Tim Berners-Lee’s thoughts on the Web at 20

12 July, 2009 – 5:01 pm

Read an article at the BBC dot.life blog, where inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, talks about his creation.

I love the fact that Sir Tim has never tried to exploit or cash in big-time on the fact he created the modern web. This gives him real credibility in my eyes. He always speaks out in favour of openess and standards too. I love this quote:

“My feeling is that the web should be like a blank piece of paper. You can’t buy paper on which you can only write the truth, or not draw a nude. The medium should not be set up in order to constrain it”.

Some of the other points they touch on are interesting, such as the concept that a TV channel may become history. Baroness Susan Greenfield, however, is clearly a nutter!

By Mesanna | Posted in Internet | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment

Google Operating System confirmed

8 July, 2009 – 8:14 am

I knew it!!

Google announce the Google Chrome operating system to be released later this year. Based on Linux and initially aimed at netbooks, it should be released in the Autumn. Read the official announcement here.

I’m excited about this :D

By Mesanna | Posted in Linux | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (3)

Another Mark Shuttleworth interview

7 July, 2009 – 11:27 pm

Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu founder, gives an interview to Linux Format magazine, summarized here.

He talks again about the anticipated super-fast boot times on Karmic Koala, as well as discussing criticisms levelled at Canonical about lack of contributions to kernel updates. He also speculates that the famed Ubuntu brown may go! Shock horror!

And there’s some talk about semi-naked people too. I think Linux definitely needs more semi-naked people :D

By Mesanna | Posted in Linux, Ubuntu | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment

Review of Moblin 2.0 beta on the EEE PC

7 July, 2009 – 11:00 pm

Moblin Introduction

After reading PC World’s review of Moblin’s latest release, I was intrigued enough to try it.

If you’ve never heard of Moblin, it’s a (Fedora) Linux-based operating system backed by Intel for netbooks and other mobile internet devices (the name comes from “Mobile Linux”). It is designed to work on devices which utilize Intel’s Atom processor and claims to offer fast boot times and longer battery life. It’s been in development for a couple of years, but only recently has it seemed to gather some momentum. Since my EEE is mainly a backup machine, I just had to try it!

Moblin Installation and Hardware Support

I downloaded the image file from the Moblin site and created a bootable USB and fired up my EEE. (If you’re not sure how to do this and want to give it a go, the procedure is pretty much the same as for Ubuntu Netbook Remix. You can read my instructions here.) If you just want to have a poke around, the Live USB drive works well and you don’t need to touch your current setup. I felt, however, that I should give Moblin a full install if I were going to give it a fair review.

The installation was very straight-forward and simple. If you’ve ever installed Ubuntu, you’ll figure it out just fine. Once Moblin was installed, I restarted my EEE and I have to say it loads fast! Previously, I’d been using Ext4 as my file system, so was used to a pretty fast boot time. Unfortunately, Moblin didn’t offer Ext4 so I’m back to Ext2 and yet it still booted in about 20 seconds from hitting the power button to the desktop.

The EEE 1000 hardware seemed fairly well supported. My internet worked straight off with an ethernet connection and, as soon as I figured out where the networking setup was (far right on the toolbar), I input my password and my wireless connection worked too. Volume and brightness buttons worked, and the webcam seemed to work fine with Cheese.

The Desktop

Moblin launches into an overview screen called “Myzone“. There are three main panels on this screen with a toolbar along the top. The left panel lists To Do, and calendar entries; the centre panel shows recent web pages and opened files, and the right-hand side is for social network updates. Most of the operating system’s functionality can be accessed through the icons on the top toolbar. The icons include “Status” where you can update Twitter; “People” for instant messaging and contacts; “Internet” to launch the web browser; “Media” to access pictures, music and video; “Pasteboard” for pasting snippets of text; “Applications” stores all your programs; and finally “Zones” which work like virtual desktops.

Moblin is very much geared toward social networking, instant messaging and, naturally enough, the internet. Once you’ve entered your account details via the Status icon, friends’ updates will appear on the right-hand panel on the main Myzone screen. Currently, the only sites you could log in to were last.fm and Twitter. I’m very surprised Facebook wasn’t there, though that may well change in future releases. Personally, I don’t really use Twitter much, so this is something of a waste of valuable screen space for me. I’d like to see a way to integrate RSS feeds in this section – something I do use a lot – but there doesn’t seem to be any way to customize the screen.

I also felt the calendar section was a little disappointing. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that for many people a netbook may not be their main machine, therefore why does it have a desktop, rather than web-based, calendar? The PC World reviewer touched on this also, when he queried the need for a traditional email client. The designers need to incorporate cloud-based services more thoroughly, given that this is “mobile” Linux..

Software

Moblin comes with a fairly limited amount of software, though more can be added. There is no Open Office for example. It doesn’t even come with a word processor. It does have a few games, a media player and its own custom email, IM and web browser. More on that later.

Flash worked out the box but MP3 files didn’t. There was no error or notification, just a rotating icon. The media player seemed very buggy and crashed often. There was no obvious way to install MP3 codecs. Update: after a bit of Googling, I don’t believe Moblin currently supports MP3 files at all.

Impressions

First off, I have to say that this is a Beta and it is very, very buggy with frequent crashes and general, all round weirdness (← very technical description there). I don’t want to criticize Moblin on that, except to say that it needs an awful lot of work still. Do not even think about installing it on your main system.

I found myself comparing the whole user interface to Ubuntu’s Netbook Remix (UNR). Some people hate UNR. I personally like it a lot and find it fairly intuitive, though perhaps my familiarity with Gnome has given me a bias. In UNR, everything is right there on the main screen and navigation is very easy. I didn’t find Moblin to be anywhere near as intuitive. For example, it took a fair bit of clicking to find the file browser initially. You have to click on Applications on the toolbar, then Accessories, then File Browser. Once you know where it is, you can get there fairly quickly, but surely a link to the file system should be in a more prominent position?

I feel the designers need to incorporate some customization features and tweaks. As I mentioned above, on the welcome screen there is a calendar and Twitter updates. If you don’t want a calendar and you hate Twitter, too bad. Right now, you can’t change it. They have gone for a very minimalist desktop which I do like. And yet … given that there are so few icons along the top, one of them is devoted to updating Twitter and another for pasting text? I’m not sure that these would suit my personal tastes, but for now you’re stuck with them. If you could change these icons to your needs, it would go a long way toward a more useful experience.

The Web Browser

The very worst thing about Moblin is its web browser – apparently a custom version of Firefox. To say it has a stripped down interface is an understatement. There are back and forward buttons, an address bar and a Close button. And that’s it. No menus with Bookmarks, History, Options etc. No place to install extensions. No searching within a page. Too bad if you want to zoom in on tiny text on a page. You can’t. Nor can you right-click on a page, and I couldn’t figure out how to, for example, save an image from a web page.

Now call me picky, but given that this is a “netbook” and it is so very internet-centric, I feel that cutting back on the functionality of the web browser is a complete and utter no-no. I want to be able to tweak my browser to suit me. I want a menu with options. Since this is a secondary device, I want to be able to install Xmarks or Weave or something similar, so that I can easily access bookmarks across different computers. I want little features that make life easy, like the RSS icon in the URL bar which lets me easily subscribe to feeds.

Perhaps the browser is also in an early beta state and these options will be added in time, but right now it is extremely limited. It also has a fairly massive bug where sometimes it wouldn’t accept text in forms, which meant I couldn’t log into Gmail or WordPress. Another minor annoyance was the way the address bar would offer to suffix every URL with .com. If I’m in the UK typing bbc.co.uk, it would suggest bbc.co.uk.com. Note to designers: not every site on the interweb ends in .com!

I was able to install Firefox 3.5, which addressed the above issues, but I don’t think I should have to install a second browser to obtain decent functionality. Plus, this broke the Internet icon on the main toolbar. It wouldn’t open the default browser, nor would it open Firefox 3.5.

In closing

I don’t wish to be completely negative about Moblin, because they’ve got some good ideas about working on a small screen. If you like trying out new distros, then give it a whirl on a USB drive, as I think it’s interesting to see how different designers perceive the netbook user interface. Development is ongoing so the final product may be rather different from where it’s at now. I believe if they improved the browser and offered some user-customisations, they could really be onto something.

Visit the Moblin site or read more about it at Wikipedia.

By Mesanna | Posted in Linux | Tagged , , , , | Comments (2)

How the new Pirate Bay will work

3 July, 2009 – 12:47 pm

Following on from the news that the Pirate Bay is being sold, more details of the proposed business plan are coming out. The potential buyers, Swedish firm GGF, have discussed their ideas for the site a little more and I’ve outlined their ideas here.

If you’re a member of the site, you’ll be paid for sharing files. To clarify, the compensation you receive would be for the use of your internet bandwidth. The copyright holders will also be paid for their content, i.e. the artists will be paid every time someone downloads a song. The Pirate Bay itself will make money from the ads on the site, and from selling on the bandwidth of its users to Internet Service Providers.

Their chief exec, Hans Pandeya, explains, “Let’’s say a popular song comes out. Rather than a million downloads from a site – which would cause a considerable strain on that ISP – we can take that song and put it out on P2P. The technology will use the community of file-sharers to cut costs of data traffic for ISPs by more than a half. Users will earn money by joining, which can be spent on Pirate Bay’s other services [such as an expected online music store] or transferred to their bank accounts.”

I give them kudos for trying something new, but I seriously wonder if they’ll be able to pull it off. The whole premise is based on the 20 million or so regular users that the Pirate Bay has. And those users are already started to desert the site. I also question how the music industry will feel about their content being distributed in this manner. The music biz like complete control over their content, and I’m not sure if they will feel they have that in this setup.

But the biggest fly in the ointment, as far as I can see, is the fact that users will have to pay for their content. If downloads were cheap and you could pay for an album by seeding non-stop for a day or two, then it might be workable. But if you’d need to seed for a a month to cover the price of a couple of tracks, I just don’t see it working.

No doubt more details will emerge in time – assuming first and foremost that the sale does go through in August.

By Mesanna | Posted in Internet | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (2)

London Stock Exchange dumps Microsoft

3 July, 2009 – 10:52 am

Couldn’t help but titter when I read that the London Stock Exchange are ceasing their partnership with Microsoft.

The stock exchange has been running custom software based on Microsoft’s .NET framework, together with Windows Server 2003. The whole exchange crashed for almost a full day in September 2008, though they’ve never fully clarified the reason why. When your business is as IT-dependent as a Stock Exchange, losing a full day’s trading is little short of disastrous.

It seems that the executive who commissioned the Microsoft deal has quit, and she’d barely left the building before they were looking for a new system. That speaks volumes about how bad it must have been. MS touted the deal on their web site, promsing “One hundred per cent reliable on high-volume trading days”. Oops, that’s what I’d call epic fail.

Computing on the level that a stock exchange requires is just a little out of my experience, but I don’t think it’s co-incidence that nearly all of the world’s super computers run either Linux or Unix. It’ll be interesting to see what they replace the failed system with.

By Mesanna | Posted in Stuff | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (5)

The Pirate Bay is going legitimate

30 June, 2009 – 10:21 pm

The big news in the BitTorrent world today is that The Pirate Bay is being sold to a Swedish company, Global Gaming Factory (GGF), whose main business hitherto is internet cafes and gaming centres.

The owners-to-be (scheduled to take over the reins in August) plan to make the site legitimate and, to quote Hans Pandeya, their CEO: “We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site.”

So, ta-ta Pirate Bay then.

I must admit I was a little shocked when I first read the news, but my natural cynicism soon kicked in. Despite all their brave talk about taking on the corporations and the governments, the Pirate Bay’s founders are taking the money and running. To be perfectly honest, I can’t blame them. The sums involved are vast (60 million Swedish Krona/£4.7 million/$7.8 million). Even if they have to pay their fine to the Swedish courts, they’ll still be quids in. I am completely bemused what GGF think they will get out of it. Napster, anyone? As soon as the Pirate Bay starts charging for content, its users will depart in droves. There are plenty of other places to find torrents (Google, for one) and I would be extremely surprised if The Pirate Bay turned into the next iTunes. I can’t believe that any company would pay such a large sum for what will more than likely turn out to be a dead duck.

So, naturally the conspiracy theories are already abounding. Some people think it’s a big prank. Others think the RIAA is behind the takeover. Peter Sunde (brokep) of The Pirate Bay admitted that the original owners sold the site in 2006 but won’t say to whom. It seems weird that only yesterday they announced The Video Bay, a YouTube rival where any material could be uploaded without fear of copyright restrictions, and today they announce they’re going legitimate.

Torrent Freak has good coverage of the story. I think this one isn’t over yet.

By Mesanna | Posted in Internet | Tagged , , , , | Comments (3)

KDE 4.3 Plasma Overview

30 June, 2009 – 9:37 pm

The newest release of KDE should be out within the next month or so. They have released a video showing some of the new features, and they also touch briefly on their plans for KDE 4.4. The video includes some info on new widgets, themes and the geo-location feature that is part of their social desktop plans.

I’ve embedded the video below (probably best to set it to full screen once it starts, so that you can see everything clearly).

By Mesanna | Posted in Linux | Tagged , , , , | Comments (2)

Firefox Tab Redesign Challenge Revisited

28 June, 2009 – 8:36 pm

A few weeks back I wrote about the Mozilla Design Challenge Summer 2009, in which they asked for ideas on how to redesign the Firefox tab system to overcome the problems faced when users open many tabs at once.

The deadline for submissions has now passed and you can view all the submissions at Mozilla’s showcase site here. Several concepts came up again and again, and I have outlined the key points below.

  • The idea that not all tabs are equal came up often. There are certain tabs that people like to keep open constantly such as Gmail or Facebook, and many submissions felt that these should be treated differently to web pages that you may only view once. Several submissions discussed the idea of keeping web applications (like Gmail or Google Docs) separate from regular surfing.
  • It was often theorized that there should be some sort of grouping system for tabs. For example, if I open the BBC News main page, and click half a dozen links from that page, perhaps these tabs should be grouped in a parent/child format? Suggestions for grouping types varied, including grouping by domain, by web applications, by time or by topic (e.g. news, social networking etc.)
  • Many submissions felt that a Search box should be included which allowed users to search through currently open tabs for specific information.
  • Several submissions felt that the browser History, Bookmarks and Tab interface should be combined in some way, perhaps in a time-line, so that users could easily find sites without having to keep multiple tabs open.
  • Some submissions tried to improve upon the current tab system by adding features to improve organisation, like tab grouping or some sort of colour coding system. Other submissions were in favour of scraping the current system completely and redoing the whole concept of tabs from the ground up.
  • Many submissions incorporated some sort of visual preview of currently open tabs, which assisted users in locating a specific tab easily.

Having sat through a lot of videos, I’ve given below my ideas on how I think the tab system could be overhauled.

It’s important to recognize that the vast majority of users rarely open more than half a dozen tabs at once. In this scenario, tab management is not an issue and does incline me to think that a complete overhaul is perhaps not necessary. Having said that, as more and more applications become web based, this may well change in the future and perhaps we should be planning ahead. There is an issue with usability however, which Mozilla recognizes. Quite simply, many people are comfortable with tabs and may not wish for a radical change in the user interface. I feel that the designers need to find the line between satisfying the power users without alienating the browsing majority by breaking their familiar interface.

Some of the submissions added an extra button on the toolbar which, when clicked, opened a page displaying information on open tabs, whether in the form of a visual preview or a simple list. I feel that this idea is a good one. In fact, for now, I’d run the current tab system as it is, with the option to click open a “tab management” page if required. This satisfies both regular and power users without confusing the less tech-savvy. And perhaps, two or three releases down the line, the tab management page could become the default, as users would be very familiar with it by then. I like the idea of a single button only opening a tab management screen when required. I am very much against a permanent left or right hand menu, as this take up valuable screen space. Not everyone has a large monitor. Indeed, in the case of netbooks, screen space is often very limited.

So what would the “tab management” screen consist of? Many submissions offered a visual preview of open tabs. I like this idea and feel it simplifies the business of finding one tab amongst a couple of dozen.  Some submissions took the idea a little further and allowed drag and drop as well as grouping of tabs. This seemed to me to be a very effective way of managing multiple tabs in a clear and efficient manner.

Everyone’s requirements are different of course, and what seems favourable to me may appall you! :)   I’ve listed below some of the submissions which I found appealing. I don’t always agree with every single aspect that the submitters proposed, but they usually had at least one good concept in their video.

Smart Tab Concept – Andrey Dydyura

Visual Tabs – Aneesh Karve

Concept – Christian Fickinger

Wave Concept – Darby Thomas, Danielle Kanastab & Alex Mattice

Hover Shelf – Damon Dimmick

CubeZilla – Faber Ludens

Tab Wall – Frederick Imbert

Thumbtabs – Jacek Spiewla

Tab Tray – Ken Moore

Collapsible Tab Groups – Martin Polley

Concept – Maxim Soloviev

P.I.E. Tabs – Severin Brettmeister

Tablines – SVA Interaction Design MFA program-Team

I haven’t quite decided who to vote for yet. On one hand, I’m drawn to the simplicity and usability of  Concept by Maxim Soloviev, as well as Damon Dimmick’s Hover Shelf. On the other hand, I love the total redesign offered by Frederick Imbert’s Tab Wall. Oh, decisions, decisions!

You can head over the the Mozilla showcase site to submit a vote for your favourite design. Voting closes on Sunday 5th July, 2009.

By Mesanna | Posted in Internet | Tagged , , , , | Comments (3)

The Netbook Market

27 June, 2009 – 12:18 am

As part of their continuing assault on the netbook market, it’s being reported that Microsoft are considering releasing Windows 7 on a USB thumb drive.

Netbooks do not generally come equipped with a CD/DVD-ROM drive and if you want to install an alternative operating system, you often have to create a bootable USB drive. Using a program like UNetbootin, or Ubuntu’s USB-Imagewriter, this isn’t hard and most Linux distros offer information on how to do this. This is a whole new territory for Microsoft though.

There is no doubt that the netbook market has changed since Microsoft pushed their way in. The whole point of netbooks was that they were to be small, cheap and fairly robust machines, primarily used for web applications. And sales went through the roof, starting with the 7″ EEE. Now, however, they’re getting bigger and more powerful, so much so that they are really small laptops. Furthermore, the fast, solid state drives are out the window, replaced with conventional hard drives. And the reason for that? Quite simply, Windows won’t fit on small drives.  SSD’s are much more expensive than regular hard drives, but this wasn’t a problem when only a 4GB or 8GB drive was needed, which allowed a couple of Gigs for the Linux-based operating system plus space for applications. But Windows 7 will need at least 8Gb for the operating system alone. Indeed, the specs recommend 16GB space plus whatever you will need for your programs.

I have an EEE 1000 which has two solid state drives – an 8Gb drive for the OS and a 32Gb drive for data. On the 8Gb partition, I have installed Ubuntu Netbook Remix (based on Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty), which also includes Open Office, Rhythmbox, Firefox, Pidgin, Evolution, Cheese webcam software and lots of games. Basically, everything you might need on a small computer. Total install size – 3.2Gb. I still have 4.8Gb to play with (plus the 32Gb data drive if I’m really stuck). What on earth does Microsoft pack into their Windows installations? Remember, my 3.2Gb install includes all the applications that I listed. It just illuminates the different directions that Windows and Linux are going. Linux concentrates on providing a fast-loading experience that will still work well on less powerful hardware. Windows just seems to add bloat with eye candy on top.

Manufacturers are saying that netbooks are getting bigger and more powerful because that is what consumers want. And yet, that seems to contradict the reason they became popular in the first place. I often think people are mis-sold when they buy netbooks, particularly when it comes to Linux-based netbooks. A regular joe doesn’t know much about computers, but likes a bargain. He picks up a netbook then he isn’t happy because he can’t watch a DVD on it, or play games, or – in the case of Linux-based machines – it looks different to what he’s used to. Netbooks need to be sold as notebooks for the ‘net. To promote them as anything else is misleading and creates disappointment and dissatisfaction.

Microsoft, at their monopolistic best, has really bent the netbook market to their will. They have done borderline illegal deals with manufacturers to prevent Linux software being installed, and they have also pressurized the same manufacturers to alter their hardware specs in order to accommodate the shortcomings of Windows. I really hope the EU picks up on this and investigates Microsoft once again for their anti-competitive behaviour.

By Mesanna | Posted in EEE, Linux, Ubuntu, Windows 7 | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment