I've been signed up to blog about the Internet Ministry Conference on the official IMC blog. If you'd like to follow what I and others are up to and what's going on in general, go check it out. You might also enjoy seeing some of the things I'm seeing over at the collective Flickr photo group.

I wasn't even in Grand Rapids before I met someone else headed to the Internet Ministry Conference. He flew in from the Philippines that same day. We'll, actually, he took off yesterday, but crossed the date line so he arrived before he really left... just take my word for it.

Apparently the Harrisburg local news is buzzing about an event that happened on the floor of my sisters studio apartment. The news includes quotes from the mayor of Harrisburg, followed by a short quote from my sister.

"I’m definitely concerned," said Miriam Ritchie, 23, who’s lived at the complex for about five months. "If this had happened in someone’s apartment, it would have been much worse."

I'm sure you know, but today is Software Freedom Day. To many, that might sound like a rather silly concept, but there are some good arguments for how free software promotes human rights. First, understand that freedom isn't about cost, but about the ability to use and reuse the software. Consider the control of information and its role in human rights. It is software that controls information in today's world.

For a more in depth explanation involving a discussion of voting systems check out SoftwareFreedomDay.org's own explanation of why software freedom is important to our world. I'll try to summarize it for you here. It is a foreign concept to many and I find most people don't understand why they should care. Let me try to help.

Many of you know that I'm a fan of an operating system called Linux. My own use of Linux is motivated in part by the value of software freedom. When we talk freedom, we aren't simply speaking of "no cost". Even if I was able to get Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office for free, I'd not be interested in them. They have other limiting factors. The way they do what they do is hidden and the formats they save their files in are not shared with others. In other words, the information you own is locked behind an artificial gate. The only purpose for it is the profit of the software vendor.

Freedom is what motivated a state government recently to consider using something besides Microsoft Office for their documents. They recognized that the documents they produced were stuck in a format that you couldn't use unless you owned Microsoft Office. If you've ever had to buy Microsoft Office, you'll know it isn't a cheap program. The lowest price I found for the latest version of Office in the standard edition was $210. This is not even close to accessible for the poorest in our country without the use of a library. Further, the fact that the format of the documents is locked means that in another 10 years, when that format is no longer commonly in use or you decide another software fits your need better, these documents will be even harder to make use of, if not impossible.

Anyway, today is a day set aside to try to communicate these values. I think the most important part to understand is that free does not equal freedom. The next thing I think you should know, there are quality alternatives that I use daily.

You may have heard of some of them:

• Mozilla Firefox browse the web in freedom
• Open Office freedom from closed office formats, but the ability to still work in a closed format world
• Scribus Freedom to create your own newsletters, pamphlets, flyers and more
• GIMP Freedom to make your own graphics and touch-up your pictures
• Stellarium Freedom to study the stars and planets
• Thunderbird Freedom to communicate through Email

We're just scratching the surface of the free softwares available. The ones above are all available for both Linux and Windows users. If you take the dive with me to Linux, you'll find a whole bunch more just waiting for you on the other side. :-)

Crazy, it's been almost a month since I posted my last entry!

Lots of thing have happened. We've spent several days traveling on behalf of our "Fund Discovery". We've sent out a newsletter. You should receive that in the mail. If you didn't holler and we'll see about sending it over. The Hospitality Suite here at FIM received the major parts of Rachel's face lift ideas.

Social networking has been something I've been watching, but up until recently never gave it much credit. Facebook has changed things for me a bit. Ever since they made it possible for other sites to integrate into their own site into facebook, I've become much more interested. These are called "applications". I've found it to be closer to what I've wanted a social network site to be, a hub of what I'm doing around the web that can be accessed by friends.

Here are some of the features that keep me coming back to facebook:

• status: This gives me a quick glimpse into what is going on in the lives of my friends.
• privacy: This helps me control who can see what. Some information I don't mind being available to anyone, but some I want to hold close. Facebook makes that possible.
• blog integration: facebook goes out and grabs my blog entries and pulls them in.
• last.fm integration: I use a service called last.fm to share my music listening habits with the world, and enjoy seeing what other friends are listening to.
• books & movies apps: I enjoy sharing reviews and ratings of the books and movies I've seen/read or looking to see what friends have read so that I can see what they like that I might also like.
• news feed: The news feed in facebook is what brings it all together. I can customize what information about what friends I see, bringing this information to me instead of making me go hunting. Isn't that what computers are for?
• email updates: This is perhaps the one that keeps me coming back most often. I come back because I get an email telling me something changed. (Which is also customizable so I only get the emails I want.)

I'm still thinking about what I think of the groups and photos apps. The groups particularly seems to be used only lightly by me. It has potential, but the greatest benefit I've found so far is finding people I've not seen in awhile or who have similar interests and are nearby. For this purpose it seems to be overly featured.

Anyway, if you're on facebook, look Rachel and I up. We've become regular users.

You very well may not have heard about it yet, but the OpenMoko Neo1973 is better than an iPhone. Yes, this is a point of opinion, but I've been watching the development of this phone since before the iPhone was more than a whisper in the back rooms of Apple. I've been more excited about the Neo1973 than I have been about the iPhone pretty much all along. It brings more actual change with it than the iPhone. It just doesn't have the Apple marketing team behind it. I'd like to tell you why this device is what I think the iPhone should be so please read on…

Dean sent this over to me, and I wanted to share the blessing with you folks who make our ministry possible. We have an internal quarterly publication that goes out to the missionaries that Dean creates. It is an attractive piece with many pictures and so forth, but in the past has been too big for some of our missionaries to receive for a variety of reasons so a few were mailed the one without the pictures in it to bring it to a usable size. This quarter I was here so I took a crack at shrinking it down to a more usable size. It turned out to be easy using technology I'd been using for several years, but here is one of the responses we got. Please don't think I'm tooting my own horn. This really wasn't a hard nut to crack so it isn't a testament to my technical prowess, just a blessing to others.

I tried it--and it now works to get it up in English without all those strange graphic symbols that characterized the FIM Connection in the past. Josiah must be a wizard. Now I am on my own. Thanks for all your help.

In all truth, there was nothing wizardly about it. Just some knowledge I'd run into quite a few years ago and readily available on the Internet. Thank you for being a part of this blessing to the missionaries we support. These little things are greatly appreciated and simply needed somebody around with the time to research the problem.

Thank You!

Lorikeet Biting My Thumb Originally uploaded by JosiahRitchie.

We went to the Lehigh Zoo on Sat. with the McCaffreys. For a buck you can feed the lorikeet. One of these birds decided my thumb looked better than the nectar in the cup and took a pretty good chomp of it. I didn't bleed, but I new it was there. The birds that couldn't get their heads in the cups bit holes in the bottom of the cups trying ti get it out. Apparently, we were the first ones of the day to feed them. :-)

We really enjoyed the Lehigh Valley Zoo. If you come see us, we might take you. I'm going to keep going until I see the Lynx standing up. That could take a long time. He seems pretty shy. :-)