With no good standard ways of plugging input methods into Linux desktops, trying to develop an input method used to be difficult. But now there is an actual standard to address this small but important part of Linux, especially for East Asian users.

Last week, I was at the Chinese Electronics Standardization Institute (CESI) in Beijing to chair the Input Method Sub-Working Group meeting for the 13th time over the past three years. The IMSWG is part of the larger Northeast Asia OSS Promotion Forum (NEAOSS), formed by the Chinese, Japanese and Korean governments for pushing open source software.

Over the past few years, literally every detail of how input methods should work were discussed and debated among participants from the three countries. All had strong opinions on the architecture of the system, and at times it seemed impossible for them to agree on the specification.

We solved that by getting them to write software code instead - being programmers, they understood each other better in computer languages than in English.

Now, not only do we have an agreed specification, but we are also developing a reference implementation called IMBus, thanks to the hard work of all involved. We have both James Su of SCIM fame, and Hideki Hiura, the designer of XIM and IIIMF on board, so IMBus will no doubt be widely adopted. James gave a nice talk about IMBus at last year’s LF Desktop Architects Meeting.

I said “nearly” in the title of this blog post because the specification is not yet actually “published”. NEAOSS being a semi-governmental organisation, they are very keen on adhering to set procedures and there is still some paperwork to be done before the specification gets to the “approval” stage later this year. However, all technical issues have already been addressed. Hopefully this specification will work its way up to ISO and be published as an ISO standard in the future. ISO being ISO, this won’t happen anytime soon - I’ll talk more about that next time.

On Monday, I got a few hours’ notice that Joi Ito, Chairman of Creative Commons and board member of the Mozilla Foundation, was arriving to our offices en-route to a visit to Macao. This initiated a flurry of activity in the office since Joi is also a board member of Outblaze affiliate SanrioDigital, and it was thus a great opportunity to give Joi some insight into what the team at SanrioDigital has been up to, and to pick his brain and see what else we could be doing.

Joi is a fascinating person and has tremendous insight into popular culture. His ability to absorb information at a rapid pace and provide succint yet insightful comments was extremely valuable to the team. In spite of his pressing schedule, he was also able to meet up with Pindar Wong, Chairman of the Asia & Pacific Internet Association and co-founder of the first licensed ISP in Hong Kong. Pindar and Joi have been associated due to their involvment in ICANN.

Pindar is a big proponent of bringing Creative Commons to Hong Kong along with others such as Rebecca MacKinnon, Charles Mok, and Oiwan Lam . My apologies if I have failed to mention other prominent Hong Kong fans of Creative Commons.

I had the privilege of spending some time with Pindar and Joi and gaining insight into why they think Creative Commons is valuable to Hong Kong and what challenges are faced in localizing CC for this territory. I hope others can help promote the advantages of Creative Commons and provide assistance to the Hong Kong Fans of Creative Commons who at this point are looking for a lawyer specializing in intellectual property to review their draft.

Enjoy the video content and don’t forget to spread the word!

Post interview whilst we were discussing random things, discussion again veered towards Creative Commons and its relevance to Hong Kong and thanks to our intrepid cameraman Jacky Yuk who kept the camera rolling I have another snippet for you to enjoy

Technorati Tags: creative+commons creativecommons hongkong video joi+ito

The 2007 Hong Kong ICT Awards ceremony and gala was a lavish affair held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre last night, January 21st, 2008. Outblaze competed in the Best Business (Product) stream, and took home the Gold Award with our white label social video service, OutblazeVideo. It was a pretty positive start to the new year. As you may remember, just last November OutblazeVideo won the APICTA award for the Tools and Infrastructure category, so it’s almost time for us to buy a new display cabinet.

The Hong Kong ICT Awards were established in 2006 as a collaborative effort among industry support organizations, ICT professional bodies, academia and the Government to establish a large scale and internationally recognized brand of ICT awards for Hong Kong. By the way, congratulations to our affiliates Dream Cortex and Sanrio Digital, who took home a Merit Award in the Digital Entertainment award category (read the press release on their web site).

You can peruse the Outblaze entry to learn more about OutblazeVideo, or browse through the other winners of Best Business awards. The winners for Best Business not only show the tremendous breadth of Hong Kong expertise and potential, but also indicate a few of the things Hong Kongers are passionate about. OutblazeVideo needs no explanation since Hong Kong has always been crazy about movies - especially free ones.

Not to be missed is Team and Concepts Limited, who won a Gold for EditGrid, their fantastic online spreadsheet. This clearly suggests that Hong Kong people put great value on efficiency and organization, and we all know that is the case. (more…)