Imc-Tech Summary 28 May, 2002

Speakeasy Hosting Update

Speakeasy has requested indymedia start paying for hosting stallman (the primary indymedia server which hosts around 35 of the sites). A few of the seattle imc people wrote a letter to mike at speakeasy discussing the issue. They tried to demonstrate to Speakeasy that they derive capitalist benefits from the relationship with IMC, as well as promoting the work of social justice.

http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-tech/2002-May/008584.html

Clarification on Global Indy's "UPCOMING IMC COVERAGE" section

More info on how to get an event listed.

http://docs.indymedia.org/twiki/bin/view/Global/UpcomingEvents

How to donate, Techdonate.indymedia.org died with Turtle

The old donate page is missing, but there is a donate link on tech.indymedia.org. Also paypal no longer thinks we're comitting fraud so online donations are working again to imc-tech.

http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-tech/2002-May/008532.html

Ruckus Tech Camp

Just a reminder that the ruckus tech camp will be in Occidental, Ca June 24 to July 2. They need help organizing the sessions. There is a list for discussing the camp on riseup.

http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/techcamp

Global features newswire

The right hand newswire column now lists features from local imc's. Not all local imc's currently have their features included because they need to upgrade their sites. The old open publishing newswire is still on the global site it is just a click away.

Features.cgi Updates

The code for the center columns on indymedia sites running active has had a lot of back end work done on it since the last summary. This makes the aforementioned global features newswire work. Most recently the ability to tag a feature with a specific language has been added. Once people upgrade we will be able to display the language for each feature on the global features newswire.

http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-tech/2002-May/008401.html

Anonymous CVS is once again working on Cat

This means that the cvsa command on stallman is working again

http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-tech/2002-May/008610.html

San Diego will provide a place to live for willing IMC-Techista

IMC San Diego needs a local techie to fix active, and are willing to provide housing this summer.

http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-tech/2002-May/008561.html

Clean-up of tech.indymedia.org

The IMC-Tech page has been cleaned up, now a good source of links to all the various IMC wikis.

http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-tech/2002-May/008553.html

Off-site lists on lists.indymedia.org

If your indymedia related mailinglist is NOT hosted on sarai (the lists.indymedia.org server) then we really need you to email listwork@indymedia.org. This will mean it will be much easier to find out where your indymedia related discussions are taking place.

http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/listwork/2002-May/002207.html

Plus, the page lists.indymedia.org now being statically generated http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/listwork/2002-May/002210.html

New Database Server

Inglis is now online as the database server taking over part of the load from stallman. While we haven't solved some serious database problems this has improved stability on stallman. Inglis is named after Agnes Inglis an early 20th century anarchist librarian.

http://www.spunk.org/agnes.html

Proposal for a features sharing system

There has been a little talk of creating a system that will automate the pulling of a feature from one indymedia site to another. So far it's still looking for people to take up the coding.

http://lists.cat.org.au/pipermail/webcoders/2002-May/000382.html

Documentation Projects: Attack of the Wikis!

In a renewed push to create a sustainable system for documentation a number of wiki systems have been setup. A wiki is a special type of web site which allows people looking at pages to edit them. Think of it as an open editing website system. Currently we have a number of different wiki systems running but there is a plan to consolidate them in to one site.

• docs.indymedia.org is the new general wiki / indymedia docs system
• bandwidthcoop.org/imc/tech code and server information
• kropotkin.indymedia.org/moin/moin.cgi for imc-tech info and status (migrated to docs.indy)

Please use the wikis for all indymedia documentation! It's easy to set up a section for your local imc's docs.

Multiplacer: pushtoeye replacement

Toni from the UK has written a replacement for pushtoeye that isn't a messy hack. It is currently in the debugging stage and is being tested on kropotkin. Please send toni@indymedia.org email bugging him to finish it up and consider using instead of the bandwidth hogging pushtoeye script. There is also a rumor that loudeye has installed rsynch so we may be able to have centerstage pull the content which would also be much more reliable.

PGP & Keyservers

There are currently four servers in the imc pgp keyring network. Somebody should write up documentation on using it and post it to one of the wikis.

Secure IRC (Chat)

For everybody who doesn't want the spooks to read your chats we have a how-to document on connecting to the indymedia's irc server. Of course it really only works for msg and private conversations.

http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Sysadmin/SecureIRC

Indymedia Syndication Projects

The syndication@indymedia.org list has finally picked up as people upgrade to use the new global features newswire. There is also a new page on the global indymedia site listing links to all the various rss feeds from the indymedia network. Using these new feeds some regional groups of imc's are considering creating their own sub-network sites which combine their content.

http://indymedia.org/syndication.php3

CPSR Conference: Shaping The Network

At the end of may a bunch of imc techies gathered in seattle for the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility conference. There were a number of indymedia related sessions and breakouts including an open mic at the seattle imc. A hot topic was how to evolve open publishing in to an open editorial system based on democratic, discursive, and networked filtering and highlighting of content. Jeff Chester from the Center for Digital Democracy's talk at the imc about the struggle for open net access over cable is online.

• DeeDee: http://seattle.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=14535
• Jeff Chester: http://seattle.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=14531
• Rabble & Chris: http://seattle.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=14537

IMC-Tech Summary Update

Sorry for the long gap in imc-tech summaries. Hopefully we can get some sort of job rotation so more people can participate in the process of writing summaries. Writing a summary doesn't take any special skill, just some time to look through and summarize what has been discussed.

http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-tech/2002-May/008624.html

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-- ChristopherMitchell - 06 Jun 2002