March is looking to be an exceptionally busy month for Bug Labs, as we set off for a series of conferences and events in the lead up to the BUG launch.

To start, we’ll be at the O’Reilly ETech Conference in San Diego next week, where Peter will be delivering a keynote on the morning of Wednesday, March 5, on "Personalizing the Device". The following week, we’ll be at SXSW in Austin, where Peter will be delivering another presentation on Monday, March 10, this time on "Hardware Mashups: Introducing the Long Tail of Gadgets". (UPDATE: On the evening of Wednesday, March 12, Jeremy will be speaking at eComm 2008, taking place at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.)

Bug Labs software gurus, Ken and Angel, will be at EclipseCon in Santa Clara on Wednesday March 19, discussing the development of the BUG platform in "BUG: A Customizable Hardware and Software Platform using Linux, Java, and OSGi". And to close off March in style, Ken will be at the Internet of Things 2008 in Zurich on Thursday, March 27, participating in the session on "The Software Fabric for the Internet of Things".

And finally, March 17 is the day we’ve all been waiting for – Lá Fhéile Pádraig, commonly known as Saint Patrick’s Day. On this day, we celebrate in the streets in commemoration of Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. (We should also mention that is the day BUG finally ships. If you haven’t ordered yours yet, you can do so now in the online store).

You can follow our updates online via Twitter, Jaiku, and Facebook, and we’ll be posting reminders and updates here on BUG blogger.

Well, I do. There is a whole lot of activity these days in the mobile Java/open source world. Harmony, Android, PhoneME, OSGi, and MIDP 3.0 are all causing waves, in one form or another. The latest MIDP JCP, initialized about 3 years ago, has been rumbling towards an initial release as of late. Back then open source mobile Java did not exist in any meaningful way. Well, things have changed. I think the PhoneME MIDP implementation needs to be opened up. If you agree you may want to let the PhoneME engineers know. I’m sure they would appreciate the feedback.

I am a big believer in the value of free (both beer and freedom).  And while digital goods get much of the attention, there are equally interesting things happening in the physical world.  Chris Anderson’s most recent article in Wired starts with the classic example – Gillette and the "sell razor blades" approach.  The whole "get a free cell phone when you sign up for 2-yr service plan" is also good.  I’d like to throw another possibility into the mix – free gear in return for information. 

It’s an idea that I first encountered over 15 years ago when I read Neal Stephenson’s "Snow Crash".  I was reminded of it again when justin.tv became popular.  Stephenson’s term was Gargoyle and it means someone who is basically a live terminal node on a network, streaming different types of real-time data into some central server 24/7.  The Gargoyle does not care who uses the data they collect, only that they get paid if someone does.  And of course they get to use the gadgets for their own purposes as well.

Why is this relevant?  Because in a world where information is king and attention is scarce, there will be a premium paid to companies/organizations that can get the right information into the right hands at the right moment. 

A Gargoyle is merely a network node in physical space.  This provides some important advantages.  One, a Gargoyle can carry sensors and detect environmental factors.  They can carry location aware technologies that provide speed, direction, altitude and attitude data.  Lastly, because Gargoyles are human they can respond to the environment in useful ways, improving the quality and quantity of data.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to envision a future where companies offer up free gear to Gargoyle-wannabes.  In return for the data they collect they get free gadgets.  On top of that, they can make money when their data is used in some way.  Personally, I think its inevitable.  Heck, I want to be one.  It’s an interesting potential business model in support of Anderson’s thoughts on "free".

Just a quick reminder: Bug Labs has been nominated as "Product of the Year" by Linux Journal for its 2008 Readers’ Choice Survey. Take a look at the contenders, and you’ll see why we’re excited to be selected among such a great list of nominees.

As always, we’re looking to the Linux and OSS community to help us spread the word about BUG. So head on over, show your support for Bug Labs (question #36), and vote for other notable for Linux/OSS contributions. Voting ends tomorrow, February 14.

We gave a talk on BUG and some things we’ve learned about embedded Linux at SCaLE 2008 last weekend in LA. The session went pretty well, and the turnout was great. The audience had some great questions and was, in general, very enthusiastic about BUG. I was surprised by the variance in topics and skill sets present, and at how friendly and inclusive everyone was. Some technical conferences I end up going to seem to have an exclusionary, elitist feel to them, whereas SCaLE participants seemed to be quite at home with each other.

One session in particular was really exciting for me: Bruno Gonçalves de Albuquerque’s talk on Haiku. Haiku hasn’t much to do with BUG really, but Bruno’s excitement and enthusiasm made me remember why I’m typing away at present: the sheer joy of making things…the pleasure in solving problems and the satisfaction that comes from taking something and making it better. At times in the thick of things it can be easy to lose track of that. So, thank you Bruno and to everyone at SCaLE for giving me that much-needed recharge!