The Inflatable Soapbox

Today is Document Freedom Day. If you’re not one of the open source faithful, or even if you are, you might not be familiar with this digital independence day. According to the web site at http://documentfreedom.org, “Document Freedom Day (DFD) is a global day for document liberation. It will be a day of grassroots effort to educate the public about the importance of Open Document Formats and Open Standards in general.”

The site does a thorough job of explaining the meaning and importance of this, but I will offer a brief summary here.

Many, if not most, people use proprietary software from companies like Microsoft and Adobe to create, edit, and manage their documents. Microsoft Office applications, Adobe Photoshop, and many others, create letters, spreadsheets and photos which are saved in a secret format known only to the company that created it. That’s great for the company that wants to control your access to your own data, determine how (and if) you can share it with others, and force you to upgrade if you want to keep support for your documents. Not so great for you, the creator/owner/manager of all these documents.

Another important issue is the preservation of documents in the digital era. There are documents from millennia gone by preserved on paper, scrolls, clay pots, even stone. The earliest known cave paintings are accessible to all who can see them. Who will read your Microsoft Word ’97 novel even five years from now?

I urge you to visit http://documentfreedom.org to learn more about the importance of document liberation. Start by freeing your own documents, then shine the light of freedom to light the way for others. Namaste.

I had an idea several years ago for a web site that acted as an exchange for real and virtual currencies. I was never an avid gamer but, after discovering Second Life and IMVU, I realized how many people were spending (and earning) money in these 3D virtual worlds. While there are some companies (IGE and others) that facilitate buying and selling of virtual goods and currencies, there didn’t seem to be a true virtual/real currency exchange market yet. One that would provide daily exchange rates for directly changing one currency into another, virtual or real, for a small fee. Like most of my ideas, this was added to a very long “projects” list. I had a good idea, I was sure, but neither the time nor resources to develop it.

Fast forward to 2010. IMVU and myYearbook are the first partners of the new Currency Connect, “a service that allows virtual world and social networking site members to exchange virtual currency among partner websites.”¹ They don’t (as far as I can tell) offer exchange with real currencies, though. That would certainly involve regulatory compliances which would complicate matters. But how long can these virtual currencies, purchased with real money, be unregulated? Over two years ago, “Linden Lab, the company that runs the popular virtual world Second Life, announced… that all in-world “banks” must now be registered with real-world banking regulators.”² Dave Rosenberg noted, in his blog on CNet News last December³, that the door is open for much larger players to bring their huge user bases to the game. Certainly PayPal, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft could stake a claim in this, as yet, wide open territory.

Where does that leave me? Crossing yet another promising idea off my list? Probably. I still don’t have the resources needed for development. So I’m throwing this idea out into the blogosphere. Maybe someone with capital or connections can make use of it.

What do you think? Thumbs up or down?

¹ http://www.currencyconnect.com/FAQ

² http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/felten/second-life-welcomes-bank-regulators

³ http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-10415702-62.html

Image courtesy of Pulsar Media