Crypto Stick project presented by Quan Nguyen at GNOME.Asia

We are a group of four people representing the FOSSASIA organization at GNOME.Asia. Hon Nguyen, one of the developer of Crypto Stick also gave a presentation at the event in Hong Kong.

Quan Nguyen at GNOME.Asia 2012 in Hong Kong

Hong Phuc DANG (left) and Hon Nguyen (right) taking photos during GNOME.Asia 2012

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Mekong Delta Map Sprint

When it comes to Free and Open Source Software there are a lot of useful tools out there to make use of maps. But how useful is it, if there is no map data?

This was the reason for focusing our attention on maps of the Mekong Delta. For two months we cooperated with companies and universities in the Mekong Delta and we welcomed 10 students to work with us to improve the maps in the area. We did with different tools including Open Source Android apps and satellite images.

Check out the OSM Beginner’s Guide to become a map contributor as well!

Everyone loves pics. So here are a few pictures of the hard-working students.

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FOSSASIA accepted as Google Summer of Code organization

FOSSASIA has been accepted as mentor organization for the Google Summer of Code 2012. It is fantastic to join the international free software community in the study program and we are looking forward to student applications.

Applications can be added through the GSoC website. Please also introduce your ideas on the mailing list and add them to the ideas page. If you are proposing an idea for a subproject like Cryptostick, people on the list will direct you to specific contact points if needed. 

FOSSASIA is acting as an umbrella organization for projects related to Asian users and the community in the region. We welcome applications from student projects around the world who work on software tools benefiting users in the region.

The FOSSASIA Google Summer of Code program is looking for applications including: 

  • software development for projects supporting social change; 
  • internationalization projects benefitting users in the region, e.g. support for Asian fonts in applications and enhancing user experience; 
  • software for secure communication and user security including support for international Asian users; 
  • decentral systems for new use cases in emerging regions; 
  • educational development projects; 
  • localized free software distributions (e.g. regional Linux distributions); 

If you are a student there are important links to follow:

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FOSSASIA Summit 2011 Wrap Up

The FOSSASIA OpenTechSummit 2011 was held at Van Lang University in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam from November 11 to 12, 2011.

The event attracted 798 participants in 2 days including students, developers, business professionals and government officials. Ninety percent of the participants were local from Vietnam. There were a total of 24 speakers, 60% were local speakers and 40% of them were from other countries, including USA, France, Denmark, Cambodia, Germany, and Singapore. There were 26 talks and many workshops took place over the two days of the event.

It has been a great event. Thank you for joining the community at Van Lang University in Ho Chi Minh City 2011!

 

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FOSSASIA Google Summer of Code 2011

FOSSASIA was prominently featured on the Google Open Source Blog. I wrote a short sum up of the student summer projects.

FOSSASIA is participating in Google Summer of Code for the first time this summer. The goal of the FOSSASIA network is to bring young Open Source developers together with experienced international developers to join or start new Free and Open Source projects.

FOSSASIA’s Google Summer of Code projects focus on open source for social change and communication. All the students are putting in a lot of effort, however their progress is varying as students have different skill levels.

The project of “foo-script” (Adam Rakowski) is moving forward most quickly. He expands the uses for the next Crypto-Stick (an USB hardware device with an integrated openGPG smart card firmware) edition and develops plugins for popular applications like Firefox. With the Stick you can easily encrypt your emails and achieve convenient online authentication.

Secondly Chanrithy Thim, the MoonOS developer from Cambodia has been improving Appshell, a framework for applications that lets developers easily create application bundles. A single file contains all the data and files needed to run an application, so all a user has to do is to launch it.

Google Summer of Code projects will be presented at this year’s FOSSASIA Summit taking place in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) on November 11-13, 2011.

Links:

http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2011/08/whos-new-in-google-summer-of-code-part.html

 

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FOSSASIA Summit 2011 in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) from Nov. 11-12

FOSSASIA 2011 was announced officially during the Desktop Summit in Berlin by Chanrithy Thim and Mario Behling from the organization committee. FOSSASIA 2011 will take place from November 11-12 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam with a special focus on “Women in IT” and “Mobile Applications”.

“We had amazing people gathering at events in previous years, starting with FOSS Bridge in 2007 and 2008, GNOME.Asia in 2009, and FOSSASIA and the Open Design Weeks Asia in 2010. With the fantastic support of people from all over the world FOSSASIA 2011 is a place to meet the community, government officials and open source IT businesses. There are many opportunities to learn about existing projects and to meet people to start new software projects.” says Hong Phuc DANG, chair of the event.

Continue ReadingFOSSASIA Summit 2011 in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) from Nov. 11-12