September 4, 2012
by sjvn01
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Chrome and Internet Explorer locked in Web browser desktop battle

I’m a big Chrome fan and so are many other people since Chrome recently became the world’s favorite browser, but according to StatCounter’s August numbers, Internet Explorer (IE), has been making a comeback.

By StatCounter’s count, Chrome passed Internet Explorer during the week of May 13th. StatCounter’s stats are based on a sample of 15 billion page views in the company’s network and they show that Chrome was gradually pulling away from IE. As Aodhan Cullen, StatCounter’s CEO wrote in a blog posting in July . “There is much greater competition now. Although IE still leads in countries such as the US and UK, on a worldwide basis Google’s Chrome overtook IE in May and maintained a narrow lead in June.”

In August, though, IE started taking some market share back. Chrome had increased its lead in July, 33.81% to IE’s 32.04% but IE closed the gap in August. By the end of the month, Chrome lost a bit, to 33.59% and IE had gained some to reach 32.85%.

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September 3, 2012
by sjvn01
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How to watch football on the Internet

I’m not a big football fan, but like almost everyone from the United States, I have my particular favorites—the West Virginia University Mountaineers and the Pittsburgh Steelers–that I want to watch. Unfortunately, while watching even their most obscure games have gotten easier on cable or satellite TV thanks to ESPN, the NFL Network, and DirectTV, it’s not to easy to watch them on the Internet.

There is some coverage available though and here’s what I’ve found so far.

First, on the college side, ESPN3 used to be your go-to place on the Internet to watch live college football. While it still has some live sports—Canadian Football League (CFL) anyone?–Division 1 college football coverage is no longer a given. Some games are available, while others are blacked out.

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September 3, 2012
by sjvn01
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Linus Torvalds on the Linux desktop’s popularity problems

I’m a Linux desktop user. Google’s staff are Linux desktop users. But the Linux desktop itself has never been that popular and Miguel de Icaza, one of the creators of the GNOME’s Linux desktop explained why in What Killed The Linux Desktop. Linux’s creator, Linus Torvalds, and other top Linux developers, had other takes.

De Icaza had argued that Linux desktop’s ‘failure’ was “rooted in the developer culture that was created around it.” Specifically, “Linus, despite being a low-level kernel guy, set the tone for our community years ago when he dismissed binary compatibility for device drivers. The kernel people might have some valid reasons for it, and might have forced the industry to play by their rules, but the Desktop people did not have the power that the kernel people did. But we did keep the attitude.”

By that, de Icaza meant, “The attitude of our community was one of engineering excellence: we do not want deprecated code in our source trees, we do not want to keep broken designs around, we want pure and beautiful designs and we want to eliminate all traces of bad or poorly implemented ideas from our source code trees. … And we did.”

Linus Torvalds on the Linux desktop’s popularity problems. More >

August 29, 2012
by sjvn01
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The truth about Goobuntu: Google’s in-house desktop Ubuntu Linux

San Diego, CA: Most Linux people know that Google uses Linux on its desktops as well as its servers. Some know that Ubuntu Linux is Google’s desktop of choice and that it’s called Goobuntu. But almost no one outside of Google knew exactly what was in it or what roles Ubuntu Linux plays on Google’s campus, until now.

Today, August 29th , Thomas Bushnell, the tech lead of the group that manages and distributes Linux to Google’s corporate desktops unveiled Goobuntu from behind Google’s curtain at LinuxCon, the Linux Foundation’s annual North American technical conference, First things first, can you download Goobuntu to run it yourself? Well yes and no.

Bushnell explained that “Goobuntu is simply a light skin over standard Ubuntu.” In particular, Google uses the latest long term support (LTS) of Ubuntu. That means that if you download a copy of the latest version of Ubuntu, 12.04.1, you will, for most practical purposes, be running Goobuntu.

The truth about Goobuntu: Google’s in-house desktop Ubuntu Linux. More >

August 29, 2012
by sjvn01
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How to put your movies on your media server

I have a huge movie collection. It used to all be on VHS tapes, then I moved to DVDs, and now I’m slowly moving to Blu-Ray. That’s all well and good, but along the way I decided I liked the convenience of making my hundreds of movies accessible from a single hard drive instead. Does this sound good to you? Here’s how you, too, can put twenty boxes of DVDs into a single 2TB hard drive.

Note: Before you go any farther, you should know that most movies comes with some kind of Digital Rights Management (DRM) encryption. I feel that since I bought these videos I should have the right to do with them what I want — so long as I don’t try to sell or distribute their contents to others. I am not a lawyer though and this is a legal gray area. If you decide to follow a similar course, you should be fine, but neither I nor ITworld can be responsible for any legal damages that may result from this how-to article. Got that? OK then.

[Here’s what buying movies and TV shows online looks like, drawn in marker ]

The media server and extender

Before you start any of this you need a media server and a media extender. A media server is a program, such as iTunes, MythTV, or Windows Media Center, that enables you to “broadcast” your videos to other computers and media extenders. A media extender, in turn, is just a device, like an Apple TV, the Xbox 360 and most 2011 and newer Blu-Ray DVD players, such as a Sony BDP-S580, that lets you view video from your media server on your TV.

How to put your movies on your media server. More >

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