THERE’S a lot of talk about cloud storage these days, which is just a fancy term for online storage. The idea of saving files on a remote server and accessing them from any machine with an Internet connection isn’t new. That’s been around since file hosting services from the early days of the Web. What’s new is that online storage is becoming more ubiquitous and more convenient, with services that automatically synchronize content on your local drive with a virtual drive on the Internet and a variety of devices.
THE recent exchange of harsh words between Washington and Beijing highlights a major concern for Internet users all over the world. How this debate plays out in their own countries will determine how free individuals are to express themselves online.
DO you have a Facebook account? It seems like every dog and his brother is on the world’s biggest social networking site these days. Facebook happily reports that it has more than 350 million active users. Of these, about 8.4 million are from the Philippines, which makes it the ninth biggest country in terms of Facebook users, says Nick Burcher, who has tracked usage statistics since 2008. In Asia, only Indonesia, with 14.7 million users, is bigger than we are, according to the December 2009 figures. The biggest country, by far, is the United States, of course, with 101.3 million users. Surrounded by so many millions of Facebook users, I sometimes feel a bit of a Luddite for steadfastly refusing to hop on the bandwagon.
QUESTIONS that I get in the mail show that quite a number of Windows users are curious about what to expect when they make the jump to Linux.
While answering one such question this week, I realized that I’ve already written quite a bit about how things are done in Linux as opposed to Windows, but that these snippets were scattered over many columns over the last three years. I thought it might be useful to gather that information in one column, where it might help more Windows users to make the switch to Ubuntu Linux.
IF you were a Microsoft stockholder, would you fire Steve Ballmer? Newsweek predicts you will, just as Ballmer marks his 10th anniversary as chief executive at the software giant.
2010 is going to be a good year for Linux on the desktop. No, tens of millions of Windows users aren’t going to see the light and suddenly switch. Inertia and resistance to change make a massive migration highly unlikely. At the same time, Microsoft has managed to stem the erosion from its Vista-fueled disaster, first by extending the commercial life of Windows XP on netbooks, then by releasing Windows 7. On the other hand, there is no doubt that Linux will continue to make steady gains on the desktop next year, even though most estimates still put its market share at about only 2 percent.
ONE of things that might disconcert Windows users after they’ve switched to Ubuntu Linux is the frequency with which the operating system is updated. There was a five-year wait between Windows XP and Windows Vista, and another two years until Windows 7 was released to fix all that was wrong with Vista. In contrast, Ubuntu, one of the most popular flavors of Linux, has pretty much followed a six-month release cycle since it was first introduced in 2004. This means that every April and October (except in 2006 when Dapper Drake was released in June instead), a new version becomes available. It’s only been a month since I installed the latest version, Karmic Koala, on my home PC and already, an early test version of the next release, Lucid Lynx, is available. The final version of Lucid isn’t due until April 2010 – but that’s not really too far away.
A colleague recently tweeted that he was dumping Mozilla Firefox for Google Chrome. Half in jest, I said, “You’ll be back.” My prediction wasn’t based on any fierce brand loyalty. I too have gone through periods when I stopped using Firefox in favor of Opera, usually because of some annoying bug. After Google finally released a decent Linux version of its much-hyped browser, I dabbled with Chrome, too. Eventually, however, I would always return to Firefox as my browser of choice because a new version would fix the bug and throw in new features that were compelling.
FIVE years ago last month, Firefox rose from the ashes of Netscape’s crushing defeat at the hands of Microsoft in the first browser wars. In that first encounter, Microsoft used its monopoly in operating systems to clobber Netscape by bundling its own browser, Internet Explorer, with every copy of Windows. This strategy made IE the default browser for most Windows users and wiped out the early lead that Netscape enjoyed. As a result, Netscape’s share of the browser market plummeted from more than 80 percent in 1996 to less than 5 percent by 2003.
Verzio Skii: A dual-SIM phone with a lot of extras
NOBODY I’ve shown the Verzio Skii to can believe that this slim, dual-SIM touch-screen phone costs less than P5,000. Visually, everything about the Skii from Verzio of Singapore—black piano finish, the brush metal back cover, chrome trim and one-centimeter profile—speaks of an expensive phone. That Verzio has managed to pack so many features into an attractive candy-bar phone that sells for only P4,990 is no mean feat.
SOMETIMES, less isn’t more – it’s just less. This was certainly the way I felt when I fired up an early open source demo of Google’s Chrome operating system that became available for download last week.
Digital Life is a blog that features a technology column by the same name that appears every Tuesday in Manila Standard Today, a national daily from the Philippines. This blog gives readers easy access to the column, which started in November 2002. Copyright 2009 Chin Wong.
QUESTIONS that I get in the mail show that quite a number of Windows users are curious about what to expect when they make the jump to Linux.
My webcam captures motion and takes time-stamped shots.
2010 is going to be a good year for Linux on the desktop. No, tens of millions of Windows users aren’t going to see the light and suddenly switch. Inertia and resistance to change make a massive migration highly unlikely. At the same time, Microsoft has managed to stem the erosion from its Vista-fueled disaster, first by extending the commercial life of Windows XP on netbooks, then by releasing Windows 7. On the other hand, there is no doubt that Linux will continue to make steady gains on the desktop next year, even though most estimates still put its market share at about only 2 percent.
