MAKE desktop Linux more attractive than Mac OS X. That was the challenge that Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth issued to open source developers in July 2008. Now, almost two years later, Shuttleworth seems ready to put his money where his mouth is with the coming release of Lucid Lynx, the first Ubuntu to break out of its dark brown motif and orange “Human” theme since the distribution was introduced in 2004.
FOR years, American companies have been beating developing countries over the head for copyright violations, egging the US government to threaten trade sanctions against those who do not toe the intellectual property line. Now the same US companies are trying to bludgeon countries such as India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam into abandoning policies that favor open source software for use in their own public agencies.
A FUNNY thing happened on the way to the Facebook log-in page. Earlier this month, hundreds of users wanting to log into Facebook got “lost” and stumbled into a technology blog instead that had just written about the social networking site. And they couldn’t tell the difference.
HOW do you write about technology and opt out on the latest social networking craze? Simple, just say “no.” Last week, when Gmail popped up a screen announcing Google Buzz, I viewed this as yet another annoying attempt by some company to benefit from a online community I would help create with content that cost them next to nothing. You know, just like Facebook. “Share updates, photos, videos, and more. Start conversations about the things you find interesting,” the announcement said. Not interested, I ignored the large blue button that said “Sweet! Check out the Buzz!” and clicked on the tiny link that said “Nah, go to my inbox” instead.
ONE of the cool things about Google is its informal motto, “Don’t be evil.” When Google was still an upstart, the motto was a jab at its more established competitors, who were seen to be exploiting their users, said Paul Buchheit, a former employee who suggested “Don’t be evil” in a 2000 meeting on company values. Microsoft, which used its dominance in operating systems to stifle competition, surely comes to mind. But now a decade later, Google is a dominant force on the Internet. Is it beginning to look like the new Microsoft?
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.
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.
