The English Cemetery

The first users of the blogging software that we released, Bitakora, are on the FFF categories: Friends, Family, Fools... I suppose that's what has to be expected. But, at least we, and some friends around, are using this new tool happily. There's the first english Bitakora of the planet, as the newsroom for Tagzania. Also a Bitakora-based site for a Spanish opinion-writer, Javier Ortiz and the first open Bitakora website: Blogak.com , sort of Blogger in Basque, a platform to create a blog in 3 easy steps., which we launched yesterday.

FON reaches the US, and now has maps for that country created by the Tagzania crew, altogether with coleagues of another Basque company, Alianzo.

FON is a start-up created by serial entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky.

The idea is a long-tail-like connectivity network. Wi-fi access points that users provide thru their wi-fi routers, each one re-distributing their broadband share from their particular source. You enter the network, share your broadband around your home, but get your share returned when you approach other people's windows. Others, not members of the network, may get cheap broadband paying for a connection if they happen to be around those points, and the network members may get benefits from that as well.

Any area of great Google Earth resolution that has no counterpart in Google Maps, has now been updated: at Google Local, but not thru the API.

Examples at the Hierro island, in the Canary Islands, off the coast of western Africa. Looks cloudy at Tagzania, and as a matter of fact, those are the very same clouds appearing at Virtual Earth or Windows Live Local, the Microsoft counterpart to Google.

This happens in many places. Tallinn, for instance, in Estonia.

We're eager to see these things in the API, obviously. Streetplans will arrive hopefully. I guess Germany's map vistas will be earlier than the World Cup: just a guess.

Today my company CodeSyntax has released a new Zope blogging product.

It is called Bitakora or Bitakora Blog Community.

This is a product for managing multiblog communities. It is multilingual, with varios language versions right now (english, spanish, basque). Blogs managed thru this system are based on a tag-based archive. And other features, as well (ePoz based wysiwyg editor, pingback system...). There must be bugs, of course. This is the release 0.1.

We have created a mailing list for the product, as well.

Some screenshots here and the .po files and translations made so far also downladable.

Some days ago, The Spanish Royal Family published in their official website a Chritsmas picture so badly photoshopped that it would seem like a joke. They even offered apologies: no time to reunite all the grandchildren around Juan Carlos and Sofia, so they turned to copy & paste. Lots of work, for these parasites of public budget, it seems.

However, that kitsch collage has ignited a wave of mockery that feels like fresh air. The king of Spain has become Spain's ideal Moshzilla model for dozens of picture mash-ups.

Now, they've met online, as well.

That's a picture a friend sent me. Not yet in the pseudo-official Family gallery. Great artwork there. There's the Constant Plumber from Bloglines even, or a Basque motive.

My personal favorite is the Republican version.