Four short links: 19 Mar 2009

Graphics, Sin, Smart Water Grids, and Invention--just another four short links:

1. Libre Graphics Meeting -- meeting for developers of free graphics software such as Inkscape, , and Scribus. 6-9 May 2009, and they welcome sponsors. Great tools for desktop publishing, photo manipulation, illustration, etc. are what normal businesses and consumers want on their desktops. Lovely to see more Open Source and Free Software maturing in this area.
2. Druckers' Five Deadly Business Sins -- love them all. #3: Cost-driven Pricing. The only thing that works is price-driven costing. The only sound way to price is to start out with what the market is willing to pay--and thus what the competition will charge--and design to that price specification. A quick search will turn up PDFs of the original article.
3. IBM Says Solar Water Will Be A $20BB Business -- smartgrids for water, akin to smartgrids for power. And IBM sees a role for information technology in the water world that's analogous to its role in smart grid projects, Nunes said. That includes sensor networks that can track water flow and quality, water meters that can give utilities and customers up-to-date information on water use and price, and complex "predictive" modeling to let water managers plan for the future. (via Freaklabs)
4. Excogitate -- another word from Dr Johnson's Dictionary blog, this one means to invent. I love the suggestion that invention is simply the external reflection of thought. Get excited and make things.