Adventures in Open Source

A year ago I decided to see who “owned” each letter of the alphabet when doing a Google search. Simply go to Google, type in just one letter, and see what is suggested.

Let’s see what changes a year can make. Those with a “*” were there last year.

A – Amazon *
B – Best Buy *
C – the speed of light (Craiglist was second)
D – Durham Bulls (some still get Dictionary from last year)
E – natural logarithm (eBay is second)
F – Facebook *
G – Gmail *
H – Planck’s Constant (hotmail is second)
I – iPad (IRS drops to fifth)
J – Justin Bieber (Java is second, JCPenny from last year is fifth)
K – Kohls *
L – Lowes *
M – Mapquest (MySpace is second)
N – Netflix *
O – Orbitz *
P – Pandora (Photobucket is gone)
Q – QVC (Quotes is second)
R – REI (Redbox is second, Realtor from last year is fourth)
S – Sears (Skype is second and Southwest Airlines is gone)
T – Target *
U – USPS *
V – Verizon (Verizon Wireless, from last year, is second)
W – Walmart *
X – Xbox (xkcd is second, then XM Radio)
Y – Youtube *
Z – Zappos (Zillow is second)

So the big losers look like Photobucket and Southwest Airlines.

MySpace continues to decline, and I could never understand why Zappos wasn’t first last year (I had never heard of Zillow).

I am only vaguely aware of who Justin Bieber is, but he rules the “Js”, although Java now makes a strong showing at number two. I was also happy to see xkcd up there.

It was funny to see scientific hits, like the speed of light, coming up first, although in every case the number one from last year has simply moved down one.

The “D” was funny, since I think it is location-based. I asked a number of people on IRC and they got different things.

Anyway, until next year …

Hi, my name is Bob Taylor and I found %your site% while I was seaching in Google.

I’m writing because after reviewing your site I believe there is potential to help promote each other’s sites.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PITTSBORO, NC (April 1, 2010) – The OpenNMS Group is announcing today that they are drastically changing their business model. Instead of producing the world’s first enterprise-grade network management platform that is truly open source, they’ve decided to turn their talents toward producing pizza.

The name of the project will be changed to OpenNOMS.

“Despite over 10 years as an open source project and over 5 years as a rapidly growing, profitable company, we’ve decided to follow the example of venture-backed open source firms and to adopt the ‘open core’ model,” says Tarus Balog, CEO of the new OpenNOMS Group. “Even though our bank balance kept going up, along with our taxes, everyone told us we couldn’t make money with a pure open source model. One of our analysts, Michael Coté of Redmonk, advised us to look at successful companies for our new venture. So we looked among our customers and said, hey, Papa John’s Pizza makes money, so we should bring our experience to bear on that.”

OpenNOMS will bring the open core development model to pizza, thus OpenNOMS will be available in two versions. The “community” supported pizza version will be available for free, while the enterprise pizza version, containing additional features, will be sold under a more traditional license.

“The community version will be just as satisfying as the enterprise version,” says Balog, “and is optimized for the cloud and virtualized environments, built leveraging the latest in Agile technology and DevOps trends.” The community version will to completely free, while the enterprise version will focus on those features specifically desired by larger and more profitable customers, such as crust, cheese and toppings.

In a video demonstrating the new product, people can see the immediate value open source brings to the pizza process. OpenNOMS can expedite virtual paradigms and benchmark mission-critical technologies in order to grow ubiquitous solutions and visualize visionary experiences with the final goal to repurpose value-added experiences and harness magnetic relationships.

OpenNOMS community edition is available now for download, and orders are being accepted for the enterprise edition.

About the OpenNOMS Group: Formerly the OpenNMS Group, OpenNOMS consists of people who believe that a valuable business can be built by focusing on customer needs and having fun fulfilling them. With a business model of “spend less than you earn” they have the luxury of focusing on customers and not investors, plus they can eat pizza and drink beer whenever they feel like it.

Okay, I have a weird sense of humour and I saw this on Century Boulevard and thought it was funny:

One of the many things I do at OpenNMS is handle the finances. This often requires me to interact with the Federal and State governments. To say that the system could be simplified is an understatement.

For example, take this postcard I received in the mail. It was for a corporation that was dissolved in 2003, but for some reason the office of the North Carolina Secretary of State (with whom I dissolved the corporation) still thinks that it is, in some form, active.

As you can see, the card tells one not to contact the office of the Secretary, but instead to call a particular number to talk with the Department of Revenue.

Go ahead, dial it. I dare you.

It appears that the Department of Revenue didn’t pay their phone bill, and the number has been disconnected.

(sigh)

Sometimes movies like Brazil get it right.