Practical Technology

for practical people.

March 3, 2009
by sjvn01
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Twitterfall — the best Twitter client ever

Twitter is the place to go for idle Internet chatter — for example, what could be more fun than following a Congressional representative who twitters about President Obama’s speech in real time?

However, the native Twitter Web interface is a model of bare functionality. If you want more features — and many people do — then you need a Twitter client. The best I’ve found to date is Twitterfall.

What is it? Twitterfall is a Web-based client for Twitter that adds all the search and trend-tracking bells and whistles that a news addict could ever want. Because it’s a purely Web-based service, unlike the Adobe AIR-based Twhirl or the Mac/iPhone’s Twitterrific, you can run it on any PC or device that can run a full-powered Web browser.

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March 3, 2009
by sjvn01
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Linux Foundation has bought Linux.com

The Linux Foundation has long wanted the Linux.com domain name for obvious reasons. For a long time SourceForge, formerly VA Linux Systems, kept the site, but the company has now sold Linux.com to the Foundation.

Sources close to the deal say that the deal was made because, — an all too familiar story these days — the company needed the money. SourceForge, had, in addition to its well-known open-source eponymous code Web site, been in the media business. In December 2008, however, the company laid off the bulk of its NewsForge editorial staff. NewsForge, which was hosted at Linux.com. The Linux.com site then became something of a placeholder site, which held only discussion forum.

SourceForge had announced, on January 1st, 2009, that: “Many of you have commented that our NewsVac section hasn’t been refreshed since the middle of last month. Others have noticed that our story volume has dropped off. Changes are coming to Linux.com, and until they arrive, you won’t see any new stories on the site.”

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March 2, 2009
by sjvn01
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Need a new tech job? Learn Linux

I grew up dirt-poor in the middle of West Virginia on my grandparents’ stories of the Great Depression. We’re not even close to being that bad yet. But, when it’s you without a job, when you’re not able to draw a paycheck, that’s cold comfort. One ray of light in this misery economy though is that there are still some Linux jobs.

So it is that the Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated Linux’s growth, has announced the Linux Foundation Training Program. According to the Foundation’s press release, “It will kick off with courses taught at the Linux Foundation’s Annual Collaboration Summit April 8 – 10, 2009 in San Francisco.”

The Foundation explains that with the Linux server market predicted “to reach $50 billion dollars in three years, and the embedded and mobile Linux markets continue to explode,” it’s a good time to move your career to Linux and open source. Citing the freelance marketplace Odesk, the Foundations reports that the number of Linux-related jobs posted on its boards has increased more than 1400% since 2006.

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March 1, 2009
by sjvn01
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Dell & Ubuntu’s mighty Mini 9

Want a great Linux netbook for a great price? Then, give Dell’s Ubuntu-powered Mini 9 a try. I like netbooks. They tend to be small, powerful and you can easily get them with Linux. Not all netbooks are created equal, though, and some are clearly better than others. One of the best is the Dell Mini 9.

In the not even two years since Asus changed the laptop world with the first true netbook, the Eee PC 4G, I’ve used many netbooks, such as the ASUS Eee 1000. My new favorite though is the Dell Inspiron Mini 9.

It starts with the look and heft of the device. Some netbooks feel like their prices: cheap. Not, the Mini 9. It feels solid and well-made.

The keyboard backs up that initial impression. Other than squeezing the quote mark key down on the spacebar row, I found the keyboard to be quite comfortable. And, as someone who spends hours every day pounding out thousands of words, I know what I’m talking about when it comes to keyboards.

Powering this up is an Intel Atom 270 Diamondville CPU running at 1.6GHz. The one I bought came with a gigabyte of RAM and an 8GB SSD (solid state drives). The display is not quite nine-inches-8.9-inches with the graphics pushed by the Diamondville’s built-in 945GSE graphics. The default resolution is 1,024×600 and it looks great.

The Mini 9 comes with 3 USB 2.0 ports, an RJ-45 10/100Mbps Ethernet port and a media-card reader. Most of though will use Inspiron 910’s built-in 802.11b/g Wi-Fi.

Oh, and have I mentioned the battery life? It gave me an honest 4-hours of work. I like this netbook! Ubuntu 8.04, the latest long term support version of Ubuntu, runs great on this hardware. Its performance was, in a word, ‘snappy.’

Making it even better, Dell has already added such optional, but ‘must-have’ as far as I’m concerned programs such as Adobe Acrobat and Flash. Nicer still, Dell has thrown in the Fluendo Codecs. This allows you to play pretty much any multimedia file you’re likely to find on the Web including the Windows Media formats and MP4 videos.

I have a few quibbles, but that’s really all they are. For example, this Ubuntu comes with OpenOffice 2.4, instead of the newer and faster OpenOffice 3.0. I can live with that though. It’s still more than fast enough on this portable powerhouse.

Oh and the best part? All of this computing goodness came to me with a $289 price-tag. Now, this, this is my kind of computer.

A version of this story was first published in ComputerWorld.

February 27, 2009
by sjvn01
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Microsoft goes after TomTom — and Linux

Microsoft’s decision to sue TomTom — and in the process take on Linux — isn’t likely to affect your use of Linux. As of now, that’s the concensus among experts.

But if Microsoft wants a fight — oh boy, is the open-source community ready for it.

First, it should be noted that Microsoft is claiming its lawsuit, made public this week, isn’t really about Linux or open source. Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft’s corporate vice president and deputy general counsel of Intellectual Property and Licensing, said that while “three of the infringed patents implicate open-source code…open-source software is not the focal point of this action.”

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February 27, 2009
by sjvn01
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Good-Bye Computer Shopper

Once upon a time, in the late-80s to the mid-90s, if you cared one bit about PCs, you read Computer Shopper. You might only get a copy once or twice a year when you got the bug to buy or put together your own computer, but when you wanted to get deep into PCs, Computer Shopper is what you got. That was then. This is now. Today, Computer Shopper announced that it was going online only.

It just won’t be the same. There was a time when Computer Shopper had more than a thousand, tabloid sized pages. It was the Goliath of the magazine rack. And, I’m proud to say that I was a contributing editor and columnist for the magazine back in those days.

I started writing for Shopper in 1989, just before Ziff Davis bought it and I wrote regularly for it for the next six years. It was a great run.

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