Here is one way to store your stuff more securely in the Ubuntu One cloud.

0) If you mess up and need to start over again follow these directions to completely remove Ubuntu One and start again.

1) Install the file encryption program Cryptkeepter with sudo apt-get install cryptkeeper at the shell, or your favourite package manager. This uses an encrypted file system called EncFS for pass-through file encryption - essential for having your stuff be readable to you but gibberish to anyone else.

Last week I got to be part of OpenEd09 - a conference hosted (for the first time) here in Vancouver all about openness in information technology and the education system. I had been invited to be on an parallel panel about copyright and creative commons but when I checked out the schedule I wanted in!

Fortunately the organizers were pretty cool and let me sneak in for free so I ended catching some amazing presentations and discussions, all now available on UStream. In particular I recommend Gardner Campbell on "No Digital Facelifts: Thinking the Unthinkable About Open Educational Experiences", Jim Groom on "The Design of Openness", and John Maxwell on "Wiki as CMS/LMS".

On Friday I presented a talk at the 2009 OpenWeb Vancouver conference entitled Collapsenomics 101: Finding (Open) Opportunities Amidst the Chaos. You can view the slides from my OpenOffice presentation as a Shockwave animation by clicking here (click to advance to the next slide).

I began by talking about the economic downturn and the first slides show what's been happening with various economic indicators over the past year as compared to the Great Depression of 1929. As you can see most indicators show steeper decline. I emphasized that Europe and Asia have been affected more strongly than the US which has resulted in a flood of investment into the US dollar and has really helped prop up the US stock market especially since January. This will not last.

I upgraded both of my laptops to the final pre-release version of Ubuntu 9.04 yesterday and am happy to report that they are both running great. The upgrade on my 16" Sager was as smooth as possible - just download the new packages and reboot. On my netbook (10" Asus Eeepc) I had to jump through a few hoops installing wifi drivers and ACPI scripts but it was all well-documented on the eeeuser and Ubuntu forums.

I initially installed the array.org kernel but was having more trouble connecting to wifi than with the generic Ubuntu kernel so I've switched to Ubuntu's offering. Yay Ubuntu for sorting out issues for netbooks so quickly that we don't even need a custom kernel anymore!

I've long been a big fan of Douglas Rushkoff. In this keynote "invocation," (courtesy of BlipTV, 8 mins) which opened the second day of the Personal Democracy Forum on June 24, 2008, he argues that there is no such thing as "personal democracy" and genuine democratic discourse can only be participatory and collective. The power to write and publish, he notes, may finally be in the hands of everyone (after centuries of domination by religious and political elites), but real democracy isn't just blogging and commenting, it's treating the entire world as "open source" and remakable by direct participation.

Today's announcment that Verizon and Mozilla are joining the Linux Mobile Foundation (LiMo) is great news for the advancement of mobile Linux.

Having a major carrier like Verizon announce that they "will encourage its handset partners to use the OS even if it is not a part of LiMo" and that they will "make a big financial commitment by hiring people" signals great confidence in open platforms as the way forward.