Open Enterprise
Glyn Moody
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Glyn Moody's look at all levels of the enterprise open source stack. The blog will look at the organisations that are embracing open source, old and new alike (start-ups welcome), and the communities of users and developers that have formed around them (or not, as the case may be).
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Published 12:23, 05 February 08
The UK-based Brownbook calls itself “the open yellow pages”:
that anyone can edit and where everyone has their say. We're building the Internet's most reliable and accurate yellow pages, one business at a time - and you can be a part of it just by having your say. It's an ambitious project and one that we hope you can contribute to. You can add new businesses, update existing businesses, even write helpful reviews about good or bad service. If you own a business you can claim it and promote it in BrownBook so you get alerted to reviews and edits that other people make.
It's a local business directory that uses a mixture of all the usual Web 2.0 stuff: wiki-based database, search engine, user-generated content and user reviews – there's even a blog.
It claims to have over two million businesses in its database, although the Recently Added Businesses panel didn't show exactly a stampede of others wishing to add themselves to that number. Nonetheless, it's a sensible application of various open technologies; what it needs now is some critical mass.
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