April, 2008

Overheard: Linux desktop flunks the parent test

The day where I can recommend that my father use Linux (without the fear of him calling me on a daily basis to fix things) is the day I’ll proclaim the “year of the Linux desktop” has arrived. Wayne Richardson, Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 Release Notes Rewritten in Plain English

You could have said the same thing about Windows ten years ago.  Remember drivers and .DLL files?  I think the learning curve is going to be the same no matter what operating system you start with. It’s no different for Linux on the desktop. The navigation, jargon and acronyms are always going to be confusing the first time you jump into a new OS.

Overheard: Hardy Heron flunks the girlfriend test

Linux won’t truly be ready for the desktop until someone computer illiterate can sit down at a the computer and with little effort do what they want to do. Content Consumer, The Great Ubuntu-Girlfriend Experiment

The Linux on the Desktop debate continues. Lots of buzz this week about this guy who had his girlfriend try out Ubuntu’s latest release, Hardy Heron. (Love the codenames!)

It seems the guy (Content Consumer) had his girlfriend perform 12 tasks — ordinary things like watching a video on YouTube or changing the mouse speed. Nothing fancy.

And guess what? She had trouble. His conclusion?

Conclusion
The main issue with the desktop experience is that the geeky programmers and designers assume too much from the average user. They assume the user knows about the way in which programs are installed, or how the file system is set out. The average user will not go out of their way to google for help or even read the associated documentation that comes with Ubuntu and its default software. The little information pop-ups and guided wizards are critical to explaining how the user can accomplish the basic tasks they most probably are trying to do.

For those of you who’ve never even seen Linux on a desktop, Shawn Powers from Linux Journal gives you a high-level look-see. And here are the release notes from Wayne Richardson in plain English.

Overheard: Goodbye GoLive

HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and the Web graphics formats are all public, open standards. It just doesn’t seem right that the primary tool for professional Web site creation should be an expensive, proprietary software package. Where are the low-cost or open source competitors? Neil McAllister, GoLive Goes Dead as Adobe Consolidates

Adobe should just have cleaned up GoLive and made it free. It’s still a useful app and would go a long way to soothe all the people who are still angry about how Adobe promised something useful with Photoshop Express but didn’t deliver.

Overheard: iPhone vs. Blackberry

I couldn’t type on it and I still can’t type on it, and a lot of my friends can’t type on it. It’s hard to type on a piece of glass.” Mike Lazaridis, as quoted in BlackBerry’s Quest: Fend Off the iPhone

Overheard: Microsoft Cosmos

Unlike most OSes,   Cosmos doesn’t run on the bare metal of machines. Rather, it’s a virtualized OS that runs within the .NET container, intended to support .NET-based languages (particularly C#) that are also resident on the .NET container. Joe McKendrick,  A New OS is Born

Channel 8 has step-by-step directions for downloading and making Cosmos work on your PC. 

Overheard: If you build it, they will wreck it

Years from now, we may come to realise that the defining characteristic of Web 2.0 wasn’t gradients, bubbles and excessive use of JavaScript – it was a false belief in user-generated content. Ian Harris,  Can you trust Web 2.0?

Overheard: Microsoft Live Mesh is JBOF (just a bunch of feeds)

Essentially, Live Mesh is a collection of feeds (which can be expressed as ATOM, JSON, FeedSync, RSS, WB-XML, or POX). Every piece of data entered into a user’s Mesh — be it a file, a folder, a message, a user permission, or a new device — is rendered as a piece of information in a feed. The feeds are then synced with other devices that are part of that Mesh following rules for how to sync each particular piece of information. Josh Catone, Live Mesh: First Look at Microsoft’s New Platform

Ok…I’m loving this. Social networking all grown up. News feeds are the future and Facebook showed us how to use them.

The Live Mesh Notifier is a news feed of all the activity on a user’s Mesh. Right now that means changes made to files, folders, devices, user permissions, and comments left on files/folders. However, because Live Mesh is a platform that seeks to interact with third party services…it is easy to envision how much more could be pushed through the news feed.

Video: Robot demonstrates face recognition

Kind of cool!

Overheard: InPhase Tapestry is just a WORM optical drive

Essentially, the InPhase guys have built yet another WORM (write once, read many) optical drive. Yes, the 1.6 TB capacity is impressive, considering that the only recently has the new Blu-ray DVD-like format made it to market and the proposed dual-layer Blu-ray disks top out at ~50 GB. However, modern 52X CD-ROM drives have a random seek of ~90 milliseconds, significantly faster than the InPhase spec. for their drive. Dossy, InPhase Technologies to publically demonstrate “Tapestry” holographic data storage drive

When I saw that Ivy had picked holographic disk drive as today’s Word of the Day, I got all excited. Then Dossy brought me back to earth.

Overheard: Ballmer says customers love Vista

“In the business environment, we still have customers who are buying PCs with XP because information technology departments often have to work with old machines.” Steve Ballmer as quoted in Microsoft could keep XP if customers want it: CEO

I don’t know which was more entertaining — Ballmer’s spin — or laughing at how this Reuters headline was written for search engines.

Microsoft, by the way, has announced that the cut-off date for XP will be June 30.