Practical Technology

for practical people.

July 30, 2012
by sjvn01
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Is GNOME “Staring into the abyss?”

Benjamin Otte, a leading GNOME developer thinks GNOME, once a popular Linux/Unix desktop but now more often used as a foundation for other desktop interfaces, is “staring into the abyss.”

I can’t argue with him. I think GNOME lost its way when it decided to move from its excellent 2.x release series to a barely usable GNOME 3.x line in 2009. Like many Linux users, I loved GNOME 2.x and hated GNOME 3.x. I’m far from the only one who disliked GNOME 3.x that strongly. Linus Torvalds, Linux’s father, would like to see GNOME forked and the current GNOME 3.x buried.

It’s not like this was hard to predict. When GNOME first announced that it was going to take a very different direction with GNOME 3, many GNOME supporters doubted this path’s wisdom. By October 2010, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, Ubuntu‘s  parent company decided to create another Linux desktop, Unity, instead of using the GNOME 3.x shell. While Ubuntu Unity has it critics, GNOME 3.x has lost many, indeed probably most, of its users.

Is GNOME “Staring into the abyss?” More >

July 30, 2012
by sjvn01
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Google adds Google+ Hangout style video-conferencing to Gmail

Fred Brewin, a Google product manager, has just announced that Google is upgrading its Gmail and its closely allied Google Talk  instant-messaging, VoIP, and video-chat service to to “a more modern video calling technology — Google+ Hangouts.”

Google+ Hangouts enables up to ten people to talk in a video-conference at once. In addition, with Google+ Hangouts on Air you can also broadcast to a world-wide audience via YouTube.

Google adds Google+ Hangout style video-conferencing to Gmail. More >

July 29, 2012
by sjvn01
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Five ways to skip Windows 8

I’ve been working with Windows 8 for months. Even after Microsoft dished out the release candidate to application developers, I’m still finding Windows 8 to be the worst Windows version to date.

Yes, worse than Vista, worse than Windows Millennium Edition (Me), and the only reason I’m not saying its worse than Windows Bob, is that Bob was just a user interface for Windows 95 and NT and not an operating system in and of itself.

Now, though even some of Microsoft strongest fans are beginning to back off from praising Windows 8.

Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) aren’t happy that Microsoft is going to be competing with them on tablets with Surface — the one area where Windows 8 Metro actually works. As a result I can’t see them pushing Windows 8 hard to their customers. Besides, they’re going to have to support potentially millions of customers trying to figure how to use the Metro interface and that will eat alive their already razor-thin profit margins.

Five ways to skip Windows 8. More >

July 27, 2012
by sjvn01
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How to watch the Olympics on the Internet

The simple way to watch the London Olympics is to just turn on your cable or satellite-connected TV and watch the NBC Olympics coverage on conventional television. If you want to watch the London Olympics via the Internet, though, things get complicated.

First, NBC’s “Live Extra” Internet Olympics coverage requires that you have a cable, satellite or telephone company TV, such as AT&T Uverse,  subscription that includes MSNBC and CNBC. If you get your TV purely over the Internet or over the air (OTA) with an antenna, you’re out of luck. You’re also not going to be watching the Olympics live over the Internet if you have a basic TV subscription that doesn’t include MSNBC or CNBC.

Think you’re ready to go? Not so fast, buddy. If you’re lucky, you’ll be “automatically” validated without needing to login in. Chances are though that you’ll need to jump through NBC’s Olympic hoops first.

How to watch the Olympics on the Internet. More >

July 27, 2012
by sjvn01
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Apple working on Google Glass rival?

Oh sure, you want to know about the latest iPhone 5 rumor or if Apple really going to come out with an Apple TV that’s not just a little black box, but what’s more exciting still is that Apple’s taking out patents on wearable computers, ala Google Glass.

According to Patently Apple, a site that tracks Apple’s patents, Apple has been toying with the idea of wearable computers since at least 2006. Indeed, wearable computers are far from a new idea. I first played with them in the 90s. But those were niche devices. It wasn’t until Google showed off with Google Glass in June 2012 at Google I/O that the idea of a heads-up computer display in your glasses captured the publics’ imagination.

Apple working on Google Glass rival? More >

July 26, 2012
by sjvn01
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The Blessings of Open Source for Small Business

Portland, OR: You may not think of yourself as an open-source software user, but if your business has any kind of a Web presence, you owe thanks to open source. That was one of the messages that Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media, delivered at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON), in his keynote speech, “The Clothesline Paradox: How Sharing Economies Create Value.”

In particular, O’Reilly said that open-source software creates great value for small and mid-size businesses (SMBs). “An economy is an ecosystem,” O’Reilly said. “If you take more out than you put in, the economy fails,” citing such infamous figures as Bernard “Bernie” Madoff and Charles Ponzi. Still others, such as Internet and open-source pioneers as Vint Cerf, Linus Torvalds, and Dennis Ritchie,  understood that “We all do better when we all do better.”

The Blessings of Open Source for Small Business. More >