Practical Technology

for practical people.

August 16, 2012
by sjvn01
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Windows 8 belongs on older PCs like a fish needs a bicycle

As it happens, I do run Windows 8 on older PCs. But, testing operating systems is part of what I do for a living. Unless that’s also part of your job description running Windows 8 on an older PC is just a waste of time.

Oh sure, Windows 8 does boot faster and it has a few new features, but generally speaking Windows 8 with its “not Metro” interface is junk. I’ve been working with Windows 8 in one version or another for months now and there is simply nothing about it that would make me recommend it over Windows 7 or XP for that matter.

Metro, no matter what Microsoft wants to call it, remains a usability nightmare on a conventional PC. It may or may not be as awful on a touch tablet—I haven’t tried that so I don’t know—but I do know it’s annoying as heck on my non-touch enabled PCs.  The desktop, no matter what Microsoft may want, still works best with a Windows, Icons, Menu, Pointer (WIMP) interface, not Metro’s big, klutzy tiles.

Windows 8 belongs on older PCs like a fish needs a bicycle. More >

August 15, 2012
by sjvn01
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Office to finally fully support ODF, Open XML, and PDF formats

Earlier this week, Microsoft Office standards chief Jim Thatcher quietly announced that Microsoft would add ”two additional formats for use: Strict Open XML and Open Document Format (ODF) 1.2. … [and] support for opening PDF documents so they can be edited within Word and saved to any supported format.”  It took Microsoft long enough.

As Andrew ‘Andy’ Updegrove, a founding partner of Gesmer Updegrove, a top technology law firm and standards expert points out, this “brings a degree of closure to a seven year long epic battle between some of the largest technology companies in the world. The same saga pitted open source advocates against proprietary vendors, and for the first time brought the importance of technical standards to the attention of millions of people around the world, and at the center of the action were Microsoft and IBM, the latter supported by Google and Oracle, among other allies.”

Updegrove continued, “More specifically, the battle had been joined between the supporters of the Open Document Format – ODF for short – developed by OASIS, and then adopted by ISO/IEC, and a format developed and promoted by Microsoft, called Open XML, which it contributed to ECMA for adoption before also being submitted to ISO/IEC. In due course, Open XML was adopted as well, but only after a global battle that, improbably, even inspired a public protest on the sidewalks outside a standards committee meeting.”

The battle was largely over Microsoft’s desire to control “open” document standards.


Office to finally fully support ODF, Open XML, and PDF formats. More >

August 14, 2012
by sjvn01
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The new, improved Klout

You may not buy that your Klout  score matters. Too bad. Employers and bosses do pay attention to the social network “Standard for Influence” measurements. And, since  Klout has just changed its scoring system and is adding new features. you should too.

In a blog posting by Klout CEO Joe Fernandez, he announced that “we’re introducing some of the most significant product updates in Klout’s history. With these updates, we’ve concentrated on helping everyone to gain a clearer, more accurate understanding of how they influence other people through the ideas they share.”

Specifically, “The updated Klout Score now includes significantly broader data sets and signals, including our first steps towards including real-world influence. We now include many more actions from Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and more, and for the first time incorporate Wikipedia as a signal.”

The new, improved Klout. More >

August 14, 2012
by sjvn01
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Google starts changing Google+ naming system

Google+ is the best social network for grown-ups, but Google still doesn’t get it when it comes to letting people go by the names they want.

The good news is that Google will soon let you use human readable names for your Google+ account. In the next few weeks you can follow me at http://google.com/sjvn01 instead of https://google.com/113169713749496726739/posts. The bad news is that Google is limiting who can use such names.

Saurabh Sharma, a Google project manager, wrote, “We’re introducing custom URLs to make it even easier for people to find your profile on Google+. A custom URL is a short, easy to remember web address that links directly to your profile or page on Google+.”

Google starts changing Google+ naming system. More >

August 13, 2012
by sjvn01
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Are Android tablets ready to take on the iPad?

Do you remember April 2010? That was when the tablet market sprang to life.

Tablets had been around for more than a decade, but hardly anyone outside of certain vertical industries (utilities, for example) had noticed them. When Apple released the iPad in April 2010, everything changed.

The iPad wasn’t destined for some niche market; it was an object of desire. Apple claimed that it sold 300,000 iPads on the first day that it was available. No other vendor had technology that could come close to competing with iOS on the iPad.

Many tried. There was the now largely forgotten Moblin operating system, RIM’s PlayBook OS, Intel and Nokia’s short-lived Meego, Chrome OS and, of course, Android, most promisingly realized in the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. None of them was good enough to seriously compete with Apple, in either 2010 or 2011.

But now it’s 2012, and at long last, we have a contender: Google’s Nexus 7, running Android 4.1.

Are Android tablets ready to take on the iPad? More >

August 13, 2012
by sjvn01
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Red Hat finally commits to OpenStack for the cloud

Red Hat has long supported OpenStack cloud software… in theory. In practice though the Linux giant wouldn’t commit to OpenStack until now.

On August 13, Red Hat, announced the immediate availability of the preview release of Red Hat’s OpenStack distribution.  This test release is based on the Essex version of popular open source OpenStack Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud framework.

Red Hat claims that “With this, Red Hat delivers the next step in its plans for the industry’s only enterprise-ready OpenStack distribution with Red Hat’s award-winning commercial support, certified ecosystem of hardware and application vendors and leadership in delivering trusted open source clouds for organizations worldwide requiring enterprise-grade solutions and support.” This would come as a surprise both to Canonical and Hewlett-Packard, which had long committed to OpenStack for their cloud offerings.

Red Hat finally commits to OpenStack for the cloud. More >