Posted July 16th, 2009, in: 1| Ideas, Observations, Opinions, Rants Etc| New Media| Technology| Ubuntu/Xubuntu/Linux| Web Browsers

I was inspired to write this after hearing the good people at Buzz Out Loud as well as others talk about Chrome OS (supposedly coming in a year or two) and the Android Mobile OS somehow being evidence of some sort of disorganization of Google’s intentions Etc.

Google has these two initiatives that keep getting mentioned: Android, a “mobile OS,” and “Chrome (an OS allegedly coming out in a year or two),” which has been announced after all of us are already aware of the Chrome browser, which is pretty awesome in my opinion.

Here’s what I think practically everyone is missing about  this.

Linux Distros are all frankensteins.  I’m most familiar with Ubuntu, but I think anyone that knows about Linux would back me up in saying that Linux is an open-ended compilation of source-code.  And if you have a given distro and need some additional software, you very likely are going to be using add-on code that users of other distros are also using.

For this reason, Android and Chrome OS are not necessarily different initiatives on Google’s part.

And to go even further, I don’t believe that Android and Web OS from Palm are competitors.  I think it’s completely reasonable to assume that a Web OS front-end for Android is likely (as long as Android and WebOS continue to be released to consumers).  They’re both just Linux with different front-ends.  And with Linux Boxes, as they used to be called, the GUI is itself just an add-on.

Back to Google Chrome and Android.

I suspect that as an afterthought, Google realized that it should choose “Chrome”as it’s brand for NetBook sales because “Android” is not as friendly a name to the average buyer of a low-end laptop.

Along with that, banking on the fact that Mobile Data Connections are only going to get better, while WiFi only becomes more ubiquitous over the next two years, the idea of a machine that, for instance, has a music player that’s basically Pandora or Last.FM starts to make a lot of sense. (remember the FT article where the teenager says streaming music preferable owning it? I don’t know that we’ll even need to download mp3’s in 2 years, just stream!)

In order to make as many apps cloud-based as possible, Google Chrome could come to us with small API-based developments that take advantage of services like Yahoo!’s Flickr or Delicious or even news and entertainment services that plug right into the struggling corporate content businesses we keep hearing about in the tech news.

Perhaps the Chrome-loaded Asus laptop will be a direct Kindle competitor (or even an additional revenue model for amazon).

Meanwhile, mobile (pocket sized) devices aren’t going to stop getting smarter.  Android is just a catchy ‘band name’ for what’s ultimately the result of Google seeing that it’s in their best interest to get the OS market out of the hands of Microsoft and Apple.

Chrome is the same thing, but with a better name, and a wider appeal as long as the NetBook trend keeps up.

And at this point, I don’t think Google is risking much on its campaign to popularize Linux.  I personally believe that Linux is finally mature enough to begin competing with Mac OS and Windows so Google is just helping it along.  They’re jumping on the bandwagon because it serves them to do so.

In case I didn’t make it clear enough, Chrome and Android are the same thing or at the very least they’re both just Linux with different default drivers and GUI coding.

You can run Linux on a toaster.

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Posted February 12th, 2009, in: 1| Ideas, Observations, Opinions, Rants Etc| Technology| Ubuntu/Xubuntu/Linux| Web Browsers

It looks to me like the Smartphone market is going to spear-head of a lot of improvements to personal computing.

Surely location-based services are going to make our lives a lot easier in many ways, and of course, these technologies are probably going to completely change the face of advertising. But the ubiquity of GPS, and in turn, the development of new location-based services is only one of the more obvious ways Mobile will likely evolve personal computing as we know it.  

Here are two areas where I think the powerful mobile devices of the near future are going to be major game-changers. 

1. The Race for Affordability and SPEED in Mobile Data Connections – It seems like the mobile phone carriers haven’t been doing much to grow or improve their coverage.  It’s like there was an initial land-grab and for the past several years, whichever carriers are dominant in a given area have been left alone by the other carriers.  For years now, in the tech news I consume, I’ve been hearing about small, experimental rollouts of WiMAX and other alleged 4G technologies, but as far as  can tell, connectivity is just as crappy and overpriced as ever.

Smartphones are a real incentive for carriers to improve their networks.  The days of dumb-phones are coming to an end.  It wont be long before we all have , in our pockets, devices capable of streaming video in either direction. We will all be using ‘cloud’ services from our phones.  The devices are going to be practically free, so if the current major carriers don’t make better and more affordable connectivity available, some one else will. 

2. The Homogenization of Operating Systems - Linux is on the rise and JavaScript+HTML+CSS is proving to be an adequate way to build UIs (Thanks, Web2.0 Boom!).  You don’t need to look far to see evidence that the languages the Web is built on may be most of what we need.  One case in point is Palm’s “Web OS”, a mobile OS, the UI of which is totally done in JavaScript with HTML and CSS (and the backbone of the phone is all Linux) …Or how about Android? Again, Linux-based.  I don’t see non-linux OS’s continuing to rule the Mobile OS space for long.  It’s got to be just too tempting for Developers to write applications that will work on many devices rather than just one, especially when those Apps will be very easy to port to Browser-Based UI’s… What Smartphone 3 years from now will come without a browser?  

So you see, the browser is a leak into the cloud. And devices/OSs that allow cloud Apps to run natively rather than through a browser window are appealing for users and developers.  I just don’t see any way I could be wrong about this.  Instead of your phone having a browser, imagine that your phone will be a browser.  Right? You see?  For instance, the settings pages on your phone are just little web pages hosted by a tiny server you keep in your pocket.  Palm is on to something.

So the iPhone may stick around for a while, but I see a major uphill battle for for Apple or any other device manufacturer who wants to maintain complete control of what apps and services consumers can use.

I believe that the desktop computer and the desktop OS are going to move aside when it comes to what is really important to most people.  Connectivity.  Anytime, anywhere for anything.  And rich Applications to go along with it.  That’s what’s important.  Your Mac OS or Windows can be virtualised.  

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Posted January 30th, 2009, in: Computer Problems and Fixes| Technology| Web Browsers

I recently got blocked from being a subscriber to a video podcast based on nothing more than the fact that my IP Address is in the USA. The website only lets people within Australia download the content.  They can tell where people are based on the IP Address of the visitor.

One way around this is to use a “proxy”

The connection may be a little slow, but slow is better than nothing, right?

Here’s what to do in FireFox:

preferences>network>settings

Shown is one of many proxy sites’ IP Addresses you can find online by googling around.  I used xproxy.com for this example.

Once you do this, the server (website etc) your visiting thinks you’re visiting from within Australia.  Nice.  Actually you are visiting from within australia.  When you  use a proxy, your web traffic is actually going through another computer somewhere in this case, Australia.  xproxy has a bunch of proxies for different countries.

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Posted January 30th, 2009, in: Computer Problems and Fixes| Evil Robots| Ideas, Observations, Opinions, Rants Etc| Spam and Scams| Technology| Web Browsers

I was glancing at something over at The Pirate Bay and maybe I clicked on a banner or something but damn… What is this?  I’ve never seen anything like this on a Mac.  Is this new?  Are there new threats for Macs?  Or just new Warnings? 

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Posted December 24th, 2008, in: Reviews & Thoughts About Products| Semantic Web| Technology| The Semantic Web (Giant Global Graph)| Web 2.0| Web Browsers| WordPress

Trying out Zemanta, a service for finding related resources. 

They make Plugins for WordPress, TypePad and other blogging platforms, as well as extensions for both FireFox and IE.

Currently, as I’m writing this, the Zemanta plugin is only giving me a “Loading Zemanta…” message… I figured Zemanta’s database would likely have plenty of articles about Zemanta.  Maybe not.

We’ll see.  Very cool idea either way.

Update:

I guess the first time I loaded my WordPress Dashboard’s Editing page, Zemanta took a little while to load… Ever since it’s been super fast.

Pretty cool little Plugin. 

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Posted December 16th, 2008, in: Ideas, Observations, Opinions, Rants Etc| Marketing/Advertising In The Cloud| Semantic Web| Social Software and The Social Graph| Technology| The Semantic Web (Giant Global Graph)| Web 2.0| Web Browsers

first of all, my last prediction-for-next-year was a little optimistic, as I was predicting what people in the echo chamber have since started calling ‘cloud computing…’ I predicted that we’d see a lot of online services that blur the lines between what is ‘local’ and what is an online ’service.’  …let me just defer that prediction one year and add it to the heap of what I see coming this year.  At least give me credit for making it my major prediction before the catch-phrase ‘cloud computing’ came to the surface.

1. Linux Will Come and Start Killing. Google Android, Ubuntu Mobile, Asus’ recent release of EEE PC’s running Linux, all point for me to the fact that Linux is finally coming to a device near you.  Of course, Linux never went away, but I’m talking about real OS Market share.  In addition, I wouldn’t be surprised if the coming popularity of Linux also dishes out a major hit to Microsft because I bet it’s easier to port software made for Linux to Mac OS X than it is to port it to Windows since OS X is built on Unix.  Just something to consider.  Also, if you haven’t been looking, take a look at Ubuntu.  It’s a pretty nice OS and will run on anything, maybe even your toaster.  And it’s free!
   
2. AJaX Will Continue to Prevail as the Shiznit in Web Development (while Flash and others continue to die).  Because of the nature of touch-screen interfaces and because we will increasingly see the deployment of Navigation and Map-based services as well as virtual world type applications, where a scalable simulated 3-D space is used, I think AJaX is likely to continue to become the way things are done.  At this point, I’m starting to doubt the long term success of Flash, AIR, Silverlight because I think Javascript can do what these things do better.
3. Affordable Smartphones. Maybe this is a no-brainer, but when I say affordable I mean $100 or less.  I’m not predicting at this time affordable connectivity for these devices. I know gadget enthusiast might hate me for saying this, but I think the Handset Race and the Netbook Race are very overlapped.  They are both fighting for certain causes together such as improvements to battery life, cheapening of Solid State storage, cheapening of Mobile Connectivity, The need for competition in the OS market and the need for “Thin” software, not to mention ‘Cloud’ services… 
4. Ubiquity of Navigation Systems and/or GPS. From my understanding, cellular networks are already able to provide location info nearly as accurate as true GPS.  There’s no reason for the next wave of phones to not have on-board GPS capability or something similar that offers driving directions etc.
5. Google Will Roll Out Geo-Targeted Advertising for Realz. Via GPS/Navigation devices probably, but even desktop search should see a shift in this way. Try searching for ‘pizza.’ You can see there’s big room for improvement there.
6. Google Search to Shape Up or Start Shipping Out. Google may begin losing Search market-share in 2009 if they don’t play their cards right. Google’s Search Results haven’t changed noticeably since they started putting Wikipedia articles at the top of the stack a few years ago.  Personally, I think Google is intentionally not releasing major improvements to their results in order to avoid being an unofficial API for competing services. Again, search for ‘pizza.’ Then, add your postal code to the search. The funny thing is that Google already knows where you are, more or less, based on your IP address. Meanwhile, other search engines are actually better for many kinds of searches. Try Yahoo! for ‘pizza.’ Try Dogpile for finding an mp3. Google is capable of being better than these right now, in my opinion, but intentionally holding back, banking on the idea that their mindshare will carry them along until the next era, probably brought on by the ubiquity of GPS and Smartphones.  Even if Google loses a considerable amount of its Search traffic, it will continue to be the biggest hub of online metrics collection, as well as of course, online advertising, where Google makes all its money.  I don’t think Google is going anywhere any time soon.

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Posted June 1st, 2008, in: Technology| Web Browsers

I learned this from the Tekzilla Daily show (from Veronica Belmont who is way hot).

1. type about:config into your firefox url address field.
2. Right-click (or control-click if you’re on a mac) on the blank space
3. Select “New” and from the sub-menu,  ”Integer“
4. Name it nglayout.initialpaint.delay
5. Set the value to 0 (zero)

This will make Firefox load webpages more like Safari does.  You will see the page instantly and slower-loading parts of the page will come up later.

OMG

Thank you Tekzilla!

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Posted April 5th, 2008, in: Intellectual Property| Social Software and The Social Graph| Technology| Videos| Web 2.0| Web Browsers

[viddler id=10cc3285&h=370&w=437]

This looks cool. Thanks, Arin for the heads up.

I wish it wasn’t necessary for developer to build their own APIs for these social sites like myspace. I wish there was just a comprehensive API to begin with.

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Posted April 4th, 2008, in: Technology| Web Browsers

I’m writing this through FireFox. I’m only using FireFox because Flock and Safari are both shit-out-of-luck with the recent wordpress.com back-end upgrade.

I hate this.

I hate using FireFox. I like Safari because it’s native to osx and it’s not buggy (and it’s fast). I like Flock for all the reasons people like FireFox, and then some.

Why do i have to use FireFox if I don’t like it? This sucks.

I can’t post blogs with either Flock or Safari.

I’m using OSX 10.4

Please fix this, WordPress wizards!

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Posted April 4th, 2008, in: Technology| Web Browsers

I like The New WordPress basically. It’s gonna take some getting used to though.

But on my first post, I noticed I can’t use the link adding popup thing. IT’S BLANK!!!!

ARGH!

I finally got this whole multi-browser system down and now WordPRess doesn’t work with Flock?

NOOO!!!

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