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Posts published by “Phil Shapiro”

For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.

Why Is Open Source Important to You?

By Phil Shapiro on July 11, 2017 |

Community and Video

Why Is Open Source Important to You?

While watching this video called “Why Is Open Source Important to Us,” we suddenly found ourselves wondering why it’s important to you.

By Johannes Spielhagen, Bamberg, Germany
[CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

The Screening Room

Interesting comments from people working the open source way at Liferay.

Liferay is a CMS used for intranets, portals, etc.

“Anytime I want to learn something new, open source actually makes that available to you… By contributing, you put yourself out there and you give other people the opportunity to help you grow…”

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An Ode to the Coming of the 4K Boardgramophone

An Ode to the Coming of the 4K Board

By Phil Shapiro on July 4, 2017 |

Hardware, Humor and Video

Our irrepressible Phil Shapiro thought you might like to hear something on the Fourth that isn’t a national anthem or the 1812 Overture. And who knew he could sing or play an instrument? We’re considering renaming his column, The Penguinista Minstrel.

gramophone
Pixabay

The Screening Room

Every jump in computer resolution technology brings with it a cornucopia of new creative and business opportunities. When I noticed recently that an affordable 4K hobby computer board was being launched on Kickstarter, I felt moved to compose this song — Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory of the Coming of the 4K Board.

Phil Shapiro

For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.

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‘Meeting for Good’ – Schedule Meetings in Multiple Time Zones

By Phil Shapiro on June 20, 2017 |

Community, Tutorial and Video

The Screening Room

One of the great joys of open source is that it can unite geographically dispersed people to work together on software and other projects. This often happens asynchronously, via email and other tools. However, sometimes there are real benefits to having a live meeting. When that happens, keeping track of people’s availability in different time zones becomes a challenge.

Phil Shapiro

For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.

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Caleb Hawkins Talks Music & Open Source

By Phil Shapiro on June 13, 2017 |

Community

The Screening Room

Open source attracts some of the most wonderfully creative people. I learned this when video interviewing a longtime open source buddy of mine, Caleb Hawkins, a singer/songwriter in Indianapolis, Indiana. I met Caleb online via our shared interest in the Inkscape vector drawing program. Only after I met him did I learn of the neat ways he uses other open source programs, such as Audacity and Ardour. Meet Caleb in this video interview.

Phil Shapiro

For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.

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The Spirit of Open Source

By Phil Shapiro on May 23, 2017 |

Video

The spirit of open source can be found all around us in the world. Just look for it, and you’ll find it.

The Screening Room

This evening when I spotted this music video on YouTube, my immediate reaction was — “That’s a song about open source!”

Phil Shapiro

For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.

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Why Do You Choose Open Source?

By Phil Shapiro on May 17, 2017 |

Video

The Screening Room

Conference keynote speeches can unify attendees around ideals or principles that cut
across a broad swath of a particular field. Such was Chris Aedo’s recent OSCON keynote, which he summarizes in this short interview video. Chris works as the program manager, developer advocacy for IBM. OSCON is the annual O’Reilly Open Source conference. currently held in Austin, Texas..

Phil Shapiro

For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.

Continue readingWhy Do You Choose Open Source?
Red Hat’s Women in Open Source Award Winners, 2017Red Hat Summit Women in Open Source

Red Hat’s Women in Open Source Award Winners, 2017

By Phil Shapiro on May 9, 2017 |

Community, Interview, News and Video

Last week, Red Hat’s DeLisa Alexander presented the third annual Women in Open Source Award to Avni Khatri and Jigyasa Grover at Red Hat Summit 2017.

Red Hat Summit Women in Open Source

The Screening Room

Red Hat is a company that does many things right, including promoting women in tech. Learn about the two winners of this year’s Women in Open Source Award, announced at the Red Hat Summit conference in Boston last week.

Phil Shapiro

For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.

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Stuart Keroff Receives Distinguished Humanitarian Award for Asian PenguinsAsian Penguins

Stuart Keroff Receives Distinguished Humanitarian Award for Asian Penguins

By Phil Shapiro on May 2, 2017 |

Community, Operating Systems and Video

Asian Penguins is another illustration of giving the gift of Linux to help cross the digital divide.

Asian Penguins

The Screening Room

Stuart Keroff, a visionary middle school teacher in St. Paul, Minnesota, recently received a distinguished humanitarian award for his work in founding Asian Penguins computer club at the Community School of Excellence. This club refurbishes computers with Linux to be used both at the school itself and to deliver to the homes of students who don’t own a computer at home. View the video made by the Minnesota State University – Mankato Campus – to learn more about this award.

Phil Shapiro

For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.

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Using SlideWiki for OpenCourseWare

By Phil Shapiro on April 18, 2017 |

Community, Tutorial and Video

Open source is about much more than free (as in beer and speech) software and hardware designs. It’s being harnessed to do things like bring free or affordable health care to undeveloped nations, and as the underpinning for free education.

The Screening Room

Collaborative teaching and learning can theoretically occur via a text wiki, but SlideWiki looks like it goes far beyond text wikis. This Google Hangout explains the rich feature set of SlideWiki, including machine translated versions of your digital presentations.

Phil Shapiro

For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.

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Open Source Adapted Bicycle Pedal Comes to the RescueBicycle

Open Source Adapted Bicycle Pedal Comes to the Rescue

By Phil Shapiro on April 11, 2017 |

Accessibility and Video

Accessibility has always been important to designers of open source software. Now that open source has come to design, that’s more true than ever, as demonstrated with this open source bicycle pedal.

The Screening Room

Bicycle

Smart engineering students at Brigham Young University have devised an open source solution that extends the joy of bicycle riding to some who otherwise would not experience that joy. Watch this heartwarming story in this short video.

Phil Shapiro

For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.

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Review of BeansBooks, Released Under ‘Open Code’ License

By Phil Shapiro on April 7, 2017 |

Software, Tutorial and Video

Before using BeansBooks, be sure to take a look at its “open code” license, which is a free software license but incompatible with the GPL and all GPL compatible licenses, whether “copyleft” or “permissive.”

The Screening Room

Open software often reduces the barrier to entry for small businesses. FOSS fans might well have heard of personal and small-business accounting software GnuCash, which is taught in the Penn Manor School District in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and described in Charlie Reisinger’s book The Open Schoolhouse. Less well known is BeanBooks, an “open code” SaaS accounting program created by the well-known folks at System76, which came onto my radar just recently. This screencast review of the software does a good job showing you its features.

Phil Shapiro

For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.

Continue readingReview of BeansBooks, Released Under ‘Open Code’ License
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