“xkcd: volume 0” by Randall Munroe

What can I say? After all the years of reading xkcd.com, buying the book seemed like an obvious “huh, how did I not buy this already” moment.

This was a great wander down memory lane. I found a great many of my favorite xkcd comics, including bobby-drop-tables (therapeutic for anyone with an apostrophe in their surname!), locked-out-of-house, i’m-compiling-code and “the one that makes every Release Engineer I know cringe“.

Somehow, there were even some I’d never seen before, a very happy discovery: chess-coaster (which in turn inspired real life http://xkcd.com/chesscoaster!), the why-i’m-barred-from-speaking-at-crypto-conferences series, girls-on-the-internet, ninjas-vs-stallman, counting sheep…

All in all, a great fun read, and I found the “extra” sidebar cartoons equally fun… especially the yakshaver! If you like xkcd, and don’t already have this book, go get it.

ps: He’s got a new book coming out in a few days, a book tour in progress, and a really subtle turtles-all-the-way-down comic which nudges about the new book… if you look *really* closely! I’m looking forward to getting my hands on it!

http://oduinn.com/blog/2014/09/05/xkcd-vol-0-by-randall-munroe/

We have been working hard to develop initial multi-screen capabilities within Firefox for Android Beta. Now, supported video content from Web pages you visit can be sent to and viewed on a second screen, with a new ‘send to device’ video sending feature. This feature is now available for testing.

Users now have even more control over their Web experience and can enhance the way they view video content by sending it to a larger screen. They can play, pause and close videos directly from within Firefox for Android via the Media Control Bar, which appears at the bottom of the phone’s screen when a video is being sent to a device. The Media Control Bar will stay visible as long as the video is playing, even as you change tabs or visit new Web pages.

To help users identify that the video they are watching in Firefox for Android can be sent to their connected media streaming device, a ‘send to’ indicator will appear (after any ads have finished) on the playback controls bar for the video.

Clicking this indicator will bring up a list of connected streaming media devices. Users can then select the device they want to send the video to for viewing on a big screen. A second ‘send to’ indicator will then appear in the URL bar to remind users that content from this Web page is being sent to a device.

How to Get Started
To test this feature on Roku or Chromecast, follow these simple instructions:

1. Install Firefox for Android Beta if you haven’t already.
2. Make sure Roku or Chromecast is set-up on a nearby TV and is running on the same WiFi network as your Android phone.
3. If streaming to a Roku, add the Firefox channel to the channel list – instructions from Roku on how to add a new channel are here
4. Go to a site like CNN.com and look for a video on the homepage. Once you start playing a supported video (after any ads have finished playing), the above ‘send to’ icon will appear over the video controls indicating that it can be sent to a nearby streaming device.
5. You can send the video you are watching to a nearby media streaming device by tapping on the video and selecting ‘send to’ from the video controls or touching the ‘send-to’ icon in the URL bar. Both actions will automatically launch the Firefox channel on Roku or activate Chromecast for streaming and send the video to a nearby TV.

NOTES:

• So long as the device receiving the video supports the same video format being viewed on Firefox for Android (e.g. MP4 for Roku), it will play.
• Some websites hide or customize the HTML5 video controls and some override the video playback menu too. This can make sending a video to a compatible device like Roku a little tricky, but the simple fallback is to start playing the video in the web page. If the video is in MP4 format and Firefox for Android Beta can find your Roku, a “send to device” indicator will appear in the URL Bar. Just tap on that to send the video to your Roku.

Support for sending videos to compatible devices like Roku and Chromecast is currently in pre-release. We need your help to test this exciting new feature. Please do remember to share your feedback and file any bugs. Happy testing!

For more information:

• Download Firefox for Android Beta
• Firefox for Android Beta release notes
• Download Firefox Beta for Windows, Mac & Linux
• Firefox Beta for Windows, Mac & Linux release notes

https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2014/09/05/road-test-sending-video-to-chromecast-and-roku-in-firefox-for-android-beta/

I know lots of people are very anxious to see Mozilla’s new code-review tool. It’s been a harrowing journey, but we are finally knocking out our last few blockers for initial deployment (see tracking bug 1021929). While we sort those out, here’s something to whet your palate: a walk through the new review work flow.

http://mrcote.info//blog/2014/09/04/review-board-preview/

Next Wednesday, a number of organizations and tech companies are rallying together for a Day of Action to protect net neutrality. Mozilla is proud to join the effort.

Protecting net neutrality is a top priority for Mozilla. We believe that regardless of who is sending and receiving it, ISPs treating data equally is vital to a healthy, vibrant and open Web. During the Day of Action, we will encourage the Mozilla community to amplify its voice and send a clear message to the U.S. Congress about what is at stake if net neutrality is weakened.

In advance of the Day of Action, we will also host a reddit AMA to raise awareness and understanding of the issue so people can take informed action. Please join us in the AMA on Tuesday, September 9, from 12-1pm PT by visiting https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/.

This is a critical time in the evolution of the Web. Decisions about net neutrality will determine whether the Web continues to be a powerful, shared resource for innovation, opportunity and learning. A long-awaited decision from the FCC is imminent, so let’s join together to send a strong message to policy makers: Protect Net Neutrality.

https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2014/09/04/a-day-of-action-to-protect-net-neutrality/

Primarily what I did during Wikimania was chew on pens.

Discussing Fluid Lobbying at Wikimania 2014, by Sebastiaan ter Burg, under CC BY 2.0

However, I also gave some talks.

The first one was on Creative Commons 4.0, with Kat Walsh. While targeted at Wikimedians, this may be of interest to others who want to learn about CC 4.0 as well.

Second one was on Open Source Hygiene, with Stephen LaPorte. This one is again Wikimedia-specific (and I’m afraid less useful without the speaker notes) but may be of interest to open source developers more generally.

The final one was on sharing; video is below (and I’ll share the slides once I figure out how best to embed the notes, which are pretty key to understanding the slides):

http://lu.is/blog/2014/09/04/my-wikimania-2014-talks/

Now that we’re well underway in the brand exploration project, we’re starting to see some fun and exciting ideas unfold visually thanks to a partnership Creative has with the amazing Pitch Interactive.

It’s awesome to see just how much Pitch understands what we’re trying to achieve and their level of energy for making this a reality matches ours perfectly. Their experience with illustration and data visualization has us super excited to team up and make this living brand the fingerprint Mozilla needs to represent our amazing, diverse organization.

As an amazing example of what the potential is, please check out one of their portfolio pieces for McKnight Artist Fellows. Those individual artist illustrations use data from their career and form stunning interactive visuals using Web technologies. Exciting stuff!

If you’ve been following along, you’ve seen my first two live stream sessions where I’ve been dreaming up potential directions for our logo. Using those directions, Pitch has started looking into what data we can use from within Mozilla and how it could be visualized using HTML5/CSS/JS as an “of the web” logo for us.

We’ve received several mockup visual routes we could take and we’d like to share a small sampling of what they’ve been dreaming up on their end, to keep this process as open as possible. I’ll be taking some of their ideas and playing around with them in the next livestream to build on their vision and see how it could evolve further.

Stay tuned!

http://blog.seanmartell.com/2014/09/04/mozilla-id-project-logo-exploration-and-pitch-interactive/

I started contributing to Mozilla back in early 2004, when I would have never imagined how my life would be so connected to Mozilla 10 years after.

When you devote so much time of your free time to a project it has to be a reason, and in this case it’s the Mozilla mission and see how you can contribute to change things globally.

If you didn’t know, Mozilla is a global community and a non-profit organization which wants to bring openness and participation to the web thanks to open source products like Firefox web browser, Firefox OS mobile OS and others.

I’ve been involved in a lot of projects these years but there are two that I consider the most important.

The first one is Mozilla Hispano, the Spanish community we founded back in 2007. Being involved in community building efforts and contributor engagement with people from a lot of Spanish speaking countries has been (and is) an awesome experience. It has taught me a lot about how to work in and structure volunteer communities.

The second one is the Mozilla Reps program. When William Quiviger invited me to join the first Council to start the project in 2011, and join the rest of the initial Council in the Paris Work Week, we had no idea about the importance Reps program would have right now.

I was part of the council till first elections took place and then I’ve been involved as a mentor and also as a Reps module peer, helping and suggesting improvements to the program.

Starting in September I’ll be joining the Community Engagement team at Mozilla to work together with Rosana as Community Manager for Mozilla Reps program. This will allow me to devote full time to help improve the program working with Council, Mentors, Reps and the rest of the organization. I’ll be focused on improving tools, processes, metrics and internal communications.

I’ll keep my responsibilities as Mozilla Hispano community member and you shouldn’t expect major changes on my contributions to other Mozilla areas as long as my time allows me

I’m really excited about this change and it’s an honor to work full time on something that enables mozillians to move Mozilla’s mission forward and keep making impact on the web.

http://www.nukeador.com/04/09/2014/joining-mozilla-full-time/

Today when I sent a friend request on Facebook to a person, I was met by a dialog asking if we’re really friends.

This got me thinking about what their motivation for this might be, and my first thoughts were:

• This means a lot of people are using Facebook “wrong” in their eyes
• People have gotten tired of tons of friend requests (lucky them)
• Friend requests is not for making new friends – just nurture existing ones
• The definition seem to be that you have friends in real life, and digital is only an extension of that
• The person I sent a friend request to is someone fairly well-known on the tech scene, so maybe it’s some protection against that

Breaking this down:

Doing it wrong?

I both get friend requests from, and send requests to, people who I might not know personally (or in some cases, not at all). And in some cases, these have become the best friends. I’ve gotten to know so many great people and friends through the web/a digital medium – some who I’ve been lucky to then meet in person, some I still haven’t.

It also seems that Facebook has become a sort of Rolodex with connections for people, throughout their life. Almost everyone are on Facebook, some reluctantly, so it is more or less a de facto place to find people, friends long lost and more.

Nurture existing friends

I love making new friends and reconnecting with old ones alike! Given how Facebook begun, and how it has evolved, seems to be that it’s much more a platform of connecting new people than just a connection with close friends (actually, for me, some of my close friends and I have virtually no interaction on Facebook, but rather in other contexts).

And what’s really the definition of “know this person personally”, anyway? That we must have known each other five years? Or met 100 times? Got drunk together? Slept together?

People You May Know

It also doesn’t seem to rhyme well with their People You May Know feature, suggesting mutual friends and more. Sometimes it’s a match, but the majority of the time, they are complete strangers. Only connection is a possible mutual friend.

“Famous”

It could also be that I sent a friend request to someone fairly well-known on the tech scene, but we have 18 mutual friends so it would be fairly ok to assume we have some connection.

Seems to me that a possibility is that famous people have gotten tired of lots of friend requests so it’s a way to keep them in.

Just make friends

To me the Internet is amazing for making new friends, and staying in touch with old ones – especially if there are geographical reasons and similar behind you’re not being able to meet in person – so I’d encourage everyone to keep on using it just like that.

So, who is really your friend on Facebook? Anyone you want!

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robertnyman/~3/vIlr7y7ZHlY/

This month marks my one year anniversary contributing to the Release Management Team as a Early Feedback Community Release Manager and I was not sure how the experience would turn out at first. I have really enjoyed the last 12 months working on our Firefox Nightly release. At our last work week in Portland, one […]

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BenjaminKerensaDotComMozilla/~3/e3wsB1MjW7M/one-year-of-release-management

With today’s release of Firefox Beta, we are introducing an experimental Web Real Time (WebRTC) communication feature that aims to offer more value to Firefox users and we’re calling for your help to test it out and let us know what you think.

There are a growing number of online communication services which are incompatible with each other, making it hard to communicate with your friends and family who might not have the same service, software or equipment as you. In order to use one of these services, you have to register an account and also give up your personal information in exchange for the right to use the services.

We’ve been testing WebRTC in experimental builds of Firefox for the last few months and today are expanding these trials to Beta to get more user feedback and for load testing purposes. With this WebRTC experiment we’re aiming to simplify video and audio communications by building an integrated communications feature directly into Firefox. It’s free to make voice and video calls and there’s no need to download software, plugins or even create an account, it’s ready to go immediately when you open Firefox Beta.

Mozilla has been pioneering WebRTC in a number of areas, from our industry-first implementation of DataChannels, to the first WebRTC call between two major browsers. With this experiment in Firefox Beta we’re continuing this momentum and increasing the value of WebRTC to Firefox users and developers.

So why not give our experiment a test drive. You’ll notice the product feature identified by a phone icon on the toolbar.

Please remember to share your feedback and file any bugs as we continue to improve performance and features around this WebRTC experiment.

We’ll have more to share as this product feature progresses.

More information:

• Download Firefox Beta for Windows, Mac and Linux
• Release Notes for Firefox Beta for Windows, Mac and Linux

https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2014/09/04/help-test-experimental-webrtc-communications-feature-in-firefox-beta/

Back in May, I let you know that we were running some experiments with the new tab page. I wanted to share a quick update on our progress and thinking as we expand testing to Firefox Beta.

We’ve learned a lot. We’ve experimented with every part of the new tab page – the size, layout, number of tiles, their UI, as well as varying the kinds of content we show. We’ve seen that some tiles don’t work at all, and some tiles get 50x the interaction we’d expect from industry benchmarks. We measure those interactions because we think they’re a proxy for giving users something valuable.

We’re really excited about the good stuff we can bring to users by working more closely with content providers and leading by example. This is new terrain for us, though, so we’re being deliberate about testing as we go.

Our next step is to extend these tests to the Firefox Beta channel, starting with our English locales. Our early results are promising, and we’ll keep measuring and refining until we’ve got it right.

https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2014/09/04/new-tab-page-experiments-in-firefox-beta/

I tend to use pretty basic (and preferably cross-platform) software so I can be comfortable on systems that aren’t highly configured to my specific taste. I don’t change the software I use on a daily basis very often. However, I recently switched away from the IRC client that I’d used heavily for many years, and started using IRCCloud instead. I’m so happy with it that I thought I’d write about it.

I used Colloquy, and I was pretty happy with it. It’s about as good as a native application IRC client can be. It has two major down-sides though, both of which are consequences of its being a native application.

First of all, when my computer was off or asleep, or I forgot to start the application for some reason, I was offline. I frequently missed interesting public conversations and private pings.

The second problem is that Colloquy only works on OS X, and if I’m using different machines I have to configure an IRC client on each one. I’m frequently using a couple of machines at the same time, like an Apple laptop with a bunch of OS X-specific applications open (e.g. iTunes, Word) and a Linux machine that I’m writing code on. If I want to copy/paste something to IRC from the machine that isn’t running Colloquy, I can’t unless I quit Colloquy on OS X and start some other IRC client on the other machine. Not being able to easily be on IRC with the same nick from multiple machines was annoying.

About six weeks ago I signed up for IRCCloud, based on a blog post I had read. Once you create an account, you can configure it just like any other IRC client and connect. The connection is persistent, so you’re online on IRC even when you’re not on the site. When you log on again, you can see what you missed in public rooms, as well as any private pings you might have missed. Fantastic. Because it’s a web application, it works on all platforms. You can even be logged in from multiple machines at the same time!

Switching to IRCCloud has improved my IRC experience immensely. I highly recommend it if you’re a regular IRC user.

http://boomswaggerboom.wordpress.com/2014/09/03/loving-irccloud/

First things first, what do we mean when we say “Open Badges Infrastructure?” Infrastructure is a bit of a loaded term, you can interpret it as servers, you could interpret it as software, or both hardware, software, internet…all the things. We’ll make this easy and say that the Open Badges technical Infrastructure is all the things that make it possible to earn or issue an Open Badge.

“All the things” is an easy answer to the question, “what is the open badges infrastructure?” but it doesn’t help much when we’re trying to push the infrastructure forward, when we’re trying to grow the ecosystem. Given a technical infrastructure need, how does the Badge Alliance, and the Open Badges community, figure out the best way to address the need? If the OBI is “all the things,” who could support it without turning the OBI into a silo’d badge system?

When we asked what role the Badge Alliance would play in the OBI, we knew that the OBI needed a shepherd organization that could help the members of the OB community coordinate their efforts maintaining the long-term health of the OBI. So how do we decide what actions fit into that model? What parts of the OBI are fair game for the BA to directly touch, which parts can we influence, which parts should we stay away from entirely?

We built a three-tier model that represents all the pieces of the OBI,

The first layer of the tier is the Open Badges standard. If you’re issuing an Open Badge, you’re relying on the standard to make the badge interoperable, transportable and verifiable. It’s the layer that all the other layers of the OBI rely on.

The second layer is libraries and tools that interact with the standard. Badge issuing libraries, validation libraries, badge bakers, tools that you download and install on your machine, or use as a dependency to build a bigger tool, fit in this layer.

Lastly, the top layer is userland. The marketplace. All the hosted services that interact with badge earners, with badge issuers and with badge consumers. It relies on the layers below it, and covers them up. A student earning a badge never knows that layers one and two exist, they just know that they received a badge and are storing it in their backpack.

Given the three layer model of the OBI, the Badge Alliance realized that it’s absolutely vital that we take a very active role in the maintenance of the first layer – the OB Standard, a less active role in the library layer, and a purely advisory role in the top userland layer.

Like all frameworks, it’s possible to find edge cases that break the model, but for most cases, it’s a solid way to judge what actions the BA should take in the maintenance of the OBI. Sunny and I will write more over the next couple of weeks about exactly how the BA will play in the three tiers.

http://chrismcavoy.org/2014/09/03/the-open-badges-infrastructure/

Planet Mozilla’s been a little mixed up for the past few days, claiming that I was the author of posts on the Mozilla Security Blog. The good news is that this problems appears to have been fixed, thanks to Mike Hoye.

However, it’s likely that very few people saw the post I made a few days ago about the new per-class measurements in about:memory. So please take a look if you’re interested in that sort of thing. Thanks.

https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/09/04/this-is-not-the-security-blog/

JackPair is a small widget which fits between your headset and your phone using the 3.5mm jack and encrypts your voice calls when you are talking to another JackPair user. Seems a really good design, without any secret sauce crypto, uses open hardware and software, and they need another $7,500 in the next day and a half to build it. Go and back them on Kickstarter :-)

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HackingForChrist/~3/121MhudcKdM/

Alex Fink from the OKCast interviewed me earlier this week about Mozilla’s work. More specifically, we discussed Webmaker and my focus on the Web Literacy Map. It serves as a useful introduction to the space as well as the importance of what we’re doing at the Mozilla Foundation.

Click here to listen (54:02)

http://literaci.es/the-okcast-ep16

Suggestion: let’s be sure to begin this work earlier in the 2015 Maker Party campaign, so that we can best take advantage of the snippet traffic during the campaign.

• http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/168374/building-a-community-out-of-ones-and-zeros
• http://www.elobservador.com.uy/noticia/286730/una-fiesta-de-datos-en-buenos-aires/
• http://www.eleconomistaamerica.com.ar/telecomunicacion-tecnologia-ar/noticias/6042831/08/14/Buenos-Aires-cierra-el-mayor-encuentro-de-periodistas-y-hackers-del-mundo.html#.Kku8dG3VJKtEK9E
• http://www.espectador.com/tecnologia/299107/encuentro-de-periodistas-y-programadores-mas-grande-del-mundo
• http://www.sitioandino.com/nota/130345-la-tercera-edicion-del-media-party-buenos-aires-ya-esta-en-marcha/
• http://www.paraguay.com/internacionales/cierran-el-mayor-encuentro-de-periodistas-y-hackers-del-mundo-114786
• http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/sociedad/3-254185-2014-08-31.html
• http://www.cronista.com/tecnologia/Hacks–hackers-lo-nuevo-en-periodismo-y-medios-se-discute-en-Buenos-Aires-20140829-0082.html
• http://www.elpais.com.uy/vida-actual/finalizo-mayor-evento-periodistas-hackers.html
• http://nueva-ciudad.com.ar/buenos-aires-sede-del-mayor-encuentro-de-periodistas-y-hackers-del-mundo/
• http://www.radiointereconomia.com/2014/08/30/sabado-30-de-agosto-de-2014-0700-gmt/
• http://www.elconfidencial.com/ultima-hora-en-vivo/2014-08-30/sabado-30-de-agosto-de-2014-18-10-gmt_349880/
• http://www.entornointeligente.com/articulo/3323121/URUGUAY-Una-fiesta-de-datos-en-Buenos-Aires-01092014
• http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1722312-periodismo-millennial-social-movil-e-inmediato
• http://www.iprofesional.com/notas/194795-La-Media-Party-de-HacksHackers-llega-a-Buenos-Aires-con-40-talleres-sobre-innovacin
• http://nueva-ciudad.com.ar/la-media-party-2014-de-hackshackers-tendra-40-talleres-gratuitos-sobre-herramientas-y-recursos-para-innovacion-en-medios/
• http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1722126-arranca-el-media-party-2014-el-encuentro-para-debatir-el-futuro-del-periodismo

——————————————————————–

PAID MEDIA (we’ve never considered this a major strategy for Maker Party)

http://hannahgrams.com/2014/09/02/maker-party-engagement-weeks-6-and-7/

A collection of semi-random notes from Wikimania London, published very late:

Gruppenfoto Wikimania 2014 London, by Ralf Roletschek, under CC BY-SA 3.0 Austria

The conference generally

• Tone: Overall tone of the conference was very positive. It is possibly just small sample size—any one person can only talk to a small number of the few thousand at the conference—but seemed more upbeat/positive than last year.
• Tone, 2: The one recurring negative theme was concern about community tone, from many angles, including Jimmy. I’m very curious to see how that plays out. I agree, of course, and will do my part, both at WMF and when I’m editing. But that sort of social/cultural change is very hard.
• Speaker diversity: Heard a few complaints about gender balance and other diversity issues in the speaker lineup, and saw a lot of the same (wonderful!) faces as last year. I’m wondering if there are procedural changes (like maybe blind submissions, or other things from this list) might bring some new blood and improve diversity.
• “Outsiders”: The conference seemed to have better representation than last year from “outside” our core community. In particular, it was great for me to see huge swathes of the open content/open access movements represented, as well as other free software projects like Mozilla. We should be a movement that works well with others, and Wikimania can/should be a key part of that, so this was a big plus for me.
• Types of talks: It would be interesting to see what the balance was of talks (and submissions) between “us learning about the world” (e.g., me talking about CC), “us learning about ourselves” (e.g., the self-research tracks), and “the world learning about us” (e.g., aimed at outsiders). Not sure there is any particular balance we should have between the three of them, but it might be revealing to see what the current balance is.
• Less speaking, more conversing: Next year I will probably propose mostly (only?) panels and workshops, and I wonder if I can convince others to do the same. I can do a talk+slides and stream it at any time; what I can only do in person is have deeper, higher-bandwidth conversations.
• Physical space and production values: The hackathon space was amazingly fun for me, though I got the sense not everyone agreed. The production values (and the rest of the space) for the conference were very good. I’m torn on whether or not the high production values are a plus for us, honestly. They raise the bar for participation (bad); make the whole event feel somewhat… un-community-ish(?); but they also make us much more accessible to people who aren’t yet ready for the full-on, super-intense Wikimedian Experience.

The conference for projects I work on

• LCA: Legal/Community Affairs was pretty awesome on many fronts—our talks, our work behind the scenes, our dealing with both the expected and unexpected, etc. Deeply proud to be part of this dedicated, creative team. Also very appreciative for everyone who thanked us—it means a lot when we hear from people we’ve helped.
• Maps: Great seeing so much interest in Open Street Map. Had a really enjoyable time at their 10th birthday meetup; was too bad I had to leave early. Now have a better understanding of some of the technical issues after a chat with Kolossos and Katie. Also had just plain fun geeking out about “hard choices” like map boundaries—I find how communities make decisions about problems like that fascinating.
• Software licensing: My licensing talk with Stephen went well, but probably should have been structured as part of the hackathon rather than for more general audiences. Ultimately this will only work out if engineering (WMF and volunteer) is on board, and will work best if engineering leads. (The question asked by Mako afterwards has already led to patches, which is cool.)
• Creative Commons: My CC talk with Kat went well, and got some good questions. Ultimately the rubber will meet the road when the translations are out and we start the discussion with the full community. Also great meeting User:Multichill; looking forward to working on license templates with him and May from design.
• Metadata: The multimedia metadata+licensing work is going to be really challenging, but very interesting and ultimately very empowering for everyone who wants to work with the material on commons. Look forward to working with a large/growing number of people on this project.
• Advocacy: Advocacy panel was challenging, in a good way. A variety of good, useful suggestions; but more than anything else, I took away that we should probably talk about how we talk when subjects are hard, and consensus may be difficult to reach. Examples would include when there is a short timeline for a letter, or when topics are deeply controversial for good, honest reasons.

The conference for me

• Lesson (1): Learned a lesson: never schedule a meeting for the day after Wikimania. Odds of being productive are basically zero, though we did get at least some things done.
• Lesson (2): I badly overbooked myself; it hurt my ability to enjoy the conference and meet everyone I wanted to meet. Next year I’ll try to be more focused in my commitments so I can benefit more from spontaneity, and get to see some slightly less day-job-related (but enjoyable or inspirational) talks/presentations.
• Research: Love that there is so much good/interesting research going on, and do deeply think that it is important to understand it so that I can apply it to my work. Did not get to see very much of it, though :/
• Arguing with love: As tweeted about by Phoebe, one of the highlights was a vigorous discussion (violent agreement :) with Mako over dinner about the four freedoms and how they relate to just/empowering software more broadly. Also started a good, vigorous discussion with SJ about communication and product quality, but we sadly never got to finish that.
• Recharging: Just like GUADEC in my previous life, I find these exhausting but also ultimately exhilarating and recharging. Can’t wait to get to Mexico City!

Misc.

• London: I really enjoy London—the mix of history and modernity is amazing. Bonus: I think the beer scene has really improved since the last time I was there.
• Movies: I hardly ever watch movies anymore, even though I love them. Knocked out 10 movies in the 22 hours in flight. On the way to London:
  • Grand Hotel Budapest (the same movie as every other one of his movies, which is enjoyable)
  • Jodorowsky’s Dune (awesome if you’re into scifi)
  • Anchorman (finally)
  • Stranger than Fiction (enjoyed it, but Adaptation was better)
  • Captain America, Winter Soldier (not bad?)
• On the way back:
  • All About Eve (finally – completely compelling)
  • Appleseed:Alpha (weird; the awful dialogue and wooden “faces” of computer animated actors clashed particularly badly with the clasically great dialogue and acting of All About Eve)
  • Mary Poppins (having just seen London; may explain my love of magico-realism?)
  • The Philadelphia Story (great cast, didn’t engage me otherwise)
  • Her (very good)

http://lu.is/blog/2014/09/02/wikimania-2014-notes-very-miscellaneous/

The 2nd video of the series (streamed live on August 19th) involves exploring options for what a potential living logo could look like. Based on these initial rough sketches, I’m very excited to say we’ll be working in partnership with Pitch Interactive to come up with data-driven visualizations as the main build of our logo system. More on that soon!

In addition, today on the Firefox Channel we released a small overview video of what we plan to achieve and how we’re going about making the project open. Enjoy!

http://blog.seanmartell.com/2014/09/02/mozilla-id-project-logo-exploration/

The add-on review process on AMO is fairly complicated, and can get very overwhelming if you need to look at it close enough that you must understand file and add-on statuses. AMO admins, devs, and reviewers are usually the ones who have to worry about this stuff and there aren’t good docs for it.

Since the issue popped up again today, I decided to take a few minutes to create a chart that explains the AMO review cycle from a file and add-on status perspective. If you think this chart is pretty crazy, you should keep in mind it’s a simplified view of the process. It doesn’t take into account developers deleting versions of marking their add-ons as inactive, and a few repetitive connections were left out. Still, it should give a good idea of how add-on and file statuses interact during the review process, and should help admins figure out which status means what (to add more confusion to the mix, AMO has old unused statuses, as well as others that are only used in Marketplace).

Here’s the chart without the notes:

For the real deal, check out the doc.

Is this complexity necessary? Probably. We have two review levels because it allows us to list polished add-ons as well as experimental ones, giving developers and users more flexibility and choice. This in turn makes AMO more diverse and generally a better option than self-hosting.

http://xulforge.com/blog/2014/09/the-complex-amo-review-process/