In a comprehensive report, Gordon Cook brings together a collection of articles and interviews, specifications and outlooks on the subject of the user-owned mesh communications infrastructure that was experimentally introduced and run by Isaac Wilder at Occupy Wallstreet’s Zuccotti Park.

Isaac is also one of the initiators of the Free Network Foundation, a non profit that has a precise target: the prototyping and construction of citizen-owned network infrastructure everywhere. The report takes a look at that as well. It is available for download as a PDF (59 pages) here:

Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Hollman Enciso, a 25-year-old systems engineer, member of the BogotaMesh community, which works to build a free (as in "free speech") wireless community network in Bogotá (read more about the project on it's official web page) and I'm looking forward to getting your support to be able to attend the "2nd Regional Days of Free Networks" to be held March 19th and 20th in Uruguay.

The main goals of this event will be:

• Agreement on a common license for the free networks in the region
• Debating about the node installer to reach a common project. Nightwing being the first option
• Debating about contents for the network
• Setting up a date and place for the 3rd edition of the event.
• Talks
• Participate in the hackmeeting that will be taking place simultaneously
• Invite to create a free network in Uruguay

Besides the main goals, there will be many talks by members of the different communities that will gather there which I'm very interested to attend in order to gain knowledge and bring something back to the table to our local project.
I had the chance to attend the first event that was held in Buenos Aires, Argentina (pictures) were I was able to promote our project ; but this time around I'd like to take a more active role as a participant; all this is would allow me to bring much more knowledge to our country. Unfortunately I don't have the funds to attend but if you help me, I will be able to :-D. I'm trying to gather some money in order to buy the flight tickets (I'll do some magic myself in order to handle food and lodging). If you believe it's an event I can take advantage of, please consider donating to my cause.

If you are outside of Colombia, you could still help me through your credit card by using this page but there is a $6/transactio fee . I've already used it twice (some of my personal information has to be provided so if you are going to do it, get in touch with me so I can provide it to you). It's easier to send any donations to my friend Fabian Rodriguez (Send to him via PayPal directly). Fabian is an active member of the free software community in Canada and has donated the first U$50 for this. He is going to then arrange to make a single payment to my Colombian bank account on 28/02/2011, which will save transaction fees - Xoom is ~6U$/transaction.

If you do support me I make a commitment to make a post in my blog with information on the event and progress / benefits to my project. I will list all donators names/logos/pics/links to your profiles in twitter/identi.ca/blogs/web sites or your donation can be anonymous; I know it's not much but at least it's something I can do for you. Make sure to mention if you want to remain anonymous.

I need to raise EXACTLY 1,500,000 COP (roughly 800 US$) before the tickets get more expensive as the date approaches.

If the amount of money raised doesn't match the requirement, I will not travel but I'll be donating it all to the BogotaMesh project.

If it does, any extra money will go through this trip's expenses and then as a donation to the project itself, for equipment and ongoing expenses.

As wikipedia says, Grooveshark is an online music search engine, streaming music service and a web application for music recommendation. this service is very successful because we can listen music on their official site, create playlists, recommend songs, find good friends and a lot of things over which I will not talk and that everyone has described in their sites like this or this ...

Today I'm going to talk about my experience with Grooveshark VIP which I purchased a few days ago; many friends have been asking me that such it are a good app or is worth it and yes; because I want to talk a little about what has been Grooveshark VIP for me.

I Just purchase one month for the modest sum of 3 USD (the next full year insurance for 60 USD), the VIP account as the appointing official site has the ability to download the mobile application, the application is available for now for andoid, palm, nokia and blackberry (except the storm :E) where you can play any song on catalog available, the preferred and listen to playlists created.

The other advantage is to have the Desktop Grooveshark version which allows me to run the application without accessing the website, integrates with the operating system, it's possible to enable notifications  like sound control, audio controls, forward, rewind pause... therefore we must install Adobe AIR :E but hey, On Ubuntu works great as a whole.

Another advantage of VIP is able to scrobbling on last.fm :D (my last.fm), another yhat is't named is that this version are fre of advertising in comparison to the free version ...

OK, and that's what this cool? Well I like music very much and now -because I have it installed on my mobile android- I can hear my favorite music where and when I like -as has coverage from my provider or a public internet acces- , including what I like most is that just put a song by artist X and activate the radio mode is still playing music similar to this, that way you know many bands / artists  \m/. The truth is that I really enjoy it's the Grooveshark on the phone, I installed the desktop edition but almost not played becouse on my desktop I hear a good radio station: P

To complete this post I rescue of Grooveshark the amount of music we could find, from rancheras (my boss got me to find the Togres del Norte) until you are.. whatever .. I've searched everything comes and I think this is because it is also possible to upload music to their big catalog, which do not permit other great services such as last.fm which had before but at that time was not vallenato or wagon (not sure if now if you find that kind of music)

As many people know, some months ago Evan Dandrea was asking for LoCo Teams support of the creation of one dedicated site on Stack Exchange Network for Ubuntu [1].

Ubuntu Colombia was making some testing of one similar platform called Shapado 4 months ago. This platform besides giving us similar functionalities, have many improvements on communication with other (social) networks, translations in many languages and many others [2]. And the big advantage over Stack Exchange Network is that it's Free Software under GNU Affero General Public License (same of Launchpad.net).

They are really open to suggestions, and also have many developers compromised with Free Software, Ubuntu and communities. Their development is under Ruby on Rails, Linux and MongoDB. Example:http://ubuntu.shapado.com/questions/what-would-be-a-good-openid-icon-for-launchpad

We, Ubuntu Colombia, believe that Free Software must be used and supported by us, a big community helping a big software. And, additional to this support, we reject the wish of support to the proprietary software used on Stack Networks.

We and the Shapado community are waiting their LoCo Teams supports to raise Shapado as THE free and bigger website of questions and answers on the Internet.

Hey follows, we don't have any excuse to not use Shapado and give some love to the free software community, we are waiting for you.

Just use it!!

http://ubuntu.shapado.com

[1] https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/loco-contacts/2010-July/004683.html

[2] http://shapado.com/questions/how-does-shapado-compare-to-stackexchange

One of our communuty members, Fernando (you can check his blog at http://blog.beford.org ) post some weeks ago this small javascript that could be pretty useful for other LoCoTeams. I' m transcribing his post here for public consumption.

This little javascript obtains a sorted list of members from any Launchpad Team by karma. It's using the Launchpad API and Mochikit

In order to test it you should drag the Karma table link to your favorites bar, then you must go to www.launchpad.net. When you're there just clic on the Karma table favorite and it would ask you for the team you want to check and voíla.. you'd get your favorite's team karma sorted member list.

This is the code so everyone can take a look on it:

javascript:(
function(){
var d = loadJSONDoc('/api/devel/~'+prompt('Team name:', 'ubuntu-co')+'/members?ws.size=200');
d.addBoth(function (res) {
res.entries.sort(function(a,b) { return parseFloat(b.karma) - parseFloat(a.karma) } );
msg = "";
for (i=0;i<res.total_size;i++) {
msg = msg + "\r\n" + '<tr><td>'+(i+1)+'</td>
<td><a href="/~'+res.entries[i].name+'">'+res.entries[i].display_name+'</a></td>
<td>'+res.entries[i].karma+'</td></tr>';
};
document.body.innerHTML="<table class=\"listing\" id=\"activemembers\">
<thead><tr><th>&nbsp;</th><th>Name</th><th>Karma</th></tr></thead>
<tbody>"+msg+"</tbody>
</table>";
});
}
)();

Best regards from Ubuntu Colombia.

For the original post please check http://blog.beford.org/2010/07/30/obtener-lista-de-karma-en-teams-launchpad-net/

Last Monday (July 19th) at the Ubuntu Colombia Council meeting, i've passed the role of Ubuntu Colombia LoCoTeam Contact and Administrator to Andres Mujica. Since February 21st 2008, i was put in charge of Ubuntu Colombia by Fabian Rodríguez when our Community presented itself as Official Comunity at the LoCo Council.

By now, I believe that i fullfilled a complete cycle on my Contact duty for the Ubuntu Colombia community. A lot of goals, plans, proyects and personal objectives were accomplished hand to hand with the Community and now is time for new members of Ubuntu Colombia take the shot for the Contact role, new members with much more time, willingness and dedication to accomplish a lot more things that i could have done until now.

I'm not going away from the Team, I'll be working harder than ever as an active member, supporting all the projects i'm working on within Ubuntu Colombia.

I'm wishing the best of the lucks to Andrés on his new role and a lot of success to become in order to fulfill our LoCo Team goals.

It's important for me to let you all now about our Reapproval wiki at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ColombianTeam/TeamReApproval2010, in this wiki all the activities and grow that our community has experienced are shown. And thanks to Colombian community for their support on this.

Ubuntu Colombia For The Win!!!

On Monday June 28 starts the third version of Campus Party, one of the biggest technological events that have taken place in Colombia, I had the opportunity to attend the two previous versions (2008 and 2009) as a lecturer and the third is not the exception :D this year by the area of Security and Networks, which debuts this year with excellent lectures and activities which I personally think the vast majority attend.

A little more info out of the Campus Party wikipedia: Is a Lan party that was established in 1997 in different regions of Spain like Málaga, Valencia and Palma de Mallorca and is hold as the "biggest electronic entertainment of the world online"[citation needed]. In 2009 it moved also to other countries like Mexico as it did in 2008 with Brazil, Colombia and El Salvador. The most common activities of Campus Party are video games, Linux install fests and sharing digital technology information.

No doubt this is a festival of great technology, adventure, knowledge and reunion with many friends. On campus spaces lend themselves to all kinds of activities between them and that I like after the conference are workshops and hacklabs improvised. of all the same communities in different areas. It pays to do business, create and advance projects with the knowledge of all and also call all these people to become involved in them.

This is my little note, do not say goodbye without telling my conference this year is about Community Mesh Networks which will be transmitted by streaming on Friday at 3:00 PM, by now I have no link, but are pending that this means I will report as watching live conference.

Today I decided to see how to connect the PlayStation 3 to my Ubuntu, to share multimedia content such as photo galleries, Music and Video. For this  I found MediaTomb a UPnP media server and open source (GPL) administered like a  web interface, fast, intuitive and friendly. I't allow us to transmit multimedia digital media through our local network to various UPnP devices within the latter PS3, but for this we must enable some parameters that I explain below

First, you have to download the MediaTomb from the official website or from Ubuntu repositories, as it is available. :D You can download fromt Synaptic, the Ubuntu Software Center or APT.

sudo apt-get install mediatomb

Once installed, we have to configure the network interface through which our computer MediaTomb going to work, we do this by editing the file /etc/default/mediatomb changing the line INTERFACE = "" by INTERFACE = "networkInterface"

sudo vim /etc/default/mediatomb

INTERFACE="eth0"

Now, to work withe the  console PlayStation 3 edit the file /etc/mediatomb/config.xml

sudo vim /etc/mediatomb/config.xml

In this file, under <server> add network interface:

<interface>eth0</interface>

In the same file, find <protocolInfo extend="yes"/><!-- For PS3 support change to "no" --> And change it for yes, it is as follow:

<protocolInfo extend="yes"/><!-- For PS3 support change to "yes" -->

Finally enabling the divx for the PS3 on the line

<!-- Uncomment the line below for PS3 divx support -->

<!– <map from=”avi” to=”video/divx”/> –>

And leave it like this:

<!-- Uncomment the line below for PS3 divx support -->

<map from="avi" to="video/divx"/>

Save and now swe have to start de MediaTomb daemon

sudo /etc/init.d/mediatomb start

Lunch the MediaTomb on the console and copy the last one line; the ip addres and the port (ip:port) and entered in our web browser

hollman@saboteur:~$ mediatomb &

FLISoL Ibague

The Music Capital - that's how Ibague is known in Colombia – could not stay out from the biggest Free Software Event in Colombia, that's why Ubuntu Colombia and Casli (Ibague Open community for Free Software) joined efforts organizing this event. After four months organizing and setting up everything, the past saturday April 24th the FLISOL event was held at the Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia. Several prominent members of the free software movement in Colombia like Wilfredo Pachón, Mayckol Morales (Ubuntu Colombia), Sergio Gonzalez (Debian Colombia), Zoociedad, among others were speakers at the conference.

Before April 23th a frantic activity inviting people, business, universities, schools, even the City Major. A lot of flyers, posters and publicity was made so an event like this couldn't pass unnoticed.

On April 23th Diego Forigua (Ubuntu Colombia), Mayckol Morales (Ubuntu Colombia), Wilfredo Pachón, Microprint, zoociedad, Nestor Santos, travel from Bogota to Ibague (about 4 hours trip) , while Casli made last arrangements for the event.

On April 24th everyone was expecting the FLISOL start, the people start arriving really early in the morning. With the words from Mr Iván Melo Delvasto, Mr Cesar A Gualteros Galeano inviting people to use free software the activities started. About 700 people were present. All of them went to the Ubuntu, Debian, Centos, Fedora and OpenSuse stands. Talks, workshops, Urban Terror and Frets on Fire tournaments, even to commercial stands from Comcel, Redecomputo and Urbanetwork.

Around 8 hours of fun and several activities were enjoyed by the community. At the sunset 3 big events started, Cosmos navigation with free software, astronomical observation (validating the previous software navigation) and DJ night, we were able to watch on real time the Moon and Saturn thanks to Urania-Scorpius also some moon dancing with the DJ Maomix music.

This event ends with CASLI as a new, vibrant and powerful community, an example of quality on a very short time, able to put the University and Tolima as a Free Software seed in Colombia.

FLISoL Cucuta

The FLISOL at the Cucuta City, this year showcased a new element, the "marathon" held at a nearby city, Pamplona. This was the first time a FLISOL was arranged with speakers traveling from different cities to talk about free software philosophy and free culture, it's important to notice the effort from Xavier Araque, who came from San Cristobal - Venezuela and Katherine Cancelado from Bucaramanga, accepting the invitation.

A massive assistance with more than 200th people, Orlando Rios from the SENA helped with the locations for talks, works

As LoCo contact Team Ubuntu Colombia I can request, after each release a Mix of CD's, To Lucid the Mix of CD's has 250 Ubuntu's, 50 Kubuntu's and 50 Server; Well Ubuntu Colombia just got his Mix Ubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.04 LTS :). I leave you some pictures of the new art. - Canonical Thanks!