree in computer science, and that's the lens I look through when thinking about websites.

A few years ago, an organization I work for had a site that had grown increasingly difficult to manage so we decided to take a look at content management systems. We were working in a .NET environment and had both DotNetNuke and Umbraco on the list, but we also wanted to consider the "Big 3" PHP platforms - WordPress, Joomla and Drupal.

It fell to me to evaluate these platforms, write up a recommendation and do a brief demo of the top two choices. I started with Joomla because my boss had heard great things about it. I installed it and added a few pages, tweaked some configuration options - you know, took it out for a test drive. I repeated this process one by one until I came to the last platform, Drupal. 

The install seemed to go smoothly...so far, so good. I went to create a page and...hold on a second. I think something went wrong in the install. Where is the text editor? Maybe I need to turn something on?

Ten minutes of clicking through the admin pages.

OK, time for Google.

Oh, I see! You need a module called WYSIWYG. Strange that they don't include that. All of the others did. Well, no big deal. Modules don't seem too hard to install.

Ten Minutes Pass...

WYSIWYG is installed! Now let's create that page!

Uh...no editor. What the hell? Back to Google. 

Looks like I need to add the actual editor. Wow, there are a lot of choices. Also a lot of debate on which one is best. Guess I'll just go with TinyMCE. People seem to like it.

Whew! That was a bit of work but finally I've got an editor in there - let's make a page!

Wait...why can't I add an image? Where is the upload? Oh. I have to install another module.

Check that, two modules - IMCE and IMCE Wysiwyg Bridge.

Are you *!?#ing kidding me? All of this to make a basic page!? 

A Few Things to Consider

Before you tell me how stupid it was of me to not do A or B, consider that my experience is not that uncommon. You see, the Drupal community is dominated by developers, really good developers who embrace complexity and who love nothing more than to muck about with code and get their hands dirty. Installing and configuring a few modules is nothing. Actually it's kind of fun, right?

Unfortunately, there are a large number of people involved in building websites who don't feel this way.

There is a common complaint about the quality of Drupal themes and they are often contrasted unfavorably with WordPress themes. Have you ever considered the possibility that Drupal usability may be playing a role? How can this be, you ask?

Web designers are very influential in the CMS decision making process in many firms and certainly among consultants. They generally just want things to work. If a content management system is a hassle for them, they will naturally tend not to recommend it. Instead, they will choose a CMS that will allow them to spend more time working on the parts of their job they love - designing themes, for example.

The marketing department also likes to have a lot of input into the website. After all, in the large majority of cases, the website is a marketing platform. How do you think they feel about a CMS that seems hard to use right out of the gate?

A Unforced Error

When Drupal 7 was nearing release, I read about all of the usability improvements that were on the way. Finally, I thought, Drupal will get a text editor by default!

Obviously, that didn't happen and it remains a blemish on what are some really great improvements to usability. In fact, had an editor been included by default, I honestly think that Drupal 7 would compare very well to WordPress 3 with regard to usability. 

Now, some folks might mention using an installation profile that includes an editor. That's not really a solution when you think about it. People who are new to Drupal are going to download the default install or perhaps from Acquia (also, very surprisingly, no editor). Installation profiles are generally for people who are already familiar with Drupal and are looking for a time saver. 

An analogy I think is appropriate is with product packaging. Think about Apple and how they package their products and how that affects the buyer's experience with the product. The first 20-30 minutes a person spends with a CMS is very similar. The product speaks to the user. Some may marvel at the flexibilty and power of Drupal. Many others may try to create a simple page and wander off in frustration thinking, "Drupal is too hard."

It doesn't have to be that way.

Can't We All Just Get Along?

Obviously, I didn't give up on Drupal during that evaluation process and have since become an ardent supporter. But I've always wondered why - virtually alone among all the CMS platforms - Drupal continues to omit a default text editor.

I would like to appeal to the Drupal community for two things.

First, please support the inclusion of a default text editor in future versions. CK Editor, YUI, TinyMCE - it doesn't really matter. Just pick something. It can always be switched out later. Including an editor by default will go a long way toward making a good first impression with new users.

Second, let me say how much I respect Drupal developers and the amazing CMS they have built. I only ask that you leave a little room at the table for some of the other important stakeholders that may not always feel heard within the community. I'm talking about the designers, the marketers, information architects, copywriters and even executive decision makers who work together to build great websites. There are more of us out here than you may think. And we would like a default editor, please. It will make the job of selling Drupal to new users much easier.

And that's a good thing for everyone, don't you think?

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