Wikispaces is looking for translators - interested in helping out?  Wikispaces wants to offer the wiki platform in additional languages and needs the help of others who have strong written fluency in English and the additional language of choice.  This is not a paid-for opportunity, but one that will greatly impact the community of Wikispaces users.

Desired languages include:

Originally published on the TechSoup Blog.

I've recently been enjoying Two Bits, Christopher M. Kelly's study of the cultural significance of free and open-source software. There are many books about FOSS' history and future, but where Two Bits really succeeds is in Kelly's perspective as an anthropologist. He places FOSS in a broader cultural context of rethinking intellectual property: his book examines not only free software, but also free music, free text, and free education. (via)

One great point Kelly makes is that organizations and companies committed to open source implicitly prioritize their content over their own longevity. Projects continue to grow even as the organizations supporting them shuffle in and out of the picture:

Being radically open means that any other competitor can use your system - but it means they are using your system, and this is the goal. Being open means not only sharing the "source code" (content and modules), but devising ways to ensure the perpetual openness of that content, that is, to create a recursive public devoted to the maintenance and modifiability of the medium or infrastructure by which it communicates. Openness trumps "sustainability" (i.e., the self-perpetuation of the financial feasibility of a particular organization), and where it fails to, the commitment to openness has been compromised.

The book was published by Duke University Press, but Kelly has put his money where his mouth is by offering the entire book for free in several formats. He encourages readers to notate the online version with their own comments or even rewrite it.

There’s something about the grey depressingness of Hallowe’en in Canada that brings out the zombie in everyone. Trying to make your next presentation a thriller? Need some (ahem) braaaaaains to help you through your new duties as social media champion?

Help is on the way with free, open sourced tools and methods from Open SoSi and "When Bad Presentations Happen to Good People" (More...)

During the week of September 14-21, 2009, Mozilla is asking individuals to step up and make a difference by using the Web to better their community. They are looking for people who want to share, give, engage, create, and collaborate by offering their time and talent to local organizations and people who need their help. 

Join the Mozilla Service Week!

Google 'launched' Google Wave about two weeks ago at the I/O Conference. It's continued to create quite a stir on the blogosphere, Twitter, and YouTube (2 million+ views!). Check out the 80 minute intro. video or read this TechCrunch article for an overview. 

Through Google Wave, Google seeks to change the way we communicate and collaborate online. I think it's worth pausing, though, to reflect on the Google Wave team's process around how they communicated and collaborated with the community to get us to this point. How might the Google Wave team have done things differently to better position themselves for world-changing success? And what are lessons we could learn for our world-changing projects?

Adam Hyde heads up FLOSS Manuals, a nonprofit foundation focused on the creation of open-source, how-to documentation that addresses how to use free software. FLOSS

[and Hyde's experience with it] has been documented somewhat extensively online, and I was fortunate to get to ask him a handful of questions about what he's learned along the way. He has been extremely generous in sharing with us such insightful, in-depth responses.

Rufus Pollock, co-founder of the Open Knowledge Foundation (and Cambridge University economist) talks about the importance of making data and information open and useful to the world.

NewsCloud is seeking applicants for the following contract positions. There are four contract slots at this time:

1) Multidisciplinary Software Project and Partnership/Outreach/Marketing Manager

2) PHP/Facebook Developer I

3) PHP/Facebook Developer II

4) Web Community Moderator, Customer Support and Fulfillment

Full listings are available here...
http://www.newscloud.com/jobs

I've updated the Social Media Toolkit to v0.11 with a number of features taken from the NewsCloud platform:

I am happy to share an early testing release of the NewsCloud Social Media Toolkit with you.