Last Year’s Dragons’ Den was record breaking, attracting more viewers than ever before. New Dragon Hilary Devey arrived, arched her shoulder pads and firmly established her place amongst the revered business leaders, and some of Britain’s best entrepreneurs gained the cash they desperately needed to turn their business fortunes around. Now it’s 2012 and the Den is ready to open once again.
Series 9 saw sixteen entrepreneurs accept an offer of investment from the business savvy multi-millionaires. One of the most dramatic pitches came from Chris Hopkins, who needed £120,000 to take his solar panel service nationwide. Having demonstrated his business was on a steep profit trajectory, four Dragons entered into a fierce bidding war to take a stake in the Yorkshireman’s company. A total of seven offers were made, including one notably retracted by Duncan Bannatyne. Chris finally shook hands with Theo Paphitis and Deborah Meaden, and with their help, he says he is now operational in eight regions and has quadrupled his sales revenue. Last year his profit exceeded £1M, and he is delighted to say, “Dragons’ Den has made me a millionaire!”
Former city worker Georgette Hewitt, who offered a stake in her children’s gift website, had an experience marked by extremes. After one of the worst starts ever in the Den that saw her fail to complete her presentation, she reined in her nerves and steered her pitch back on track. Such was her transformation; Peter Jones and Theo Paphitis agreed to invest £60,000 in her business, and it seems that viewers were won over too as she tells us her website received 1.4 million hits that night. Since then, Georgette says she is spending her Dragons’ money wisely, and reports a 70% increase in sales. It was Hilary Devey who spotted the opportunity in Liz and Alan Colleran’s memory foam sleeping bag. Impressed with their invention she invested the £80,000 they needed to improve manufacture. Now they say their influential Dragon has helped them to pursue new markets; including arranging a meeting with Richard Branson to pitch their product to his airline, and securing a major new deal that already guarantees half the turnover they achieved last year.
Previous success stories in the Den include single mum, Kirsty Henshaw. In 2010 she convinced Duncan Bannatyne and Peter Jones to invest £65,000 in her healthy deserts. She tells us that since her Dragons came onboard, her produce is now stocked in 665 stores nationwide, and she has achieved nearly £700,000 worth of sales. 2012 will see her new product range hit the shelves, and she is in talks to launch in America. Of course not everyone secures investment in the Den, but that doesn’t stop determined entrepreneurs going on to prove the Dragons wrong. In 2008, Natalie Ellis failed to convince the financiers to back her non-spill dog bowl, now she tells us that the product is available in 42 countries, her business is worth millions of pounds and even Barack Obama owns one!
The Rules
The rules are simple: Entrepreneurs ask for a cash investment in return for equity in their business. They must get at least the amount they ask for or they will walk away with nothing. The Dragons are prepared to be pitched any kind of business but they must be convinced that it requires investment and will make money. Ideas, businesses and products that have previously gained financial backing in the Den have demonstrated one or more of the following: unique selling point, scalability, clear route to market and a planned exit strategy.
How to Apply
If you’re genuinely seeking investment for your business idea or invention, the Dragon’s Den team would like to hear from you. The BBC will be auditioning throughout the coming months. If you would like an application form please send an e-mail to dragonsden@bbc.co.uk or visit www.bbc.co.uk/dragonsden
QCon, the Software Development Conference will be taking place at The Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London from March 7th to March 9th 2012 and would be of interest to enterprise software developers, team leads, architects and those involved in project management.
The organisers list Martin Fowler, one of the industry’s most influential authors, as one of the many speakers.
BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA — Monday, December 12, 2011
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced the dates for its upcoming LibrePlanet 2012 conference as March 24th and 25th, 2012, at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. A call for papers has also been announced. The conference will include talks from the FSF staff and board, GNU project contributors, and other members of the global free software community.
Previous LibrePlanet conferences have featured many free software luminaries, including FSF president Richard Stallman, Eben Moglen of the Freedom Box Foundation and Software Freedom Law Center, EFF co-founder John Gilmore, GNOME Foundation executive director Karen Sandler, Jeremy Allison of the Samba project, Selena Deckelmann of PostgreSQL, Máirín Duffy of Fedora, and veteran GNU developer Rob Savoye.
“At last year’s event, I promised we would make this conference bigger and better than ever before.” said Matt Lee, FSF campaigns manager, “All signs point to us making good on that promise.”
The conference is open to the public with purchase of a ticket, but associate members of the Free Software Foundation can attend as a benefit of their financial contribution. A goal of one hundred new associate members has been set in order to fund the conference, and new and existing members are encouraged to contribute online at http://www.fsf.org/associate.
Gartner, Inc. has revealed its top predictions for IT organizations and users for 2012 and beyond. Analysts said that the predictions herald changes in control for IT organizations as budgets, technologies and costs become more fluid and distributed.
This year’s selection process included evaluating several criteria that define a top prediction. The issues examined included relevance, impact and audience appeal. A list of this year’s predicts reports is available on the Gartner Predicts website at www.gartner.com/predicts.
Gartner’s top predictions for 2012 and beyond showcase the trends and events that will change the nature of business today and in years to come. Selected from across Gartner’s research areas as the most compelling and critical predictions, the trends and topics they address underline the reduction of control that IT has over the forces that affect it.
Daryl Plummer, managing vice president and Gartner fellow, said:
“The continued trends toward consumerization and cloud computing highlight the movement of certain former IT responsibilities into the hands of others.”
“As users take more control of the devices they will use, business managers are taking more control of the budgets IT organizations have watched shift over the last few years. As the world of IT moves forward, CIOs are finding that they must coordinate their activities in a much wider scope than they once controlled. While this might be a difficult prospect for IT departments, they must now adapt or be swept aside.”
Gartner analysts said that going into 2012 there is an increase in the amount of information available to organizations, but it’s a challenge for them to understand it. Given the shifts in control of systems that IT organizations are facing, the loss of ability to guarantee consistency and effectiveness of data will leave many struggling to prevent their organizations from missing key opportunities or from using questionable information for strategic decisions. No regulatory help is on the near horizon, leaving each business to decide for itself how to handle the introduction of big data.
“Any organization which wishes to accelerate in 2012 must establish in itself a significant discipline of coordinating distributed activities,” Mr. Plummer said. “They must establish relationship management as a key skill and train their people accordingly. The reason for this is that the lack of control can only be combated through coordinative activities. The IT organization of the future must coordinate those who have the money, those who deliver the services, those who secure the data, and those consumers who demand to set their own pace for use of IT.”
Gartner’s top predictions for 2012 include:
By 2015, low-cost cloud services will cannibalize up to 15 percent of top outsourcing players’ revenue.
Industrialized low-cost IT services (ILCS) is an emerging market force that will alter the common perceptions of pricing and value of IT services. In the next three to five years, this new model will reset the value proposition of IT. Low-cost cloud services will cause the cannibalization of current and potential outsourcing revenue. Similar to what happened with the adoption of offshore delivery, it will be incumbent upon vendors to invest in and adopt a new cloud-based, industrialized services strategy either directly or indirectly, internally or externally. The projected $1 trillion IT services market is at the beginning of a phase of further disruption, similar to the one the low-cost airlines have brought in the transportation industry.
In 2013, the investment bubble will burst for consumer social networks, and for enterprise social software companies in 2014.
Vendors in the consumer social network space are competing with each other at a rate and pace that are unusually aggressive, even in the technology market. The net result is a large crop of vendors with overlapping features competing for a finite audience. In the enterprise market, many small independent social networking vendors are struggling to reach critical mass at a time when market consolidation is starting, and megavendors, such as Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Google and VMware, have made substantial efforts to penetrate the enterprise social networking market. While substantial excitement will be raised by private firms going public, valuations of smaller independent vendors will diminish as recognition sets in that the opportunities for market differentiation and fast growth has eroded.
By 2016, at least 50 percent of enterprise email users will rely primarily on a browser, tablet or mobile client instead of a desktop client.
While the rise in popularity of mobile devices and the growing comfort with browser use for enterprise applications preordains a richer mix of email clients and access mechanisms, the pace of change over the next four years will be breathtaking. Email system vendors are also likely to build mobile clients for a diverse set of devices for the same reason. Market opportunities for mobile device management platform vendors will soar. Increased pressure will be on those suppliers to accommodate an increasing portfolio of collaboration services, including instant messaging, Web conferencing, social networking and shared workspaces.
By 2015, mobile application development projects targeting smartphones and tablets will outnumber native PC projects by a ratio of 4-to-1.
Smartphones and tablets represent more than 90 percent of the new net growth in device adoption for the coming four years, and increasing application platform capability across all classes of mobile phones is spurring a new frontier of innovation, particularly where mobile capabilities can be integrated with location, presence and social information to enhance the usefulness. Innovation is moving to the edge for mobile devices; whereas, in 2011, Gartner estimates that app development projects targeting PCs to be on par with mobile development. Future adoption will triple from 4Q10 to 1Q14, and will result in the vast majority of client-side applications being mobile only or mobile first for these devices.
By 2016, 40 percent of enterprises will make proof of independent security testing a precondition for using any type of cloud service.
While enterprises are evaluating the potential cloud benefits in terms of management simplicity, economies of scale and workforce optimization, it is equally critical that they carefully evaluate cloud services for their ability to resist security threats and attacks. Inspectors’ certifications will eventually become a viable alternative or complement to third-party testing. This means that instead of requesting that a third-party security vendor conduct testing on the enterprise’s behalf, the enterprise will be satisfied by a cloud provider’s certificate stating that a reputable third-party security vendor has already tested its applications.
At year-end 2016, more than 50 percent of Global 1000 companies will have stored customer-sensitive data in the public cloud.
With the current global economy facing financial pressure, organizations are compelled to reduce operational costs and streamline their efficiency. Responding to this imperative, it is estimated that more than 20 percent of organizations have already begun to selectively store their customer-sensitive data in a hybrid architecture that is a combined deployment of their on-premises solution with a private and/or public cloud provider in 2011.
By 2015, 35 percent of enterprise IT expenditures for most organizations will be managed outside the IT department’s budget.
Next generation digital enterprises are being driven by a new wave of business managers and individual employees who no longer need technology to be contextualized for them by an IT department. These people are demanding control over the IT expenditure required to evolve the organization within the confines of their roles and responsibilities. CIOs will see some of their current budget simply reallocated to other areas of the business. In other cases, IT projects will be redefined as business projects with line-of-business managers in control.
By 2014, 20 percent of Asia-sourced finished goods and assemblies consumed in the U.S. will shift to the Americas.
Political, environmental, economic and supply chain risks are causing many companies serving the U.S. market to shift sources of supply from Asia to the Americas, including Latin America, Canada and the U.S. Except in cases where there is a unique manufacturing process or product intellectual property, most products are candidates to be relocated. Escalating oil prices globally and rising wages in many offshore markets, plus the hidden costs associated with offshore outsourcing, erode the cost savings that didn’t account for critical supply chain factors, such as inventory carrying costs, lead times, demand variability and product quality.
Through 2016, the financial impact of cybercrime will grow 10 percent per year, due to the continuing discovery of new vulnerabilities.
As IT delivery methods meet the demand for the use of cloud services and employee-owned devices, new software vulnerabilities will be introduced, and innovative attack paths will be developed by financially motivated attackers. The combination of new vulnerabilities and more targeted attacks will lead to continued growth in bottom-line financial impact because of successful cyber attacks.
By 2015, the prices for 80 percent of cloud services will include a global energy surcharge.
While cloud operators can make strategic decisions about locations, tax subsidies are no long-term answer to managing costs, and investments in renewable-energy sources remain costly. Some cloud data center operators already include an energy surcharge in their pricing package, and Gartner analysts believe this trend will rapidly escalate to include the majority of operators — driven by competitive pressures and a “me too” approach. Business and IT leaders and procurement specialists must expect to see energy costs isolated and included as a variable element in future cloud service contracts.
Through 2015, more than 85 percent of Fortune 500 organizations will fail to effectively exploit big data for competitive advantage.
Current trends in smart devices and growing Internet connectivity are creating significant increases in the volume of data available, but the complexity, variety and velocity with which it is delivered combine to amplify the problem substantially beyond the simple issues of volume implied by the popular term “big data.” Collecting and analyzing the data is not enough — it must be presented in a timely fashion so that decisions are made as a direct consequence that have a material impact on the productivity, profitability or efficiency of the organization. Most organizations are ill prepared to address both the technical and management challenges posed by big data; as a direct result, few will be able to effectively exploit this trend for competitive advantage.
Further Information
Additional details are in the Gartner report, “Gartner’s Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users, 2012 and Beyond: Control Slips Away,” which is available on Gartner’s website at www.gartner.com/predicts. The Gartner Predicts Special Report includes links to more than 70 predicts reports broken out by topics, industries and markets.
UK scientists and businesses will have access to the most sophisticated technology keeping them at the cutting edge of research and development, as details of the Government’s multi-million pound e-infrastructure investment were announced today by David Willetts.
The investment includes £43 million for ARCHER, a new national supercomputer to support advanced research, such as complex chemistry and climate science, while helping industry design new products. For sectors such as aerospace and automotive, this could lead to better analysis of car incidents, helping industry build safer vehicles in less time.
E-infrastructure also supports the world’s best researchers through increased data storage and faster networks.
Minister for Universities and Science David Willetts said:
We should not think of infrastructure as just roads and railways - it’s also the networks and systems that underpin our world-leading science and research base. This ambitious and forward-looking programme of investment will be vital for businesses and universities alike. It will improve research and manufacturing processes and reduce the time and money it takes to bring a product to market.
This will drive growth and innovation across a whole range of sectors and ensure our leading institutions and companies are able to exploit the very latest technology.
The following projects will also benefit from the £158 million investment:
£30 million for the Daresbury Science and Innovation Campus, supporting research into the latest product development software;
£24 million for high capacity data storage across the Research Councils, ensuring researchers can easily access complex information from experiments;
£31 million to improve high capacity networks, including JANET, the Higher Education Funding Council for England’s system that helps the higher education community share large amounts of research data more easily;
£19 million for specialist supercomputers in areas such as particle physics and astronomy, weather forecasting and climate change, and genome analysis;
£4.75 million for the UK Space Agency to support the collection and storage of data from satellites; and
£6.5 million to establish a research fund for collaborative university projects to improve access to e-infrastructure.
Welcoming the news, Chair of Research Councils UK (RCUK) Professor Rick Rylance said:
“This investment is especially welcome in the challenging economic times we all face. Investment in high performance computing and increased data storage capacity is essential to ensure research in the UK remains at the cutting-edge in the most advanced areas and is capable of stimulating growth. It signals once again RCUK’s commitment to supporting the best and the most innovative work and ensuring the future prosperity and wellbeing of the UK.”
This investment is in addition to the ring-fenced science and research budget and is subject to business case approval.
Case Studies
Weather forecasting
The new, more-powerful, Met Office supercomputer has been operational since 2009. It is now providing more accurate forecasting of small-scale, high-impact weather events, with earlier warnings for the public and civil response authorities. It has also resulted in continued improvements in the quality of routine automated UK and global forecasts at all ranges, which is particularly beneficial during volcanic ash incidents, storms and floods, and for transport providers and utility companies.
Part of the £145 million will be invested in the highly successful joint Natural Environment Research Council and Met Office supercomputing project (‘MONSooN’) based at Exeter. The weather and climate research undertaken on MONSooN helps to improve our understanding of atmospheric science, leading to improved weather services and advice for policy makers, business and the public. MONSooN Phase 2 will enable the capacity to be increased by 50 per cent.
DNA sequencing
DNA sequencing requires e-infrastructure to process and interpret increasingly large amounts of research data. Investment will be made to develop new computing infrastructure at The Genome Analysis Centre in Norwich, which receives strategic funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.
It will be equipped with cutting edge computing hardware for data processing, vital for providing high quality, meaningful information to researchers in industry and academia in support of global challenges like food security. This could ultimately lead to, for example, the development of better crops, able to withstand challenging conditions like drought.
Aerospace and automotive manufacturing
To compete with the rest of the world, British manufacturers need to bring the most sophisticated technology to market as quickly and cheaply as possible. To meet these challenges, the aerospace industry is making increasing use of “virtual prototyping”, with an aim for physical testing to be all but eliminated until the final verification phases. This reduces product development risk and can lead to new manufacturing processes.
In the past the automobile industry would have been content to model the collapse of the rear bumper of a car on impact. Now the industry has the ability to model the effect of the impact on the structure of the whole car, the deployment of the air bag and even the effect of the impact on the internal organs of the passenger.
These approaches places enormous demands on e-infrastructure, but are essential if the UK is to remain at the leading edge of manufacturing. We are investing in the software development tools to model and simulate these product and process developments.
Digital media
The entertainment and media industry is a $1.7 trillion market, and the production engines of TV, films and gaming are making increasing demands on computer processing.
The creative industries have always pushed the boundaries of hardware and software to ensure maximum ‘realism’ in representing the world, and DreamWorks (producers of Shrek and Monsters Versus Aliens) considers high-performance supercomputers (HPC) to be one its most vital strategic assets.
The UK Visual Effects (VFX) and post-production industry is one of the top three in world, and to remain so it will have to be at the forefront of technological development, including HPC. Currently, VFX work is a very slow process for the creation of a high quality image. Real time rendering, driven by HPC, will be a major commercial driver when film studios and production companies are choosing their post-production houses.
Game developers already use real-time rendering - even at TV HD quality - but to improve image quality and match those of film and future TV resolutions, these developers will need HPC - especially as content is transferred from one medium to another. The introduction of stereoscopic and auto-stereoscopic (glasses-free) 3D, particularly for live events, is currently hindered by the lack of good and reliable real time processing for the alignment of the left and right eye image channels. This can only be resolved by HPC.
The Chancellor has today delivered his autumn statement to Parliament, alongside the publication of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s updated forecasts for growth and borrowing. He announced permanent reductions in spending to ensure that the UK meets its fiscal targets, using some of those savings in the short term to fund infrastructure investment to generate long-term growth. Alongside this, he announced measures to help households and businesses cope with higher inflation and to ensure that deficit reduction is implemented fairly.
Protecting the economy
As result of the ongoing impact of the financial crisis, the euro area crisis, and commodity shock, the OBR expect slower growth and higher borrowing in each year of their forecast.
In order to ensure it continues to meet its fiscal targets, the Government will:
set plans for public spending in 2015-16 and 2016-17 in line with spending reductions over the Spending Review 2010 period
set public sector pay awards at an average of 1 per cent for each of the two years after the current pay freeze comes to an end - Departmental budgets will be adjusted in line with the policy, with the exception of the Health and schools budgets, where savings will be recycled
adjust the allocation of Official Development Assistance in line with the OBR’s revised growth forecast, meeting the 0.7% of GNI target in 2013
raise the State Pension age to 67 between April 2026 and April 2028
not increase the child element of the Child Tax Credit by more than inflation, and not up-rate the couple and lone parent elements of the Working Tax Credit by inflation next year
To complement the Bank of England’s active monetary policy, the Government will launch a package of up to £21 billion to ease the flow of credit to smaller and mid-sized businesses, including:
up to £20 billion through the National Loan Guarantee Scheme to lower the cost of bank loans for smaller businesses
an initial £1 billion Business Finance Partnership, which will lend to mid-sized businesses and SMEs in the UK through non-bank channels
Building a stronger economy for the future
Building on the first phase of the Growth Review, the Government is taking action to accelerate its supply side reforms to invest in infrastructure, support enterprise and lay the foundations for strong, balanced growth, including:
£6.3 billion of additional infrastructure spending over the Spending Review period, of which £1.3 billion was announced earlier in the autumn. This includes:
investing over £1 billion to tackle areas of congestion and improve the national road network
committing £170 million of extra funding to allow more local transport projects to go ahead
investing £100 million to create “super-connected” cities across the UK, with 80-100 megabits per second broadband and city-wide high-speed mobile connectivity
increasing the Regional Growth Fund by £1 billion
£600 million of funding for an estimated 100 additional Free Schools, alongside an extra £600 million for Local Authorities with the greatest pressure on school places in England
around £1 billion of new private sector investment in regulated industries supported by government guarantee
commitments to £5 billion of capital projects in the next Spending Review as part of the National Infrastructure Plan
targeting up to £20 billion of private sector investment in infrastructure through a memorandum of understanding with two groups of UK pension funds and establishing the Infrastructure Investors Forum with the Association of British Insurers
a new Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) from April 2012
100 per cent capital allowances in Sheffield, the Black Country, Liverpool, Tees Valley, North Eastern and Humber Enterprise Zones
a new build indemnity scheme for builders and lenders to the stimulate the construction of new homes
Fairness
Fairness underpins the Government’s plan to protect, rebalance and strengthen the economy. To ensure that the deficit reduction is implemented fairly, provide further support for families and businesses with high inflation, and support young people in the labour market, the Government will:
defer the 3.02 pence per litre (ppl) fuel duty increase due to take effect on 1 January 2012 to 1 August 2012; the second increase planned for 1 August 2012 will be cancelled
increase the bank levy to 0.088 per cent from 1 January 2012, consistent with the Government’s intention that it raises at least £2½ billion each year, as set out at Budget 2011
ensure employers making asset-backed pension contributions do not receive unintended excess tax relief
proceed with the extension of Air Passenger Duty (APD) to flights aboard business jets, effective from April 2013 – details will be set out in the Government’s response to the APD consultation on 6 December 2011
introduce a Youth Contract worth a total of £940 million over the Spending Review period to provide wage incentives for small firms to take on young apprentices and employees
provide extra support for 18-24 year olds through Jobcentre Plus, and an offer of Work Experience or a Sector Based Work Academy for those on Jobseeker’s allowance for over three months
fund a new £50 million a year programme to support some of our most disadvantaged 16-17 year olds into education, an Apprenticeship or a job with training
invest a further £380 million a year by 2014-15 extending to 130,000 more disadvantaged two year olds the offer of 15 hours free education and care a week
The UK’s most innovative firms share their business secrets.
Every day across the British business landscape new companies are starting up and fresh ideas are being generated. 2011 has seen a plethora of bolder and better business ideas. These gems can be new products and service ideas or equally new ways to improve existing offerings. The most important thing for any entrepreneur or start up is how to take an innovative idea and turn it into a success, delivering bottom line growth.
If the UK is to regain its role as a world leader of innovation, British companies must be at the forefront of research and development. Innovation is key for Orange (the mobile telecoms company) and this is why it has teamed up with some of the UK’s most exciting business innovators and leaders to create a new guide for business. It will help you master the art of innovation, featuring the likes of LinkedIn and The British Library through to small nimble firms like Naked Wines, all contributing their secret tip to this guide.
Professor Dominic Swords from Henley Business School, who contributed to the guide, said:
Innovation does not just sit at the top. To innovate successfully the whole business, from product development, to sales and marketing, must be fully engaged and energised behind that goal. Companies that are always improving and investing stand a much better chance of offering their markets what they want.
These tips include:
A full bodied business model can never disappoint. For startups to succeed against established companies, it’s vital to offer customers and suppliers something better than the status quo - the basis for which needs a sound business model. Rowan Gormley, CEO, Naked Wines
Quickly find out if your idea is unique or not. You’ve come up with a brilliant idea, which could make you millions. Before you spend a lot of time and money on developing your ground-breaking new product, it is vital to find out whether it is unique and innovative and can be protected. Steve van Dulken, information expert, British Library Business & IP Centre
Let your customers drive your innovation. Innovation is central to all business growth. Always try and build new ideas around your customers and any problems they have. Anthony Keyworth, B2B Strategy, planning & products director, Everything Everywhere
Put time aside for creativity. Dedicate two hours every Friday afternoon to free thinking. Everyone downs tools on their normal work and takes time to think about new ideas or concepts. They can then spend this time to develop them. Jim Shaikh, founder and CEO, yoomi
Hot water and central heating costs are unavoidable and becoming increasingly expensive but they can easily be managed keeping the size of your bills to the bare minimum. There are many ways to achieve lower fuel bills ranging from changing your fuel supplier to the installation of cavity wall and loft insulation. But, a new device called FUELmaster takes a more hands-on approach to the problem. It works on gas, oil and LPG boilers to lower heating and utility bills.
We at Fuelmaster have used our knowledge of the heating industry to design, develop and produce what is arguably one of the most effective, least expensive and quickest ways customers can maximise fuel cost savings with the minimum of financial outlay and causing the least inconvenience to install. A typical return on product investment can be achieved in less than 12 months.
BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA — Thursday, September 29, 2011
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced the re-launch of its Free Software Directory at directory.fsf.org. The Directory lists over 6,500 programs that are free for any computer user to download, run, and share. It was first launched nearly a decade ago, but the new version brings a host of new features designed to make it a more useful and current resource for users, developers, advocates, and researchers.
John Sullivan, FSF’s executive director said:
Since its inception, the Directory has been one of our most popular and important resources. Its careful curation has made it a reliable place to find applications for any purpose that are free — as in freedom — for everyone. Users can find programs they need, and advocates can find programs to recommend. But with so much free software being written and shared now, we wanted to update the technology we use for the site so that contributors can participate in examining and posting new entries, and users can more easily search them.
Because each entry is individually checked and tested, users know that any program they come across in the Directory will be free software with free documentation and without proprietary software requirements. Programs that run on proprietary operating systems like Mac and Windows are listed, but only if they also run fully on GNU/Linux. The new version of the Directory will continue to provide users these same assurances, but it has been rebuilt so that members of the free software community can become familiar with the criteria and then work together to curate and grow the catalog.
The new site is based on MediaWiki, free software most famously known for powering Wikipedia. It also uses a set of extensions called Semantic MediaWiki that add advanced search and presentation capabilities, structured to be useful for reading by both humans and data-mining programs.
Joshua Gay, campaigns manager said:
“We’re empowering contributors to improve every aspect of the site, from its look and feel to enabling more types of information and multimedia to be associated with each individual listing, we also have plans to collaborate around sharing data with GNU/Linux distributions and other free software projects.”
To most users of the Directory, the key aspect of the new software is that it will make it easier for them to find the program they need. An extensive and flexible category system, plus over 40,000 keywords and more than 40 different fields of information, enhance both simple and advanced searching.
Yaron Koren, one of the free software developers behind Semantic MediaWiki, gave support and help in the re-launch effort. “I created the Semantic Forms extension in order to allow for sites that combine the collaborative nature of a wiki with the structure and queryability of a database; so it’s heartening to see Semantic MediaWiki and Semantic Forms being used for that purpose, and so comprehensively, in the Free Software Directory,” he said.
We would like to know how Ed Miliband plans to identify and reward ‘good’ companies over ‘bad’ ones. In practice, we think he would find this neither straightforward nor desirable. He should have more faith in customers and investors to decide. In the modern business place price is not the sole determining factor affecting people’s buying and investment decisions. Consumers and investors are better equipped and better informed than ever to impose discipline on firms than any government. Instead of proposing that the state makes choices that are likely to be simplistic and wrong he would be wiser to find ways of boosting competition so that the customer remains king.
Wall Street celebrates as unemployment in the United States falls to its lowest for almost three years. The surprise drop in the US unemployment rate has pushed the Dow share index in New York to its highest level since May 2008, four months before Lehman Brothers went bankrupt.
Alexander Schey is just 26, and in the garage of a fairly ordinary house in west London where he, and a few other fellow London students, built a battery powered electric car. Then, to raise awareness of their new battery management system, they drove along 25-thousand kilometres of the Pan American Highway. But this was more than just an elaborate student […]
If times are hard, why not set up your own business rather than try to find a job somewhere else? Peter Day hears from young entrepreneurs who think that one way of beating recession is to start from scratch. Producer: Caroline Bayley Editor: Stephen Chilcott
