I stumbled on the "lifestream" blog of Cory O'Brien today. Being a fan of "lifestreams" (an aggregation of 'actions' taken on various sites) myself, I was interested to find that Cory's site was running on an lifestream aggregation platform called Sweet Cron, which was new to me. Sweet Cron is an open-source PHP-based application developed by "yongfook."

The developer, however, has since moved his own lifestream/blog to the free service called Posterous. Posterous, like Tumblr makes blogging easy, which is great. However, Posterous, like Tumblr, also has a very opaque business plan. Call me cynical: but I can't get my head around relying on "free" hosted Web services for more than transient projects. (I'm even starting to question my own previous musings about a "Software pyramid for a healthy non-profit".)

From the recent purchase of EtherPad by Google -- leaving even their paid customers in the lurch -- to the quiet shut down of free service TwitApps, it seems that hosted services -- paid or not -- can be volatile ground these days. There's a long list of web services that have joined the "dead pool" over the last few years -- I know that I've been bitten more than once (Stikipad, Ma.gnolia, etc.)

If you've read Free by Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson, you'll know that most of these services aren't free by any means; they are simply going for the largest market possible to make it feasible for 5% of users to pay the freight for the other 95%. If they can't reach the mass market necessary to succeed, troubling times lay ahead for the service's users.

Enough of these free services have shut down that I've started moving toward installed software again for my own personal needs. After enough wasted time looking for half-baked free services, I've found it becomes worthwhile to invest in running the service myself on my own infrastructure. Your mileage may vary of course.

All that said, I'm sincerely curious about what others are doing: Are you relying more-and-more on free services like Posterous and Tumblr? Do you think about the day of reckoning when, inevitability, they introduce a premium plan, sell your data, or show ads on your site? Do you back up your data regularly, or just have faith that all will be okay? Or, alternately, are you starting to dust off your old programming books and getting to work on your own solutions?

If you are a client, or a colleague, you probably have heard me talk about Bricolage -- the industrial-strength content management system. If you're a client of mine, you probably know why I talk about it (in fact, you're probably using it every day). And, if you're a colleague, you've probably wondered what the hell I was going on about. Well, I figured it's about time that I explain why some people claim that "Bricolage is quite possibly the most capable enterprise-class, open-source application available."

Rather than write at length about client requirements that keep me coming back to this capable, free and open-source software platform, I'm just going to capture some typical scenarios that come up -- case studies if you will -- and how they're easily accomplished in Bricolage. This is not to say that they can't, or couldn't be accomplished in other content management systems, but simply serves to expose how it is done by the bricoleurs.

Today's lesson: Permissions 101

(Or how to set-up basic permissions to limit a group of users to a certain group of assets, or categories.)

The typical scenario goes like this:

• I have a group of users (let's call them "Bloggers") that I want to limit to a certain set of assets, or categories
• I'd like to limit them to the creation of "Blog posts" (the asset)
• And I'd like to limit them to creating those assets in the /blog/ category

Bricolage is well suited to running large sites with thousands of stories and hundreds of categories (or several sites, with thousands of stories, and hundreds of categories) and potentially many languages -- think World Health Organization, or Grist. These site often have a large number of users that need access to certain things, but not others -- or are allowed to perform certain tasks (editing, proof reading) but not others (publishing, or developing templates, etc.).

Permissions, though confusing as hell, is one of the areas where Bricolage really shines. For a general overview, just have a scan through the Bricolage Security Guide. And, if you want to know more, just read it another five times. ;-) In short: it doesn't get more fine-grained and sensible than this, once you get your head around the concepts.

However, reading about permissions is one thing (and that thing is boring), and seeing them in action is another thing entirely. So, for your viewing pleasure, I've put together a couple of five-minute screen casts on Bricolage permissions 101. I've also typed up some quick notes on the steps I took and I've put them on the Bricolage wiki. And, if you're still curious, you can always go mining in the mailing list for permissions gems.

So, back to our scenario above: Bloggers (user group) need to be able to create blog posts (element type group) in the /blog/ category (category group). This is actually quite straightforward and only took about 10 minutes to set-up from beginning to end. Here's how:

• Bricolage permissions 101, Part I (5 minutes)
• Bricolage permissions 101, Part II (5 minutes)

Let me know if you have any questions. And keep your eyes out for the next installment in the journey of a self-appointed bricoleur.

I saw a note from long-time friend Amanda Hickman this week announcing the release of the "Base Edition of NGO-in-a-box". It reminded me of all the work that's been underway (for some years now) at Tactical Tech to get the NGO-in-a-Box project up-and-running. NGO-in-a-box is probably one of the most impressively organized projects in the social-technology sector ... from the NGO-in-a-Box site:

NGO-in-a-box offers a set of peer reviewed and selected Free and Open Source software (F/OSS), tailored to the needs of NGO's. It provides them not only with software, but also with implementation scenarios and relevant materials to support this.

Each "Edition" has Editorial teams that select the software, and write the documentation, and manage the project. To date they've released NGO-in-a-box Open Publishing Edition, Security Edition, Audio Video Edition, and now the Base Edition that Amanda worked on.

The Base Edition is a great resource if you're starting a new organization, or wondering how free and open-source software might be able to help your organization do more with less. The Base Edition Web site describes it as:

...a collection of essential tools for running a small-to-medium sized NGO. You can use this toolkit to set up and coordinate your office, organize and manage projects, collaborate online and support your campaigns. The Box contains a set of peer-reviewed Free and Open Source Software tools, with associated guides and tutorials, giving you the technical foundations to build upon.

And, if you don't know why you should be thinking about free software yet -- go read my article on the subject!